The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  There were always storms offshore on the Great Sea, far out from land, waiting restlessly to rush at the land. One such would come, if she called it. Druyan knew that in her bones, in her lost fingers. She had no need of hopes, or guesses. For whatever reason, a taint in her blood or her character, she had that power, unquestioned.

  She could call a storm—if she dared. Call, and be answered, but scarcely control and certainly not quell. She could save her people with her forbidden, smothered gift—and she could drown quite a lot of them along the way to that salvation.

  The trembling grew to a shuddering. Countering it, of a sudden Druyan felt the comforting steadiness of an arm about her shoulders. All at once she saw, in her mind, a tiny silver image, two miniature wolves running as one, shoulder to shoulder, bold and unafraid of what they were. As she stared the image grew, the wolves came closer and closer yet, until with a bound they sprang right through her, through her heart. She saw moonlight, but felt a splash of rain.

  Do what you must, the great silver wolf whispered into her head. Never fear what lies in your heart, for that alone can save you . . . This I learned from you. Now I give it back.

  Druyan opened her eyes, but for a moment all she saw was storm, wind and rain, darkness and howling destruction. Slowly the disasters faded, as the night’s dark ebbed back from the risen moon. Druyan took a breath. Her sight cleared. She was looking into Kellis’ very sober gray eyes. He raised that crow-black eyebrow at her.

  Had she chosen?

  She had.

  “Could you shift again and get back to Splaine Garth? she asked him. It wasn’t fair to ask, really, she knew he was exhausted, that he had run all night and fought most of the day. His eyes were blood-hatched, shadowed beneath. But what needed doing superceded pity.

  Kellis nodded, not the least reluctant except about leaving her. He was well enough, he said offhandedly, and tired was only tired.

  “Good. The marsh may hold the tide, but the wind’s another matter. Someone has to warn Enna and the girls, and I’d rather it was you. Tell them a storm; they’ll know what to do when they hear that. Help them do it.” Kellis nodded again, and Druyan turned to Robart, raising her chin.

  “The Riders have one last task ahead of them. And I’ll wager you can find horses enough, if you look for them now, before this mess gets sorted out. Or Valadan could call them.”

  “What do you mean?” Robart stared at her, not even ready to dispute what the stallion could do. “What task?”

  “Raising the coast—the towns, the farms. Telling them there’s going to be a storm surge atop a springing tide. Telling them to make ready, to protect themselves.”

  “A storm?” Robart tipped his head back. The moon was unveiled overhead. Stars glittered, all across the arch of the sky. There were clouds—small, few as fleas on a welltended dog, and scattered as a lost flock.

  “It’s a long way out,” Druyan agreed. “But it will hear me.”

  The Riders departed at first light, on sound horses gathered by Valadan’s surrmions, veterans of battle every one, fleet and willing. Kellis went then, also, a wolf careful not to limp while he was under her eye, Druyan suspected. At least he had slept awhile—she had seen him curled up under a wagon, nose tucked under his tail. As the day brightened, she jogged Valadan to the top of the headland opposite her uncle’s mighty castle of Keverne, on the far side of the river and town. What she needed to do, she might have done from the relative safety of Keverne’s battlements—but Druyan chose not to shelter behind walls. She wanted no barriers between her and the wind, not even crenelated stone.

  The wind’s cold fingers poked teasingly through her cloak in a dozen places as she dismounted. When she faced the sea straight on, all her hair was scooped back from her face to stream behind her like Valadan’s tail. Druyan vgalked slowly through the heather, soaking her boots with the wind-flung spray that clung to the tough plants. Seapink grew in soft mounds to the cliff edge and tumbled right over—she stopped walking when she reached them, and stood at the end of the world.

  There were certainly rocks in the wild waters below, near the foot of the cliff, maybe even islets, but she would not see those unless she leaned out over, and she had no need to do that. From Druyan’s vantage, all was sea before her, no land in sight at all. Oh, indeed there was land on the other side of the sea—always she had heard of it, and Kellis had been born upon one of those distant shores—but it was so far off as not to truly exist. There was only the endless sea, a thousand shades of blue and green and amethyst, and the wide sky above her, full of wind.

  The breeze close about her was playful as a young cat, and smelled of the coastal waters—fish and weed and salt, nothing more ancient, foreign. It was not the wind she sought. Druyan pursed her lips, breathed deep through her nostrils, feeling that she drank as deep of the wind as ever Valadan did, running.

  When she held all of it that she could, she sent the air whistling out again, in a plaintive call. The summons had a long way to go—she drew a breath only normally deep, and rested a moment. For good or ill, it was begun. She might step back from the cliff now, but not from what she had done.

  Valadan neighed a challenge, and Druyan turned in a windswirl of woolen cloak. There was a horseman fifty paces off—as she stared, the wind threw his hood back, and his chestnut hair caught the wind and the light as he halted and swung out of his saddle.

  Yvain was visibly pleased with himself, over the matter of eluding his fellow Riders. They had departed one and all, and not a man of them—for example, Robart—was on hand to say him nay.

  Plainly, he did not expect Druyan would do so, either. There was no diffidence, no hesitation in Yvain’s step as he drew near, though he paused once to ease saddle cramps out of his legs. The captain made Druyan an elegant bow as he reached her, took her hand as he straightened once more and pressed his lips to it. “Lady,” he said, smiling in the manner of a ginger cat well fed on stolen cream.

  “What pmt of Esdragon is left unwarned, while you are here?” Druyan asked, dismay defeating courtesy.

  Yvain’s eyes widened a touch, but his smile held its brightness. “We’ve not such a long coast as that! Rank grants privilege, Lady. I chose this section of coast for my responsibility. And so here am I, honorably at my post.”

  “This wasn’t Robart’s idea?”

  Yvain laughed outright at her suspicion. “No. I cannot imagine he’ll be much distressed, though.”

  Druyan tried to take her hand back. She wore her glove, and Yvain knew that—and why—two of its fingers were empty sleeves of leather, but she did not feel easy with it in his grip. Her face went hot, despite the cool air rushing past it from the sea. She tugged gently, striving not to act as if it mattered. . .

  Yvain did not relinquish his hold, gentle but nonetheless implacable. Her hand stayed his prisoner. “Lady Druyan, it may be a tedious while before all’s formally done, but I would have it said between us now, so you’re clear on my intentions?” He smiled again, with devastating effect. “I know you are widowed, though you have found it prudent that no other should have that information.”

  Now, as the long-dreaded disaster finally touched her, Druyan found to her amazement that it scarcely seemed to matter. There was windsong in her ears, roaring in her blood, and what she wanted most at that moment was for Yvain to let go of her hand so that she could issue her call once again—without having to whistle straight into his face.

  “I want you to wife,” Yvain declared earnestly.

  “I suppose you do.” With pounding heart, Druyan studied the sky. It was full of wind-tattered clouds, rushing busily along inland. “You’re far too rich to want me just for a paltry farm like Splaine Ganh.”

  “I am crushed! That you even jest at such a crass motive’s attaching itself to me, Lady—” Yvain had got hold of her other hand, somehow, and they stood facing one another. Druyan’s heart still raced, fast as the flying clouds.

  “As second widow of a childle
ss landholder, I know the laws for land passage, that’s all,” she said, forcing a calm she did not feel. “I have had cause to learn the legalities very thoroughly.” And she discovered herself more than a little relieved not to have to bother keeping her great secret any longer. There were other matters that demanded her whole attention—if she could once get her hands free.

  “I know you have tried to freehold, Druyan. I admire that. The way you have kept up your land, despite all that has befallen Esdragon, is most impressive. It does you the greatest credit. We shall even spend pan of each year living at Splaine Garth, if you prefer it to Tolasta or my other properties. I have no objection. Why should we not share our homes with one another?”

  Druyan closed her eyes and felt the wind pressing against her shut eyelids. Then, without warning, Yvain’s lips were upon hers, and he had dropped her hands so that he could put his own one on either side of her face, sliding his long clever fingers through her hair in an amazingly pleasurable, intimate touch.

  No man had touched her that way since—since Travic? Druyan wondered. Or was it not so long ago as that? What was she remembering? Had Travic ever touched her so? Ever made her feel so? But someone had—Yvain’s mouth moved against her lips, and something stirred in Druyan, deep inside. Her blood sang in her ears, surged like a storm tide, matching Yvain’s passion.

  And at the same time she wanted to slap him, and was hard put to resist acting upon her wish, now that her hands were finally freed. For Yvain’s presumption, his arrogance? Or for his waking feelings she had thought left behind with her girlhood dreams? Anger and regret twisted tight together like two threads plied together into one yam, impossible to separate. Yvain murmured something into her hair, and her lips bumed where his had touched them.

  Instead of lashing out at Yvain, Druyan stepped a pace back from him, with her hands carefully behind her, just as a great blast of wind shook them both, sent a mist of salty drops between them.

  “Let’s see first, Yvain, whether we will live anywhere,” she said shakily. He blinked at her, as if he had for the instant forgotten where they were, so utterly caught up by his own plans for what she would do that he forgot what she was there to do. Probably he did not believe in what she was attempting. Druyan found it hard not to hate him for that, for his so readily dismissing any part of her, but especially this part, at this critical instant. “You may not, after today, still desire to mingle your illustrious lineage with mine.”

  What—” His sculptured face was blank as a sleepwalker’s.

  “Be still,” Druyan said ungently. “Or go.” She marched to Valadan and climbed into his saddle. She’d be safer from Yvain’s distractions aboard the stallion. She turned Valadan’s fine head into the wind. His forelock blew back between his ears toward her, like black wave spume.

  I am of the wind, the stallion said. That will aid you.

  Druyan breathed deep and sent out her whistling call once more into the restless air atop the cliffs. Higher by the height of Valadan’s back, she felt even more a part of the air. It did help, as the stallion had pledged. She felt braver, surer, more herself somehow.

  She whistled again.

  “What are you doing?” Yvain shouted.

  Druyan ignored him, sending out her call again and again. As she ran out of air, she kept her lips pursed while she drew in another breath—and that breath whistled, as well, while it was drawn into her toward her.

  This is why women are reckoned to be bad luck on boats, Valadan said, tasting the wind he was kin to. And generally forbidden whistling.

  And the wind, which had been blowing from all directions in short gusts, shifted. Now it came steadily from the sea. And its smell was different—old, wild, full of shipwrecks and thunderclaps.

  Druyan sat astride Valadan’s back, while the wind blew steadily inshore. Her tawny hair was twirled into elflocks, as was the stallion’s mane. Her face was dry with cold, washed red by the sun’s dying rays.

  The sky above was yet a bottomless blue, studded with bits of cloud beautifully gilded by the sinking sun. At her back the moon was rising, very near, so full it seemed like to burst of ripeness. Once each year—only once—the moon drew so near in the night, seemed almost prepared to step down out of the sky, and its tidal pull flooded shores left diy at all other times.

  Her own grandfather had sung songs of greeting to the Lady of the Moon. So, in his different way, did Kellis. Druyan only looked seaward, fretting. Where was the storm? The steady daylong wind had not increased its fury, there was no sign of the thing she was calling with all her heart.

  Who can see the wind? Valadan asked. But he, too, was concerned and restless. Druyan could feel him lift first one foot, then another.

  Yvain still stood at her left hand. He looked back at the moon, following her gaze. Its pale light silvered his blue eyes till he turned them to sunfall once more.

  Druyan wished he would go. She could not decide whether he distracted her—she thought she could prevent that by ignoring him, and certainly by sparing no corner of her mind for what he proposed for her. It was not that she wanted to be alone—rather that the only man she wanted to have by her side was the very one she’d sent away.

  It was the only time she had ever managed to send Kellis from her side. Like a good sheepdog, he knew when ’twas utterly needful to obey, and he had done as she’d asked. But, oh, how she wished that a silver wolf paced where Yvain now nervously stood.

  Where was her storm wind? Had she not summoned it? Had she not called it, all that long day?

  She had called, certainly—but had she expected the wind to come? Had she wanted it, or was she, at the very core of her heart, still afraid of the wind and of herself? Would some coward, craven part of her accept the storm’s disobedience with relief? She was exactly like Kellis, afraid of nothing so much as what lay just under her own skin. . .

  “Druyan, enough of this!” Yvain shouted, tearing through her reverie. “Come with me now—”

  Go with Yvain. Yes, she could certainly do that. What was it but another order, one more instruction? As youngest of a very large family, she was quite well used to doing what she was told. Obeying now would free her of responsibility for putting raiders to flight, for arranging harvests and planting crops and the hopeless task of protecting villages. And it would not be such a very bad life, as Yvain’s wedded lady. He was pleasing to the eye, keen of wit, wealthy enough to know few cares—and he wanted her, without bargaining, without lands and dowry and family connections. It would be a fine life, surely, the one he offered her. Until Yvain discovered that she could not give him a child, until he leamed she was as empty within as a hollow tree, save for an arcane power over the wild wind that he surely could not approve of.

  He doesn’t care whats inside, Druyan thought, suddenly furious with the revelation, shaking with all the pent anger of a whole lifetime, as she began to understand her instinctive objection. I will not be afraid of what I am—let us see if Yvain can say the same!

  “No,” she said, and turned her face back to the sea, into the wind. She dropped the reins and lifted her hands, stretching out her arms to embrace the wind. She whistled once more, a piercing, demanding tone that never considered for a single instant that its quarry might mutiny or ignore it. Come to me, the call went out, no longer hesitant.

  And like a wayward horse that has stayed near while refusing to be caught and haltered, the wind answered her. Through its lash, Druyan looked seaward once more.

  The sky above was darkening, the moon’s glow not nearly compensating for the loss of the sun’s light. Ahead, where the disc of the sun still perched on the horizon of wavetops, the sky should yet have been bright.

  It was not. In place of the expected banners of scarlet and gold, orange and rose, there loomed a great dark mass, like a bmise across the sky, enveloping the sun as it sank toward the sea.

  Yvain heard the startled hiss of his own breath being drawn in, without recognizing it. Lightning flickered in
side the oncoming squall line, and white edges of cloud could be seen to seethe and boil against the blackness. Distance masked size and length, deceived as to speed—but blink and the storm was closer, and that gave a true measure of how quickly it swept upon them. Had he been aboard a ship upon open water and seen such a bank of cloud bearing down on him, Yvain would have given himself up for lost.

  He was hardly certain that he was safe on the land. The headland had never seemed so lofty, so at the mercy of the air about it. The grass rolled like sea billows, and anything loose had already gone skipping and flying toward the rising white face of the moon.

  The tide was roaring in. It could be heard over the wind, as the moon’s irresistible pull increased its force. The storm winds would be thrusting a massive bulge of water ahead of them, and when those waters were added to the tide . Yvain’s jaw dropped as he began to comprehend what had been only a misty plan, more hope than reality and not much attended to. He looked up at Druyan, her arms still open in welcome.

  “It comes at your call,” he whispered. The wind took his words, claiming the air they rode upon, and whirled them away like so many dry leaves.

  The face she turned upon him was a stranger’s, taut and wild and exultant. Her hair lifted around her like a living thing. Her eyes were a she-wolf’s, glowing full of moonlight, and they saw his fear.

  “Do you truly desire a barren witch for your wife, Yvain?” she asked.

  Yvain licked his wind-cracked lips and pitched his voice to cany, but his answer died in his cold throat, just before the gust front of the storm reached them and bowled him off his feet.

  Enna’s eyes were twin points of cold iron. “You came back without her?”

  “She sent me back,” Kellis pleaded. A gust of wind plucked at the horse blanket he had draped about him in a roughly fashioned beltran when he reached the barn, and he shivered. He was clothed enough not to outrage Enna, but not sufficiently to keep warm if he stood still. And beyond the discomfort was the unease the wind carried. “What do you do here when there’s a storm? A high storm tide?” She didn’t answer. He wondered if she thought he was just making conversation. “We’re supposed to do that.”