The Wind-Witch

by Susan Dexter

  Kellis hadn’t made it away beyond the lane’s end. He stood by the lightning-blasted tree, facing the dogs. Rook was crouched, staring her best stare, and Meddy was trying to back her comrade up, though her whines said all too plainly how uneasy she was about the business.

  “Call them off,” Kellis said, when he heard the four-beat of walking hooves behind him.

  He sounded angry, but Druyan didn’t fear he’d shift to wolf right in front of her—he never had, whether from shyness or some more dire reason—and there was no other way he’d get past Rook.

  “Tell me again why you’re going,” she said, scarcely able to hear her own voice over the hammering of her heart. If he’d been looking at her, she might not have been able to squeeze out a single word. Luckily, he was still trying to stare Rook down.

  He pivoted to face her, a line between his brows. “You know why, Lady. Because there might be a place for me, in the Wizards’ City.”

  “Or not,” Druyan said heartlessly.

  “Or not. As it always has been.” Of course. He had accepted that possibility, and still sold his honor for his passage price across the sea. “No difference.”

  “There might be a place for you here,” Druyan suggested. “Spare yourself a long walk. I can`t imagine you aren’t footsore.”

  The line deepened. “You have a good heart, Lady, but your kindness is misguided. M’lord Yvain won’t especially want me here.”

  Druyan could only stare at him. What did he know about that? How. . .”

  Valadan snorted and pawed vigorously at a puddle that lay before his hooves. The splashing hint was plain. Druyan felt her face go hot. Whatever Kellis must have seen had been either too little or too much, depending on how one considered it, but the conclusion it had led him to was suddenly obvious. Perversely, it gave her hope, the tiniest stirring breeze of it. She lifted her chin, watching him between Valadan’s black ears.

  “As it happens, Yvain of Tolasta has no say about who does or does not stay on my farm, Kellis!”

  His expression remained polite, but skeptical.

  “You doubt me? The same year and a day that lets you walk away from here now means the time’s past when I’d have been forced to wed any man my family or Travic’s told me to.”

  His right brow gave a twitch, then settled level again. “Men of Yvain’s sort don’t need force, Lady, not in this world.”

  Kellis was trying to sound as if it didn’t matter, but his eyes gave his hean away. He looked at her the way Rook sometimes did. Meddy, now, might entreat with her blue eyes and every inch of her pied body, shamelessly, but if Rook fancied a taste of the food you had on you, the dog would never beg for it. No, she’d only look, with just such a wanting, a hopeless hope fit to shred the hardest heart. Such a look faced her now, whether Kellis was aware of it or thought he hid it. I’m right! Druyan exulted, and the breeze freshened.

  “Yvain said he intended to ask Brioc for me. He never asked me, or I’d have told him no to his face, instead of letting him figure it out for himself.”

  That took him by surprise, very plainly. “Why would you do that, Lady?”

  Druyan laughed. “I’m sure Yvain asks the same!” She scissored her right leg over Valadan’s back and slid down his side, dismounting lightly as one only could from an unsaddled horse. She kept her arm over the stallion’s neck for a comforting instant, then stepped toward Kellis. Meddy gave her tail a happy wag, and Rook reproved her sister, by no means sure they were relieved of their duty.

  Druyan pulled the glove from her right hand and rested her shortened palm on her belly. Nothing there yet for the eye, but she could sense the gentle swelling to come, could feel a stirring through the layers of cloth. It might be her imagination, so early. It might not, given the blood she carried, given the father’s. The heartbeat was surely slighter than a breeze, but she knew ’twas there—in the wind, if nowhere else. “I’m not free to wed Yvain,” she said. “I owe a life debt.”

  He misunderstood her and denied her claim. “There’s no life debt,” Kellis said hastily, stepping back as if she frightened him. Rook growled, and he spared her a glare. “You’re not the only one with teeth!” He snapped out, then turned back to Druyan. “Don’t go on about my saving your life! You might not have died, you probably wouldn’t have—”

  “lt wouldn’t have been for lack of trying,” Druyan said soberly, letting herself remember. It seemed safe at such a distance, though it made the bright day dim in her eyes. She remembered the wolves, the courage they carried. “My head thought I should die, Kellis, and so I nearly did. But you taught me to listen to my heart, and I lived.” She swallowed hard, and wished she could hold onto Valadan’s mane for comfort. But she had left him behind. “So I ask you now—do you want in your heart to leave, Kellis? Or only with your head? You’re free—but free to leave is free to stay, too.”

  She was cutting his heart clean out of him, to ask him that, to offer him that choice. That was what she was doing. Kellis wished desperately that he had been wise enough to slip away before ever she rode homeward. He didn’t entirely believe her about Yvain—or trust that the truth of the moment would hold, once the captain began to press his suit once more.

  “I said from the first, it was better if I went. And I was right. It would have been, and sick or not, I should have gone—”

  “You can give me a dozen reasons why you should go,” she said, eyes bright as raindrops. “Give me a thousand—none of them will make me glad of it, Kellis! And I’ll never be sorry you stayed.”

  Kellis flinched, Rook bristled again at his movement, and while his attention was on the dog, Druyan stepped close and wrapped her three fingers about his right wrist. He could have broken her grip by taking half a step or a deep breath, but she knew he would reject that advantage.

  “Have you no mercy?” he asked her, motionless and looking miserable.

  “If I thought you’d be hurt by it . . . Kellis, all the times you spoke of going to Kovelir, you never once said you wanted to be there. And you don’t, do you?”

  He shook his head, and then gave her that same look of helpless anger he’d been favoring Rook with. Druyan refused to wither. She moved her left hand over her belly, as if she gentled a restive horse.

  “People want . . . so many things. When Travic died, all I dared hope was to keep this farm, somehow. How could I long for more, or other? I never knew to want it, much less expect—but the weaver can only set the warp, fate weaves in the weft, no matter what you do, or think you’re doing. And warp and weft must cross, or there’s no cloth. Even you can see only a little way ahead, Kellis.” She looked down at the ground. Three fat dewdrops lay along a grass blade, like silver peas in a pod. Like a sign, and she took courage from their gleam. “The pattern’s not the least what I thought it would be, when I began. It’s all wolves, and moonlight?”

  “Dreams,” Kellis whispered.

  “Then stay and dream with me. With us.”

  “Lady, I cannot—don’t ask this of me—” A twitch betrayed his longing to run.

  “The indebtedness isn’t for the life you saved—though I do thank you for it. My debt is for the new life we made between us, that night.” She trailed her hand across the cloth again. “And for that child, our child, I’m asking whether you could bear to give up Kovelir, and stay here awhile longer?”

  Silver eyes went wide as twin moons, and his right brow disappeared under silver hair. The left almost managed to do likewise. “Child?” He shaped the word as if he had never heard it.

  “About lambing time, I’m very much afraid,” Druyan confessed. “I really do need you to stay—we’ll be short-handed even if all the men come back, and I won’t be able to do much by then. I promise you won’t have to card wool all winter, or sleep in the barn—”

  He wasn’t saying anything, so she abandoned the jesting and faltered uncertainly on. “And then later, you could go on to Kovelir, if you still wanted to . . . if you’d only stay here awhile .
. .” She shut her eyes and felt his wrist pull free of her grasp. Her throat hurt her again, full of begging words, but she couldn’t hold onto him as if she were an iron-jawed trap, not even for love of him, not even if she died of it—she couldn’t make him tear free, the way trapped wolves did.

  “Would a lifetime be long enough?” And of a sudden he was nuzzling into her hair, his arms going around her, his lips brushing her ear. “Wolves take mates for life. Could you bear that, Lady? I’m no wizard and I’m no farmer, and there’s no one would ever tell you this was a good idea . . .”

  Druyan felt her world open wide with joy, all her senses expanding as they had the night he’d sung her into the wolf-form with him, to save her life. She could scent every shore the tickling breeze had touched, number the fragrant fruits in the orchard with her eyes closed, hear skylarks singing half a league off. His lips touched hers, and all at once Druyan’s heart was brimful of moonlight. Her arms dared now to slide around Kellis, and she put her unequal hands into his hair. It felt as shaggy as it looked, like a wolf’s pelt. “You can change your shape, but not your heart,” she said, nestling her head against his shoulder. “I can bear anything, so long as that’s true. Can you bear to take an eight-fingered witch to wife?”

  “Trust me,” Kellis said, and meant it. He hunted for her lips again, evidently with his eyes shut, for he roved all over her face before he ran down his quarry at last.

  The wind dropped a shower of raindrops onto them from the branches overhead. Rook padded half a dozen steps and rested her nose gently against Kellis’ leg. Meddy sat, sighed, and thumped her tail once with relief.