Mindbond

by Nancy Springer

  I had heard whispers, nothing more, of something vicious the Fanged Horse Folk did to captured women. Whispers … I had not known until I met Mahela that the act of love could be turned into a weapon and an abomination. And suddenly understanding, I sat without speaking, chilled. But Kor, who must have felt it worse than I, nodded briefly and spoke.

  “A king must know of such evils. They had done it to you before?”

  “Nearly. Not completely, or I would be—I would be like Dannoc’s brother. It was but the one, then, and I withstood it, and that was terror enough. But the twelve, less only the one in Ytan …”

  Alone and exposed on the expanse of beach—too late to hide, for they had long since seen her. No time to take refuge in the cave or her hut, for they were swift, rippling in on a western wind. She had held her sword at the ready as she stood to meet them—not with any hope of defeating them, for she knew, as we did, that knives, even the shining black blades of sharpest obsidian, had no effect on devourers. But she gripped her sword because the feel of the rounded hilt in her clenched hand, the weapon’s weight, gave her some small courage. Also, she had resolved, as we had, months past, to use it on herself rather than let them possess her. She raised the blade as the fell servants skimmed around her to gang her, close enough that she smelled their deathly stench—

  And the sword of its own accord had darted and pierced a glaring eye. Pale greenish ooze had spurted out, and the devourer had fallen back, thrashing in pain. She had whirled, or the blade had whirled her, to hold off the attack from behind, slicing deeply into a fish-gray body, sending splatters of blood the color of cormorant feathers, green-black, onto the sand. She had severed a thick, eel-like tail.… More quickly than she could tell it, she said, three devourers lay dead and the rest were fleeing. And only after it was over had she taken time to think, this sword is no ordinary knife, it is made of different stuff. And she had caressed it, speaking to it softly by name.

  “Do you wish to tell us the name?” Kor asked quietly. And I sensed, as he did, that this was no small matter of trust, for Tass.

  “Marantha,” she replied promptly.

  “The amaranth,” I murmured. The healing flower of Sakeema’s time, gone from the land with his passing, a spire-flower of a color I had never quite seen in any other, the same clear red-purple color as the jewel in Tassida’s sword. Of course it was the name of her weapon. But Tass was looking at me curiously.

  “Dan, how did you know? I thought all folk had forgotten that flower but me.”

  “I have seen it in vision.”

  “Marantha,” Tass said again, a different, vibrant tone to her voice, and the sword floated lightly out of the scabbard she wore by her side. Marantha laid herself in the sand, pointing toward us, Kor and me, but between us. As if in a trance we drew our weapons and laid them over Tassida’s, blades crossing, so that blades and hilts formed a sort of star of six darts. And the stones blazed out, darting forth their own six-bladed lights, deep yellow, amaranthine, and sunset-red, bright as blood, brighter than the fire.

  Eerie, uncanny, unaccountable … uneasily my mind built barriers. Perhaps it was not just the three of us, I thought eagerly. Perhaps there were swords for others at the bottom of the pool of vision. Many swords. One for my brother Tyee, one for Leotie, his pledgemate, who had once been my sweetheart. Twelve for his twelve, and as many for Kor’s as well. Would it not be overweening to think that such weapons were only for the three of us, Korridun and Tassida and I?

  “The day I saw that the glow had come back to your swords,” Tass said softly, “I was so happy I wept.”

  Startled, Kor looked up at her. But her gaze was fixed on the star the swords made.

  “So you see,” she said softly, “I had time, those long days while you were gone, to think that I had lost you both and to know that I had been a fool to be afraid. We belong together, we three.”

  Swordlight flared briefly at her words, then subsided to a warm glow.

  “Is it fated so?” Kor asked, and if there was fear in him I could not hear it in his voice.

  “I do not know the reason. But that we three are to be—comrades—that much I am sure of, now.”

  “And defeating the devourers did not hurt your courage,” said Kor dryly. She caught his meaning at once and looked up at him with a merry smile. Something grew hard inside me, and hurt.

  “Indeed it did not. Thought I will never be able to use my sword against either of you two, and I know that.”

  She had told us once that the weapons with names could not be used against anyone the swordmaster loved.…

  “I will not leave you again,” Tass said.

  Both of us, she meant. I was to—share her with him?

  Swordlight had faded. I reached for Alar, drew her out of the star, and sheathed her. After a moment the others put their weapons away as well.

  “Tired, Dan?” Kor’s voice was gentle. I hated him. Without replying I lay and swaddled myself in my furs. One of them was a seal pelt. My pelt. I could be a seal again whenever I wanted, and swim away.

  “Sleep with your swords,” Tassida told us. “Mahela wants you badly.”

  I slept restlessly, ill at ease, feeling the hard edge of my own blade by my side, sensing fell shapes moving in shadow at the edge of my own dreams, feeling fear, and not of Mahela’s minions. No devourers came that night. There was no need for Mahela to send them. She had only to watch and wait, for yet darker forces were moving in me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We should go to Seal Hold,” Kor said in the morning.

  Tassida shook her head. “Wait one more day. You are still very weak.”

  Though mending, both of us, far faster than we should have expected after starvation and Mahela’s brutal tempest, so it seemed to me.

  “Your people will manage without you another dayspan. The salmon run less, as always, and the Otter beg and the Fanged Horse Folk threaten, and not enough oats are left. Once you go back there, they will want to make a savior of you, there will be no peace.”

  It was a rarely fine morning. Blue sky, blue doveflower already blooming upon the rocks. Eastward I could see the snowpeaks! Fresh breeze. Greed of Mahela be praised, the high tide had taken the carrion devourer, which had been starting to stink. All was fair now, and clean, as if just washed. I scanned sky, sea, sand. Near the rocks a white shape lay on the beach, left there by the retreating surf.…

  I stood up, staring, and if Kor or Tass spoke to me I did not hear them.

  The white seal. It was she, my gentle lover. I went over, knelt beside her sleek body—she looked as fair as she had in life. I reached out, meaning nothing but to stroke the glossy fur. But as my hand touched her she changed. There on a white pelt lay the sea maiden, with her long, shimmering hair flowing down like tears. Pale, bruised, dead. I could have stood it better had I not been so startled, I think. But as it was, I made a choking sound and reached out to gather her up, as if by holding her I could somehow help.

  Tass and Kor had come to stand beside me, and I looked up, bursting out, “I—I killed her, great oaf that I am! When she hit against the rock, I came blundering on top of her.”

  “Mahela’s doing, not yours,” Kor said, sensibly—but I was in no fit mood to be sensible. “It might as easily have been you who were killed. The white maiden saved you.”

  “You—you loved her!” Wonder in Tassida’s tone, and she was staring. “In a—a certain way …”

  “If I cannot love a woman, I do not lie with her,” I said.

  “Dan, I did what I had to!” Kor protested, his voice sharp with—grief? I stared at him in surprise.

  “I have said nothing against you!”

  “Not yet.”

  So he knew, damn him, he sensed—what could have been decently hidden from any proper friend.… Well, if the cap fit his sore head, let him wear it, then! I gave him a black look but no answer, and turned back to the sea maiden.

  “We must guard her,” I said, thinki
ng hazily of the legend of Sedna, “so that carrion birds do not pick out her eyes. We must cover her with a cairn.”

  She who had floated in the salt eddies to be laid in a bed of bruising rock—it hardly seemed fitting, yet such a wrong-headed demon was in me that I could think of nothing else. I lifted her, carried her up beyond the tide line to where the dry sand lay in billows. Tassida came after me with the white pelt.

  “Take it,” I told her. “We will all three be seals, then, and go swim in the greendeep when Mahela has laid bare the land.”

  She hesitated, then took the seal pelt back to our campsite, brought other furs instead, a deerskin, a fine cape of otter. We laid the white maiden on the deerskin in soft sand and covered her with the otter cape, fur side next to her, head and all, so as to keep the rocks from her skin.

  Then we built the cairn, and what should have been half a morning’s labor took us all day, Kor and I, we were yet so feeble. Tass helped us when she could, but she had snares to tend, and foraging to do, and cooking, if we were to eat. Which was of importance, that we should eat and mend. So Kor and I carried stones, small ones, singly, and laid them over the otter cape. Between times we rested, not much speaking to each other. I found ways to busy myself—my body ached and stumbled in protest, but better that than sitting near him, not wanting to meet his eyes. I gathered driftwood and dragged it to the fire—the tide had been high, for the moon was at the full. I hunted in the rock pools for mussels and such, food I had never sought with such fervor. Silent and still, Kor watched me.

  If Tassida had not been there, if it had been just the two of us, bond brothers, the silence would have been unbearable after all that we had shared, and perhaps we would have had our trouble out and mended it somehow. But Tass was with us, we talked with her, and she sensed nothing wrong between us—she thought we were tired, which we were. There had not been much need of speech between Kor and me since she had known us. Though time had been when we would have walked under the full moon, Kor and I, and talked for hours while he kept the vigil his kingship demanded of him.… I would not think of those times. I had hardened myself to the unspoken quarrel, for it cleared my way to Tassida. Though I would not admit as much, not even to myself.

  Sunset, the color of my sword, then bright orange as of highmeadow poppies, sea stacks sleek and dark against it, like great seals. And blood-red sky dimming into purple. Dusk deepening into shining night—stars, full moon rising over the mountains, gleaming off the eversnow. Kor and Tass and I sat amidst it all, eating roast partridge and mussels steamed in eelgrass and the tender spring sprouts of celery and sparrowgrass that grew where soil gathered on ledges near the cascades. It was a blessed twilight. Odd, how such warm and peaceful times come even in the midst of trouble, but it must be so or we would go mad.… Pushing aside my dark mood for a while, I ate the shellfish and grinned at Kor, mocking myself. He gave me his grave, quiet smile, and Tassida hummed snatches of song and gazed at the sky, seeing stories there. Times to come, I cherished the memory of that night.

  The white maiden lay in her cairn under the moonlight, and the rocks glinted where we had piled them.

  Not long after full dark, when stars splattered the sky like foam, there was a splashing in the surf, and we looked. There were seals in the breakers, seals surging up the beach like the waves, seals to the number of half a hundred or more, many-colored under the moonlight. The three of us sat by our dying fire and watched as they left the sea and dragged themselves far up on the sand, much farther than was the custom of seals, up to where the mound of the fresh cairn shone, and in a press of sleek bodies they pooled around it.

  Then in a few moments they had undone what it had taken us all day to do. Rocks flew as if out of a thunder cone, flung upward and back by pointed snouts and strong necks. They laid low the cairn, pulled the covering back from the sea maiden with their teeth—

  And as soon as one of them touched her he stood by her in human form, and so soon also did the rest. Sea folk, sylkies, Kor’s distant kindred, to the number of fifty or more. The white maiden’s people, and every one of them as beautiful as she, and as strange. Hair that flowed and shimmered, seal-black or red-brown as wrack or shell-tan or sea-foam white, down to the shoulders of the men, below the waists of the women. They were lissome, the women, but for once my eyes caught on the men, for they were different from any people I had ever seen. Long necks, narrow sloping shoulders, chests of the same breadth as their midriffs, and their long, loose-jointed hands and feet moved at odd angles. Their skins, hairless and sleek, and their cocks, like the breasts of the women, small. But manly and tall they stood, their heads high, their movements graceful, and though their bodies were slight I sensed all the power of the sea in them. And their faces, comely and fearsome. Wonder moved me to mindspeak to Kor.

  I would not want to meet any one of them in fair fight!

  Nor would I. They look as potent as tide surge, and as mute.

  There had been not a sound from any of them. But we sensed a silent uproar—one of the tall men had lifted the white maiden in his arms, and others were holding the pelts, the deerskin, the otter cloak. And there were touchings, fluid movements of quick hands, as if they were speaking in that way. And the pool of them swirling like boiling water.

  “I knew it was wrong,” Tass muttered, and as she spoke she was on her feet and striding down the beach toward the strangers, looking very much the warrior and a daughter of earth next to their small-boned beauty. She carried the white seal pelt in her hands. “Here it is, people of the sea!” she called aloud.

  And Kor, confound him, went after her, holding his own dark, dappled pelt. “Take this one, too,” he said roughly. “Never again will any king of the Seal Kindred go to court Mahela. I have sworn it.” He thrust the pelt toward them.

  “Blast it!” I whispered. Then I found my own sealskin, light brown with a sheen as of sunstuff, as beautiful as any pelt I had ever seen, and I loved it as I did my own body. “Blast it,” I grumbled again, and I trailed after the others and offered the limp thing wordlessly to the sylkies.

  The white maiden’s people had stopped their eddying and stood gazing at us. No fear in them, but much thought—we were envoys from a different world from theirs. They measured us with their stares, then reached a silent agreement among themselves. With slow ceremony three men of their number stepped before us where we stood in an uneasy row. We gave the sealskins back to their long hands, back to the sea. And when my eyes met the eyes of the one who faced me in the moonlight, my breath stopped. It was a glance out of depths beyond my knowing, time before time, like the speechless glance of an animal, full of the ardor that has no voice, but a hundred times wiser, more centered—and utterly, painfully, mute.

  Mindspeak? I hazarded, facing that mute gaze. But I knew it could not be, as indeed it was not. The sylkies’ minds were of a different nature from ours, their thoughts swam to truth while ours plodded and crawled.

  We turned to go back to our fire. But they stopped us, each of us, with a touch. Out of our depth, awkward and awed, we stood with them as they prepared to honor the white maiden.

  They placed all the pelts, their own plus the ones we had given them, fifty or more, in a great, soft pile centered on the beach, the white sealskin on top. And there they laid the dead sea maiden, as if on a bed made of all their lives, her head pillowed on their lives. She lay as gracefully as if she only slept. Then they formed a circle around her, us three mortals among them, and began the magic dance that needs no music but the music of the mind.

  Like the waves of the sea they wove the dance, cresting and dipping and cresting again, tossing their heads, whitecaps beneath stormwind, flowing together as breakers flow an ebb at the strand, circling past and between one another, ocean swell, intermingling in a pattern beyond my comprehension. Like the serpentine of the sea their arms rose and fell. My skill could not begin to match theirs, and after a few rounds of the dance I stood aside, bidding farewell in my own way to the mai
den who had been a white seal, who had saved my life. A soundless farewell, while the dance swirled between us—the half a hundred of the sylkies seemed as vast as the world-sundering ocean.

  Kor danced this weaving sea-wave dance better than I, for it was in his blood, that wild grace, But he tired soon, and stood beside me. Tassida joined us, and after a while we walked back up the beach to where our fire had died down to embers and ashes, sat there and watched. The sea folk did not see us go, I felt sure. They were well into the trance of the dance, and I drifted into one too, watching them, their hair billowing and flying like spindrift, the white maiden so still in their midst, ingathered, floating.… I felt as if I were floating with her—I swayed where I sat, my eyelids closed but the dance circled on in my mind, my dreaming.

  Sometime before the moon began to set they took her back to the sea. For when I awoke they and all the pelts were gone.

  I awoke when the moon stood high, because Tassida’s hand lay on my arm.

  Danger, I thought at first. I sat up quickly. But the night was still, and the touch of Tassida’s hand steady and soft, and her handsome face sober but not alarmed in the moonlight. Kor lay sleeping beside me, quiet, unmoving. I looked at Tass for a moment, and she answered my gaze. Then I got up and followed her away from where Kor lay.

  She took me up beyond the edge of the beach, into the wind-bent spruce woods, along a small trail that followed rock ridges to where her shelter stood. A man-shelter shape in the moonshadow, nothing more … She guided me in under the leather flap that closed the door, let it fall behind me. I could not yet believe what was happening.

  “Tass?” I whispered, questioning.

  Touch of her hand showed me the way. The bed was made of spruce boughs. She had brought furs to lay on it. After she had spread them, she sat there and guided me to the space beside her.

  “Tass—” My heart was pounding so, it made a roaring as of stormside surf inside my head. I could say nothing more than her name.

  “I should never have touched you,” she murmured.