“Ah, mistress, he guards well the secret of his skill. I cannot tell its source.”
“And how did you come to serve him?”
“I dare not say.” He lowered his gaze; his tone was apologetic. “He’s forbidden me ever to speak of it.”
“You spoke earlier of a chain,” she reminded him.
“A chain,” he repeated, again pressing his arms to his sides. For a moment his tone seemed truly bleak. “A cruel chain, mistress, tight and heavy—so heavy.”
“But you don’t wear any chain,” she said, frowning.
“I—No, I can say nothing.” His hands flew melodramatically to his throat. Playacting again. “He’ll slay me.”
“He’s not here to hear you.”
Claid’s eyes grew wide and frightened in his childish face. “He’d know, mistress.” He glanced about as if expecting to find the mage lurking in the shadows. “He has spies everywhere.”
“What sort of spies?”
“Oh, nasty things. Spirits and wraiths, werefolk, even Dire Lords. Things he traps and binds to his will.”
He did sound genuinely afraid. Still, she remained skeptical. “No one, not even a great mage, could trap a Dire Lord,” she said, thinking of all the tales told about the powerful lords who shepherded the dead either to a place of torment or to a place of joy. If such beings existed, they must be beyond the reach of even the greatest of mages.
“A mage who has no fear can do many forbidden things,” Claid said.
“Only fools have no fear.”
“My master is many things, but he is not a fool.”
Though she didn’t fully accept Claid’s revelations, Kyla’s picture of Alair darkened. “And what are you, Claid?”
His innocent gaze rested on Kyla. “Hungry, mistress.”
With a pang of guilt Kyla pushed away from the wall. She’d actually forgotten that they’d eaten nothing all day. “I’ll see about making supper,” she said. “And I’ll fix you a place to sleep.”
Before she could do either, someone pounded on her front door. She opened it and found the town elders gathered in front of her house, their faces stern, angry. Claid slipped in front of her and pressed himself against her legs, looking small and fragile and frightened.
The elders had been hastily convened: Sedder Sims had come without the cap that usually covered his bald head, and Turley Beal must have been called from his supper and came away without wiping the gravy from his beard.
The Townmaster was not with the group, and the men wore their everyday tunics and trousers, not their cloaks and ribbons of office over fine white shirts. So this was not a formal hearing.
She nodded a greeting. Only two or three of the ten nodded in return.
Claid hid his face against her knees and stayed absolutely still.
Sedder stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Mistress Kyla,” he began, “we heard you brought back a child.” He paused to peer curiously at Claid.
Kyla pictured the Widow Lee dashing through town spreading the news.
“He’s a child I’m taking care of for a short time,” she snapped. “If that’s what you’ve come about, it doesn’t concern you.” She turned to step back into her house.
Turley Beal moved to block her way. “Mighty peculiar,” he said, squinting at her. “You up and leave all on sudden with no word to nobody ‘cept the Townmaster. And him you roust from his warm house to announce you’re going but won’t say where nor for how long. Townmaster’s been ill ever since. He thinks you cast a spell on him.”
“So think many of us,” another man added.
Kyla stared at them in disbelief. “I’m not a sorceress. I know no magic, and if I did, why would I bear the Townmaster any ill will?”
“He says he ordered you not to go and you got mad, and that’s when he took the chill that sent him to his bed.”
“The Widow Lee swears you put a spell on her cow and her dog,” someone else put in. “The dog’s run away and the cow’s gone lame.”
“I put a spell—”
“You had no call to leave like you did,” the oldest of the group interrupted. Hunched over his cane, the stoop-shouldered ancient glared up at her. “Suppose there’d been mindstealers about? We’d have had no warning. People would have been caught in the fields.”
So they didn’t know about the mindstealers. “Mindstealers are about,” she said hurriedly. “I cut my journey short and hurried back to tell you.” A sudden wicked impulse made her add, “This child was orphaned by the evil things. How could I leave him? I’ve not forgotten what happened to my parents.”
She scanned their faces, saw a softening of their anger, a slow reversal of their censure. Some cast sympathetic glances at the quiet child. She pressed her advantage. “I was near Martyr’s Pass when I learned of them. It’s good you came here. My legs ache from running through the hills, and I didn’t know how I’d find the strength to cry up the whole town. Now you can sound the alarm and set a guard.”
With a shuffling of feet and apologetic mutters, the group edged away.
“Hurry,” she urged. “Please waste no time.”
“I’ll ring the alarm bell,” Sedder Sims offered, trotting off.
The oldest hobbled to the next house on the street, pounded on its door with his cane, and in a quavering voice called out the warning. The others dispersed quickly until only Turley Beal remained, scowling at her, hairy hands planted firmly on his hips.
“What I want to know is, how come you didn’t warn nobody that passed you on the way if you was in such a hurry to get the news out? And when you reached town, how come you didn’t come directly to one of us ’stead of goin’ home. If we hadn’t come here, would you a’ waited till morning afore you gave the news?”
Kyla thought fast. “Of course I wouldn’t have waited,” she said. “When you arrived I was about to go out and start spreading the warning. I had to get the child settled first. On the road here I met very few people. The Farno brothers couldn’t hear me over the creaking of their cartwheels, Old Man Ryne is stone deaf, and when I called to the Widow Lee, her dog started barking, frightened the cow into running off, and the widow ran after it before I could tell her anything.”
“Hmmm. Mebbe it’s all as you say. You better get us a full report from the wind first thing in the morning. Don’t let that young’un keep you from your duties.”
“I’ll climb the hill at sunup and gather the news,” Kyla promised.
Apparently satisfied, he stomped off.
Kyla pulled Claid into the cottage with her and made sure the door was securely locked. “Well, that went better than I’d feared,” she said, turning to Claid.
He gazed up at her, eyes gleaming silver in the lamplight. “Why should you fear them, mistress, with the power you have?”
“They are my employers, Claid. And I have power only with the wind. Now I’ll see about supper.”
She had little food in the house. Tomorrow, if the windspeaking session went well, she’d not give the information unless the Townmaster first promised no restrictions on her supplies. She’d need plenty of eggs and milk and butter and meat and fresh greens.
They supped on stale bread and cheese, caronuts and fruit preserves, with only well water to drink. Not the fare Claid was accustomed to, Kyla guessed. The mage most likely provided a bountiful table. But Claid didn’t complain. He ate with great delight. Could Alair have been starving him?
After the meal, she laid out a pallet for Claid in the main room and retired for a good night’s rest so she could rise early for her tryst with the wind.
Hours later, when she tiptoed out in the morning darkness, he was asleep, curled up like a cat. She left without waking him and went to meet the wind at the sun’s rising.
CHAPTER SIX
WADDAMS
A few stars still shone in the silvering sky. Thin clouds drifted along the horizon, their soft coral a harbinger of the waking sun. Kyla shivered in the chill air. She sat cross-leg
ged on the brow of Rial Hill and, lifting her arms, sang a wordless song, its melody formed of the fading flicker of stars, the glow of dawn, the sparkle of dew, the rustle of grass, the flap of bird wings.
The wind eased around her. Pale yellow zephyrs blew against her upraised hands.
“Oh, I was so afraid you wouldn’t come!” That fear had haunted her dreams throughout the night.
As if in apology the wind ruffled her hair, brushed her skin, and whispered soothingly.
She felt a sudden pang of guilt for having blamed Claid for the wind’s absence yesterday. He’d given her no more trouble after the incident with the widow’s dog. She could hardly blame him for that; Ruffian had, after all, attacked him, and he’d acted to defend himself. What he’d done to Ruffian she didn’t know, nor how he’d done it, but he had surely frightened the dog more than damaged it. It would find its way home—probably already had—and the Widow Lee would forget the matter.
With a sigh of contentment Kyla lay back on the smooth rock and let the wind swoop down and flow over her, plucking at her dress. Its pale gold deepened and reddened, inflamed with the rays of the rising sun. It tore around her with the ardor of a penitent lover. She laughed and yielded joyously to its wild bursts. When it calmed and softened, it whispered all it had seen and done. Bathed in its sweet airs, she gathered the gossip of the valley and its surrounding hills.
She listened carefully to each murmur, each soft susurration. The wind reported with the same light exhalation the ripening of saddleberries on Tinder Mount and the death of Farmer Blagg’s young wife in childbirth. Kyla sifted the important from the inconsequential, wary of overlooking some portent of danger to the people of Waddams.
The wind told of cows wandering into a grain field, of a flock of birds descending on the chirberry patch, of fish schooling in the Damin River at Willow Bend, of the early harvest of caronuts, of the taking of three ferebeasts by hunters. Only one item made her uneasy: the report of a large black dog trotting alone along the trail to Martyr’s Pass.
The description fit Widow Lee’s Ruffian.
Kyla bid the wind farewell, changed clothes, and made her way down the hill. The early morning sunlight warmed Kyla and bathed Waddams in temporary splendor, gilding the wooden shingles of the steep roofs and transforming the humble whitewashed walls into gleaming alabaster. Kyla loved this time of day when the streets were quiet, the farmers gone to their fields, the women gone out to milk cows and gather eggs. She’d have time to look in on Claid before reporting to the Townmaster.
As always, Kyla wound to the east and came through the center of town to avoid the sight of the home where she’d grown up. She almost regretted her decision to sell her parents’ house. She could use more space now that Claid was thrust on her, but she wouldn’t want the unhappy reminders of her parents’ tragic end.
No, she’d done well in selling it two years ago at the conclusion of her apprenticeship to the young man who claimed to be an exile from beyond Rim Canyon. With Claid to consider, she’d need the gold disks she’d received for the house. The gold was of sufficient purity to be useful for jewelry. She could barter it for goods her windspeaking didn’t earn.
The aroma of fresh-baked bread wafting from the bakeshop made her mouth water. She’d bring Claid here after seeing the Townmaster, and together they’d enjoy the warm bread and perhaps a sweetcake or two. Already tasting the delicacies, she hurried home.
She let herself in and looked for Claid, expecting to find him sleeping. Instead he was seated before the bookshelf, dusting and oiling each precious volume. Apparently unaware of her, he caressed the leather bindings lovingly, totally engrossed in his work.
She spoke his name and he jumped to face her. “Mistress, you’re back. You left me here alone. Master said I was to stay always at your side.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean that we could literally never separate. I’m a windspeaker. Each dawn I climb Rial Hill to sing the wind and gather news for the town, and I can’t take you with me. You seem to have found something to do while I was gone.”
“Yes, mistress, I always find ways to occupy my time.” He nodded toward the cabinet. “These books were sadly in need of care.” He removed a book from the shelf and held it out, pointing to its spine. “See, the leather has begun to crack.”
“I forget about them,” Kyla confessed. “My father set great store by them and treated them well. I rarely use them.”
“A pity, mistress. You do read?”
She nodded. “My father taught me, with these books.”
“Good. Books hold power.” He replaced the damaged volume on the shelf. “Pity, though, that you have no spell books here.”
“Why should I? My father was not a mage and all these books were his.”
“If your father wasn’t a mage, why did he have these books? He must have been a scholar, but what was a scholar doing in this humble village?” Claid held out one of the books and read its title: “A Philosophical Treatise on Mind and Thought Expounding on How the Latter Proceedeth from the Former. That is not a book a farmer would own.”
That was true; books were costly. The Townmaster owned three or four, and one or two of the elders might have a volume of family or valley history—that was all. Few of the villagers could read.
She’d never asked how her father acquired all these, had always taken their possession for granted, accepting them as the symbol of her father’s profession.
Yet her father had made only one of them. The rest were old and beautifully bound. A sudden memory surfaced of her father teaching her to read, saying, “You must always value these books, Kyla. They contain treasures beyond your imagining.”
When she’d pressed him to explain how books could hold treasures, he’d said, “Knowledge is treasure, pet. These books contain many kinds of knowledge. When you can read well and think you understand them, read them again and search out their deeper meanings.”
She’d forgotten until now her father’s injunction. She still thought he’d meant no more than that the books held knowledge she could only understand as she grew older, but Claid’s interest in them hinted at other possibilities.
“My father was a scribe,” Kyla explained, resisting these thoughts.
“I wouldn’t think this town would offer enough work for a scribe.”
“He liked the quiet life in Waddams. He recorded deeds, wrote letters, did accounts. We never wanted for anything. Why are you so curious about him?” She might have added, How is it you know so much about books like these? But she forbore, having accepted the truth of Alair’s declaration that Claid was not a child, though what he was had become more of a puzzle, not less, with this discussion about her father’s books.
“Forgive me, mistress.” Claid bowed his head contritely. “I didn’t mean to pry. The books fascinated me, that’s all.”
“Well, there’s no mystery about them.” She spoke with more conviction than she felt.
“No mystery perhaps, but all books possess a kind of magic, and these more than most, I’d say.”
“That’s nonsense,” she snapped. “My father had no interest in magic, and neither do I.”
Claid finished arranging the books to his satisfaction and turned to Kyla, his eyes the dark green of a murky sea. His face looked older, less childish. “No magic? You’re a windspeaker. You practice a magic art.”
“Windspeaking is an art, but not magic. It requires talent and training, not spells and charms.”
A wide smile lit Claid’s face. “Ah, but magic is a matter of talent and training. The spells and charms are merely tools. Sometimes they’re for nothing but show.”
Kyla frowned. “Yes, well, my voice is my only tool. Now I must go and make my report to the Townmaster. I’ll come back for you as soon as I’ve done that, and we’ll go for bread and milk.”
“And eggs?” Claid added hopefully, his face a child’s again.
The Townmaster did not observe even the slightest formality befor
e ushering Kyla into his parlor and indicating with a wave of his hand the chair she should occupy. She sat, expecting him to take his customary seat at the escritoire.
Instead he stood in front of her and glared down his beaky nose like an angry shalkor. “Mistress Cren,” he began ominously, “because of you, men have been out all night searching the valley for mindstealers and have found none. Now they go footsore and weary to work their fields and tend their animals. Many are saying that your tale of mindstealers was a diversion to forestall questions about why you sneaked off.”
Kyla stiffened. “I did not sneak off. I told you I was going and about how long I’d be gone.”
“You told me only just before leaving. There was no time to summon the elders.”
“There was no need to summon the elders,” Kyla shot back. “I’m not a slave. I was only gone two nights and two days.”
“You left us unprotected.” His voice reached a higher pitch, becoming a nasal whine. “I’ve been ill the whole time you were gone—sick from worry and from the chill I took talking to you outside in the damp air. And you’ve returned with a child and a tale of mindstealers that no one can confirm.”
“I explained the child,” Kyla said, well aware that her explanation had been a lie.
“Perhaps, mistress, perhaps. But the elders have advised me that your compensation for this week is to be greatly reduced.”
“Reduced! That’s unfair! I’ve fulfilled my duty. And now I have a child to feed.”
“The child is no concern of ours, Mistress Cren,” he said with a self-righteous sniff. “You’ve aroused the ire of the townspeople. The men were sent on a fool’s errand. Widow Lee has lodged a complaint about you, and Mistress Laron has accused you of rudeness and indecent dress.”
“I explained—” Kyla attempted.
He cut her off. “It is the opinion of the town that you presume too much on the value of your services and need to be taught a lesson. Here are your authorization slips. You won’t starve. You have chits for bread and milk, apples and caronuts, even mushrooms if you want them.”
Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1) Page 6
