Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1)

by E. Rose Sabin

  “I’m no mage. You have Alair’s gift of power. Maybe you could do it.”

  Marta dropped the shirt into her lap and pulled the book toward her, swung it around and opened it. She stared fixedly at the page for several seconds, lifted her gaze to Kyla, and shook her head. “I don’t have any idea how to do it. Claid’s been teaching me a few things, but I’m not close to having the power you have. Anyone who can command the wind—”

  “I don’t command the wind,” Kyla snapped. “I windspeak. I know Alair claimed that was magic, but I’ve never thought of it that way.”

  “Of course it is.” Marta shuddered. “I’ll never forget the ride that brought us here. Scared as I was, I could hear and feel the wind responding to your song. It was weird.”

  “Riding the wind is not part of a windspeaker’s job. It’s my duty—or was—to coax the wind into giving me news of what’s happening in the valley. A windspeaker’s primary responsibility was to warn of mindstealers. Now that the mindstealers have been destroyed, no village will hire me.”

  “Maybe not in your little valley,” Marta said. “Outside of it no one’s heard of windspeakers. They’d pay to see you ride the wind. You could probably carry messages from town to town.”

  Kyla shook her head. “They have trains that go as fast as the wind. They don’t need windspeakers. And if windspeaking is magic, it’s the only magic I have.”

  She stood and picked up the Breyadon. “I’m going back to the library to see Claid. I’ll tell him I won’t look at another book until he proves to me that this one won’t yield to his power.”

  “You haven’t tried to use your own power on it,” Marta pointed out stubbornly. “You should do that before you go after Claid again.”

  “My power? Should I sing to it?” Tired of this discussion, Kyla flounced out of the kitchen.

  “You could try,” Marta’s voice followed her.

  Claid wasn’t in the library. Could he have gone outside? The storm still raged; the wind howled through the stout outer walls. Hunting her.

  Shuddering, she turned her attention to the stack of books Claid had left in the middle of the room.

  Her books. She picked up the one on the top of the stack, The Meaning and Hidden Significance of All Colours with Special Attention to Those of the Skye Bow. The words “Hidden Significance” leaped out at her. If any of her father’s books did contain a secret message, this one must.

  She put down the Breyadon, sat on the floor, and opened the curious volume. She’d examined it before, and so had Claid. They’d checked every one of her books as well as most of Alair’s, but she felt compelled to study this one again.

  Hidden Significance. Special Attention to … the Skye Bow. The title might contain a message. She began to study the sections dealing with the colors of the rainbow, looking for some clue to a secret meaning. Probably she was being silly, wasting time when the answer they needed was most likely in the Breyadon, but the Breyadon was unreadable. This book was printed in words and letters she could understand. Though it was no more comprehensible.

  She shook her head at its peculiar and outlandish statements clumped together without any apparent connection of meaning. Writing that appeared so meaningless must have some purpose.

  After staring at several pages and seeing nothing that looked like coded text, Kyla let her eyes go out of focus to rest them. As she refocused, she thought she saw the word “dire” near the top of the page. A closer look showed her that what she had seen was the end of the word “nadir” followed by the e of the word “even.” She felt foolish until she saw in the line above and slightly to the right of what she had read as “dire” the word “realms.” Could she have found something?

  She hunted for other words and combinations of letters that made sense and fit with “dire realms.” She spotted a few, and their location brought the breakthrough. Skye bow. The rainbow was a semicircle. If a semicircular strip were superimposed on the top half of each page (its sky?), the letters and words it covered formed a message, read in an arch from the bottom left of the “bow” to the top center of the page and down to the right.

  Experimentation established the width and boundaries of this “rainbow.” As she puzzled out the message, it became clear that she had not found its beginning. She turned back to the book’s opening pages. Finding no hidden bow on the first page, she looked with equal lack of success on the next six pages and doubted the reality of her discovery until she found the bow on the eighth. She traced it for seven pages before it skipped again, resumed seven pages later. Seven, for the seven colors of the rainbow.

  Proud of her cleverness, Kyla fetched paper and pen and sat down to transcribe the book’s revelations.

  As she wrote, she grew more excited and amazed. This must have been the book Alair had told her of borrowing. How like him to withhold the fact that the mage he’d borrowed it from was her father.

  The book contained the procedure for traveling through other planes to reach the realm of the Dire Lords. Not just anyone could use the formula; it required a mage’s skill. Forging the chain of power to bind and enslave a Dire Lord was a long, arduous procedure that must have drained Alair for many years. What courage and persistence he’d needed to attempt it!

  With an exclamation of annoyance she reached the end of a seven-page section and counted the next seven pages hurriedly, impatient to arrive at the part that must reveal how to free the captive Dire Lord.

  When she turned the sixth page she found—nothing. Worse than nothing! Kyla stared in shock, her fingers tracing the ragged edges that were left where several pages had been ripped from the book.

  Claid! He must have done this. Despite all his protestations of respect for the books, he had ruined this one. The missing pages must contain the secret they’d been trying so hard to recover. He’d torn them out to use to gain his freedom.

  Sudden rage blazed through her. No wonder she hadn’t been able to find him. He had returned to his own high realm, abandoning her and Marta.

  The wretch! Everything Alair had said of him was true.

  The brainstone that held the patterns of Alair’s mind! Where was it? Had he taken it with him?

  Desperate, furious, Kyla left the books to search for Claid and for the brainstone.

  She checked the bedrooms. Empty. She headed down the corridor to the laboratory. A loud crash from that direction made her break into a run.

  She halted at the open door and gaped at the rainbow-filled room. Light bounced off the facets of the huge crystal balanced precariously on the laboratory table. Fragments of objects pushed off the table lay scattered across the floor.

  The crystal she’d taken from the glass bowl and left forgotten on the table had grown. Was growing! As she stared, appalled, it usurped more table space and sent two more glass beakers crashing to the floor. The top of the crystal neared the light that hung from the ceiling.

  She spun around and screamed for Marta.

  Marta came running from the kitchen, and Kyla pointed wordlessly at the inflating crystal. Marta pushed past Kyla and took a long look. She stared at the shimmering sphere. Its sparkling facets sent reflected rainbows dancing over the wreckage. “It’s beautiful!” she said.

  “But deadly if it breaks through the roof and brings the house down on us.” The thing had grown a bit more.

  “What is it? How did it get there?”

  In short, rapid phrases Kyla told her what little she knew.

  “Find Claid,” Marta said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “He’s not here,” Kyla said shortly. No time to explain Claid’s absence. “We’ll have to deal with it.”

  Marta put her hands on her hips. “What do you expect me to do? You’ll have to deal with it.”

  “What can I do?” Kyla slipped around Marta and approached the expanded crystal.

  “Sing,” Marta urged, peering over her shoulder. “Maybe it will break.”

  Kyla didn’t argue. She breathed deeply an
d poured forth her strongest wind-summoning song. Her voice soared to its highest pitch. The crystal quivered. With a bell-like chime it rocked back and forth like a hatching egg.

  One or two more sustained high notes should shatter it. She inhaled deeply and opened her mouth.

  “Don’t break it!”

  Kyla whirled around.

  Claid stood behind her. He held the Breyadon in his arms. “Don’t break it,” he repeated. “It may be the way out of our dilemma.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  POWER-GIVER

  “Claid! You’re here! You didn’t … I thought … the book … the secret …” Helplessly she let her voice trail off.

  Claid grinned his insouciant grin, and Kyla guessed he knew exactly what she’d been trying to say. “I’ve been restocking the woodbin. Our supply was getting low. I’d just come back to the library when I heard you scream. I brought this.” He thrust the spell book into her hands.

  What good would the unreadable book do?

  There was no time to argue. Kyla pointed to the crystal. “Look! What do you mean, ‘Don’t break it’? It’ll destroy the house.”

  “It may hold the key to saving Alair.”

  “Save Alair! How?” Kyla’s mind raced. If there was a chance to restore Alair …

  The crystal pressed against the light globe. The false sun shattered, plunging the laboratory into darkness. “Marta! Light!” Kyla shouted.

  A wavering light sprang up from Marta’s trembling fingers. Claid clasped her hand and held it steady. The flame grew stronger.

  “Kyla, aim your power at the spell book,” he said. “Find how to stop the crystal’s growth.”

  With clammy hands and a feeling of hopelessness, Kyla opened the Breyadon.

  “I know you have the power,” Marta said excitedly.

  Did she? She had claimed for so long that her wind singing was not magic, but she had used song to open the laboratory door. Could Alair have been right all along? Could she have magical power expressed through song? She could test it by using song on the spell book. Claid and Marta were watching her with expressions that said she had to try.

  She needed a song that would summon power yet not endanger the crystal. She chose a soft, seductive melody she’d used to wheedle a recalcitrant wind into mellowing and sharing its gossip. The book in her arms grew warm. The leather glowed. She flipped open the book while singing and watched the lines of script for any sign of change. Her song pled, promised, coaxed. The script remained unreadable.

  A loud crack interrupted her. She looked up. The table split and collapsed beneath the crystal’s weight. The crystal settled slowly to the floor. It rocked but remained whole. The change in position opened a wide space between it and the ceiling, but a new spurt of growth lessened that distance to little more than a handbreadth. Cracks radiated outward from a bulge in the ceiling where facets of the crystal had pressed. If the crystal reached the ceiling again …

  “Don’t stop,” Claid urged. “Keep singing. I’ll channel power to you.”

  Kyla nodded. Closing her mind to the growing crystal, she directed her song to the book alone. Breathing deeply of the smell of the leather, her fingers caressing the heavy, rough pages, she spoke to the words inscribed in bold black letters, spoke to the letters themselves with their wide loops and tall straight strokes. Her song sank to a near whisper, crooned to the marching lines.

  They shifted slowly. Almost imperceptibly they slithered into the shapes of familiar letters, familiar words, until the page she stared at held neat lines of intelligible script. Her eyes scanned the lines while she tried to maintain the thread of her song.

  It was hard to do both. She held the book so that Claid could see it and paused long enough to say, “Find the spell while I sing.”

  As she resumed the song, he reached over her shoulder and turned pages, stopped with a triumphant “Aha!” and pointed at the top of a right-hand page. A section heading announced the formula for creating a living crystal and explained how to control its shape and regulate its growth.

  When Kyla stopped singing to read the instructions, the writing wavered and reverted to code.

  “Keep singing,” Claid said. “I’ll stabilize the crystal.”

  So Kyla sang, while Claid scanned the instructions, then edged around her to enter the laboratory. He placed his hands on the crystal, blew on it, edged around it, squeezing through the tight spots where the crystal blocked passage, touching it all around. Kyla lost sight of him when he passed behind the crystal. He reappeared holding a bottle of liquid fitted with a perforated top. “Found this on the shelf,” he said as he sprinkled the contents liberally over the parts of the crystal he could reach. He pulled a ladder out of one corner, set it up, climbed on it, and sprinkled the top of the crystal.

  He returned to Kyla and Marta. “No need to sing any longer. The crystal will grow no more until I will it to.”

  Kyla could not suppress the suspicion that Claid had needed neither the spell book nor the mysterious liquid. With his power and knowledge he had no need for spells or libations. He had used this ploy to make her see that she did indeed have mage power inherited from her parents. She cleared her throat. “Tell me how the crystal can save Alair,” she said.

  Claid removed the brainstone that held Alair’s mind from its cord and balanced it on the palms of his hands. “Mistress Kyla, you know we have no time to find a living, mindless body we can insert Master Alair’s consciousness into. I can’t tell whether his mind still lives in this small container. It may have already faded into true death. If not, it soon will. We may not be able to leave here until the spring thaw, and that would be much too late. Alair cannot be restored to human form.” He paused and regarded the stone solemnly, turning it slowly about in his hands.

  Shifting his gaze from the brainstone to Kyla, he continued. “The living crystal gives us an alternative. Alair’s mind can be placed in it. The properties of the crystal will allow the mind to be conscious, to think and to know, but with no body he will be a prisoner within the sphere.”

  “That would give us time to find a body for him,” Kyla interrupted, giddy with sudden excitement.

  Claid regarded her sadly and shook his head. “If Alair’s mind enters the sphere, I can no longer control the growth of the crystal. The sphere cannot remain here; it would destroy this house. I will have to transport it to another place, another dimension, where its expansion can do no harm. I have the power to take it to such a place. There Alair will retain all his mage power, and I believe he will be able to reach out to other minds, but he will never again experience physical contact with another human being.”

  Claid’s words gripped her heart. Never again would she feel Alair’s arms around her, never again know the warmth of his lips against hers. Their single night of lovemaking could never be repeated.

  All her grief at his loss welled afresh. She had given him up once, when she found his broken body on the floor of the canyon. Claid’s words had rekindled her hope, let her imagine a rebirth of the love that had bloomed so briefly. Now that fragile hope was crushed.

  Marta slipped an arm around her waist, steadied her. When she raised her tear-filled eyes to meet his gaze, Claid said softly, “You must make the decision.”

  How could she decide such a thing? She stretched out her hands and cupped them around the brainstone, drew it to her and cradled it against her breast. His life, his survival was up to her. And she didn’t know what to do.

  “If only I could ask him what he would want,” she said.

  “I’d let him come back into my body for a few minutes, if that would help,” Marta offered, hugging Kyla.

  Kyla looked hopefully at Claid.

  He shook his head. “Too dangerous,” he said. “He could use Marta before only because she was unconscious. Marta would be unlikely to survive the possession of her conscious mind.”

  Kyla sighed. She couldn’t risk Marta’s life, but she could risk her own.

&n
bsp; As though he anticipated her thought, Claid said, “I doubt that Alair’s mind could withstand another such transfer, either. You must decide for him.”

  What if she decided wrongly? She tried to guess what the proud mage would have preferred.

  Proud? Yes, he was that, but he had been capable of great sacrifice. He’d spent years in total isolation while he forged the chain that held Claid captive—he was used to being alone. He’d known when he dedicated himself to the destruction of the mindstealers that the struggle could cost him his life.

  “How is it that Alair could live in the crystal though he can’t in this stone?” she asked Claid.

  “The crystal is a living organism, one that will not grow old and decay like a human body. In it he can be virtually immortal.”

  Immortal … Alair would like that. “You have no doubt you can transport the crystal safely?”

  “None at all,” he said.

  His certainty aroused her suspicion. “How would your chains allow you to move something that large into another dimension?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Ah, mistress, I must confess to a deception.” He reached up, grasped the heavy chain hanging beside the door, and pulled. The chain spilled down onto the floor in wide coils. Kyla and Marta leaped back to keep from being struck by the massive links. Solid though the metal appeared, it disintegrated into a pile of metallic dust, and after a few seconds even the dust vanished into nothingness.

  Kyla wiped the toe of her shoe over the bare floor where the chain had been. “So, the pages you tore from my book did allow you to free yourself.”

  Claid hung his head and drew from beneath his tunic the torn and wrinkled pages. “Forgive me for damaging the book. I’ll do my best to repair it.”

  “When? I’m amazed you’re still here, not already returned to the Dire Realms. You must have discovered the secret only just before I did.”

  “No, mistress, you misjudge me. I did not need these pages to free myself. Your efforts freed me bit by bit.”

  “My efforts? You mean by pulling on the chain every time I came into the laboratory?”