The Wind-Witch (17 page)

“You be careful,” Druyan ordered sternly. The kitchen’s roof was a story less lofty than the hall’s, but still far enough to fall onto cobbles. Kellis had been lucky not to break his neck the first time.

“It’s all right,” Kellis assured her stalwartly. “I know how to fall off this roof! I have experience. I don’t want to take you with me, that’s all.” He tossed out another tiny spell and frowned at the effect. “This is meant to keep sheep from straying, not straw from slipping. I don’t know . . . So some of the landless sons go raiding for sport; and some of them go emigrating because it’s that or starve, and they need to raise money first, to pay for the ships, so they go a-raiding, too. And if the songs are true—and I heard enough of those—any time one lord works his way to the top of the pile, there’s a dozen others won’t tolerate him, so they load up families and goods and go looking for other lands to settle on. All they do is iight, birth to grave. Compared to their own folk, my clans were hardly even an obstacle to them. Your folk might be another tale entirely.”

“How so?” Druyan dodged another cascade of loose straw. “Are you sure you’re all right up there?”

“Yes.” But the word was gasped out. “Sorry. What about beeswax? Got any of that?”

“From just two hives? Enough for a roof? Maybe we could take something from the skep the storm upset, but those bees are very unhappy right now, and you didn’t like them much when you looked in on them at winter’s end.” They’d opened the hives to see whether queen and workers had survived, whether they had reserves sufficient to feed themselves till blossom time. Kellis had been stung dozens of times and had made it clear he didn’t intend to go near the bees again. “Last year’s wax all went for candles. There’s some tallow, I think.”

“I’m thinking that if we coated some sacks with something to shed water, it would be a start up here,” Kellis said abstractedly. “Watch yourself, Lady. I’m going to try to come down.”

“There are some hides in the barn. Not sound enough for boots, but maybe we could drape them over. And you’re six feet left of the ladder.”

“Thank you.” Kellis corrected his course, but Druyan didn’t draw an easy breath till they were both safe on the ground, covered with sticks of thatch and looking like a pair of scarecrows.

“So, why is Esdragon another tale to the raiders?” she asked.

“Cities are harder to push aside than herds of sheep.” Kellis brushed a hand through his hair, dislodging chaff. “It isn’t just that cold iron doesn’t poison you; your people stay put. Mine wander. That was what we did when the Eral first came at us—we just moved away from them. It didn’t solve the problem, except that first year. I suppose they’ll never get all of us . . . He slnugged. “Some Clans will always be out of reach, on the fringes. We can’t make the Eral leave, they can’t make the Clans not exist. Nothing resolves. We’ll go where they don’t much like to be—the hills. It’s hard to live there, but the Clans know how to survive.” He pulled a barley stem out of his collar. “Your folk, on the other hand, will stand up to the raiders, and you won’t leave it too late, the way my people did. Working together isn’t the novelty for you that it was to the Clans.”

“And we can fight them off?” Druyan asked, baffled, trying to take it all in.

“You already do.” Kellis waved a hand at the dooryard they had defended so very well. “And if you do it long enough—well, the Eral still won’t go away, but they’ll change toward you. They’ll roll over anything that shows the least weakness, but an equal—they’ll trade with an equal, instead of trying to snatch whatever they want. They’ll have to. It’s not something they sing about on the raiding ships, but they do go places where the medium of exchange doesn’t include fire and blood.

When will that happen?” Druyan asked eagerly.

“Depends on how well you fight,” Kellis rubbed his sore shoulder. “The better you are, the sooner they’ll respect you.”

Druyan’s heart sank, seeing the impossible scope of it. How could she have hoped for immediate relief?

“Every captain’s his own master and does what he chooses. The Eral follow the strongest. But the word will run back to the home shores that a land’s too strong to be profitable for raiding, that it’s too much trouble. Then they’ll start to trade for what they want,” Kellis consoled her.

“Meantime we break our necks watching our backs.” Druyan showed Kellis where the hides were piled. He touched one and wrinkled his nose. “Travic got these in trade, I think,” Druyan said, vaguely embarrassed. “We didn’t cure them here.” The hides from the early winter butchering were all salted down in a barrel, waiting for Mion the tanner to come home. They’d keep, and Druyan didn’t feel desperate enough yet to teach herself tanning. “I remember he wasn’t happy with them—the quality’s poor, they’re stiff and they stink—Travic never thought there’d be a use for them.”

“They’ll stop the birds from diving into the soup pot,” Kellis said optimistically, ducking out of a barn swallow’s flight path. “At least for a while.”

They might add salt-grass hay to the thatch, too, later in the season. ’Twasn’t grown long enough yet. “So, until we impress the Eral so thoroughly that they’d rather bring goods to our markets than swords to blood, the raids will continue?” Druyan wasn’t sure she liked the implications, but she was determined to understand them.

“This place isn’t
so
easy to find,” Kellis offered, rolling the hides into a long bundle.

“It’s been found
twice
in a handful of months,” Druyan countered tartly. “The season’s just eased enough to make sailing bearable. And half the settled bits of the duchy are this easy to find.” She explained about the estuaries, the attractions river and harbor offered in Esdragon. “We might as well hang signs out: ‘Rich pickings right here.’ ”

“You keep watch.” Kellis shrugged, then bit his lip. “And your duke has an army in the tield, does he not?”

“He took my men for it,” Druyan agreed bitterly. “They’d have been better use here, seems to me. In case you didn’t notice, no army showed up to help us the other night.”

Kellis frowned. “You have a long coast. Raids are quick. How does the army know where it’s needed in time to get itself there?”

“That’s just it,” Druyan answered. “They
don’t
. They sit by the towns, and the rest of us are on our own.” Her voice was bitter as black-walnut hulls.

“Keeping watch,” Kellis repeated, “and having some thought for what you’ll do when trouble comes, Lady. There won’t always be a storm. Though there is always the rain.” He lifted the rolled hides with a small groan and headed back toward the kitchen roof, accepting the realities of Esdragon’s weather.

The barley shot upward in the fields. The sheep were sheared, the wool tithe paid. The apple trees set fruit. The kitchen roof leaked a little less with each rain, for Kellis took careful note of the weak spots and tended them, sometimes even while the rain yet came down. He fell off the roof twice more, but both times managed to catch hold of the edge at the last instant, so that he dangled a moment before dropping—a method of landing he reckoned to be far less hazardous than being lifted off helplessly by the wind.

He did, though, pause for a drink at the well before going back up to finish his work and a moment later the roof was forgotten and Kellis off in search of Splaine Garth’s mistress.

Druyan had gone out riding, returning home at dusk and riding straight into Enna’s furious report that Kellis had vanished without a trace or a word, leaving the ladder standing where it might fall on any unwary soul trying innocently to pass through her own kitchen doorway. . .

He wasn’t to be found. The amount of thatch scattering around the dooryard in the breeze suggested Kellis had been gone from the work a good while. There was straw torn from the lower edge—he might have tumbled off again and taken otherwise sound roofing with him. He might have hurt himself—but in such case, where had he gone? He wasn’t in the barn. Had he landed on his head, then wandered off, dazed? Could he have gotten far, hurt? Druyan wondered. Or had he departed, quite healthy and perfectly ready to seize a chance?

Druyan remounted, in no small way confused. If Kellis had wanted to run, he’d had chances in plenty and could have gotten safe away with far more than the clothes on his back, which seemed to be all that was missing. Every horse save Valadan was safe in paddock or pasture—from the high vantage of the stallion’s back, then, she saw the lone figure trudging down from the near edge of the headland. The distance was great, but she could not mistake that ash-pale hair.

Druyan touched a leg to Valadau’s side and went cantering to meet him, as much to be out of earshot of Enna’s grumbling as to discover what made Kellis leave his work scarce half done. When she saw him starting to run, I she urged Valadan into an effortless gallop and reached Kellis in what seemed an eyeblink.

“What is it? Did you see something?” Her gaze went to the river, frantic, trying to pull in information. There was no reason at all that another shipload of adventurers should not have found them. Bad luck so soon, but no wise impossible, from what Kellis had said. Maybe the first batch had never left the area, but had only retreated.

Kellis lacked breath enough to answer her, but he shook his head emphatically. “Not here,” he gasped, to further reassure her. “I was trying to find you. . .

And she and Valadan had been leagues away, on the moors. “Then you
did
something!” Druyan rose in her stirrups and looked out over the fields again, searching in a panic. Whyever had she ridden so far? Fast as Valadan was, would she not have been sensible to stay closer to home?

“Can’t see much in a dipper of water.” Kellis drew in two more ragged breaths. “I couldn’t tell
where
, except it wasn’t Splaine Garth. A river, a village, a lot of ships—” He faltered, out of breath again.

“That could be anywhere!” Druyan cried, dismayed.

“I know.” He pressed a hand to his side, waved away her concern, “I remembered what you said. And it wouldn’t help if I’d had more water to look in—the only spot I can recognize in Esdragon is this one. But you know the others, Lady, and if I can show you—”

“You couldn’t before.”

“You didn’t see. because I didn’t.” Kellis shut his eyes and shook his head. “Lady, I don’t want these visions! I turn my eyes away, whenever I’m close to anything that might reflect . . . but it’s not helping, they’re hammering at me. I can’t`shut them out. I have to see them. I think I can show them to you. And maybe if you see something that tells you where the raid will be, you can send them a warning.”

She reached a hand down to him. “Get up behind me. Last time you
tried
to see ahead, it didn’t work. Why’s it different now?” She urged Valadan back toward the farm buildings. “You didn’t fall on your head, did you?”

His explanation came in snatches, into her left ear over the thudding of Valadan’s hooves. “Always ran in cycles. . . it would leave me for a long while. Then all at once it would start up again, I couldn’t tell where I was, what was real, what was there and what was to be. It was strong as this horse, Lady, only I couldn’t ride it, couldn’t control it. It ran away with me, dumped me off when it chose. I want to find that Wizards’ City. Maybe someone there can tell me, help me—”

“Was it like this all winter?” She couldn’t recall him so distressed, not ever. Not even at the very first, when he’d been wholly an enemy and must have thought of her as such, too.

Kellis laughed, as if he knew what she was thinking. “You probably would have known, Lady! No, there was nothing, nothing at all. I’ve never had such a long peace from it—I thought it must have been something to do with that knock on the head my captain gave me. I thought he’d cured me of the cursed visions, and I was so gratefull—” He laughed again, a sharp bark like a fox’s. “And so wrong, as it happens.”

Valadan halted beside the barn. Druyan slipped from his back, dragging Kellis along by one arm. “What do you need?”

“Water,” he said, stumbling a little in her grip, then finding his balance.

Druyan let him go, snatched up a pail, and strode to the well. Kellis heeled her. When she’d filled the bucket, she thrust it into his hands. He accepted it, shivering, not looking into it directly.

“How do we do this?” Druyan asked doubtfully. “How will I see what you do?”

“I am going to sit down, because otherwise I’ll drop the pail,” Kellis said unsteadily. He drew a deep breath. “Showing you—I don’t think there will be any problem. So long as your skin touches mine, you should see whatever I do. It would probably be harder
not
to show you.”

Kellis seated himself cross-legged on the paving tiles that kept the mud around the well from becoming impossible. He braced the pail against his right knee and hand, and reached his left hand out to Druyan. She knelt and clasped it.

It was the insistent visions that had made Kellis leery of conning the songs of summoning. Each vision he managed to call seemed to drag another, unbidden one after it, and that uninvited kind
hurt
. They were sneaky, too, often biding their time for days ere they struck, like storms lurking just over the horizon, rumbling but not breaking. When those finally arrived, at the very least they’d inflict a blinding headache on him. More than once he had fainted. The worst time he could clearly remember, he had seen double images for endless days and had felt trapped, stuck fast between vision and reality, terrified to try to move one way or the other lest he choose wrongly, frightened he might never come out of it. Wisir was no help—the old man’s visions had never been painful, or so he claimed. Kellis had been compelled to leam to deal with the trouble all on his own.

To invite that again . . . already he felt the familiar coldness in the pit of his stomach, and the sweat was starting out all over him, in great drops. The day dimmed, as if he was about to swoon from lack of food, or blood loss. . .

I dont have to sing this one in
, Kellis thought, dismayed.
It is coming, whether I ask it or not. If I invite it, will it be better? Or worse?