The Wind-Witch (40 page)

“What pmt of Esdragon is left unwarned, while you are here?” Druyan asked, dismay defeating courtesy.

Yvain’s eyes widened a touch, but his smile held its brightness. “We’ve not such a long coast as
that
! Rank grants privilege, Lady. I chose
this
section of coast for my responsibility. And so here am I, honorably at my post.”

“This wasn’t Robart’s idea?”

Yvain laughed outright at her suspicion. “No. I cannot imagine he’ll be much distressed, though.”

Druyan tried to take her hand back. She wore her glove, and Yvain knew that—and
why
—two of its fingers were empty sleeves of leather, but she did not feel easy with it in his grip. Her face went hot, despite the cool air rushing past it from the sea. She tugged gently, striving not to act as if it mattered. . .

Yvain did not relinquish his hold, gentle but nonetheless implacable. Her hand stayed his prisoner. “Lady Druyan, it may be a tedious while before all’s formally done, but I would have it said between us now, so you’re clear on my intentions?” He smiled again, with devastating effect. “I know you are widowed, though you have found it prudent that no other should have that information.”

Now, as the long-dreaded disaster finally touched her, Druyan found to her amazement that it scarcely seemed to matter. There was windsong in her ears, roaring in her blood, and what she wanted most at that moment was for Yvain to let go of her hand so that she could issue her call once again—without having to whistle straight into his face.

“I want you to wife,” Yvain declared earnestly.

“I suppose you do.” With pounding heart, Druyan studied the sky. It was full of wind-tattered clouds, rushing busily along inland. “You’re
far
too rich to want me just for a paltry farm like Splaine Ganh.”

“I am crushed! That you even jest at such a crass motive’s attaching itself to me, Lady—” Yvain had got hold of her other hand, somehow, and they stood facing one another. Druyan’s heart still raced, fast as the flying clouds.

“As second widow of a childless landholder, I know the laws for land passage, that’s all,” she said, forcing a calm she did not feel. “I have had cause to learn the legalities very thoroughly.” And she discovered herself more than a little relieved not to have to bother keeping her great secret any longer. There were other matters that demanded her whole attention—if she could once get her hands free.

“I know you have tried to freehold, Druyan. I admire that. The way you have kept up your land, despite all that has befallen Esdragon, is most impressive. It does you the greatest credit. We shall even spend pan of each year living at Splaine Garth, if you prefer it to Tolasta or my other properties. I have no objection. Why should we not share our homes with one another?”

Druyan closed her eyes and felt the wind pressing against her shut eyelids. Then, without warning, Yvain’s lips were upon hers, and he had dropped her hands so that he could put his own one on either side of her face, sliding his long clever fingers through her hair in an amazingly pleasurable, intimate touch.

No man had touched her that way since—
since Travic?
Druyan wondered. Or was it not so long ago as that? What was she remembering? Had Travic
ever
touched her so? Ever made her feel so? But someone had—Yvain’s mouth moved against her lips, and something stirred in Druyan, deep inside. Her blood sang in her ears, surged like a storm tide, matching Yvain’s passion.

And at the same time she wanted to slap him, and was hard put to resist acting upon her wish, now that her hands were finally freed. For Yvain’s presumption, his arrogance? Or for his waking feelings she had thought left behind with her girlhood dreams? Anger and regret twisted tight together like two threads plied together into one yam, impossible to separate. Yvain murmured something into her hair, and her lips bumed where his had touched them.

Instead of lashing out at Yvain, Druyan stepped a pace back from him, with her hands carefully behind her, just as a great blast of wind shook them both, sent a mist of salty drops between them.

“Let’s see first, Yvain, whether we will
live
anywhere,” she said shakily. He blinked at her, as if he had for the instant forgotten where they were, so utterly caught up by his own plans for what she would do that he forgot what she was there to do. Probably he did not believe in what she was attempting. Druyan found it hard not to hate him for that, for his so readily dismissing any part of her, but especially this part, at this critical instant. “You may not, after today, still desire to mingle your illustrious lineage with mine.”

What—” His sculptured face was blank as a sleepwalker’s.

“Be still,” Druyan said ungently. “Or go.” She marched to Valadan and climbed into his saddle. She’d be safer from Yvain’s distractions aboard the stallion. She turned Valadan’s fine head into the wind. His forelock blew back between his ears toward her, like black wave spume.

I am of the wind
, the stallion said.
That will aid you.

Druyan breathed deep and sent out her whistling call once more into the restless air atop the cliffs. Higher by the height of Valadan’s back, she felt even more a part of the air. It did help, as the stallion had pledged. She felt braver, surer, more herself somehow.

She whistled again.

“
What are you doing?
” Yvain shouted.

Druyan ignored him, sending out her call again and again. As she ran out of air, she kept her lips pursed while she drew in another breath—and that breath whistled, as well, while it was drawn into her toward her.

This is why women are reckoned to be bad luck on boats
, Valadan said, tasting the wind he was kin to.
And generally forbidden whistling.

And the wind, which had been blowing from all directions in short gusts, shifted. Now it came steadily from the sea. And its smell was different—old, wild, full of shipwrecks and thunderclaps.

Druyan sat astride Valadan’s back, while the wind blew steadily inshore. Her tawny hair was twirled into elflocks, as was the stallion’s mane. Her face was dry with cold, washed red by the sun’s dying rays.

The sky above was yet a bottomless blue, studded with bits of cloud beautifully gilded by the sinking sun. At her back the moon was rising, very near, so full it seemed like to burst of ripeness. Once each year—only once—the moon drew so near in the night, seemed almost prepared to step down out of the sky, and its tidal pull flooded shores left diy at all other times.

Her own grandfather had sung songs of greeting to the Lady of the Moon. So, in his different way, did Kellis. Druyan only looked seaward, fretting. Where was the storm? The steady daylong wind had not increased its fury, there was no sign of the thing she was calling with all her heart.

Who can see the wind?
Valadan asked. But he, too, was concerned and restless. Druyan could feel him lift first one foot, then another.

Yvain still stood at her left hand. He looked back at the moon, following her gaze. Its pale light silvered his blue eyes till he turned them to sunfall once more.

Druyan wished he would go. She could not decide whether he distracted her—she thought she could prevent that by ignoring him, and certainly by sparing no corner of her mind for what he proposed for her. It was not that she wanted to be alone—rather that the only man she wanted to have by her side was the very one she’d sent away.

It was the only time she had ever managed to send Kellis from her side. Like a good sheepdog, he knew when ’twas utterly needful to obey, and he had done as she’d asked. But, oh, how she wished that a silver wolf paced where Yvain now nervously stood.

Where was her storm wind?
Had she not summoned it? Had she not called it, all that long day?

She had called, certainly—but had she expected the wind to come? Had she
wanted
it, or was she, at the very core of her heart, still afraid of the wind and of herself? Would some coward, craven part of her accept the storm’s disobedience with relief? She was exactly like Kellis, afraid of nothing so much as what lay just under her own skin. . .

“Druyan, enough of this!” Yvain shouted, tearing through her reverie. “Come with me now—”

Go with Yvain. Yes, she could certainly do that. What was it but another order, one more instruction? As youngest of a very large family, she was quite well used to doing what she was told. Obeying now would free her of responsibility for putting raiders to flight, for arranging harvests and planting crops and the hopeless task of protecting villages. And it would not be such a very bad life, as Yvain’s wedded lady. He was pleasing to the eye, keen of wit, wealthy enough to know few cares—and he wanted her, without bargaining, without lands and dowry and family connections. It would be a fine life, surely, the one he offered her. Until Yvain discovered that she could not give him a child, until he leamed she was as empty within as a hollow tree, save for an arcane power over the wild wind that he surely could not approve of.

He doesn’t care whats inside
, Druyan thought, suddenly furious with the revelation, shaking with all the pent anger of a whole lifetime, as she began to understand her instinctive objection.
I will not be afraid of what I am—let us see if Yvain can say the same!

“No,” she said, and turned her face back to the sea, into the wind. She dropped the reins and lifted her hands, stretching out her arms to embrace the wind. She whistled once more, a piercing, demanding tone that never considered for a single instant that its quarry might mutiny or ignore it.
Come to me
, the call went out, no longer hesitant.

And like a wayward horse that has stayed near while refusing to be caught and haltered, the wind answered her. Through its lash, Druyan looked seaward once more.

The sky above was darkening, the moon’s glow not nearly compensating for the loss of the sun’s light. Ahead, where the disc of the sun still perched on the horizon of wavetops, the sky should yet have been bright.

It was not. In place of the expected banners of scarlet and gold, orange and rose, there loomed a great dark mass, like a bmise across the sky, enveloping the sun as it sank toward the sea.

Yvain heard the startled hiss of his own breath being drawn in, without recognizing it. Lightning flickered inside the oncoming squall line, and white edges of cloud could be seen to seethe and boil against the blackness. Distance masked size and length, deceived as to speed—but blink and the storm was closer, and that gave a true measure of how quickly it swept upon them. Had he been aboard a ship upon open water and seen such a bank of cloud bearing down on him, Yvain would have given himself up for lost.

He was hardly certain that he was safe on the land. The headland had never seemed so lofty, so at the mercy of the air about it. The grass rolled like sea billows, and anything loose had already gone skipping and flying toward the rising white face of the moon.

The tide was roaring in. It could be heard over the wind, as the moon’s irresistible pull increased its force. The storm winds would be thrusting a massive bulge of water ahead of them, and when those waters were added to the tide . Yvain’s jaw dropped as he began to comprehend what had been only a misty plan, more hope than reality and not much attended to. He looked up at Druyan, her arms still open in welcome.

“It comes at your call,” he whispered. The wind took his words, claiming the air they rode upon, and whirled them away like so many dry leaves.

The face she turned upon him was a stranger’s, taut and wild and exultant. Her hair lifted around her like a living thing. Her eyes were a she-wolf’s, glowing full of moonlight, and they saw his fear.

“Do you truly desire a barren witch for your wife, Yvain?” she asked.

Yvain licked his wind-cracked lips and pitched his voice to cany, but his answer died in his cold throat, just before the gust front of the storm reached them and bowled him off his feet.

Enna’s eyes were twin points of cold iron. “You came back
without
her?”

“She
sent
me back,” Kellis pleaded. A gust of wind plucked at the horse blanket he had draped about him in a roughly fashioned beltran when he reached the barn, and he shivered. He was clothed enough not to outrage Enna, but not sufficiently to keep warm if he stood still. And beyond the discomfort was the unease the wind carried. “What do you do here when there’s a storm? A high storm tide?” She didn’t answer. He wondered if she thought he was just making conversation. “We’re supposed to do that.”

“We throw shifty thieves into the marsh to appease the sea gods, so they don’t flood us out.” She had understood perfectly well. “With an iron spike hammered through their hearts to make sure they stay there.”

Kellis stared, the wind lifting his hair out of his eyes.

“I know what you are,” Enna said. “It’s not only wizards can’t touch cold iron. How could you leave her?”

“She
told
me to!” Kellis exploded. “Do you think I’d have left her otherwise? She’s whistling up this storm to sweep away the raiders, and she doesn’t want Splaine Garth swept away with it. Riders are warning the whole coast, but it’s no use to warn if there’s no one here to do anything! She sent me back to be sure there was.
Now what do I do?
”

She wanted to spit invective at him. But the wind’s howl got Enna’s attention. She’d heard its like before, but it wasn’t common. “I always wondered what she could do if she had to,” she whispered. “Now we’ll see—think you can nail shutters closed without nailing yourself to them?”

Kellis curled his lip in a silent snarl. “I shall manage.”

“There’s two of my lord’s men just back yesterday, they’ll help. We’re too high here to flood unless all Darlith washes away, but we’ll need anything loose tied or nailed down so it can’t blow away. And the animals need to come in; they’ll drown in the marsh when the water rises.”

I’ll see to that,” Kellis said.

Moments later, Rook and Meddy were gathering their charges and chivvying them to safe ground. Reluctant sheep met a most persuasive silver wolf, whose nips at their woolly heels got swift results.