The Wind-Witch (33 page)

Druyan’s eyelids lifted. Her gray eyes were clear as aisky with all the rain washed out of it. “You came back,” she whispered, plainly astonished.

Kellis knelt down beside the bed, caring no more for Enna’s wrath. “I was just behind you,” he said, forcing a smile. “That horse of yours is so fast, he ran my legs off. Is it well with you, Lady?”

“I don’t think so.” She only moved her lips—no sound came to his ears, which were nearly as sharp human as wolf’s. He had to decipher her words with his eyes. “My hand—”

Kellis looked at the bandage. Most of it was crimson now, as was the pillow beneath. He spied a basket of rags by the bed, the wadded contents stained, as well. He cocked his head at white-faced Enna.

“I’ve sewed the wound closed, and the bleeding’s slowed, but it won’t
stop
,” Enna said, relenting out of desperation and speaking to him. She took a step closer. “I used yarrow, and lady’s mantle, and shepherd’s purse—”

“You did right,” Kellis agreed. He could smell the healing herbs, but the fresh blood scent overwhelmed all else. Maybe they’d need to resort to cautery—he cringed to think of the burnt-flesh stink filling the little room. And the pain. . .

But that might not need to be. Kellis lifted Druyan’s hand gently and held it up against his chest, which had at last ceased to labor. He captured her gaze, too, kept it locked with his own. “You know, if you uncork a bottle and lay it down, all the wine will run right out,” he said conversationally. “But set it upright—” Kellis was arranging his fingers carefully, to bring pressure to bear on the wound beneath the scarlet linen without hurting her overmuch, letting her eyes be his guide. He could tell she was trying not to flinch. “I’m going to make it harder for the rest of your blood to drip out of you, Lady. Just lie still.”

“No worse than I deserve,” Druyan whispered, her eyes now tight shut. “I always thought my hands were ugly, they were so big. I was always wishing them smaller A drop of water squeezed between her lashes and slid down into her left ear.

“Shhh,” Kellis said to her, with lips and eyes. “Oniy children have tiny hands.”

By the day’s end—so many hours later—Kellis was finally confident the wound was staunched. Druyan had been sleeping most of that time, which was fine so far as it went—asleep, she would not move about and reopen the wound. Presumably she was in no pain. Enna had at his direction bound new wrappings iight over top of the old, so as not to start the bleeding afresh. She should heal, and even if the wound festered, a fever could be fought off. He knew plenty of simples to treat such maladies—when one lived by hunting, wounds were a commonplace.

Only Kellis greatly feared that Druyan would not live long enough for a fever to set in. She slept, but it seemed more like a swoon. Her heart still beat fast as a caged bird’s, and her pale skin was damp and cold despite the fire that warmed the chamber. Kellis had seen men take terrible wounds and readily recover, but he had likewise seen men suffer what appeared to be trifling hurts and die of them, once this same cold pallor had come over them, the same rapid, weak heartbeat manifested.

Fear was a huge portion of it. Kellis could feel the terror in her, even while the lady slept or swooned. She was frail and frightened and dying of the shock of her hurt, more than its severity. If only he could gift her with a wolf’s courage, a wolf’s strength and lust for survival.

There was a way, if he would risk it.

Enna had brought a fresh pot of medicine. The cooling liquid was a tisane of nettle leaves and dried briar hips, mostly. Kellis’ nose sorted out the ingredients easily. Parsley, too, he thought, and a little honey stirred in. The sweetener and the rose fruits would scarcely overcome the other, less pleasing tastes, but each dried herb in the simple was a blood-builder. If Druyan woke, he would make her drink the brew, and it would do her good.

She drew in a breath a little deeper than the last, and her eyes unclosed, with no more warning than that. “Still here,” Druyan whispered. Which of them did she mean?

Kellis nodded, and lifted her head so she’d be able to swallow the tea. He held the cup to her lips. A single sip, then he had to let her sink back into the pillows. She had not swallowed, and Kellis was fearful of choking her. A coughing fit might stop her heart. He wiped the corners of her mouth, carefully. Her lips were palest mauve, ever so slightly shading to blue.

“When’s the turn of the tide?” she asked him then, those pale lips moving against his fingers.

“You know I’ve never figured the tides out,” Kellis answered, smiling at her and getting the cup ready again. “I get a saltwater footbath every time I go near the marsh. I can remember the water comes in farther sometimes than others, but never
when
. Why?”

“Nothing that lives by the sea can die till the tide goes out,” she breathed.

“You mean like snakes can’t die till sunfall?” Kellis raised an eyebrow. “That’s superstition. I have killed any number of snakes, and when I’m done, they’re dead, no matter where the suns stands.”

“When the tide ebbs, life ebbs,” Druyan whispered, ignoring him, and shut her eyes.

Enna was determined to send him away, once the bleeding was staunched. She would not have him spending the night in her lady’s bedchamber, no matter the reason. Kellis could not convince her of the danger that still lay waiting, though he scomfully thought that anyone with two working eyes should have recognized it. Second sight wasn’t needed to know that future.

“When’s the tide?” he finally asked her, exasperated.

Enna reckoned it up, though she didn’t trouble about answering him—shorefolk knew the turn of the tide as they knew their own names. “What sort of trick is that? What are you up to?

“Your lady thinks she’ll die when the tide goes out—and if she believes it, she might just do it! Beware the turn of the tide—her spirit will follow, if we let it.”

“You won’t touch her again, you filth!” Enna said, outraged. “That’s a stupid superstition. I know well enough that you’re free if she dies.”

I shall have to do samething more than touch her
, Kellis was thinking. He wasn’t afraid to turn his back on Enna—she needed him able to walk out on his own legs, because she couldn’t drag him, so she wasn’t likely to hit him. He saw that Druyan’s gray eyes were open again, and watching him. Her freckles stood out like brands against the bloodless white of her skin. Kellis thought he could see her heart beating, right through flesh and cloth and blankets, having a very hard time, and more than ready to surrender its fight, like a brave horse overidden. She looked past him.

“
Enna
.” Very, very faint. A hummingbird’s wing stirred the air more loudly.

“Lady?” Enna bent close by the bed, ignoring Kellis beside her.

“Do whatever he tells you.”

Enna started back and glared at Kellis. “I
have
done,” she said. “The wound’s well closed. You’re fine, you’ll mend, you just need to sleep. And
he’s
not staying in
here
. I’m sure he’s full of fleas, if not lice—”

Druyan’s eyes went to Kellis’ face, to the message his golden wolf’s gaze sent.
Let me help you
. . .

“Enna, let him stay. Do what he says.
Whatever he says
—” Her voice was slight as wind rustling through grass, a shuttle through the warp threads. It was an order, all the same.

Enna gave him a look fit to stop a man’s heart. Kellis swallowed hard, then found his voice. The time was come. He didn’t know how the tide stood, but he saw ebb in Druyan’s face.

“Just . . . heat me some water, please. Lots of it.”

“There’s tea brewed already—”

“Hot
water
,” Kellis repeated firmly, and stared her down.

Enna hobbled out grumbling, and Kellis went at once to peer round the door, stepping softly on his toes. When he saw Enna start down the stairs, he swiftly barred the door with oak—for strength, and magic—for silence. Then, confident they could not be disturbed, he turned back to the bed.

“I feel so light,” Druyan said wonderingly. “As if I could fly on the wind.”

“That’s the blood-lack,” Kellis explained reassuringly. He sniffed twice. “You lost buckets. Don’t fret. I won’t let you die. I swear it.

“Trust vou?”

He winced. “There’s no help for it. You’ll have to.” He sniffed again.

“It was so confusing,” Druyan said, not really hearing him. She frowned. “The battle. All that shouting . . . no order to it—is war always like that?”

“I can’t judge,” Kellis admitted, busy. “The first fighting—that sort of fighting—that I ever saw was right here, and I think having my head bashed in right at the start of it warped my perceptions a trifle. It’s more confusing than hunting deer. It isn’t any harder, but it’s muddled.” He flared his nostrils.

“Deer don’t hunt you back,” Druyan said wisely. “What are you doing?”

He was searching all about the bed—between the sheets, beneath the blankets, along the head and foot, among the goosefeather pillows, in the seams of quilts and hangings, sniffing and then questing with his fingers. And it was taking him too long.

“Enna hides nails in all your clothes, to keep you safe from me,” he said lightly. Iron scent led him to his quarry, a wicked long pin worked into the mattress edge.

“I take them out.”

“I know, but she’s persistent,” Kellis said, easing the fell object free of the cloth gingerly, with his nails. “And I need to clear every last bit away, even the smallest pin. It’s not quite true that my folk can’t touch cold iron—you have seen.” He flicked the pin away, out the open window, and blew on his flngers. “It’s painful—sometimes excruciatingly—but it can be done, for a while. And we can be near it without much distress, though I do think my heart’s been scared out of a beat, now and again. But I dare not work any magic upon cold iron—the results may be less than predictable, but they’re predictably unpleasant. You’re hurt already—I don’t want to find out how much more harm I can do you by being stupid.”

“Are you going to work a magic?” Druyan asked drowsily, like a child promised a treat.

“I’m going to sing to you. You like that.”

But even as Kellis answered her, she had faded once more, beyond the reach of his words.

He sniffed out three nails dropped into floorboard cracks, and flung each one out the window, hissing at the brief contact. There was something sharp worked into the hem of her bed gown—another nail, Kellis thought, or a big pin. The only sure way to be rid of all such tiny traps was to slip the gown from her. He did that, gently. Kellis stripped the bedclothes away, as well, still wary of the linens despite his unrewarded search of them. And the warmth of woolen blankets no longer reached Splaine Garth’s lady.

The firecoals gave the room its only light—all was darkness now, outside the unshuttered Casement. ’Twas quiet, too, thanks to his lock charm on the door. The oaken bar would stop Enna short of reaching his magic with cold iron, try though she likely would, and he did not think Dalkin was strong enough to break down the panels by force. The wall beneath the window was sheer, he did not think it could be climbed. The chamber was secure. He could begin his work—and none too soon.

Kellis slipped out of his own garments and lay alongside Druyan on the bared straw of the pallet. If this desperate chance worked at all, it would only be while they were skin to skin.

He gathered her to him carefully, alert to her irregular breathing, the still-frantic hammering of her heart. She was so cold, only the rise of her chest offered him any hope at all. Kellis calmed his own lungs, calling upon all the care and control he had ever managed to learn, and then he sang them both into wolf-form.

Druyan dreamed that she ran lightly over the moors—not carried upon Valadan’s familiar back, but on her own four legs. And though the world about her was all muted shades of gray and silver, lacking any stronger colors, it was rich beyond imagining in its scents. She could smell the grass, the earth, the rabbit that had crossed her path an hour gone, the birds wheeling in the air. She could read by scent the places the wind had visited, all the shores the sea had touched. . .

Something loped alongside her, at her right shoulder. A great silver wolf, with slanting golden eyes she knew she had seen ere then, somewhere, in another sort of face.

Fear not
, he said to her, tongue lolling from his pointed muzzle.
You have the wolf-heart inside you—you have always had it. I am only showing it to you. You have more courage than you know as much as you can ever need
.

The grass was soaking with dew—sparkling drops flew up with her every stride, were deliciously cool against her legs. Suddenly one paw flamed with pain, and she yelped, breaking her stride, nearly falling.

There is no loss you cannot withstand
, the wolf told her, steadying her against his shoulder till she found the pace once more.
There is no loss that even matters, you are so strong, so brave
. . .

I’m not brave
, Druyan said, confused, and faltered once more. It seemed to her that there was some reason she could not run so, some disaster of her own making that had befallen her. Something she should not have done—she ran faster, to get distance on the troubling thought. There was darkness at her heels, like a storm cloud on the far horizon, sweeping ever closer, about to overtake her.

The silver wolf still galloped beside her, easily keeping pace.
Your courage lies within you
, he said.
Only hold tight to it, do not deny it, Do not let it go
. . .

I don ’t know what you mean!
she howled in utter despair. The darkness was sweeping closer. It was cold, so cold . . .

Be what are you
, the wolf insisted, forcing her to hear him.
Not what others tell you!

What you tell me?
For some reason, the advice seemed ironic.

Now the silver wolf faltered, in a manner she found somehow familiar. Just for an instant he did not look like a wolf at all, save for those golden eyes. But in another moment he was by her side again, long-furred, long-legged.