Wind Over Bone: The Estralony Cycle #2 (Young Adult Fantasy Romance)

by E D Ebeling

  “Would you free the Rilelden?”

  He stared at her. “How do you free people who aren’t enslaved?” Dreida, mending one of his jackets in the corner, stopped moving her needle.

  “They’re tied to the land,” said Sarid.

  “They’re serfs. If one wants to see the countryside he has only to ask his lord.”

  “That’s the thing. He has to ask.”

  “Way of the world.” He sat down on a bench. It was straight-backed and made him look very stiff. “If a lord wants to clear a forest he has to ask his Ravyir. If I wanted to marry you I’d have to ask your father and mine.”

  “My father’s mad. What if the Ravyir was mad?”

  “The nobles would oust the mad Ravyir and put his closest relative on the throne.”

  “Couldn’t the Rilelden do the same to a bad lord?”

  “His fellow lords could.”

  “Why not the Rilelden?”

  “They could.” He shrugged. “Then they’d be hanged by terrified nobles.”

  “Would you hang them?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Or more would follow their example and a century of nasty things would happen before another king takes power.”

  “You don’t suppose we could become a republic? Like Benmarum?”

  “Perhaps. If all the aristocracy dropped dead at once.” He tried to slouch and failed, and a bit of his drink spilled into his lap. “If the Eliavs took ship together and sank. Benmarum went through hell before it became Benmarum.” He blotted at his trousers with a sleeve. “Besides, it’s more an oligarchy than a republic. Fortune is a mountain––not everyone can be at the top.” He scowled, and messed his hair with a hand. “I sound like an ass. Doesn’t matter, though. I’ve a feeling Benmarum won’t last much longer, or Lorila, that the Rilelden won’t stand for it forever being shat on by those above them. I very much hope I won’t be around when it happens. It’s a blessing to be human now. Tomorrow it could be a curse.”

  “Does it have to be either?” Sarid took a kerchief from her pocket and threw it at him. “Couldn’t we all fit comfortably in the middle?”

  “You ask my idealistic little brother––” He put it beside him on the bench. “You ask Rischa if he’d give up his fetes and fur long-coats and go turn the soil in the spring and shiver in the winter.”

  “You’re too cynical to argue with.”

  “Aren’t I arguing?”

  “Changing the subject’s what you’re doing,” said Sarid. “If you were Ravyir would you allow the Rilelden the simple courtesy of choosing where they might turn the soil?”

  “Depends.”

  “Yes or no?”

  He leaned forward, almost sliding off the bench, and said, “No. It’s a big country. We’re fending off Miachamelvans and Virnrayans and Goyiniki. Taxes are high. They’d all move to the cities or out of Lorila, and we’d have no food.”

  Sarid touched her glass. It was still warm. “Isn’t buttered rum a winter drink?”

  “It’s a cheerful drink,” said Savvel. He poured another glass. Then he walked over to Dreida and set the glass next to her.

  She smiled weakly and continued sewing.

  ***

  Rischa came back one day around midsummer. Sarid didn’t know about it, and she dropped the pitcher when he burst into Savvel’s parlor. (She’d been watering the ferns she kept on the windowsill.)

  His hair was a mess, his cheeks red. He smelled like his horse. She rung out her wet skirts, and reached down and steadied the pitcher. “You’ll be wanting an explanation––”

  “Pash said everything.”

  She keenly felt the weight of her wet skirts on her legs. When he didn’t continue, she said, “Did you come up here to throw me out, or just gawk?” She hadn’t intended to sound so harsh.

  Dreida, who’d been watching in a sort of stupor, got up and disappeared into a closet. Rischa was breathing hard––she suspected he’d run all the way up. He looked her up and down. “You haven’t suffered any harm. Can’t say I like it, though. Pash was nervous as a horse at sea. Where’s Savvel?”

  “Asleep.”

  Dreida walked softly over to the window. She began mopping up the spilled water with a rag.

  “This early?” said Rischa.

  “He has little else to do. He ought to go outside once in a while.”

  “Has he been much trouble?”

  “He could have an escort with him. I could go with.”

  Rischa watched Dreida push water around, and then looked up and smiled. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you fancied him. Take him outside, then, if you want.”

  He left without saying more.

  “Lords,” said Dreida. “They could be twins, the two of them.” She hung the rag over the sill. “You called him Rischa.”

  “Everyone does.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  Dreida usually spoke in the common tongue; she knew only a little of the human language. Sarid pointed at her ferns. “Fiddlehead.”

  “Oh lords,” said Dreida. She closed her eyes. She looked like she might be sick. “Oh lords.” She began to laugh and put her fist against her mouth. “His gracious majesty, Ravyir Fiddlehead.” Sarid laughed, too, so hard her stomach cramped.

  Twelve

  A few days before the midsummer tourney Sarid was in her neglected garden cutting away a creeper strangling the chamomile. She heard the thump of boots. Gryka pulled her snout from some small creature’s hole, slinked under a bush, and issued a low growl that tightened to a whine when someone said, “If you would be so kind, Sarid––” Sarid looked up. Veins stood out in Leva’s forehead. “Would you come with me to the stables so I might exercise Shasi?” Leva looked down and twisted her lip in her teeth. “We would very much like to enter the sports at the festival. Could you agree to be there?”

  Sarid rubbed dirt from her eyes. “That was stilted as a scarecrow.”

  “It doesn’t come naturally.”

  “You did well enough.”

  And the two girls walked down to the stables, Leva swinging her arms in a careless, joyful way that Sarid hadn’t seen in a while.

  The horses stamped and snorted, white-eyed, until Sarid brushed Leva’s smoky shadow from their backs. A groom saddled Shasi, and Leva mounted him and skillfully ran him through his paces, and if the brown gelding was a bit nervous it only rendered him more sensitive to Leva’s commands.

  ***

  Three days later at the tilting-at-the-ring competition Shasi was just as nervous, dancing beneath Leva, eager to run. The day was cloudy and dry, and a crowd sat in the stands on either side of the course, which was scuffed with prints and still hazy with dust from the earlier races. Leva had beaten out twenty other contestants, and now she was set to run the middle lane in the last. In the lane next to her Rischa sat a big bay courser lent to him by Pash.

  Sarid wasn’t surprised. He had good horsemanship and an agile body––helpful in catching rings on the point of a lance while cantering by on a horse.

  “Swiveling hips, smoldering eyes. Moves like a Virnrayan courtesan,” said Vanli in the row above her. She caught a tendril of wind and yanked his hat off.

  She wasn’t in a good mood. She’d overheard her sister promise Rischa a kiss if he won.

  “I’m not going to win,” he said. “Leva beats me. Every summer I’m here she beats me.”

  “It’s not right,” said Yelse teasingly, “that a lady should outdo her lord again and again. You’ll win this year. It’s time she learned her place.”

  “Gods forbid. It’d be a very dull competition.”

  “But I know you. You’re indulging her, letting her win. She’s only a maid and you like to see her happy.”

  Rischa laughed. “If she thought I was letting her win she’d beat me with her horsewhip. Believe me, she wins by her own merit.”

  “She wins because she drives her horse so hard. The poor beast. Does no one think of the horses?”

 
He squeezed her arm. “I’ll ride Lua so gently he’ll think I’m a voice in his head.”

  Sarid pulled an ant from the balustrade and decapitated it.

  ***

  The horn sounded and the gates slammed open. The six horses and their riders beat the dust into clouds, and soon all the different caparisons took on a dun color. Sarid could hardly make out which one was Leva. Not that she needed to. At the beginning she’d released the horses of Leva’s curse, and now she just had to mind they stayed free of it.

  Yelse sat across the track from her, between the Countess and Dame Haek. Her poppy-red dress blew like a pennant in the wind, and she kept still as a statue throughout, blankly staring, no reaction on her face that Sarid could see.

  Sarid tapped fingers on the balustrade, wishing for the whole thing to be over. The riders had spread out of their initial huddle. Leva and Rischa ran head to head: the girl bent over her horse and holding her lance like a battering ram; the boy gently, almost conscientiously, sitting his big courser, pricking at the rings as though embroidering.

  Leva was the better rider. Shasi moved under her like water, and for all that Leva hammered at the rings with her lance she only missed one of the first five. Rischa missed three, and soon his rose-gold colors had fallen behind. The riders gained points both from finishing first and capturing rings, and it looked as though Leva was going to win the competition for the third year in a row. Sarid sat back, a little relieved.

  She saw a poppy-red flash in the corner of her eye. She looked up, but her sister hadn’t moved.

  She heard a whinny––it sounded like a man screaming––and just as Leva overtook Sir Gabadak in the sixth lane, his horse flung him against the barrier. The grey screamed again and slammed into the barrier a little shy of Gabadak, who lay against it. Leva didn’t turn. She caught her last ring just as Shasi balked under her and sprang backwards.

  Sarid saw Leva’s smoky hand rolling over the horses. Shasi bucked, and still Leva sat him. He rolled his head and backed, kicking, into Rischa’s courser. Rischa tossed his lance aside and his horse threw him. He landed on his side, and Sarid jumped up and, waving her hand, swept Leva’s smoke off Shasi. Leva gained control and pulled him to the side, away from the other horses.

  The poppy-red leapt again at the corner of Sarid’s eye, and the smoke fell back over the horse. Shasi abruptly sat down. Leva spilled backward off him, still holding her lance with its ten rings.

  Sarid fought forward to the railing; everyone was leaning over it, horrified and yelling. She wrapped her cloak around her so people wouldn’t see her arms moving beneath it. She removed all of Leva’s curse from the arena, and Yelse, sitting perfectly still, dress fluttering around her, didn’t see fit to restore it.

  ***

  Afterwards, when the medics had determined Sir Gabadak had a broken leg and several cracked ribs, and Rischa no serious injuries, it was concluded, to Sarid’s satisfaction, that Leva had won the tourney.

  Leva didn’t agree.

  “The snow bitch won. Sitting there in her red dress, smiling.” She’d a bloody scratch all down the side of her leg. “What happened to you? Did you have a sneezing fit?”

  “I relaxed too soon,” Sarid said.

  “Tomorrow see you don’t. I’m hunting boar.” Her courage was inhuman.

  “You’re not.” Sarid pulled a tough weed from the ground. The two were in her garden again. “I promised Savvel I’d take him outside.”

  “Where’d you think the hunt was going to be? The kitchens? Take him on his walk in the same place as us.”

  “I should like to be able to see you and your horse.”

  “Yelse isn’t coming. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

  Sarid snorted and stood up. “Probably my sister can turn into a hound, or deer.”

  “Good. I should like to catch her on my spear.”

  “For gods’ sake, Leva––”

  “Help me, Sarid,” Leva took a sharp step forward, winced, touched her leg. “Please? Will you let her win so easily?”

  “Won’t your leg hurt?”

  “Defeat hurts.”

  Though she tried, Sarid didn’t have the wherewithal to argue Leva out of it.

  So it was decided that Sarid, Savvel, and Dreida would take their walk on the north side of Mount Fovaya, far enough up that they wouldn’t get in the way of the hunt.

  ***

  The boar hunters, about twenty of them, gathered below a northern wicket late the next morning, and Sarid, Savvel and Dreida were there to see them off. Yoffin was away visiting a relative in the southwest.

  Savvel had a morose look on his face. Dreida followed Sarid like a shadow, looking nervously over at him while Sarid did her work with Leva and the horses.

  Afterwards Leva thanked her, and Sarid told her she was being stupid, and Leva ignored her; and the hunters picked their way down the rocks toward the mountains.

  Most days Fovaya had a gloomy shade cast over it by a wreath of clouds. The mountain looked almost welcoming this morning, pines dark-green, crags glinting in the sun. As Sarid’s little party walked down the path Dreida skipped over rocks and chattered about her three younger brothers, the littlest one so clever––he’d killed a fire sprite with a pail of dirt just last week, though he’d burned his hands red like cherries. Savvel said nothing and kept out of the sunlight.

  “Oh!” said Dreida when they crossed a stone bridge. Sarid asked her what the matter was. “I saw a fox. I think. It was black, though, all glossy. They’re not usually black, are they? It crept under those hawthorns.”

  Sarid said, no, they weren’t usually black. And she looked more closely under every hedge, bush, and rock they passed, but neither she nor Gryka noticed any foxes.

  The group climbed up into the mountain’s lap and passed through an apron of aspens into an old pine wood. The trees towered over them, great red columns, and the ground turned to pools of bronze were shafts of sunlight fell over the needles.

  They ate their midday meal there, sitting against a stone wall, and Dreida talked about how the blackberries were ripening just now.

  “Go find some, then, Dreida,” said Sarid. Savvel said nothing.

  Dreida went off down a path to pick blackberries, and Gryka went with her.

  Sarid looked over at Savvel. His eyes were black and reflected no light. “What’s the matter with you?” she said.

  He didn’t reply. His gaze felt like a winter wind, and his breath came out in a sparkling cloud. He was somewhere else, and she did what she always did: she took his hand.

  His skin was dry, like ice on a cold, cold day, and the cold crept past her thin dress.

  The wall stretched up behind them, huge, with black, rough-hewn stones. Black moss grew in the chinks, and black water dripped down the face of it in long slimy streaks. Further down there was a wide hole, or door, with runes across the top that, when Sarid looked straight at them, turned into words: don’t, don’t. On the other side was a wood of naked trees, limbs twisting over tunnels that disappeared into darkness.

  The trees soughed in the wind, and someone was singing:

  “Sere are the grasses, and sluggish the water,

  And Ida is hollow and whittled away.

  She stands like a statue, all eaten with weather,

  Her eyes lidless marble, her limbs barrow-gray.”

  It was Savvel. His voice froze her insides. She thought of the Kelimondra.

  “Have you eaten anything red?” she said.

  He only sang more:

  “Wind has teeth, and wind has a mouth,

  And wind cannot feed on emptiness.

  Ida stands and stares away south

  And the wind lingers near

  And it sucks at her hair

  And eats at her stony breast.”

  “Anything orange?” she said.

  “I ate my mother’s canary,” he said. “I wanted to sing like her.”

  “Savvel, why––?” Sarid’s stomach hurt like she’d
drunk a pail of vodka. She couldn’t feel her hands. She raised them and tried to call the wind. It didn’t work––the pines creaked above her, but not at her bidding.

  Savvel leaned close. “My brother rides like a princess.”

  He pushed her along the wall, and through the hole, so roughly she skinned her knuckles against the stone. When she came out the other side, the cold wind blasted at her. She slid away from Savvel, snagging her skirts on a thorn bush. “I ride like a king,” he said, following her. “Or would’ve.” She backed into the wall. He smiled and it made him look feral, inhuman, like a saebel. “If I eat you, will I be able to raise the wind?”

  Her heart beat very slowly, as though nearly frozen. “Touch me,” she said, “and I’ll kill you like I killed Leva’s dog.”

  He cracked her across the face. Her head hit the wall. He grabbed her hair and kissed her cheek.

  “Don’t. “ She looked behind him, pushed at him. “Savvel––”

  He put his mouth on her ear. “I’m going to eat you.” He lifted her high against the wall and buried his head in her skirts, right between her legs. Then he set her on her feet and ripped the dress down the middle.

  The wind chafed her skin. She pulled the edges together. “No,” he said, drawing her wrists back. He pushed himself against her so she couldn’t bring her knee up.

  Then a hand took his. A tall woman bent over him, black hair swinging past his shoulder. There was a raven in her hair, beating, beating its wings. Paronna, Sister Longing. She bound Savvel with a silver cord, and he didn’t resist at all, just looked at her with his black eyes. She led him through the hole in the wall and sat him against it.

  Sarid followed, and the wall shrank, became its normal size, and the tangled black wood turned to pine, dappled gold in the sunlight. Sarid saw now that the woman’s hair wasn’t black, but white, and the raven was really an albatross, beating its wings, flying away. It was Yelse.

  “I’ll release you at sunset,” she said to Savvel. “Come, sister.” She took Sarid by the hand.