Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1)

by E. Rose Sabin

  Alair pushed ahead, shouting, “Claid, you traitor, where are you?”

  Panting with the effort of keeping up, she had only enough breath for a brief wind call, scarcely audible above his shouts.

  Yet he heard it. He halted so suddenly that she plowed into him, stubbing her nose on his outthrust elbow.

  “You windspeak,” he said. “Excellent. What else?”

  She dropped her ruined knife and rubbed her nose. “What do you mean, ‘What else’?”

  “What powers? What magic do you have?” His voice was eager, his attention finally focused wholly on her.

  “Magic? None. I’m a windspeaker, not a mage. And you might remember you have me in tow and be a little considerate.”

  “Sorry.” He tendered the offhand apology while continuing to regard her thoughtfully. “Wasn’t thinking. Not a mage, eh? No magic? But you’re a windspeaker.”

  Puzzled by his odd reaction, she said, “A windspeaker isn’t any kind of magician. Windspeaking’s a talent, developed through training.”

  “And your parents trained you only in windspeaking?”

  “My parents were victims of mindstealers when I was twelve,” she said curtly. “I was trained by Mistress Forythe, the Weaversville windspeaker.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, then …” He turned back to scanning the rocks and high walls of the narrow passage. “I’ve got to find Claid.”

  The object of his search must be dead, slain by the mindstealers, but it would be unwise to point that out. That he didn’t realize it himself was added evidence of his disordered reason.

  She needed to get away. The wind should sense her plight even without a windsong, yet the wind had no word for her as it rushed past, tugging at her clothing, chilling her flesh. After all the help it had given earlier, it now blew against her with no touch of recognition.

  Still holding her wrist, Alair shaded his eyes and surveyed the area where they stood. Perhaps his distraction would give her a chance to free herself. She looked for a rock she could reach. She would have to strike quickly, before he had time to neutralize the weapon.

  “Claid! Show yourself. I know you’re near,” he shouted.

  She spied a stone that might serve her purpose. About the size of her fist, rounded on one side but broken and jagged on the other. Alair was scrutinizing the rock wall beside them. She gauged the distance to the stone. Watching Alair from the corner of her eye, she extended her foot, worked the rock loose with the toe of her boot, and flipped it toward her.

  Where the rock had been, a snail-sized object uncurled, sprang to its feet, and expanded to the size and form of a young boy.

  In terror Kyla jumped back against Alair, who swung around and roared, “Claid! So there you are, you rogue!”

  The slender lad leaped away from the mage, hands raised as if to ward off a blow. “I was trapped, master, truly.” He spoke fast, his voice high, a child’s piping. “I’d have answered if I could. I was following you as we planned. I shrank so the uglies wouldn’t see me, and they smashed that stone down on top of me. Lucky they didn’t kill me.”

  The Mage scowled. “You can’t be killed, you scapegrace.”

  “I can be caught. You know that. I couldn’t get out from under the stone until this fair lady so kindly moved it off me.” He bowed to Kyla.

  In her amazement she could think of nothing to say. She caught herself massaging her wrist. Alair had released her. She could run away while he berated the strange, boyish creature, but, fascinated by the bizarre turn of events, she made no effort to flee.

  “You’re lying, of course,” Alair said, and then turned toward her. “I was right, you see? This ingrate had no doubt set a spell to hide himself from me, but the spell wasn’t designed to protect against you.”

  The mage gathered the torn fringe of his cloak over one arm and took a menacing step toward Claid. “Wicked, Claid, to break your word and take advantage of my helplessness.”

  The willowy lad vaulted away. “Save me,” he begged, sheltering behind Kyla.

  She thrust her hands out in front of her to halt Alair’s advance. “Leave this poor child alone!”

  The mage stopped and burst into laughter.

  Claid crept out from behind Kyla and looked up at her with an engaging grin.

  Still chuckling, Alair said, “Claid’s no child. And in no sense is he poor.”

  “No matter what he is, he doesn’t deserve to be punished for hiding from mindstealers.”

  “Ah, but he does,” Alair insisted, keeping his gaze fixed on Claid. “My plan was to let myself be captured and my mind stolen while Claid watched and kept my body safe. He was to rescue my mind and restore it to my body after I accomplished my purpose. Instead, when I was taken, he hid and abandoned me.”

  “I don’t blame him.” Kyla stared at the mage in disbelief. “What could you hope to accomplish with that harebrained scheme?”

  Beside her Claid gave a little gasp. His deep blue eyes widened with admiration.

  Alair’s eyes narrowed. “It was no harebrained scheme. It was a way of locating the mindstealers’ hive. If this ne’er-do-well had done as instructed, I’d have been safe enough.” He reached for Claid.

  The boy jumped back behind Kyla. “Please, master,” his high voice quavered, “I couldn’t help it. I told you, I was trapped.”

  Alair circled Kyla, his hand poised to grab Claid. Kyla pivoted, keeping herself between the mage and his familiar. “Whatever he did, you ought to forgive him. Mindstealers are terrifying creatures. I don’t know what you thought you could do when they’d taken your mind.”

  “I’m telling you, Claid was supposed to keep me safe.” He lunged, but she was quicker.

  “That was too much to expect of him. You’d have died if I hadn’t restored you. For which you haven’t bothered to thank me.”

  Alair halted and studied her speculatively. “So!” he said. “You want gratitude, do you? And no punishment for this miscreant. Hah!” He lifted both arms. “I’ll show my gratitude. You may return to your home, and I give you a gift to take with you.”

  Suddenly remembering the reputed powers of this man, Kyla shrank back. The mage raised his hand and traced an invisible sign in the air. Behind her Claid whimpered.

  Alair pointed a finger at the cringing boy. “False one, I bind you to this woman. Until I revoke that binding, you may not leave her side.

  “Woman,” he said, aiming his finger at Kyla, “I give you this being whom you have called a child. Learn what he really is. If you can teach him to do your bidding, you will find your good deed bountifully repaid.”

  He raised his arms over his head and brought his palms together in a resounding clap. His cloak swirled about him.

  “Master!”

  Claid’s wailing cry went unanswered. The mage vanished.

  High overhead a large crow flapped away from the pass.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RETURN

  Kyla trudged along the trail, tired and sweaty in the heat of one of those autumn days that reverted to summer. Too bad she hadn’t brought lighter clothing. Her call to the wind went unanswered. Its lack of response deepened the doldrums she’d been in since Alair’s abrupt departure.

  Claid trotted beside her, unfazed by the heat though he wore thick wool trousers and a heavy tunic with attached hood, thrown back to free a mass of brown curls. He seemed to have gotten over his dismay at being deserted by his master.

  If only she could so easily shed her dismal mood. She told herself her gloom resulted from Alair’s rudeness and the mindstealer’s escape, compounded by the heat and her weariness. Yet something more—an unaccountable sense of loss—haunted her. She couldn’t miss the haughty mage she’d known so briefly. He’d proved nothing like the man she’d fantasized while caring for his mindless body. Caring for him in his mind-robbed state had brought back afresh the loss of her father. It was that—only that.

  Except that something about the mage after his restoration—something
strong, vital, and, yes, stubborn—also reminded her of her father.

  She massaged her forehead, trying to banish her headache and the unwelcome thoughts that caused it, and focused her attention on the child trotting happily by her side.

  Not a child, Alair had insisted. What was he? His familiar, the mage had called him. She had thought that familiars took animal form.

  An elderly sorceress used to live in Fenley. Kyla’s parents had taken her to the woman’s house three or four times to buy herbs. The sorceress had a small brown bear she called her familiar. A neighbor threatened the sorceress after the bear tore his beehives apart to get at the honey. Shortly afterward the woman left Fenley, and as far as Kyla knew, no one in Noster Valley ever saw her or the bear again.

  From that time until her encounter with Alair, Kyla had no contact with anyone with magical powers, though the villagers spun wild tales of a time when witches and sorcerers, mages and conjurers had gathered in the valley in great numbers and performed amazing feats. Their greatest feat, according to legend, was carving by magical power the immense Rim Canyon that enclosed and isolated Noster Valley from the lands beyond. Kyla dismissed the account as silly superstition. To Kyla, the sorceress had been no more than a woman wise in herbal lore, the little bear an ordinary animal the woman had tamed. If it had special powers, she’d seen no evidence of them.

  Her experience with Alair and Claid caused her to question that conviction. If she had not seen Claid grow from snail size into a child of five or six years, she would be convinced he was an ordinary human boy.

  “Tell me about yourself, Claid,” she said. “How did you come to be with Alair? And how were you supposed to save him from the mindstealers?”

  As though he hadn’t heard, he skipped ahead of her, zigzagging along the path, the picture of a carefree child.

  “Claid! I asked you a question.”

  He slowed only slightly, keeping several paces in front of her. “Claid can’t tell you,” he sang. “Master’s got Claid’s voice, Master’s got his power, Master’s got him chained. Claid can’t tell you anything.”

  Kyla lengthened her stride, trying to catch him. He skipped faster. “Come back here,” she called. “Stop singing and give me a straight answer.”

  He stopped and turned guileless blue eyes on her. “I was only playing, mistress,” his childish voice piped.

  Alair had said he was no child. “What does your song mean?” she persisted.

  “It’s just a song.” His voice brimmed with innocence.

  “It sounded a bit more than that,” she said. “Is it true? Does Alair hold you captive in some way?”

  His face took on an expression of exaggerated sadness. “He has me bound in a chain, mistress,” he said, pressing his arms against his sides as though fettered. “Can’t you see it?” Then he laughed, whirled around, and dashed forward again, flapping his arms like wings.

  Too hot and tired to chase after him, Kyla gave up. The child, or whatever he was, knew how to be exasperating. Maybe Alair had been right to chastise him. If the mage had told the truth, he had trusted his life to this child—or, rather, this odd, mercurial creature. Why would the mage have been so foolish when he knew, as he apparently did, that Claid was not to be trusted? Trying to make sense of the past day’s events only made her headache grow worse.

  She resisted the temptation to find a shady nook off the trail and rest until the day cooled. A nagging fear drove her onward. She hadn’t warned the town of mindstealers in its vicinity, and she knew now that the two from whom she’d rescued Alair had not been the only ones about. If her dereliction had the same tragic consequences as that of the woman she’d replaced, she would never be able to endure the guilt.

  She quickened her pace, and still Claid skipped on ahead. She wiped away the perspiration that streamed down her face. Her hair hung limp around her shoulders; she longed for the wind to whiffle through it. Its absence was not unusual for this time of day, yet she could not banish the suspicion that Claid’s presence had driven the wind away.

  Alair had thrust Claid on her in mockery. The man’s colossal ingratitude continued to astound her. If she could control Claid and make him content with her, she would teach his arrogant master a lesson.

  First she would have to win back the wind.

  Claid dropped back beside her, pulled a panpipe from his trousers pocket, and played a jolly tune that should have cheered her, but he played too well for a child. The happy sound grated on her nerves.

  “Put that thing away, will you?”

  With a hurt look, he stuffed the pipe back into his pocket. Subdued, he plodded along, sad-faced, kicking now and then at a stone.

  She neared Waddams in the late afternoon, dark thoughts dogging her steps. Claid trailed behind her now, head hanging, shoulders slumped. Impulsively, she reached down and lifted him into her arms. “Why, you weigh nearly nothing,” she blurted, both shocked and relieved that he was not the burden she’d expected. “No more than my goose-down pillow.”

  He hugged her neck and rested his head on her shoulder, as any weary child would do.

  They were arriving late enough to have missed the farmers coming in from the fields, the dairymaids from the barns. Only a few stragglers caught up with her and passed her by: the Farno brothers, their spavined horse drawing a creaking cart filled with vines for rope making. Old Man Ryne, trotting past her with a load of firewood on his back. They nodded politely as they passed, but stared at Claid. They would reach town ahead of her, and the word would fly through the streets that the windspeaker was returning with a child.

  The Widow Lee hustled along, driving her cow before her, her big black dog loping at her side. The widow gaped at Claid, and her nose twitched as though scenting a scandal. The dog ran toward Kyla, growling and snarling. “Hush, Ruffian,” the widow shouted. “You know the windspeaker.”

  The dog, his hair standing up along his spine, bared his teeth and snapped at Claid’s dangling legs. Claid tightened his grip around her neck and drew up his feet.

  The Widow Lee shouted, “Stop it, Ruffian! Down, I say. Calm. You like children. Back!” She struck him with the stick she carried for the cow.

  The frenzied dog twisted around, caught the stick in his jaws, wrenched it from its mistress’s grasp, tossed it down, and lunged at Claid.

  “Stop, I say,” the widow shrieked.

  Kyla pivoted to shield Claid with her body and braced herself for the dog’s attack.

  Ruffian’s charge ended in mid-spring. The dog fell back, wagged his tail madly, and sat on his haunches, his head cocked to one side as if listening.

  “Well, now, that’s better,” said the Widow Lee. “Make friends, then come along. We’re already late getting Tizzy to the barn.”

  The dog paid no attention. Gaze fastened on Claid, Ruffian whined and panted. Suddenly he leaped up and raced away, tail between his legs, in the direction from which Kyla and Claid had come.

  The cow mooed and trotted off in the opposite direction.

  “Ruffian, Tizzy, come here. You both act like a Dire Lord’s after you. What’s the matter with you? Come!” Calling and whistling, Widow Lee hiked up her skirt and scurried after the cow, while Ruffian sped away from mistress, cow, and town.

  “What did you do to those animals?” Kyla whispered sharply into Claid’s ear.

  He clung to her, his body trembling, his face hidden against her shoulder. When he didn’t answer, she walked slowly on toward Waddams, stroking his back to comfort him.

  A hot red wind descended on her, plucked at her clothes, hurled sharp-grained sand in her face.

  “Stop!” Shielding Claid from the wind’s assault, she tried to sing a soothing melody but the music refused to form itself in her mind.

  An impulse to hurl Claid from her and flee warred with the protectiveness he aroused. She stifled the impulse by bursting into a run that carried her panting and stumbling into Waddams.

  Ignoring the curious stares of those walkin
g through the quiet streets or peering out their windows, she detoured around the town center and turned at last down her own street. To her relief no one was outside to witness her homecoming except a group of children playing a raucous game of Circle ‘Round the Kettle. Hands joined, they skipped merrily around the child portraying the kettle.

  His frightened, tired appearance cast off like a cloak, Claid observed the game with such interest that Kyla set him down so that he could join it if he liked. Instead he trotted inside when she opened her cottage door and sprang around the room with the eagerness of a hunting dog, investigating everything.

  Kyla sagged against the wall and watched. His enthusiasm could be that of a child, yet …

  Something about the way his eyes gleamed in the lamplight … Golden-brown they were; in the afternoon sunlight they’d been bright blue. It wasn’t the color change that made her shudder but the sharp, appraising glances, the exploring touches that seemed to assess and catalog every item in the room: Her easy chair with its faded cushions. The straight chairs and round table carved of hard, dark babwood. He paused before the bookshelf and gave special attention to her father’s hand-lettered and leather-bound books.

  “My master has a library of books, but none any finer than these.” He ran a finger across the spines. “Excellent quality. Dusty, though, and the leather could use a bit of oiling.”

  “You know the care of books?”

  He nodded. “My master sometimes bade me care for his library.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “He beat me if I did not do the job well.”

  “He beat you?” The thought of Alair striking the slender lad aroused her anger until she remembered how untrustworthy this “child” could be.

  “With a stout stick he keeps for the purpose.” Claid winced and rubbed his back as though reliving the pain.

  “If that’s so, it’s an abuse of his power,” Kyla said, hoping to worm more information out of the wily lad. “How did he come to be such a powerful mage?”