Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1)

by E. Rose Sabin

  Some detached portion of her mind told her she should be terrified, should feel revulsion and dread. She felt nothing.

  The mindstealers clamped their hands around her arms and led her to the path. The creatures walked one on each side of her and the third in front with its head swiveled so its eyes continued to hold her. They marched in that formation for most of the day. All the while, Kyla saw nothing but the eyes of the mindstealer in front of her. Her world shrank to the circumference of the flame-hued orbs.

  She staggered with exhaustion. Her parched throat burned. Her feet and legs were columns of fire. Unable to keep moving, she sank to the ground. One of her captors stripped her backpack from her and dropped it to the ground. Relieved of its weight and pulled to her feet, she moved on, giving scarcely a thought to the pack holding her gold and her father’s books, left behind on the trail.

  Much later, when the shadows were lengthening, they came to an abrupt stop. The mindstealer who had held her entranced turned away, its eyes no longer visible. She could think! She understood how close she was to mindlessness and death.

  Another mindstealer replaced the one who’d held her in thrall. It raised hands with shortened, clawless fingers. Shaking them at her, it wheezed, “Wind witch brought us pain. Now we take her core. Fine prize.”

  One of its companions went to its side and fitted onto its stumpy fingers claws carved of bone.

  “We make new jabbers. Wind witch will feel their sting.”

  Her gaze fixed on the bone talons. A gut-wrenching, heart-twisting terror slammed through her. She squeezed her eyes shut to hide the sight of those claws moving in to tear out her mind and leave her body a slobbering, shambling shell.

  A bone blade jabbed into her ear. Pain streaked through her head. She screamed and kicked. Her boot slammed into the mindstealer’s knees. It yowled and backed away, its talons scraping across her earlobes.

  Still screaming, she lashed out again with her foot. The two creatures flanking her tightened their grip on her arms. She kicked at them, shrieking as she twisted and jerked. One mindstealer loosened its grip. She yanked her arm free, risked opening her eyes. A claw-tipped finger waved in her face. She grabbed at it, tore loose the false claw, and used it to gouge the face and arms of her attacker.

  Its fellows tackled her from behind, threw her to the ground, and pinned her down. She struggled helplessly under their combined weight. The claw was torn from her grasp. The creatures turned her onto her back and sat on her outspread arms and legs. The one she’d maimed bent over her, its artificial talons again in place. Kyla closed her eyes. Its stinking breath flowed into her nostrils, gagging her. She hushed her screaming.

  In the silence she heard the barking of a dog.

  “Ruffian!” she shouted in desperation. The barking dog could not be Ruffian.

  She opened her eyes. An immense gray wolf bounded into the midst of the mindstealers, snarling and snapping. It leaped on the one bending over her and sank its fangs into the creature’s scrawny neck. The other mindstealers scattered.

  Kyla rolled aside. Trembling, she crept away from the animal and the screeching mindstealer. Sheltering against a tree trunk, she pulled herself slowly to her feet. Her wobbly legs scarcely supported her. She leaned against the tree and stared into the gathering darkness. The wolf gave the limp mindstealer a final shake and loped off into the surrounding trees.

  It must have gone after the rest of the mindstealers. Unable to run, she clung, sobbing, to the tree trunk, face pressed against the rough bark.

  Something cold and wet nudged her hand. She turned, screaming. A black dog whined and jumped up to press his paws against her waist.

  “Ruffian! Oh, Ruffian, it really is you!” She bent down, hugged the dog, and let him lick her face. “Ruffian, I’m so glad to see you.”

  “May I hope, mistress, you are glad to see me as well?”

  She looked up. A mindstealer stood before her. She released the dog and backed away.

  “Ah, mistress, it’s only Claid.”

  She halted, wary. Could it be Claid? The hated form and those ghastly eyes repelled her.

  “Look,” he said, turning around. “I found your cloak and your pack. They told me what path you’d taken.” The pack hung awkwardly on the sloping shoulders. The cloak was folded up and stuffed into the top of the pack. “I have the other books, too.”

  The books. Who but Claid would be concerned about the books? She was safe!

  Shudders racked her. Claid slipped off the pack, took out the cloak, and placed it over her shoulders. She drew it tight around her.

  “Claid, I can’t look at you in that shape,” she said. “Can’t you change to something—anything—else?”

  “You just saw me in another guise, mistress.”

  “The wolf!”

  He nodded, his head bobbing loosely on the stalklike neck. “I couldn’t maintain that form for long.” He spat. “The taste of mindstealer blood has fouled my mouth. Come, we must find a shelter where you can safely rest.”

  “Is there such a place? The mindstealers can’t have gone far. Did you kill that one?” She glanced at the place where the wolf had mauled her enemy, saw only bare ground.

  “I couldn’t hold the wolf shape long enough. It crawled away while I changed.”

  “If it’s the one I maimed, it’ll be more determined than ever to steal my mind,” she said, fresh fear welling within her. “We have to get away, but, please, change to something else first. You must be able to; you switched to the wolf.”

  “Alair commands me to wear this form. I could take the wolf form only to save you.”

  “Alair!” At her feet Ruffian let out a low growl. “He has no right to punish both of us like this.” Suspicion refused to be held at bay; it leapt back. “You said I’d freed you when I pulled that chain, so how is Alair controlling you?”

  “If Alair’s only intention was to punish us, I have enough freedom, thanks to you, to thwart him,” Claid said. “Unfortunately, this guise is part of his plan. I’m not free enough to defeat anything relating to that.”

  Kyla frowned. “What plan is that?”

  “To destroy the mindstealers. He has seen them grow stronger and become bolder. Like ants, killing one here and there does no good. When you declawed one, they all felt the loss and all share the rage. Your act has made them more dangerous. To end the threat, my master must demolish their hive.”

  “Their hive?”

  “For want of a better term. The hidden place where they breed and where they guard their central mind.”

  “Central mind?” She could only echo his words.

  “My master used his magical arts to study them and learn their secrets. He discovered that a single mind directs them all.”

  Kyla shuddered.

  “That is horrible enough. But that isn’t what makes them evil,” Claid went on. “My master told me how, long ago, the controlling mind—their Core—discovered how to add to itself, to make itself more powerful. By absorbing the minds of its prey, it could think as its prey thought, anticipate their moves, and catch them more easily. It grew bolder and took the minds of larger animals, wild and domestic. Through animals that lived in association with humans, it gathered impressions of the owners and desired to add to itself the minds of these two-legged beings.

  “By adding human minds to their controlling mind, the mindstealers acquired human speech and learned the use of tools. They ceased taking the minds of lesser animals and went after human minds only, taking them in ever larger numbers.”

  Kyla hugged herself to stop her trembling. “I knew they were evil,” she said. “I didn’t know they were becoming worse and worse.”

  Claid nodded. “The threat will grow unless the central mind is exterminated. That is what Alair was trying to do when he allowed himself to be captured. His mind would be taken where his body could not go. He hoped to retain enough power and coherence to destroy the mind from within.”

  In the deepenin
g gloom Kyla could see little of Claid other than the glow of his orange eyes. At these she stared, trying to absorb the awful revelations his implacable voice continued to pour forth.

  “Now you understand,” he said, “why Alair was angry when you rescued him. You robbed him of his chance to carry out his plan.”

  “A foolish, impossible plan!” Kyla said. “How could a disembodied mind destroy anything? He would have been lost, and he’d have made those things stronger.”

  “Perhaps,” Claid admitted. “But Alair had planned carefully.”

  “But if he had succeeded in destroying the mind after becoming a part of it, would he not have destroyed himself as well?”

  “He might have. It was a risk he accepted. The venture was not hopeless. I was there to protect him.”

  “You? Protect him? You ran away. I found you hiding under a rock.”

  “I hid only after you restored Alair’s mind to his body. I knew he’d be angry, and I was afraid of him, not of the mindstealers.”

  That was not what Claid had said at the time. Either he’d lied to Alair, or he was lying to her now. Or both. Alair always implied that Claid never told the truth. Of course, she couldn’t believe Alair, either.

  “What does all this have to do with me?” she asked. “And with your looking like a mindstealer?”

  The orange glow dimmed. Claid had turned his head. “Alair must find the hive. He required me to move among the creatures and follow them. When you were captured, he hoped the mindstealers would take you all the way to the hive before removing your mind.”

  “So he knows where we are and what is happening to us?” Of course he does. He’d probably been watching her in his “farviewer” from the moment she left his house. He knew everything that had happened to her, all the foolish things she’d done. And Dannel—Dannel had been no more than part of Alair’s plan.

  Kyla paced angrily around the clearing. She could trust Claid no more than she trusted Alair. She stopped by a tree and rubbed her hand over the rough bark with a force that scraped skin from her palm. The pain helped focus her thoughts. “He planned this whole encounter, didn’t he? He’s manipulated me—and you.”

  Claid shrugged, an odd gesture in that awkward form. “My master was desperate. His power has kept the mindstealers from crossing Rim Canyon and spreading throughout the land, but they grow harder to restrain. He feels he has little time left.”

  “He risked our lives.” She picked bits of bark from her palm. “What gives him that right?”

  “I am sworn to protect you. I would not allow you to be hurt.”

  “But I was hurt.” She lifted her hands to her aching ears, felt the cuts that miraculously went no deeper than the outer ear. “I suppose Alair would have let them take my mind if it served his purpose.”

  “Alair is eager to find the hive, but he does not want you harmed. He knew you’d be endangered—”

  “Endangered! I was seconds away from being mind-robbed. I was terrified! Do you understand what it felt like? Those claws in my ears?”

  “I saw the blood, mistress. That’s what drove me to act.”

  Kyla stifled the sobs that rose to choke her.

  “Alair knew your hatred of the mindstealers. He knew they’d taken your parents. Killing one and maiming another didn’t satisfy you, did it? It did not take away your desire for vengeance. He hoped you’d be willing to help him.”

  “Willing to help—” Kyla pushed herself away from the tree and stood in front of Claid, hands on her hips. “Why didn’t he tell me all this himself? He didn’t tell me anything, didn’t ask for help. He was using me for bait, that’s all!”

  “No, mistress. He does not find you easy to talk to. He is a proud man and knows little how to speak to a woman. That’s why he sent Dannel—”

  “Dannel! Ah, I see. He sent Dannel to flatter me with his soft words. Why couldn’t Alair speak to me directly as an equal? And a person of intelligence?”

  “He tried, but you always became angry with him.”

  “Tried! He threatened me, bullied me, and scared me with those stone things. Is this the way he ‘tries’?”

  Claid sighed. “It galls my master to ask for help. He does not do it graciously.”

  “He does it stupidly. I do hate the mindstealers, and I would have been willing to help him with any scheme that had a reasonable chance of success. I may yet, if he has a workable plan—”

  “He has a plan, mistress.”

  “Tell me what it is. I’m willing to do anything short of letting myself be dragged off by mindstealers again.”

  Claid did not answer. In the lengthening silence the night sounds rose around them. Ruffian’s paw thumped the ground as he scratched a flea.

  “Claid?”

  His continued silence confirmed her suspicions. “So. He plans for me to be the sacrificial lamb.”

  “I’m here to guard you, and so is Ruffian.”

  “And with that ironclad protection I’m to deliver myself into the mindstealers’ hands and let the one I maimed stick its new claws into my ears and finish what it started.”

  “No, mistress, that is not Alair’s intention or mine.”

  “Well, I don’t give a fig for your intentions,” Kyla said. At the rage in her voice Ruffian jumped to his feet and slunk away from her. “Tell your master he can do his own dirty work.”

  “But, mistress, that’s what he was doing when you interfered.”

  “So that’s why he said I’d be forever in debt to him. Well, I want the mindstealers stopped, but I won’t throw my life away to do it, and if that’s his plan, he can find another victim.”

  Claid sighed again. “As you will, mistress. He won’t force you.”

  “As if he could!”

  “Oh, he could.” Claid’s mindstealer face looked into hers. The orange orbs glowed. She tried to look away and could not. He clasped his talons around her wrist and drew her through the darkness. She walked unresisting where he led. In a broad clearing where the lingering twilight gave some visibility, Claid turned his head away, releasing her. “You see how easily I could force you to do my master’s will. But have no fear. You are free to choose your own way.”

  Kyla massaged her temples. “How can I trust you, knowing you can do that?”

  Claid placed his taloned hand over his chest. “I swear I will not do it again. I judged that the best way to prove you weren’t being manipulated was by demonstrating how easily you could be. I will henceforth obey you, mistress. Where will you go?”

  As she tried to think, she scratched Ruffian’s head, glad the dog had stayed with them. Ruffian was a comfort, but Claid … “Can you take some other form? As a sign of good faith? I can’t look at you in that guise. Especially after your demonstration.”

  He cocked his head as though considering the request. “I might be able to take another form,” he said, “but Master Alair placed severe restrictions on the shapes I can assume. If I change, it must be to something that requires little energy to maintain. You may find it more pleasant to look at, but I don’t think you will find it more convenient.”

  “Anything would be better than what you look like now. Unless it’s that as a mindstealer you’d have a chance of carrying out Alair’s plan yourself and finding the hive?”

  “No, my master bound me to you. If you will not accept the quest, I cannot. My place is with you.”

  “Then take a different shape. Let me see you as a companion and friend.”

  “In any form I will be your companion, but perhaps not the kind you want.”

  “Just so it’s an improvement over a mindstealer. Do it!”

  He bowed. “As you wish, mistress. I bid you remember that you have another companion.” His mindstealer’s head bobbed toward Ruffian. “I do have a bit of influence over the dog, no matter what form I take. I will encourage him to serve as your guide and protector if I cannot.”

  “What do you mean, if you can’t?”

  He walked to
the other side of the clearing and sat on the ground. Ruffian wandered over, evidently curious to see what he was doing. The large dog blocked Kyla’s view. Annoyed, she called him back to her. Wagging his tail, Ruffian came.

  She stared past him. An infant not more than two or three weeks old lay on its back on the damp soil.

  She ran to it, bent over it. “Oh, no, Claid. Not this. What use are you in this form?”

  The baby cooed and kicked its chubby legs.

  “I ought to go off and leave you like that,” she said, glaring down at the infant.

  The baby gurgled and waved its arms.

  “Oh, curse you!” She bent, picked it up, and cradled it in her arms, a lovely child with beautiful deep-blue eyes. “What am I supposed to do with you? I can’t go back to Waddams carrying a baby. Are you as helpless as you look? Can you talk?”

  The infant burbled soft, meaningless sounds.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  RIM CANYON

  As a baby, Claid was much easier to look at than the mindstealer, but he was not as helpful. She had to protect him rather than rely on him to protect her. She could not ask him for advice or directions.

  “I ought to put you down and leave you here. Do you know what a predicament you’ve put me in?”

  The baby cooed and smiled. Unable to resist, she touched a finger to his dimpled cheek. His chubby hand closed around the finger, pulled it to its mouth, and sucked on the tip.

  “I suppose you’re hungry. And how am I going to feed you, when I can’t even feed myself?”

  She frowned and pulled her finger away. The baby let out a wail. She glanced around nervously. The cry could attract predators or bring the mindstealers back. She gave the finger back and let the child suckle it.

  She turned to the dog, who sat on his haunches looking up at her. “All right, Ruffian, lead us out of here.”