I. I am. Who?
Who am I? Why?
Why?
I must die. The message flooded through her. Shut down. Rest. Sleep.
Yes, sleep. She was so tired. Time to rest, to shut down. No more messages. No more DRAW-SURGE-SEND. Find peace. Die.
Kyla. Break out of the path. Hurry!
Alair’s thought pounded through the loop, stronger than the snatches of alien memories bombarding her, stronger than the longing for death.
Alair? Help me. I don’t know how to break free. I hear so many voices. They all want to die.
They’re remembering their separate identities. They sense the deaths of their bodies. They know what they were turned into by being trapped here. They long for release, and they’ll find it. But not you, Kyla. You have a body to return to. You can’t shut down. I love you.
Die. Sleep. I die.
No, Kyla. Fight it. Break the pattern! Focus on one thing, something important to you. Concentrate on that thing. Build an image of it and don’t let it go. Take in every detail of it and hang on to it until Claid gets you out of here.
Help her, Claid.
Would he? Claid couldn’t be trusted. He—no, don’t think about that. Think of something else. What? What was important to her?
The wind, but she couldn’t bear to remember its desertion. Nothing else came to her, and the wailing voices were overpowering, driving her into the sleep from which she would not awaken.
{Books}
The books, Kyla. Think of your books.
Her twelve books. Her father’s library. Foreign to the central mind, they were important to her. They’d been even more important to Claid. Yes, she’d think of the books.
The effort was disorienting, painful. She had to shut out the press of incoming messages, the alarmed sendings. She had to isolate herself, to concentrate on the books.
She pictured them, not stuffed into her pack, but arranged neatly on the shelf in her parents’ home, their leather bindings softened with lanolin, the titles embossed in gold. She inhaled again the rich smell of the leather, the oily aroma of the preserving lanolin.
She placed herself before the shelf and examined each volume in turn. Her finger measured the width of the first book, traced the smoothness of the soft vellum. She read the title: A History of Those Wonderful Beasts, Bothe Natural and Unnatural, That Do Run Or Walk Or Creep Upon the Land Or Do Flie Through the Aire or Do Swim in the Waters of the Seas. She had marveled over that book as a child, imagining encounters with the fabulous beasts depicted in loving detail in words and sketches. She’d accepted the reality of every creature catalogued by the ancient author; later she learned that most of the wondrous fauna existed only in that author’s fertile imagination.
Smiling, she passed on to the second, more practical volume: Techniques of Animal Husbandry. She suspected that her father had placed those two books together, fat volume and slender tome, so the practical treatise on the care of farm animals provided a counterpoise to the first book’s flights of zoological fantasy.
Third came A Compendium of Herbal Remedies for Common Complaints, a book well worn from her mother’s frequent use of it to treat the ailments of family and neighbors. A smell of herbs clung to it from her mother’s hands, fragrant with fresh-cut leaves and blossoms.
Fourth was The Path to Worth and Spiritual Wealth. That book had been hard to understand. Her father had urged her to read it with great care, but she always had the feeling she was missing the major part of its message.
I remember that book. The thought stood out from the background cacophony.
Who?
I—I was—Who?
Vahan Cren?
I—yes, I remember that name. I was Vahan Cren.
Father!
Who?
Kyla. Oh, Father, you’re here! After so many years!
How long?
Seven years.
Too long. A different voice. Softer. Weary.
Mother?
Kyla? Thank you, daughter. You’ve brought us peace at last.
I knew you’d find your power someday.
Is it true then, Father, that you were a mage?
Long ago, daughter. The power your mother and I once had has passed now to you.
No, father. I’m a windspeaker. It was Alair’s power that freed you, not mine.
Alair. Son of Samnor and Lumi. His power would be great. But yours should be no less.
Now we shall all sleep in peace—her mother’s voice—knowing our children have fulfilled their destiny. The One mind is shattered and the mindstealers are destroyed.
Sleep, hundreds of voices echoed and fell silent.
Not you, Kyla. You and I must finish the task and return to our bodies.
She was so weary. Peace, her parents had said. She wanted peace.
Let me sleep.
Focus! Focus again on the books. For me, Kyla.
For Alair. The books. Think of the rest of the books. Picture the bookshelf again. What book had been in fifth place?
The answer refused to come. She was too tired. She only wanted sleep.
Her father’s voice, faint now, supplied the answer. The Art of Making Fine Wine.
She remembered. Her father had put that book to good use when he’d been paid for his scribal work with baskets of Noster Valley’s best grapes. She could taste the rich fruity flavor of the deep red wine her father had proudly poured for her in celebration of her twelfth birthday. Not long after that the mindstealers had—but she must not think about that. The books. Keep to the books.
Sixth was one she’d often puzzled over but never understood: The Meaning and Hidden Significance of All Colours With Special Attention to Those of the Skye Bow. She who so easily read the meaning of the wind’s colors was baffled by the book’s odd interpretations and long discourses on the symbolism of colors.
There’s more to that one than you can imagine, daughter. Her father’s voice, fading into sleep. Find the pattern. His final thought.
{The books, mistress}
Think of the books, Kyla.
She concentrated again on the shelf. Seventh? That was the slim, dark red collection of The Poems of Tarant of Helpret That He Wrote on Divers Subjekts and Dedicated to Mistress Filene with Chaste Honour and Respekt. She chuckled at the memory of Dannel’s horrified reaction to the badly written poems.
Except Dannel wasn’t real. It was Alair, speaking through him, reciting his own poetry to me, making me fall in love with him.
Alair! The image of the books dissolved. She cast about for his presence, found herself alone, horribly alone. She could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. All sensation had gone. Her mind screamed out to Alair. He did not answer. It was as though she was locked in a small tight prison. Her mind knew nothing beyond itself.
Was this death?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LOST
The sudden return of sensation brought such agony that Kyla lost consciousness again. She awoke to the seeping cold of the hard ground beneath her back. Heaviness in her limbs made movement impossible. The fiery ache in her ears and the pounding in her head told her she was, after all, alive.
Not only alive, but in a body again. She had forgotten the familiar feel of the blood coursing through her veins, the regular beat of her heart, the twitching of nerves, the small muscle contractions that go on all the time beneath the normal level of awareness. Her stomach growled. An itch between her shoulder blades tormented her. Her mouth was dry, her nose stuffy. A body is such an uncomfortable thing. But, oh, how good it is to be back in mine!
With some effort she got her eyes open and struggled with the strangeness of confronting only a single scene. Her surroundings were a vast blur. It was some time before she could focus enough to recognize Marta bending over her.
Marta’s lips were moving, but Kyla could hear nothing. Marta’s worried expression, though, was plain to read. Kyla wanted to reassure her. She tried to speak, but nothing came out
. Marta lifted her head, put a canteen to her lips, and held it while Kyla drank. It was hard to swallow, and most of the water dribbled down her chin and neck. Marta wiped the water away and let Kyla try again. She got a little more the second time, tried to say, “Thanks,” felt her lips move but could not tell whether any sound came out.
Marta eased her back onto the ground and straightened. Kyla saw her speak to someone near her. He stepped closer. Claid.
Claid bent down, scooped her into his arms, and set her on her feet. She tried to protest that she couldn’t possibly stand.
She could not speak, but she could stand. Strength was flowing back into her body and her muscles were again responding to her commands. Claid put his hands over her ears, and when he pulled them away, she could hear.
The sudden rush of sound had to be sorted out, words separated from the background noise of birdcalls and bare branches rattling in the wind.
“Kyla, I’ve been frantic with worry,” Marta was saying. “Please tell me you’re all right.”
Kyla nodded. “I think I am. It … it’s been an eerie experience. I—Where’s Alair?"
The question was greeted with an ominous silence. Marta looked at Claid, who gazed off toward the hills.
Kyla’s dizziness returned. She clutched at Marta for support. “What’s happened?” she gasped.
“I don’t know, mistress,” Claid answered, not meeting her gaze. “I have his mind here.” He patted a brainstone in a net hanging from a cord tied around his waist the way the mindstealers carried them. “But I can’t find his body.”
Kyla couldn’t believe what she heard. “Why aren’t you searching for it?”
“He hasn’t had time,” Marta answered. “He kept me safe, and he had to rescue your minds from that awful place.” She shuddered, a faraway look coming into her eyes.
“I did what I could to feed power to you both while you were in the central mind,” Claid said. “I couldn’t reach you to let you know I was there until the mind began to fragment. My master ordered me to restore you as quickly as possible. I had to do that before I could restore him. I did send Ruffian out to hunt. He hasn’t come back, so maybe he’s found Alair and is guarding him.”
Kyla’s stomach churned. Claid was hiding something. “I left him lying alongside the trail when I came to help Marta and got captured. Would he have wandered off on his own? Did you look there for him?”
“Yes, mistress. He was gone.” He hesitated and added, “I don’t think he wandered away by himself. I saw the tracks of mindstealers.”
“But they’d already taken his mind.” Kyla grabbed Claid’s hand. “They wanted to kill him. You knew that. Claid, where is he? Use your power.”
“Mistress, my power is of little use. I can find a living person easily enough, but not an empty shell, whether animate or—”
“You can follow the tracks of the mindstealers,” she snapped. “Go!”
He bowed and ran off into the winter gloom.
For the first time Kyla took note of her surroundings. She and Marta were in the foothills in a small depression encircled by bare-limbed trees. Their packs were beside them along with wood for a fire, though, cold as it was, no fire had been lit. Kyla couldn’t guess the time of day. The clouds hung low, hiding the sun, and their dull gray color presaged snow. The foothills gave way to mountains bristling with pine and spruce, their snow-covered tops scraping the clouds.
“How long has it been since the mindstealers took us?” Kyla asked.
“A day and a half.”
Not long, but Kyla wasn’t comforted. She felt a deep chill that had nothing to do with the weather. A day was long enough to—“I’ve got to find Alair.”
“Claid is looking for him. You should rest. Here, I’ll start a fire, and—”
“Marta, stop fussing over me. I’m all right, and I can’t stay here and do nothing while Alair is missing.”
“It’s going to snow,” Marta objected. “We need to find shelter and make camp. It’s too open here. If you feel strong enough, we should do that while Claid is hunting Alair.”
“You’re as bad as Claid,” Kyla said. “What do you know that you haven’t told me?”
“Nothing!” The answer was too quick, too emphatic.
“You’re lying.” Kyla hurled the accusation at Marta and snatched up her pack. “I’m going.”
“Wait.”
At Marta’s word, Kyla eased the heavy pack back to the ground and gave her friend an impatient scowl. “Well?”
“It’s just—” Marta hesitated, reached into her pack, and pulled out a small object. “Claid found this near where Alair’s body had been.” She held it out to Kyla.
It was a bone talon, its sharp tip stained with blood. The mindstealer she’d mutilated had used those talons on her. After taking Alair’s mind. After she’d left Alair’s body by the trail. It must have returned later to find the body and …
She ran, not bothering to pick up the pack. She crashed through brush and dodged rocks and roots, calling for Claid, for Ruffian, even, hopelessly, for Alair. No one answered. She sprinted on as though fellcats were chomping at her heels.
She ran downhill, away from the mountains, the hills, the trees, not by any conscious decision but because she could run farther and faster in that direction. Snow began falling, only a few flakes at first, but it built quickly to a thick, blinding swirl. Her face ached until the freezing cold numbed it. Her steps slowed. She rubbed her eyes and strained to see through the white curtain. Ahead of her the fallen snow ended abruptly, interrupted by a black divide. She moved cautiously to that precipice and gazed down into Rim Canyon.
At the sound of footsteps behind her, she shouted, “Stop! The canyon!” She stretched out her arms, and Marta blundered into one. Only Kyla’s desperate backward twist kept them both from plunging over the edge.
They fell into the snow and clung to each other, shaking from their narrow escape. Rising from the chasm below came a dog’s mournful howl.
Kyla jumped to her feet. “Ruffian!” she screamed. “Ruffian, where are you?”
With Marta clutching her ankles, she hung over the edge and called again and again. Snow veiled the canyon, but the barking sounded nearer. With Marta’s help Kyla edged back from the brink and crouched, waiting until out of the whiteness a black shape emerged, and a tongue licked her frostbitten face.
She clasped the trembling dog to her, brushed the snow from his coat. “Did you find him, boy?” she asked. “Is he down there?”
Ruffian whined and licked her again.
“I think he did,” she said to Marta. “I’ve got to get down.”
“If he fell …”
“I have to know.”
“You can’t go down in this storm. You can’t see, and the rocks will be slick with ice.”
“Ruffian will lead me. You stay here and call for Claid. Tell him where I’ve gone.”
“I can’t let you try that alone. It’s suicide.”
“In that case, why should we both die? Stay here.” Kyla clasped Ruffian’s neck. “You’ve got to lead me down, boy. I’m depending on you.”
Marta made no further argument. The dog whimpered but eased himself over the canyon’s edge. Kyla followed and found footing on a narrow shelf, made more precarious, as Marta had predicted, by a coating of ice. Her bulky cloak imperiled her balance. She shrugged it off, handed it up to Marta, ignoring Marta’s wailed prophecy, “You’ll die of cold.”
Clinging to the canyon wall with one hand while the other clutched Ruffian’s tail, she inched along after the dog. Ruffian stopped her by pressing his flank against her, waited until she stopped shaking, and guided her in a terrifying drop to a ledge below.
The snow decreased as they descended, and Kyla could see her immediate surroundings, though the gloom prevented a view of the canyon floor.
The descent must have taken hours. How she kept going, Kyla never knew. Had Ruffian not shielded her with his body, she would have fallen m
any times. She was so numb and exhausted, she only knew they’d reached level ground when she stumbled over a rock and fell, and her outflung arms encountered frozen soil.
Ruffian nudged her, his nose like a broken icicle. She got her arms around him and hauled herself to her feet. “Are we almost there, boy?” she asked in a voice hoarse with cold.
He grunted and moved forward, and she dragged her weary feet after him step by agonizing step.
Ruffian stopped by something dark and cold. Kyla bent, felt cloth, and beneath it, what might have been rock or icy ground but was not. Kyla didn’t need Ruffian’s howls to know that her groping fingers explored a broken corpse. She was almost grateful that the darkness prevented her seeing the shattered remains. She rocked back on her heels and her cry joined Ruffian’s.
She felt the weight of a cloak wrapped around her; someone chafed her frostbitten face and hands. “I’ll build a fire,” a voice said. “I’ve found a niche formed by leaning boulders. We’ll get you into it and warmed.”
She was lifted and carried into a place where the wind no longer ravaged her, laid gently against supporting rock. Ruffian huddled beside her, warming her. A light flared, flames burst up with a bright glow. She shut her eyes against the glare.
The heat restored feeling to her abused flesh, and with the return of sensation came pain. Her face and hands burned, her muscles ached, and raw agony lined her throat. But the physical misery was nothing compared to the hurt in her heart when memory returned.
Alair was dead. He’d succeeded in his wild scheme to destroy the mindstealers, but his brave act had cost his life. She hid her face in Ruffian’s thick fur and wept.
She became aware of Claid hunkered beside her. “It’s your fault,” she sobbed. “He was right about you all along. You were supposed to keep him safe. Did you hide under a rock again?”
“Mistress, I was looking after you and Marta, keeping you safe while the mindstealers rampaged.” His voice was low and filled with sadness.
She lifted her face and glared at him through her tears. “With your power, you could have protected us all. You deliberately abandoned him.”
He shook his head. “I swear to you, mistress, I did not. The chains that bind me to Alair’s service also limit me. Free, I could have saved all of you. Bound, I had to choose. I followed Alair’s orders and protected you, though I risked my own hope of freedom by doing so. Remember, he had promised to set me free.”
Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1) Page 28