She caught up the heavy packs and started after him.
The door from the rear of the house burst open and the stone ogres blundered into the room. Howling, Ruffian dodged the clomping statues and raced to Kyla’s side. Claid was holding the front door open against a violent wind. Snow and sleet pummeled him; a blizzard raged outside. Kyla braced herself for a dash into the storm.
“Wait,” Claid said, and pushed the door shut.
Brushing off snow and ice, Kyla watched the statues shuffle into the fire and trample the flames with their massive feet. In slow, arrhythmic dance the stone monsters shifted and stomped and waddled and pounded, smothering the flames, grinding out the sparks. She cried out in horror when they kicked Dannel’s smoldering form and reduced it to powdery ash. They tumbled into one another; several crashed to the floor, and the others rocked to a halt amid the ruins left by the fire.
“I think we’re safe,” Claid said.
Marta struggled in Claid’s arms and demanded, “Put me down!”
He set her on her feet, and she gazed at the fire-blackened sitting room with the fallen, broken statues. A rueful expression came over her face. “My poor house,” she mourned, her voice oddly deepened. “Dannel, the guardians, all destroyed with no one to remake them.”
Kyla stared. “Marta?”
The girl shook her head. “Alair.”
“How—What happened to Marta?”
“I’m merely borrowing her body,” the mage answered. “I could animate Dannel by my power as I could my guardians,” he indicated the stone ogres, “but my mind can’t dwell in wood or stone. I needed a body of flesh, and Marta’s unconscious state allowed me to borrow hers.”
“But is she all right? She won’t be harmed?”
“I haven’t harmed her.”
The shiver that shook Kyla’s frame was due not to the growing coldness of the room but to Alair’s evasive answer. Her fear for Marta quashed the joy that welled when Alair spoke. Claid, standing behind Marta, kept his hand cupped under her elbow. His face wore a worried frown.
“Claid,” Kyla asked him, “what’s happening to Marta?”
“Mistress, she’s weak. I doubt she can long bear the strength of my master’s mind.”
“That’s not for you to judge,” Alair snapped.
“And what of Marta if he’s right?” Hands on her hips, Kyla stared into Marta’s eyes seeking some hint of the man whose mind controlled the woman’s body. “Is she expendable? If you kill her mind to keep her body, you’re no better than the mindstealers you gave your life to destroy.”
Marta’s eyes blinked. She tottered to the only undamaged chair, sank into it, and covered her face with her hands.
Kyla knelt in front of the chair and put her hand on Marta’s knees.
“I don’t want to go back to nothingness, Kyla,” Alair said. “I don’t want to lose myself. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You have to do what is right,” she said.
Marta’s head nodded. Her hands clasped Kyla’s. “Tell Claid to put my mind back into the stone.”
Claid stepped to Kyla’s side, holding the brainstone.
“Wait,” Kyla said. “Tell me how to free Claid. Do I pull the chain in your laboratory?”
“No. It would take a far greater strength than yours to pull the chain free. There’s another way.” He paused. Marta’s eyes closed and a convulsion twisted her body. Her limbs stiffened, her face contorted.
“No time,” Alair said in a weak voice. “It’s in the book. Hurry, Claid.” Another spasm jerked Marta’s limbs.
“Hold her head,” Claid ordered.
Kyla grasped Marta’s head and placed a quick kiss on her clammy cheek. Claid leaned down, the mindstealer’s talon in his hand. He inserted it quickly into Marta’s ear, dropped it, and placed the stone against the bleeding orifice. Marta’s body relaxed. Claid slipped the stone into its sling and tied the cord around his waist. He pressed his hand against Marta’s ear, stanching the flow of blood.
“She must be kept warm.” He picked her up and carried her into the nearest bedroom. Kyla helped him arrange her in the big bed under a pile of blankets and quilts.
“Are you sure you got Alair’s mind only and not hers, too?” Kyla asked.
“I was careful about that,” Claid said as he wrapped a quilt around her. “Stay with her while I clear the debris from the fireplace and build another fire.”
He left Kyla to keep a lonely vigil by Marta’s side. If she’d lost Alair only to lose Marta, too, she couldn’t bear it.
She could hear Claid banging around in the sitting room, removing Dannel’s remnants from the fireplace, wrestling the stone guardians out of the way, and sweeping up ashes. She grieved for Dannel—not for a wooden statue but for what he’d represented: Alair’s tender, loving side.
Alair’s mind lived, unconscious in its stone prison. She had to discover a way to free it, find a receptacle in which it could be aware. For that she needed Claid, untrustworthy though he might be.
Through the walls came the howl of the storm raging outside. They could not leave, yet they must. Alair wouldn’t survive unless they found him a body. Claid had to help in getting off this cursed mountain, and with the search, and with the transfer. She could not let him go.
Yet she’d promised, and she had wrung a promise from Alair. No matter how great her need, she must free Claid.
The book, Alair had said. The secret was in the book, but which book?
She’d search them all, hers and Alair’s. Claid would help, and so would Marta if she recovered.
She peered closely at Marta. Color seemed to be coming back into the pale face; the breathing was deep and regular. She patted Marta’s cheeks and called her name.
Marta groaned and rolled her head from side to side, but did not wake.
“Come on, Marta, wake up.” Kyla reached beneath the covers to shake her friend’s shoulder. “Wake up, please. I need you.”
Marta gasped. Her eyes popped open. She sat up, gazed around, focused on Kyla. A sudden smile lit up her face. “He left me a gift,” she said in an awed tone. “A wonderful, wonderful gift.”
“What are you talking about?” Marta must be hallucinating.
“Look!” Marta snapped her fingers. A golden light sprang from her hand. “And look at this.”
She waved. The light vanished. A book lifted off the bedside table and floated into Marta’s grasp. “He left me some of his power,” Marta explained. “As payment for the trouble he caused me, he’s made me a mage.”
Stunned, Kyla couldn’t speak. A pain stabbed her heart. Alair had passed his gift to Marta. To Marta! Not to her, despite his professed love for her.
Marta’s triumphant smile faded. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Kyla lied. It was pointless to be jealous. Alair had intended a kindness. She needed a distraction. “Let me see that book.”
She held out her hand, and with a quizzical expression Marta handed her the book she’d used to display her new powers. Kyla glanced at the title. On Mastering the Intricacies of Mathematical Theory. It was the book Alair had borrowed from her.
“This is mine,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning to steal it.”
The hurt in Marta’s voice stung Kyla. She grabbed Marta’s hand. “Of course you weren’t. I didn’t mean to sound snappish. I’m worried about Alair, and I’m upset that he didn’t have time to tell me how to free Claid. He said the secret was in a book, but he didn’t say which book. We’ll have to look through his library and my books, too. Unless you can find the answer by your power.”
“I don’t think I have that kind of power. I thought I could make the light and lift the book because I saw myself doing those things in a dream. Maybe if you hadn’t wakened me I would have seen more, but I didn’t, so I’ll have to experiment to find out what else I can do.”
“Claid may be able to help you,” Kyla suggested. “He’ll probably have time. Read
ing through Alair’s books could take weeks, even with all of us looking.”
“If I can’t use my power, I won’t be any help,” Marta said. “I never learned to read.”
Kyla should have known. The search was up to her and Claid, while Marta was free to play with her new tricks.
“I’ll do everything else—cook, clean, cut firewood—so you can spend all your time reading,” Marta added.
Ashamed of her bitter feelings, Kyla hugged her friend. “We’ll make a great team,” she said. “I’ll bet it doesn’t take us long to find the answer.”
It can’t! Alair has so little time. He’ll perish while we search the books. Must I lose him to set Claid free?
CHAPTER THIRTY
BOOKS
Kyla sat back on her heels between the stacks of books and listened to the wind howl around the house like a pack of hungry wolves. Hunting her? She couldn’t shake the notion, though Claid had laughed the first time she’d voiced it aloud. He’d assured her that the winter wind always sounded so on Starwind Peak. It had nothing to do with her. “The house is built to withstand the strongest gale,” he’d said. “We’re safe inside no matter how fiercely the storm rages outside.”
Safe from the storm, but not safe from starvation when they ran out of stores.
What of Alair, his mind stifled in that brainstone? Claid had sworn that the mind could still be restored. That assurance made Kyla more eager than ever to find a body to transfer the mind into before it deteriorated. They’d find none while they were trapped on Starwind Peak.
She’d been wrong to come here. They should have gone to Line’s End, where the mindstealers had left many victims. She could have found a mindless body for Alair, but as time passed, fewer and fewer of those victims would remain alive. Already it might be too late to find one.
The delay brought her increasing frustration and fear, though she filled the time with the search for the secret of freeing Claid. She and Claid examined all the books in Alair’s study. It wasn’t logical that the secret would be in a book of hers rather than Alair’s, but at Claid’s insistence they were searching through those as well. She kept urging Claid to show her the hidden messages that her books supposedly contained, but he insisted that he did not know how to find them.
He couldn’t be trusted. As a Dire Lord he must have almost unlimited power, but he used it only when it suited him. Most of the time he kept his power hidden and deliberately withheld his help, perhaps in revenge for his entrapment, perhaps merely because it amused him to toy with them. Yet his guise of innocence never slipped, and Marta grew furious with her when Kyla accused him of deceiving them.
Whatever else he might be guilty of, the storm couldn’t be his doing. As long as it prevented them from leaving, searching the books at least filled the hours, but the work produced no answers, and time was running out for Alair.
Kyla glanced across the piles of books to the corner of Alair’s library, where Claid sat cross-legged, absorbed in his reading. No matter how much she scolded him, he persisted in reading entire books because they interested him. Nor could she dissuade him from dusting each volume and treating its leather cover with lanolin before replacing it on the shelf. “It only wastes precious time,” she said to him over and over.
“Proper care of books is never a waste of time, mistress,” he’d answer infuriatingly.
Her eyes smarted and the words blurred on the page before her. Time for a break. She hauled herself stiffly to her feet, stretched, and rubbed her neck. Claid did not look up as she picked her way among the stacks of books and headed toward the kitchen, where Marta was preparing lunch.
Fortunately, Alair had kept a well-stocked pantry, but the supplies would not last much longer. Claid supplemented their stores by trapping snow hares on the few occasions when the storm eased enough to set out traps and later return to check them. The fresh meat had been most welcome, especially to poor Ruffian. Throughout the past week the storms had been unrelenting.
Kyla detoured through the sitting room to check the woodbin. Claid would soon have to get more firewood from the pile behind the house. He alone could defy the fierce wind and plow through the snow with the needed wood.
Even if they found the knowledge to set Claid free, she and Marta couldn’t leave: the winter storms made travel impossible. Perhaps Claid understood their dependence on him and was purposely dragging out the search. The suspicion didn’t ease her mistrust; it made her angry. Alair needed his help, too.
She entered the kitchen, and Marta looked up from the pot she was stirring. “Lunch is about ready,” she said.
Kyla wasn’t hungry, but she nodded and walked over to give Ruffian a pat. The dog lay by the hearth. His sad eyes gazed up at her as if reproaching her for Alair’s loss and their incarceration in this snowbound mountain home. She couldn’t bear it; she turned and, fleeing the kitchen, headed down the long corridor to Alair’s laboratory. The door didn’t open to her spoken word as it had for Alair, but she had discovered that if she sang a command in her best wind-singing style, the door would respond.
Inside, the bright light shone, giving Kyla the eerie feeling that the mage was in residence and had only just stepped out. It was hard to come here, yet comforting, too, because of all the reminders of Alair’s living presence. As she had done many times before, she tugged on the chain with all her strength. The chain moved no more than a fraction of an inch. Why, if the attempt could not possibly succeed, had Alair become so angry with her when she had first tried it? Why had he insisted that her pull had wreaked damage by giving Claid greater freedom?
The only obvious effect was that her hands and arms grew sore. Abandoning the effort, she wandered around the room, fascinated by the array of odd objects scattered on the table and piled on the floor. She’d asked Claid what several items were, but he professed not to know.
Reluctant to return to the library and resume the wearying search, she paused before a shelf on the back wall and idly examined the row of bottles and beakers that filled it. Something inside a large bowl of clear glass sparkled even through a layer of dust.
She lifted the heavy bowl from the shelf and carried it carefully to the table, where she removed the lid and peered inside.
A single multi-faceted crystal, roughly spherical, filled the jar so completely that it was hard for her to lift it out. She turned the jar upside down, shook it, and pried the crystal through the wide mouth. When she had it free and held it in her hands, rainbows formed where the light touched it.
She recalled the small crystal she’d spotted amid the table clutter on her first visit to the laboratory. She’d never seen it again. This one was larger but otherwise looked the same.
The crystal glowed and shimmered. She set it on the table and moved it this way and that to see the shifting rainbows. The sphere almost seemed alive, but whatever purpose it might have was not related to her present quest. She tore her gaze from the crystal and went back to the shelf.
Behind the space left by the bowl she saw a large leather-bound book leaning against the wall at the rear of the shelf. She moved other bottles and beakers to get at the hidden volume, stood on tiptoe, and pulled it forward.
Its thick leather cover was fastened with metal clasps. She blew off the dust to read the title, but the single word, Breyadon, meant nothing to her. Still, Alair must have concealed this book because it had special significance.
She dashed to the library with the book clasped to her breast. “Claid, look what I found in Alair’s laboratory,” she called.
He marked his place with his finger and raised his head. His gaze fell on the book; his eyes widened. “The master’s spell book,” he said in an awed tone. “I’d wondered where it was.”
“Spell book! You knew he had a spell book and you didn’t mention it? You let us waste all this time looking through the other books when you knew of this one? This one that must hold the answer?”
He reached out and reverently touched the book’s leat
her cover. “If it does, it won’t do us any good. It’s written in a code only the master could read.”
“Code?” Puzzled, she opened the book and stared. Incomprehensible words and undecipherable symbols filled the page. She turned pages, saw only more unreadable lines. Looking up, she asked, “You can’t read this?”
He shook his head. “Alair made sure I couldn’t. He did tell me that its title, Breyadon, means ‘Doors’ in a secret mage tongue. It refers to all the possibilities the spells open, but the magic that forms the code is a different kind from mine. If the key to my unchaining is in that book, it may be forever hidden to us.”
“It can’t be,” Kyla said. “If the secret is here, we’ll have to find out how to break the code.”
The mysterious symbols and meaningless words blurred before Kyla’s eyes. She pounded an angry fist on the table. “Not a single word I can read,” she said to Marta, seated across from her mending a shirt Claid had torn while gathering firewood. “Why did he have to be so secretive? Why couldn’t he have used plain language?”
Marta shrugged. “All writing looks like that to me.” She waved a hand at the open book. “Claid told you there’d be nothing in it you could read.”
“I know, but I had to try. I’m positive this holds the information we need.” She frowned at the page. “And no matter how often Claid declares he can’t read this, I’m sure he can.”
Marta’s needle paused, stabbed the cloth with vicious force. “You keep saying that. Why? Why would he lie, when he wants to find the answer more than we do? He’s given you no reason to mistrust him.”
“You didn’t see how excited he got when I showed him the book,” Kyla said. “He knew what it was, he knew it was written in a secret language, and he acted as if it was a valuable find, not something useless.”
“Maybe he forgot it was in code.”
Kyla turned a few more pages and slammed the book shut. “No,” she said. “With all his power, he could break the code.”
“You mean it could be broken by magic?” Marta frowned. “Then why can’t you break it?”
Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1) Page 30