Wind Over Bone: The Estralony Cycle #2 (Young Adult Fantasy Romance) (20 page)

“
You’re horrible.” He picked the baldric up and put it back on. “And a horrible dancer. I wanted so badly to break your legs.” He frowned, with a fuzzy look. “Can’t remember when that was.”

“
Your restraint was incredible.”

“
One of us had to be the prince.”

She grabbed the knot of his hair. They put their heads together, and he stumbled and knocked her over. He pinned her to the ground. The grass tickled her, and she laughed so hard he put a hand over her mouth. “Try, try away,” he said. She bit his hand away, so she could kiss him properly. He put his hand somewhere else, and she gasped, pushing her hips against him. He slipped himself in, and she put bruises all over him.

He lost his clothes in the weeks following––shirt, breeches, boots––until only his belt and baldric were left. He liked them there because she could catch him by them, he said. It was marvelous being caught by a belt.

He ran through the woods, manhood slapping against his thighs, leather against his chest, and when she caught him his skin was all over welts.

She picked the thorns from his sides, and he braided her hair with moss and cut pictures into her skin.

Whenever he was sad, and he did become inexplicably sad sometimes, she sang to him over and over the only song she knew:

A red moon sets. My leman falls

Into the sweet sap of his rose.

I rest my heart against his mouth,

And down the crimson wave he goes.

He draws him well beneath the tide

For certain rescue to forestall,

And when he pulls himself ashore,

He tells me, ‘we, love, have it all.’

A blue moon slides beneath the sea,

Into a place of frozen sleep

We share our limbs, and forge one soul

Out of the burning wounds we keep.

And should the frost break through our guard,

And blight the rose with bitter pall,

We’ll keep us warm in our one skin,

And whisper, ‘we, love, have it all.’

She loved every part of him. His skin, so easily made purple; his eyes like eclipses; his hair, matted into stiff, black felt; his lips, the blood.

She liked it best in his head. He was stronger than her there. She could slam against him and rough him up without hurting him. He could force her to do things, which was something she hadn’t experienced with anyone except her sister.

***

One day in the early spring they were tangled together between two rocks, and Sarid was staring at the sky.

“
What are you thinking?” he said. His face changed in her mind, became more boyish. His beard disappeared, and his hair loosened from its mats and became a ruddy brown.

“
Nothing.” But he knew.

His face darkened. He pried her away, got up, and left.

She didn’t see him again for two months. It was unbearable.

Eighteen

Spring came. The earth blushed with flowers, and the snow sank into the ground in sullen, muddy dapples. Turgid rivers rushed down to the plains, carving cracks deeper into the hills.

Gryka came back first. It was midday and Sarid was catching trout with her bare hands (they were still sluggish from the winter), and she felt the dog’s snout in her hand. She looked up. Water foamed around Gryka’s belly. The dog wagged her tail, flinging drops about, and Sarid tried to remember when Gryka had left her. She couldn’t.

She gave a fish to Gryka. She stamped on another one with her heel, and she and Gryka lay on their stomachs and ate.

Savvel came back a day later, with a goddess.

Sarid was planting witch-hazel sticks in a circle in the ground, so the rain would know where to fall when she called it. She stank and needed a bath. Gryka stank too––she’d rolled in the fish skins yesterday, so Sarid took her by the scruff and dragged her into the circle.

Sarid said the words and the rain fell in a sheet, glinting in the sun like glass.  She tilted her head back and let it beat against her.

She saw behind the shower two figures: one small and the other like a tower of thunderclouds.

She moved out of the rain with her dog. Water fell off her face and naked skin.

Savvel stood before her, and the goddess next to him. Her eyes were fire, and there was a diamond in her forehead, a dark eye that cast dread over Sarid and turned her insides to liquid. Gryka barked. The goddess looked at the dog with her fiery eyes, and the dog jerked from Sarid’s hands and crawled dripping under an elder bush.

Sarid saw immediately that Savvel was a captive, his eyes frightened, his lips bloodless. He said, “She’s become very powerful.” He held his hand out to her. “Do you know me, Ida?”

“
She’s enslaved you,” said Sarid.

“
No, she hasn’t.”

“
There’s a collar around your neck.” There was. White, made of cloud.

The goddess said, “Could we tie her up?” Her voice boomed through Sarid’s body, shaking the water off her.

Sarid forced herself to look fully on the goddess, and she saw it.

It was a glamour: a thunderous, cacophonous glamor, but thin as vellum, and hiding behind it a mere girl.

It was shoddily done, a damaged net barely closing round the girl’s spirit. Sarid reached out, untangled it, and pulled it off. The glamor sparkled in the air like a brittle snow, and then dissolved.

The goddess was just a sour-faced girl. “You’ve taken it off me.” She began to cry big, ugly tears, and Sarid couldn’t stand it. She put a hand around the girl’s neck. She squeezed the long throat, and the girl’s hands scratched pitifully at Sarid’s, her eyes wide and bloodshot.

Savvel said in Sarid’s ear, “Sweetheart, let go. She has no more power.”

As if there were a strength in his words she must obey, she loosened her hands. He took them in his own. “What did she do?” she said.

“Come into my head and I’ll tell you.”

She squeezed his hands and she was in his head.

It was a trap.

He turned into a hard brown monster with golden eyes, and Sarid howled and beat at him with her fists. He’d stolen her power. She came up to his breast; she felt as if he’d chopped her head off. She turned to run. He picked her up and she was sick all over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but he still held her in his arms. He began walking away, walking like a mountain beneath her, and Gryka ran around them, barking. “We’ll take you someplace to wait until you’re well.”

The sky moved over her, and the trees and hills, and they brought her into a mean, dark place––a cave, or dugout––and bound her to a post. They tortured her with hot water and sticks. Bats flew in and out, and always the monster that used to be Savvel sat before her and watched her.

Fear fogged her mind. Finally she became exhausted and slept.

***

When she woke the air had changed, become more lucid. She smelled roses. She looked down: she was dirty and naked and sore. She started crying––she didn’t know why.

She tried to move her arms––they were tied behind her.

She was in a little hut: the sod roof had collapsed in places, and sun streamed through, making golden chutes in the dusty air.

“
What I wouldn’t give for a cold, wet cloth,” she said. Nothing happened. “Water,” she shouted, just to see. Dust and straw rained from the ceiling.

A girl came in with a waterskin. She had a ragged tunic and trousers on. Her face was tired, and she was as dirty as Sarid.

“Hold your head up and drink,” she said, and put the skin into Sarid’s mouth. Sarid drank a few gulps, then stopped and looked more closely at the girl. She’d rough brown hair and a nose with an exquisite little hook.

“
Leva,” Sarid said.

Everything else rushed back into her mind. She went rigid. Some tears came first, and then she started screaming.

Leva dropped the bladder and ran outside.

By the time she came back with Savvel Sarid had managed to put words together: “May she turn into a tree, may her womb be a hornets’ nest and her breasts gnawed away by termites and her eyes bored out––”

“Are you sure?” said Savvel to Leva.

“
Let me go,” said Sarid. “Let me go, I will blow her to hell.”

“
Who?” said Savvel.

“
Yelse,” screamed Sarid.

“
You see?” said Leva. “She’s come to her senses.”

“
If you’d call it that.” Savvel squatted in front of Sarid. “If you promise not to harm anyone I will let you out of my head directly.”

“
That’s rich.” Sarid’s throat hurt from screaming. “I’m stuck in your head?”

“
Yes,” he said, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “You’ve been there all week.”

She took five deep breaths. “Your talent is prodigious.”

“I can do what I like with my head.”

“
Really?” Tears dripped off her chin.

“
Are you sane?”

“
Rischa will think I kidnapped you and kept you like an animal all winter.”

“
Get out of my head,” he said.

He opened a door for her and she went out.

Her arms turned into a wind, and her bonds hung loose against the post. Her hands rematerialized in her lap. Savvel smiled. “You must still be a little mad, to be able to do that.”

***

Leva found Sarid a smock to wear, and they went outside and ate the fish Savvel had caught earlier––licking and blowing on their fingers because this time it had been properly cooked. Sarid asked Savvel, “How did she find you?”

“
An ice cutter found him.” Leva held her hand out to Gryka, and the dog gnawed on her sticky fingers. “Wandering near the Nolak.” She wiped her hand on the grass. “Naked. Mari and I were staying with Eianhurts—they’ve a place in Ederul––when we heard they’d found a tall madman with dark hair. We went to the cutter’s cottage, and he wasn’t mad anymore. We took him back to Ederul. After a while, we decided we’d better look for you.”

“
That was stupid of you,” said Sarid. Leva still had bruises on her neck.

“
What else could we’ve done?” she said, ripping a clump of grass from the ground. “After Rischa drove you out, the Pashes were next, and my family. And then a whole host of eastern nobles split from the duma, and now he’s got only sycophants and lunatics giving him advice. Since you’re the biggest lunatic of all, I thought maybe you could tell him Dirlan and Garada are collecting men. And perhaps you could kill your sister, too.”

“
I haven’t heard any of this,” said Savvel. “Why are they collecting men?”

“
To scare the sense into your brother,” said Leva. “And if that doesn’t work they’ll put you in his place.”

Savvel spat a fishbone from his mouth. “An ice cutter found me naked in the woods.”

“And your front hasn’t cracked since,” said Leva. “Perhaps you learned something, in the woods.”

“
How did you get up here?” Sarid asked them.

“
Goyinik horses,” said Savvel.

***

These were small, sturdy horses from the northern steppes, so stoic Leva’s curse had had little effect on them (though Savvel and Leva had walked rather than ridden, and laden the horses with provisions).

It was half a day’s ride to Ningrav, the closest town with a posting station.

There Leva sent a letter to Mari, asking her to meet them in Amarstad. They traded the little horses for big, swift ones––just two of them after Sarid reminded Leva that she was no rider.

Then they set off towards Amarstad, Sarid sitting behind Savvel on his black gelding. After the first day her posterior was sore and her back stiff. She could still turn to a wind, and would have done so, but there was a suspicious desperation in Leva’s actions that discouraged Sarid from separating from them, even for a little while.

When they reached Amarstad they took rooms at an inn to wait. They all took baths, and Leva broke two brushes in Sarid’s hair. In a fit of frustration she cut it all off. Savvel’s hair must have met with a similar fate––it was scarcely long enough to curl over his ears.

Mari came on the third day. “Oh, Sarid,” she said when she stepped into the parlor, and she stood back, gaping. Sarid felt small and awkward, like a shadow of her real self.

She must have made a ferocious impression, though, because the man who had come in after Mari edged to a corner of the room. “That’s the sister?” he said. He was stocky and dark, with curly black hair.

“
This is Corban Eianhurt,” said Mari. “We’ve been staying at his older brother’s house in Ederul. You probably remember his younger brother from Charevost. One of Vanli’s friends.”

“
The one who tried to tie you to the bed,” said Savvel helpfully.

“
You’ll come with us?” said Mari. Sarid was surprised. No one had asked her that yet.

“
Yes,” she said. “Where are we going?” And what, she thought, do you want me to do?

“
Dirlan,” said Mari. “The city. Olan Caveira wants a council.”

Olan Caveira was the Duke of Dirlan. Rokal, Rischa’s friend (and another of the boys who had cornered her in her bedroom), was his younger brother.

Savvel glanced at Sarid’s face. “I’ll be there,” he said. “And they’ll be frightened enough to respect your opinions.”

“
I don’t want to frighten people.”

“
Then put a scarf over your head.”

The middle Eianhurt cleared his throat. “It’s three weeks’ ride to Dirlan.”

“Let’s not be so hasty,” said Mari. “I want a rest first.” She sank with a sigh onto the couch next to Leva, who was bent over the table, counting coins. “And I want to rinse the dust out of my hair. I look like an old dame with a powdered wig.”

“
Is Mother coming to Dirlan?” said Leva.

“
No. She’s an ache in her head from me and an ache in her stomach from you, she says.”

“
And an ache in her neck, where she thinks Rischa will chop her head off.”

“
Don’t be unkind.” Mari got up. “I’m taking a nap in your bed.” She went into an inner room; Sarid heard a bed creaking.

“
Lord Corban,” said Savvel. The man gave a start. “Stop acting so nervous. Rischa’s not hiding under the couch. And I’ve trained Lady Hyeda well.”

Corban Eianhurt’s neck went a splotchy red. “My lord, we really should go. The Amar family live close.”

“Vassals to Pash?” said Savvel.

“
They’re loyal to your brother––if they catch you, they’ll take you straight to Meliona, where he is.”

“
And he’ll give me a padded apartment and chicken soup.”

“
Which my sister will doubtlessly poison,” said Sarid.

“
My lady, are you as powerful as your sister?” said Corban. 

“
Sarid’s dangerous,” said Leva. “Don’t make her angry. Go get some sleep, Corban, you look like a corpse.”

Savvel got up and showed him the closet bed in his room.

“Idiot,” he said, when he came back.

“
He’s got a point,” said Leva. “We should leave today. We’re right on the eastern border of Anefeln.”

Sarid plucked at her elbows. “Does everyone think I’m dangerous?”

“They’d better,” said Leva.

Sarid laughed suddenly. “Will Vanli be at this council?”

There was a thick silence. Savvel and Leva exchanged heavy looks. Leva said, “Vanli’s dead.”