Read Online Mindbond by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online

swallowed the terror that blocked my throat.
    â€œYou answered me,” I said hoarsely.
    â€œFor a certainty! How could I help it? You took hold of me like a flood tide.” A wry smile. “Why not? You always have.”
    â€œSorry,” I muttered.
    â€œDon’t be! Try it again.”
    Violently I shook my head. I could not venture it ever again, or so I thought. It had been a happening too eerie, too—inward. Kor felt my fear and did not press me.
    â€œWhat prompted you?” he asked instead.
    â€œCragsmen.” I gestured vaguely, not yet capable of explaining much further. “I thought certainly they would see you on that scree.”
    â€œTalu was hunting in the spruces beyond Sora. After I had caught the worthless pair of them I went after you.”
    We led our wayward mares back to the faint track that traversed the pass, found our campsite, and loaded the gear. It was quarterday before we mounted and set off westward again.
    Downward through twisted spruce and blue pine, winding around crags and rocky ribs, all in silence, for we had much on our minds. But when we came to a point that overlooked the spires of the trees, Kor stopped to gaze, his eyes sparkling. “We are coming near my country,” he said.
    In fact we had much farther to go, but the land had changed so that he felt near to home. Truly he was on his own side of the mountains again: cascades, cataracts, torrents everywhere, rushing like wind and singing and chiming like voices and clay bells, the many mountain waters, some of them mighty, some as fine as spiderweb, rippling down in shining strands from the high icefields, down over rocks and through forest to feed the Otter River far below and flow with the river to the sea. No arid plains in the distance here, no yellow pines and grassy parks. Instead there stood below us great forests of fir, dense, dripping with moss—the cataracts turned even the gray rock green with fern and moss. Farther down, near the rocky headland where Kor had his Holding, salt mists did the same. I saw him lift his head as he gazed, and his nostrils flared as if to scent the sea air, many days journey away—
    Cragsmen struck at us from behind.
    We should have been watching for them, listening for them, but there had been too much to think of, the day had thrown us off balance. And I, for one, thought we had outdistanced them, we with our horses. I had forgotten how long of leg Cragsmen can be, and tireless.… Only a scrape of stone, very close, warned me, and I swung around just in time to duck the blackwood club. And Alar was out of her scabbard as if of her own will, up and meeting the downcrushing arm before I had time even to shout.
    â€œKor!” Greenish blood splattered down on me. Club and giant hand fell with a thud by Talu’s hooves.
    Korridun was already embattled, wielding his sword faster than I could follow.
    â€œBy Sedna’s bones, Dan, it is Ytan!”
    With the Cragsmen, a yellow-braided, bare-chested Red Hart warrior, taller than most men, yet looking small amidst the giants. Still quite powerful enough to strike fear: Ytan, my brother demon-possessed. Blue eyes met mine, and he grinned, a warmthless grimace like that of a skull. He raised his bow, the bolt already nocked to the string.
    â€œAaa!” I shouted, a wordless cry. I knew Ytan’s skill. In a moment I would be wearing his arrow—
    From somewhere close at hand a snarling sounded, a roar that rose above the roar of cataracts, and I saw a graysheen flash. The wolf flung itself down from the yet higher rocks, landing like a cat on Ytan’s back and shoulders, tearing at his neck with deadly jaws. Ytan’s arrow and bow dropped from his hands as he reached up to fend off teeth and claws.
    â€œGet to him, Kor, and slit him open! I—can’t.…”
    Ytan was yet my brother, for all that a devourer held him in thrall. I could not kill him. Kor would have to