Boyett-Compo Charlotte - Wind Tales 01

Fictionwise Publications

www.fictionwise.com

Excellence in eBooks

Visit www.fictionwise.com to find more titles by this and other top authors in Science Fiction, Fantasy,

Horror, Mystery, and other genres.

Twilight Times Books

www.twilighttimesbooks.com

Copyright ©1999 by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

First published by Twilight Times Books, November 2002

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies

of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email,

floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International

copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Twilight Times Books

Kingsport TN 37664

http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

All rights reserved. Except for very brief quotes in reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in

any form without the written consent of the author.

Electronically published in the United States of America.

A special note to TT Books readers. All contents of this ebook are copyright by the author. If you

discover any artwork or writing published here elsewhere on the Internet, or in print magazines, please let

us know immediately. The staff of Twilight Times Books feels very strongly about protecting the

copyrighted work of contributors.

Credits:

Cover Artwork—Ardy M. Scott

Managing Editor—Ardy M. Scott

Publisher—Lida E. Quillen

[Back to Table of Contents]

WindFall

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the

author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living

or dead, is entirely coincidental.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Dedication

To Patty Mele:

Sister of my heart, a sprinkler of stardust;

Always there when I need a friend.

...Charlee

[Back to Table of Contents]

CONTENTS

[Back to Table of Contents]

It had been days since Nicholas Cree and his sister, Gillian, had eaten. Their bellies rumbled; their heads

ached with hunger; their fingers and toes were numb with cold, their lips blue. The snows through which

they were wading had turned their limbs stiff and they could no longer drag themselves through the

building drifts.

It had been foolish to try to escape in the dead of winter; they knew that now. The horses had run off the

second day, frightened away by the snarling of timber wolves.

Nicholas had lost his direction in the blowing snow and they had been wandering uselessly for several

hours. In the whiteout that encased them, there was no glimmer of hope; no light toward which they could

guide their tired bodies.

Now, almost to the point of exhaustion, the two young people took refuge beneath a low rocky

mountain overhang and sat shivering as they huddled together, trying desperately to blend the dwindling

heats of their rapidly chilling bodies. All that was left was the heartless, icy death that awaited them during

the long, frigid night.

“I'm sorry, Gilly,” Nick croaked through cracked and bleeding lips.

Gilly Cree used what was left of her strength to squeeze her brother's hand. “You did the best you

could, Nick,” she answered him.

Nick pressed his face against the wet wool of her coat and sobbed, his tears freezing on his chapped

cheeks as he cried. He could not feel the trembling of his sister's cold fingers as she stroked his damp

hair.

“I don't blame you, Nicky.” she whispered. “You tried to help."

The wind whipped past them, sending clumps of pristine white flakes, heavy and damp, cascading over

the overhangs its protests to the world around them.

“I didn't want it to end like this,” Nick sobbed. “Oh, God, Gilly! I didn't want it to end like this!"

She began to hum to him, a lilting tune from their Chalean childhood, hugging him to her as best she

could. Her voice broke now and again as happy memories of their growing up together flitted unbidden

across her mind's eye. As she let the tune dwindle away, she imagined she could hear someone calling to

them from out of the wind.

But that was just a painful wish, she thought with bitter regret, for no one knew where they had gone.

No one, not even their beloved sister, Adele, had been made privy to their hasty plans to spirit Gillian out

of Hellstrom Point and away from the unwanted attentions of Rolf de Viennes.

He'll not find us in Serenia,” Nick had sworn to her as he had helped her pack her small valise. “We'll

find work in Boreas; change our names. Everything will be all right. You'll see!"

They had left Virago on the night before her wedding to the man her father had decreed she spend the

rest of her life with, despite the fact that he hated the de Viennes family almost as much as Gilly hated

Rolf.

“It's a matter of honor,” her father had shouted at her. “You'll take him to husband and not argue about

it!"

“The man is vile!” Gilly had argued with her father. “I can not walk the corridors of the Keep without

him trying to paw me!"

“It is past time you were married,” her stepmother had said icily. “The de Viennes family is important in

the Realm. They are people of means. You could do worse than Rolf de Viennes."

“How so?” Gilly had shouted at her stepmother. “He has asked for the hand of every eligible maiden at

court and has been turned down. Can you not see the man is...."

“IT IS SETTLED!” her father, the Duke of Warthenham, had hissed at her. “I owe the Hesar family a

debt of honor and I will see that debt paid!"

No amount of honor could force Gilly to accept Rolf de Viennes or make her even consider spending

her life at his mercy. His reputation alone, one of cruelty and viciousness, had turned Gilly's heart to stone

with fear; but every argument she had made to her father, every tear, every tantrum, every pleading, had

been met with stony silence.

“I won't let Papa give you to that lecher, Gilly,” Nick had pledged. “Not if my very life depends on it."

As the guests began to assemble two months later at Tempest Keep, the mighty fortress of the Hesar

family where members of the peerage had taken their marriage vows for generations, Nick and Gilly had

made plans for her escape.

Now, here in this godawful cold; in this desolate place where nothing stirred and warmth was just a

fleeting memory, Nick's life might well end because he had loved his sister too much to see her shackled

to a man she could not abide.

Gilly lifted her head, hearing the phantom calling once more. she tensed, hoping against hope that it was

not a posse sent to bring them back Praying as she hugged her brother closer to her breast that no

trackers had been close on their heels when they had crossed over into Serenia.

If they had crossed over into Serenia. Nick was not sure. For all he knew, they might well still be in

Virago.

“Do you hear that, Nicky?” she whispered to him, bending down so she could place her lips to his ear.

Above the keening of the arctic wind, she doubted if he could hear her otherwise. “Do you hear it?"

“What?” he asked tiredly, his eyes closing against the spreading warmth and lassitude that was beginning

to envelop him.

Again the ghostling voice came out of the wind and Gilly pushed her brother away, too tired and cold

herself to notice the languor that was claiming her own body. “Listen, Nick!” she told him. “Do you hear

someone calling for help?"

“Trackers,” Nick stated in a flat, emotionless voice. “They've found us."

“No,” Gilly disagreed. “I don't think so.” Easing her brother out of her arms, she wrapped her heavy

coat closer around her shivering body and leaned out beyond the overhang, ignoring the fat clumps of

snow which fell heavily on her quivering shoulders. She squinted into the bright white swirl of snow that

spun around her and imagined for a moment she saw an arcing light off to her right.

“Come back, Gilly,” Nick pleading. His teeth were clicking together so hard he had to clamp his jaws

shut to control them.

“H..el..p m..e p..l..e..a..s..e!"

“There! Did you hear it?” Gilly cried out. “Someone is in trouble, Nick!"

“No more so than we are,” Nick mumbled as he pressed his back against the unbearably cold rock

behind him.

Once more Gilly saw the flare of light, closer now, and she reached back for Nick's arm. “We've got to

try to help, Nicholas!” She dragged on her brother's sleeve. “Nicky, please!"

A part of Nicholas Cree wanted to stay where he was; to close his eyes and sleep; to let the frigid wind

lull him into the arms of the Gatherer and keep him there for eternity, but another part of him was touched

by the pleading in his sister's voice and he stirred, coming to his knees in the snow, reaching out to

restrain her from venturing out from under the overhang.

“How do you know it isn't them, Gilly?” he asked, listening intently for the ghostly voice he, himself, had

heard calling for help.

“I just do,” Gilly said forcefully. “Whoever it is, he's in need of assistance, Nick, and so are we. Maybe

he can lead us to safety."

“He may well be just as lost as we are, Gilly,” Nick sighed, but he crawled out from under the overhang,

stood, then held his hand out to his sister. “Come on, then. We might as well freeze out here as under

there."

Lowering their heads against the onslaught of the pummeling snow and biting wind, brother and sister

began trudging their way toward the bobbing light.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Jasper Kullen lifted his lantern once more toward the thrashing sound coming from the frozen pond and

then shrugged indifferently. He turned his head slightly to follow the bolting doe as it wove through the tall

spruces and disappeared into the forest beyond, wishing he had his crossbow with him. The doe would

have fed his family for several weeks, had he been able to bring her down in the force of the blizzard's

wind.

Kullen looked back toward the pond just in time to see the man's head disappear beneath the surface of

the water. The broken chunks of ice around where the man had vanished, bobbed for a moment as a

struggling hand pushed up from the water, clawing at the ice floe. The grasping fingers slid away from the

slippery ice, grabbed frantically at the floe, missed, then disappeared beneath the churning waves.

“Die, you sorry bastard,” Kullen spat. “Do us all a favor and die!"

The crack of ice breaking away shot over the howling wind; the pond water heaved, splashing over the

ice floe as the man tried desperately to claw himself out of the water once more. Unable to lever himself

up, the man sank heavily beneath the waters, thrashing as he did, his hand grabbing feebly at the ice to

keep himself from going under again. More ice broke off from the main floe and the struggling man

disappeared one last time below the surface, his hand, descending slowly through the cold water, still

clutching a jagged section of ice in its rigid fingers.

For a long time, Kullen stood watching the waters subside. When at last the ice was still and the surface

began glazing over, freezing solid once more, he let a vindictive smile slowly spread over his weathered

face.

“Good riddance,” Jasper Kullen said, nodding. “And may the Demons roast you o'er a slow spit."

Hitching up his shoulders into the relative warmth of his great cape, the woodcutter turned and headed

back up the path to his hut.

[Back to Table of Contents]

He had no idea in hell where he was. Beneath the surface of the frigid water, his world was pitch black

and suffocating. It was all he could do to push his rapidly dying body through the murky wetness of the

pond.

Above him, the dark water slapped against the surface of the ice. Precious pockets of cold air had been

trapped in the space between water and ice, and he strained to press his face into the space, gasping for

breath, though the chill of the air he sucked in brought intense pain to his depleted lungs.

“You're going to die for your sins,” he had heard the woodcutter shout to him, and he was terribly afraid