Mindbond by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

as pledgemate. Hurt, yes, it had hurt indeed, as did Kor’s thrust. I winced, but before I could parry he cursed between his teeth and rolled over so that he lay facedown, his voice muffled in his blanket.
    â€œSorry, Dan. Truth is, I—Mahela’s bowels, perhaps I am a coward. I think—I could not play this game you describe to me. I have always dreamed of—a special one.…”
    â€œWe all do,” I said softly, forgetting anger.
    â€œAnd I have thought that once I have given myself to a woman I will be hers forever. I will not be able to help that.”
    I could not gainsay him. Had I not often sensed something fated in him?
    â€œThe maidens of my own people—we were good comrades as children, but often now they seem to me as strange and cold as—as devourers. And less willing.” He sat up, shaking his head. “Bah! I am whimpering. Forget it.”
    â€œNo. Tell me,” I said, gazing at him across low flames. “I was starting to understand.”
    His shoulders sagged, his face turned toward the ground. “Perhaps I am deceiving myself,” he muttered. “Perhaps the devourers have made me afraid.”
    I knew by then, but I blurted it out anyway. “You have not—you’ve never—”
    â€œI am yet a virgin, Dan.” He lifted his face and gifted me with one of his rare smiles, as if he felt suddenly lighthearted, telling me. “The fishy-flapping demons have given me my only bedding.”
    â€œDamn them,” I breathed, growing angry with a wrath as sudden as his gladness. “Damn the demons, and damn the prick-me-dainty wenches who would not come to you! The birdwits, how could they have been so stupid! Damn it to Mahela, Kor, it’s not your fault!”
    He shrugged, abashed by my fervor but faintly smiling. “I think it is the pattern of my life,” he said.
    â€œSkewed,” I grumbled, and did not know how truly I had spoken.

Chapter Four
    In the night I heard Kor moving about restlessly without fully awakening to ask him why. The next morning when I spoke to him he answered me with sour silence. It took me a moment to recognize ill humor in him, for I saw it seldom enough. Once in a tenweek, perhaps, and then it often took the form of silence. He would not shout, most times, unless he was prodded.
    â€œWhat ails you?” I prodded.
    Silence, and a sullen frown. I pulled cold cooked roots out of the ashes of the fire for our breakfast, offered him one to eat. He shook his head. But when he turned away his face and coughed as I bit into mine, I knew what the trouble was.
    â€œMountain sickness,” I said, laying the food aside.
    He scowled back at me in dismal inquiry.
    â€œThere seems to be a live lizard in your stomach and a Cragsman pounding on your head? Cramps in your limbs? A brawling in your chest?”
    With a wan look he nodded.
    â€œIt is nothing,” I explained. “Only a sickness because of the thin air. Already we have climbed higher than you have been before. It is not dangerous—it will pass in a day or two, three at the most. I have seen it in some of the younger members of my tribe, the very young and untraveled.”
    â€œThanks,” he said sulkily, the first word he had spoken.
    â€œThey suffer worst. They become parlous ill-humored as well,” I remarked. Because his sour look roused mischief in me, I did not tell him that I was one who had suffered this same ailment, often and noisily. I merely motioned him toward his blanket.
    â€œWe should go on,” he said, his mouth moving stiffly with his misery. But he got up and started gathering gear, though the commotion in his gut bent him like a bowed sapling. I abandoned my know-all air.
    â€œKor, you ass, lie down!” I got up and wrestled the things away from him. “You are not riding today. Lie down, or I will eat in front of you!”
    At the very thought he retched, a dry sound without