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published 1994; paperback 1994, Del Rey
What good is life spent at another's call? Drudgery, the long wait for another burden to be shouldered, another task borne, an endless day of work stripped of leisure or even some faint pride of accomplishment, as all fades beneath the acknowledgment of one's own failure .... Druyan, the lead character of Susan Dexter's The Wind-Witch, is willing to do anything rather than endure this fate again. She'll even enslave another to it, and rather than wince we'll appreciate her flintiness. And why? Necessity's the harshest master of all. If Druyan wants to keep her farm she needs to hold it for a year and a day, or else see it go to her dead husband's distant kin, because she has no children to be his heirs. There is no one to help her except for her husband's prisoner Kellis, who was left behind and forgotten as all the men went off to war.
The second book of the Warhorse of Estragon series is not leavened with humor like the first book or the last. It's darker, colder, and the great kings and princesses have given way to smallholders, who struggle to hold out against the barbarous Eral, raiders who have come in longboats to ruin and steal and kill. Once again the theme of the book is loneliness, though less of the self-imposed sort: Druyan is newly widowed and her prisoner Kellis is a magically gifted orphan, lone survivor of an Eral raid that destroyed his entire village but left him alive.
Though less capricious than the Eral, Druyan is no less harsh a master: she makes the injured Kellis harvest barley until he collapses from exertion and the magic-poisoning touch of cold iron. The instant he recovers she sets him the backbreaking tasks of a farm servant, all of which he completes without complaint, for what else is there for him? When Kellis dreams of a city of mages, Druyan agrees to barter him a horse so he can travel there after his three seasons of work. But the dream comes at a price which neither of them anticipates: Kellis must scry for Druyan, to protect them from the Eral.
And Kellis has always failed at scrying. Though he can see in the bowl, he can't sort out past from future, and he's known the consequences of his mistakes: first his kin died at the hands of the Eral, and later the Eral who took him prisoner died at the hands of Druyan's husband. Though Druyan understands failure as thoroughly as he, she persists. Kellis must scry, if they and the neighboring villages are to survive.
Throughout the novel Valadan the Warhorse is Druyan's help and protector; he's less of a horse of the gods in this novel, and more an intelligent beast who helps share the burden. He seems less of an icon here and more of a good well-bred horse.
Unlike its predecessor this book lacks a good sense of timing. There's less chuckle and more thud. The center of the book seems less tightly plotted than its ends. However, it is much stronger than the previous novel in evoking a sense of place, the rhythm of the country and the smell of the barley-covered land. And this lulls us, draws us in, till at last we see why Kellis is loathe to leave his prison and why Druyan is willing to risk all to keep her land. Humor implies a certain distance; by showing restraint here Dexter allows us to get closer to her characters and develop an empathy for setting. This book is rooted more deeply than its fellows The Prince of Ill Luck and The True Knight. I was impressed by it.
Review by Becky Parkhurst
Reviewed February 23, 1997
ISBN 0-345-38770-8
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