Masques

SEVEN

The wolf leapt neatly over the small stream that hadn’t been there the week before, and landed in the soft mud on the other side. The moon’s light revealed other evidence of the recent storm—branches bent and broken from the weight of a heavy snowfall, long grass lying flattened on the ground. The air smelled sweet and clean, washed free of heavy scents.

Knowing that the camp was near, Wolf increased his speed to a swift lope despite his tiredness. He reached the edge of the valley and found it barren of people. He felt no alarm. Even if the storm hadn’t driven them to the caves, the meltwater from the heavy snow that turned most of the valley bottom to marsh would have.

With a snort, he started down the valley side nearest where he had made his private camp. He decided to stop there and get his things before going on to the caves. Aralorn’s bedroll was gone, but his was neatly folded and dry under its oilcloth cover.

He muttered a few words that he wouldn’t have employed had there been anyone to hear and took on his human form. Wearily, he stretched, more than half-inclined to stay where he was for the night and join the others in the morning.

He’d always been solitary. As a boy and while an apprentice, he’d spent time alone as often as he could manage. He had become adept at finding places where no one would look.

When he left his apprenticeship behind him, he’d taken wolf shape and run into the wilds of the Northlands, escaping from himself more than the ae’Magi. He had avoided contact with people at all costs. People made him uncomfortable, and he frightened them—even Myr, though that one hid it better than most. He had a grudging respect for the Rethian king but nothing that approached friendship.

For Wolf, the only person who mattered was Aralorn.

Absently, Wolf moved his bedroll with the toe of his boot. He made a sound that was not humorous enough to be a laugh. He’d been running away from and back to Aralorn for a long time. She had caught him in a spell, and he hadn’t even known that she was weaving one.

Four years ago, he’d told himself that he followed her because he was bored and tired of hiding. Maybe it had even been true at first. She was always doing something. But then he’d heard her laugh. Until then, laughter had never made Wolf feel anything but repulsed (the ae’Magi laughed so easily).

He needed to see her.

Needing someone made him very uncomfortable. He didn’t remember ever needing anyone before, and he hated the vulnerability of it almost as much as he . . . as he loved her.

It wasn’t until he’d found out that Aralorn was spying on the ae’Magi that he knew how much she meant to him. Even the thought of her there made him shake with remembered rage and fear.

He wasn’t quite certain when his interest had turned to need. He needed her to let him laugh, to be human and not a flawed creation of the ae’Magi. He needed her trust so that he could trust himself. Most of all, he needed her touch. Even more than laughter—he associated touch with the ae’Magi—a warm hand on his shoulder (cut it so, child), an affectionate hug (it won’t hurt so much next time . . .).

Aralorn was a tactile person, too, but her touch didn’t lie. It still made him uncomfortable to feel her hands on him, but he craved it anyway. He picked up the bedroll and went down into the valley since it was the shortest way to the caves. When he arrived at the valley floor, even his dulled human nose caught the scent.

Uriah.

Not panicking, he took a good look around him and noticed the signs of hasty packing as well as the fact that the tents (including the one that Myr had worked so hard to get finished) had been torn into pieces by something other than the wind. He also noticed that there were no obvious bones.

He walked briskly though the camp to get a closer look. Here the scent was stronger, and everywhere were signs of anger vented on inanimate objects. That was good, he assured himself. Anger meant they had missed their prey.

There was a small bone—chicken. Haris would be unhappy about that. Human bones were conspicuously absent, and he felt a faint sense of relief. Myr must have had enough warning to get the camp into the caves. As long as the Uriah hadn’t been within sight when the people entered the caves, the wards would keep the entrances hidden from them.

Wolf had started once more for the caves when he saw something white in the drying mud: a horse’s skeleton. Too small to be Sheen.

It was picked clean, with only a wisp of mane to distinguish it. The leg bones had been cracked so that all the marrow could be sucked out. It wasn’t until he noticed the distinctive patterns on the silver bit that lay nearby that he knew that Aralorn had been riding the horse.

He found another pile of bones, also picked clean, fifteen or twenty paces away. They all had the peculiar twists of the Uriah. He found several skulls—she’d accounted for three of them. He had hoped that he would find her among the dead—something inside him howled with mocking laughter at the thought. But dead would be . . .

He could have followed her there easily.

He left his bedroll forgotten among the ruins of the camp and took wolf shape to run toward the caves because it was faster. On the way there he found the pitiful remains of a small child—a dirty battered doll lay nearby. Astrid—he remembered the doll. He knew then why Aralorn had confronted the Uriah.

Rage sang in his blood. He restrained it with a pale sense of hope that Myr would know something to help his search. If he let the rage take him, there was no telling who would die. If everyone was dead, he reminded himself, no one could tell him if a search had been made. And Aralorn wouldn’t want him to kill her friends.

He planned quickly as he ran so that he wouldn’t think too much about the wrong things. He was conscious of a numbness that crept over him, covering hot rage with a thin coating of ice.

The furious arguments were audible even before he entered the darkness of the cave.

“Silence!” Myr’s voice cracked with tiredness but its power was still enough that it stopped the bickering. “There is nothing that we can do. Aralorn and Astrid are gone. I will not send out parties to be picked off two at a time by the Uriah. We will wait here until I am satisfied that they are gone. Even if Aralorn and Astrid were still alive, even if our whole party went down to the camp and found them prisoners of the Uriah, it wouldn’t matter. We could not take them. A hundred, she said, and she didn’t strike me as a person who exaggerated.”

Only in her stories, Wolf thought. Not when it mattered.

He stopped in the shadows of the entrance to one of the great caverns. Myr stood in front of him, facing the main room so that Wolf had a clear view of his profile. The light from the torch revealed the tired lines of his face. “It wouldn’t matter because twenty Uriah could destroy all of us, however we were armed. They would kill us, and we’d be lucky if we killed ten of them. Aralorn knew that when she went out looking for Astrid. She stood a better chance than any of us because she has dealt with them before. Had I known what she was doing, I would have stopped her, but I didn’t. I will, however, stop any of you who try to leave now. When the sun comes up, I will look.”

“Afraid of the dark, princeling?” A swarthy man stepped out of the crowd. His face was unfamiliar, so he must have arrived after Wolf left. He was an aristocrat, from his clothes—less impressed with the king than the peasants were.

Wolf spoke then from the darkness of the entryway, almost not recognizing his own voice. “As you should be,” he said. “If I were he, I would send you out on your own to find out what happens to fools in the dark.”

Wolf stepped to the left of Myr, clearly revealing himself in the light of Myr’s torch. When he was sure that all eyes were upon him, he took his human form with all the theatrics that even the ae’Magi could have used. Masked and cloaked, he stood with a hand on his glowing staff that made Myr’s torch look like a candle.

“As it happens, though, it is unnecessary for anyone to go out. Astrid is dead.” Wolf pitched his voice so that it carried to everyone in the room without echoing. “I found her remains as well as those of the horse that Aralorn was riding. I found no trace of Aralorn’s body. I suspect that she is a prisoner of the ae’Magi.”

He had to quit speaking after those words left his throat. From the reaction of the people facing him, he could tell that they hadn’t realized that this attack, too, had been engineered by the ae’Magi. He couldn’t work up the effort to care. As long as the ae’Magi didn’t know that Wolf was here helping Myr and as long as he didn’t know what Aralorn was to him, the Archmage probably wouldn’t torture Aralorn himself—he wouldn’t consider any information she had to be vital. She had to be important enough that he didn’t just kill her for the power he might gain, but not so important that he concentrated on her himself. That would buy Wolf time. It would keep her alive for him to find. It all rested upon how independent Edom had been.

The ae’Magi tended to give his tools more autonomy because he could trust that they had his best interests at heart. So Wolf would believe that he had time to find Aralorn. He had to believe he had time.

Wolf continued in a voice that sounded disinterested even to his own ears, this time speaking directly to Myr. “My advice is for you to stay here for now. It is probably quite safe for you to go out for a while yet. The ae’Magi won’t expect you to be this close to the original camp. If I am not back in a fortnight, it would be best for you to move on.” Wolf started to leave but turned back. He might not care for them, but Aralorn would want them safe.

“I would find a way to block off the paths that I didn’t map for you so that no one is hurt or lost. You could follow these caves for a hundred miles if you wanted to.” He left then, as quietly as he had come in.

He knew all the ae’Magi’s holdings, even those acquired after he’d left. He had made a point of exploring each of them, partially to see if he could do it without getting caught, but also because he might find that he needed the knowledge. Even as he had done so, he’d been amused that Aralorn’s passion for information had passed on to him. Now he was grateful for the habit.

First, he went, traveling by magic, as soon as he was far enough south that his spells worked, to the ae’Magi’s castle since it was the ae’Magi’s preferred residence as well as the closest one to the camp. He took the time to see if the ae’Magi was in residence, not that it would have kept Wolf out if he had been. He searched the dungeon twice, certain that she would be there—but he didn’t see her among the pitiful captives. He looked through the castle, even the stables, but saw no sign of her anywhere. Then he continued to the next hold.

He searched through the night and all the next day, even the royal palace of Reth and the small cottage in which the ae’Magi had been born. Finally, he had to admit defeat. He hoped that she had been able to kill herself because he found no trace of her anywhere with which the ae’Magi was remotely connected. For lack of anything better to do, he returned to the caves.

Aralorn traveled out of the Northlands flopped over the back of the Uriah who had captured her (she would not think of it as Talor). The smell of the thing at such close range was debilitating, and she was glad enough for the cold that stuffed up her nose. She had been stripped of her weapons with ruthless efficiency and bound hand and foot. The constant jostling of the thing’s shoulder in her midriff was giving her a headache that made it difficult to think clearly.

They stopped when they were out of the mountains and dumped her ignominiously facedown on the ground. By turning her head to the side, she could see them moving about restlessly, snarling irritably at each other. For the most part they ignored her, but she received enough hungry looks that she tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. She tried shapechanging once when nothing was paying attention to her, but the pain in her head kept distracting her.

She was concentrating for another attempt, but this time the distraction came in the form of a thud originating just out of her field of view. One by one the Uriah dropped to the ground; only the glitter of their eyes gave indication that they were not asleep—or dead.

“Sst. Filthy things. Why he uses them I cannot imagine.” The voice was a light tenor, speaking Rethian with a high-court accent. Her position on the ground limited her field of view, but she could see the elegant shoes topped by the embroidered stockings of a true dandy.

“So,” the soft voice continued, “you are the prisoner the ae’Magi is so anxious to get.”

She was pushed over on her side by a magical shove and got her first full look at the mage. His face was handsome enough although overpowered by the purple wig he affected. She didn’t know him by sight, but his ability to immobilize an army of Uriah and his dress let her put a name to him: Lord Kisrah, a minor noble whose abilities had been invaluable to Myr’s grandfather in the last war.

Her father told her once that he was a competent tactician and diplomat, high praises from a man who despised the courtier type.

“Not very much of you, is there? From all the fuss the ae’Magi is putting up over you, I had expected more—although you would clean up well enough, I suppose. It is too bad that you chose to attack the ae’Magi in such treasonous fashion.” He shook his head sadly at her, and she noticed with shock that his eyes were kind. “Get set now. I’m going to transport you to the ae’Magi’s castle. I don’t like transporting humans, it’s too hard on them. But the ae’Magi is concerned about Myr. It’s not right to take advantage of a man whose mind is turned by grief, and we need to get to him as soon as possible.”

He rubbed his hands together a minute in preparation. “The ae’Magi is much better at this than I am; but he is busy with other matters, so I will have to do.”

His magic hit her body with enough force that she almost passed out. She hit a hard stone floor sweating and coughing. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to die of lung fever before the Archmage could get his hands on her. She laughed at the thought, bringing on another fit of coughing.

Ungentle hands grabbed her upper arms with bruising strength, but the man grunted as he picked her up—she was a lot heavier than she looked. Muscle would do that.

It had been daylight outside, so the gloominess of the torchlit stone walls and her hair, which had come undone from its customary braid and hung over her face, rendered her effectively blind.

She was stripped with ruthless efficiency. To take her mind off what that meant, she tried to recapture a stray thought she’d had just before Lord Kisrah had sent her over. She had a vague notion that it might be important. Her aching head didn’t want to cooperate.

“Look here, Garogue, she ain’t as small as she looks!” Rough laughter and comments she would have felt better not hearing as a second guard neared.

Think, Aralorn. I was relieved that . . . that I had not met Lord Kisrah before. Her face felt hot and tight, in spite of the coolness of the stone under her feet. Lord Kisrah would not recognize me as the Lyon’s daughter. She waited a minute before the significance of that thought hit her. I have, however, met the ae’Magi as the Lyon’s daughter. He was intrigued with the color of my eyes—my shapeshifter blood.

Gods, she thought bleakly. If he realizes who I am, he can use my father against me.

While the guards were preoccupied, she tried again to change. Not a drastic change this time, just an adjustment to her face and eyes. Her features sharpened until they were as common to Rethian peasant stock as her medium brown eyes. The eyes were always the hardest part, for some reason, and she didn’t usually bother. But she didn’t want the ae’Magi to think that she had even the slightest touch of green magic. It might be important in her escape. With a bit more effort, her skin darkened to add authenticity.

“Too bad we can’t do nothin’ with her but look.” A callused hand ran over her hip.

“Yup, don’ you ever think of nothing else. Just you remember what happened to Len. He thought the ae’Magi wouldn’t ever know. Besides, we usually get a turn at ’em.”

Goody. Something to look forward to.

She was dragged forward again, her exhaustion making her more of a deadweight than before. Her head contacted the stone wall when she was swung over a broad shoulder.

“They sure grow these Northerners heavy!” More laughter, but by then Aralorn was beyond caring.

It was late at night when Wolf returned to the camp. He expected everyone to be asleep. Instead, he came upon Myr seated on a rock in front of the caves and polishing Aralorn’s sword by the light of the moon.

“Where did you find it?” Wolf asked.

Startled, Myr leapt to his feet, holding the sword at ready. Seeing Wolf, Myr resumed his former position on the rock.

“Oh, it’s you, Wolf. No luck? Damn.” Myr held the blade up to the light. “I found it in a small cave off the entranceway this evening. Someone had made an attempt to clean it but didn’t do a very good job. I suppose that one of the children found it and left it there when he realized what it was. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d clean it—no sense letting a good sword rust.”

“No,” agreed Wolf, lying down facing Myr with his muzzle on his paws.

Myr wasn’t his friend. But Aralorn had liked him.

After a while, Myr asked, ”Where did you look?”

So Wolf told him. It took some time. Myr listened, running the soft cloth over the odd-colored blade. When Wolf was done, Myr thought for a minute.

“How did you look for her? I mean did you just look? Couldn’t a shapeshifter change her shape and escape?”

Wolf shook his head. “Once she was imprisoned, she wouldn’t be able to change. Too much iron in the bars.” And she’d have been chained.

“Iron does suppress magic?” Myr said, only half asking.

“Shapeshifter’s magic.”

The night was still except for the noise the soft cloth made on the sword. Then Myr said, “I’d met her once before, did you know that? It took me a while before I could pin down just where, because I was only a child. A more pompous, self-centered, proper little brat than I was you’d be hard-pressed to find. She was younger then, too, but she had the same mannerisms. Equal with anybody and observing protocol only because it suited her. I was offended, but my grandfather laughed and kissed her hands and said something about counting on her to liven up a dull reception.”

There was a brief pause before he continued with his story. “You have to understand that I’ve been raised reading people’s faces all my life. I saw that she really respected the tough old man, and the lack of sincerity in her manners was—dislike for the untruths that protocol demanded. It was a lesson that I took to heart.” Myr paused, examining the gleaming blade.

With a sigh, he set it aside. “What I’m getting to is this: The ae’Magi was at court a lot in those days. My grandfather thought the world of him. If I met Aralorn at court, wouldn’t he have? She’s not . . . pretty, but she is memorable. And if she wasn’t, her father certainly is. If I were going to break someone, the easiest way would be to go after her family. You might check out Lambshold and see if all of the Lyon’s family are accounted for.”

Wolf caught his breath sharply. “She would be much more conscious of that than you. With that in mind, she would do her best to make herself unrecognizable. How long is it since she was taken?” He’d lost track of time.

“Four days.”

Finally, the wolf spoke again. “She’s in one of the dungeons obviously—or she’s escaped, though that is extremely unlikely.” She’d escaped once, but the ae’Magi hadn’t been expecting it. “I think she may be in the first place I looked—in the Archmage’s castle. When I searched the last few castles I was thorough, and I think that she would have had to hide herself really well—better than she probably could by then. She doesn’t have much time, the dungeon masters in the ae’Magi’s keeps are not renowned for their gentle treatment of the prisoners—to say nothing of the ae’Magi himself. She should be safe from him, though; he’s got other concerns that are more important.” Wolf hadn’t been subtle the last two places he’d been, and the ae’Magi would know he’d been inside. Three dead men would have told him that someone had been there, and the method of their deaths would have told the Archmage who.

Wolf paused to think before he continued. “If she’s not there, I’ll come back here to check in with you. If she escapes, this is the only sanctuary that she has to come to.” On those words, the wolf melted into the forest shadows, leaving the young king sitting alone on his rock.

“Myr has a mage with him. What does he look like?”

The ae’Magi’s voice was really extraordinary, thought Aralorn. Soft and warm, it offered sanctuary—but she knew those tones, and terror cat-footed toward her.

But not even that fear combined with the cuts he was making on her arm was enough to hold her attention for long. The pain from the recoil of centuries of magic woven tightly into the stones of the dungeons made what he was doing to her body seem secondary.

She wondered if she ought to tell him that if he used iron manacles in the torture chamber as well as in the cell, she would be much more aware of what he was doing. The iron effectively blocked her meager talents from picking up on the twisted magic that a thousand years of magicians had left in the stone of the dungeon.

A bucket of cold water brought her attention back to her body. It felt good against her hot skin at first, but then the chill made her shake helplessly. In a rational moment, she smiled; the lung fever would take her soon—in a few days—if she could just hide it from him so that he wouldn’t turn her into one of the dead things that hung restlessly in her cell. She’d been grateful when she didn’t have to look at them anymore—if only she could do something about hearing them.

He wasn’t using magic on her as he had the first time she’d visited his castle. Maybe the dungeon inhibited his magic as well—or maybe he was using all his magic for something else.

Baffled, the ae’Magi looked at the pathetic figure hanging in front of him. He had seen her smile while he was cutting her, and it bothered him. She wasn’t one of those who enjoyed pain, but she didn’t seem to even feel it. Torture wasn’t working on her.

She seemed confused sometimes, though. Perhaps stealth could get him what pain could not.

“Sweetheart, sweetheart, listen to me,” said the ae’Magi in Myr’s voice, his tones gentle, like a young man courting a mate.

Aralorn jerked in reflex at the voice.

“Sweetheart, I know that you hurt. I’ve come to get you out of here, but you need to tell me where Cain is. We need him to get you out.”

She frowned, and said in a puzzled voice, “Cain?”

“Yes,” asked Myr again, and she heard a touch of anger in the voice now, “where is Cain? Where is Myr’s mage?”

Myr wouldn’t be angry with her—even though it sounded like Myr, it wasn’t him. The certainty came from somewhere. She should know who Cain was, though, and it bothered her that she didn’t. That didn’t mean that she wanted the person who stole Myr’s voice to know that.

“Dead,” she said then, with utter certainty in her voice. Somewhere a part of her applauded the edge of melancholy she gave to her voice. “He is dead and gone.”

That hadn’t occurred to him; it simply hadn’t occurred to him. The ae’Magi paced the length of the chamber. It wasn’t possible. Angrily, he stripped off the gloves he’d fastidiously donned to separate him from her filthy flesh.

It would ruin everything if his son was dead. All his efforts would be for nothing. He raised the knife to her throat, then thought better of it. She still had information for him; he wouldn’t kill her for spite.

Turning on his heel, the ae’Magi stalked out of the chamber. As he passed through the guardroom, he left orders to have her moved back into her cell and, as an afterthought, told the dungeon master that if he could find out where the rebels were hiding, he would give him a silver piece.

The dungeons were among the parts of the ae’Magi’s castle that were very old—the result of those years was not lovely. The smell made Wolf choke as he snuck into them from the hidden entrance. Magic had taken him to the castle, but he’d been forced to use mundane methods to enter. The ae’Magi was in residence, which gave him hope that Aralorn would be, too—but it meant he had to be very careful about the magic he used.

No one saw him as he emerged into the walkway between the cells. The night guards were in the room that was the only passageway from the main dungeon, other than the hidden ones, of course. There was no need for their presence in the actual dungeon at this time of night, unless they were escorting a captive in or out—or someone was being tortured.

He stood on a wide stone walkway, in human shape. On one side were seven cells, sunken the depth of a grave, in the old style. On the other side was the torture chamber, also so sunken. It was unoccupied at the moment. The only hint of life came from the smoldering coals in the raised hearth in the center of the cell.

There was no light in the dungeon other than Wolf’s staff, but it was sufficient. The ring of keys was still kept on its holder near the guardroom door—for convenience’s sake.

He slid the nearest door open and climbed down the steep, narrow stairs. The prisoners chained to the wall were too far gone to notice him. He took wolf shape because of the wolf’s sharper senses and regretted the necessity. The smells of a dungeon were bad enough to the human nose, but the wolf’s eyes were watering as he backed out of the cell. Returning to his human form, he closed the cell back up. She wasn’t in there. He found the same at the second cell.

In the third cell, chained corpses littered the floor and hung on the wall like broken dolls, but they moaned and breathed with the pseudolife that animated Uriah. They watched him with glittering eyes as he shifted again to wolf shape to sample the air. But they were too new, too heavily controlled by the ae’Magi’s spells, to give alarm.

More people in the fourth cell. When he’d lived here, there had seldom been more than one or two people in the whole dungeon. He shifted to wolf, took a breath—and stopped breathing altogether.

She’s here.

He pushed the fierce joy of that aside. Time enough to celebrate when he had her safe.

He found her in the corner of the cell. Her face was different, but she was muttering to herself, and it was her voice, her scent under the filth. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, breaking into heavy coughing when he shifted her against him to take off the irons—the dungeons held so much magic that short of melting the stone, the ae’Magi wouldn’t feel what he did unless he was in the next room. That didn’t mean they could afford to stay here long. Wolf swore at the wounds the cuffs left on her ankles and wrists.

No time to look for further wounds. He had to get out of here.

Gently, he picked her up, ignoring the smell of dungeon that clung to her. He stepped over the huddled bodies of her fellow inmates with no more attention than if they had been bundles of straw. Although he had no hands free to carry it, the staff followed him like an obedient dog.

It wasn’t until he stood outside the cell that he realized he had a problem. The secret door he’d entered through was a crawl space, too narrow to get through with Aralorn unable to move on her own.

He didn’t have time to dawdle.

A touch to the mask with his staff and both disappeared. A brief moment of concentration, and the scars followed. He was no shapeshifter. The face he wore beneath the scars was the one he was born with: It was his as much as the scars were also his.

Trying to avoid causing her any further hurt, he positioned Aralorn on his shoulder, holding her in place with one hand and letting the other hang carelessly free. A ball of light formed over his left shoulder and followed him to the guardroom door.

As he opened the door, the guards scrambled for their weapons until they saw his face. Wolf carelessly tossed the keys on the rough-hewn table, where they left a track in the greasy buildup as they slid. When he spoke, it was with the ae’Magi’s hated voice, soft and warm with music. The illusion was simple—he didn’t need much to make his face look so near to the ae’Magi’s that in the dark they would not be able to tell him from his father.

“I think that it would be wiser from now on,” he told them, “for the guard in charge to keep the keys on his person. It is too easy for someone to enter the dungeon by other paths. There is no reason that we should make it any easier to get into the cells than it already is.”

Without looking at the men again, he walked to the far door, which obediently opened to let him through and closed after him. The wide staircase that led to the upper floors stretched in front of him, leaving but a narrow space against the wall, supposedly to allow access to the area under the stairs that was sometimes used for storage. It was this path that he took, ducking as he moved under the stairway.

Unerringly, he touched the exact spot that triggered the hidden door. As he stepped through, he whispered a soft spell, and the dust under the stairs rearranged itself until it looked as it had before he walked there.

He put out the light as the stone door shut behind him. The passage was as dark as pitch, and there was little light for even his mage-sensitive eyes to pick out. Tiny flecks of illumination that found their way through openings in the mortar made the towering walls glitter like the night sky. Their presence was the reason he’d put out the light—lest someone in a dark room on the other side of the wall witness the same phenomenon.

Wolf kept one hand against a wall and the other securely around Aralorn and felt the ground ahead with his feet. He slowed his progress when a pile of refuse he kicked with his foot bounced down an unseen stairway. With a grim smile that no one could see, he continued blindly down the stairs.

There were shuffling noises as rats and other less savory creatures scrambled anonymously out of his way. Once he almost lost his footing as he stepped on something not long dead. A growling hiss protested his encroachment on someone’s dinner.

Only when they reached the last of the long flight of steps did he decide they were far enough down that he dared a light. The floor was thick with dust; only faint outlines showed where he had disturbed the dust the last time he’d been here several years before, raiding one of the hidden libraries—there were more than the one he’d made off with completely.

Content that the passage had remained undiscovered, Wolf walked to a blank wall and sketched symbols in the air before it. The symbols hung glowing orange in the shadows until he was finished; then they shimmered and moved until they were touching the wall. The wall glittered in its turn, before abruptly disappearing—opening the way to still another obscure passage, deep in the rock under the castle. He continued for some time, his path twisting this way and that, through passages once discovered by a boy seeking sanctuary.

Twice he had to change his route because the way he remembered was too small for him to take carrying Aralorn. Once, the passage was blocked by a recent cave-in. Several of the corridors showed signs of recent use, and he avoided them as well. They surfaced finally from the labyrinth, several miles east and well out of easy view of the castle.

He shifted her from his shoulder then, cradling her in his arms, though she was harder to carry that way. There was nothing that he could do until they reached safer ground, so he trod swift of foot through the night-dark forest, listening intently for sounds that shouldn’t be there.

He wished that he hadn’t had to show himself, because now—after all of his caution—it was going to be obvious that he was mixed up with Myr’s group. The ae’Magi had been seeking him for a long time. So the attacks on Myr’s camp were going to intensify. It was possible that the guards wouldn’t mention the incident to the ae’Magi—but it was always better to be prepared for the worst. He was going to have to stage his confrontation with the Archmage soon.

He wasn’t looking forward to the coming battle. Old stories of the Wizard Wars—Aralorn could tell them by the hour—spoke of battles of pure power between one magician and another, and the great glass desert, more than a hundred square miles of blackened glass, gave mute evidence of the costs of such battles. If he, with his strange mutations of magic, ever got involved in a battle on those terms, the results could be far worse.

It might be better by far to let the magician extend his power. Even the best magicians live only three to four hundred years, and the ae’Magi was well into his second century. Expending his power the way that he was now, even taking into account the energy he stole, would take years off his life. A hundred years of tyranny was better than the destruction of the earth.

The glass desert had been fertile soil once.

He walked until well after the sun rose, following no visible trail—losing the two of them in the wilds as best he might. He stopped when they reached the cache he’d set up on his way to the castle, far enough off the trails that they should be safe for a while. Not safe enough to use magic to transport them—that the ae’Magi might follow. But he could hide them from this distance—he’d found some spells that worked for that since his time hiding in the Northlands. Spells that had allowed him to follow Aralorn around without worrying the ae’Magi would find him.

He opened the bedroll awkwardly, unwilling to set her on the hard ground, and gently placed her on the soft blankets. His arms were cramping and sore from carrying her, so he had to stretch a bit before he did anything else.

Her darker skin hid the flush of fever, but it was hot and dry to his touch. Her breathing was hoarse, and he could hear the fluid in her lungs. He rolled the second blanket up and stuffed it under her head to help her breathe. Efficiently, gently, he cleaned her with spell-warmed water.

On the dark skin it should have been more difficult to see the bruises, but her skin was gray from illness, revealing the darker patches. Some were obviously old, probably from her initial capture. But fresh bruises overlay the old ones.

Three ribs were either broken or cracked, he wasn’t well enough trained in healing to tell the difference. The ribs and a large lump on the back of her head seemed the worst of her wounds—both were more likely the result of her initial capture than any torture.

Her fingernails had been removed, swollen knuckles revealed the violence of the method used to pull them. The toes on her right foot were broken, the smallest torn off completely. She had been whipped with efficiency from the top of her shoulders to the backs of her knees. But those wounds would heal in few weeks (except, of course for the misplaced toe). A woman could live without a toe.

He pulled out the bag of simples that he had brought with him. He wasn’t a healer, by any means, but he’d picked up enough to bind her wounds.

When he was through cleaning her back, he covered it with a mold paste and wrapped the bandage around tight enough to help immobilize her ribs. He splinted the toes and cleaned and bandaged her ankles, hands, and wrists.

It was while he was working on her wrists that he noticed the large sore where the inner side of her arm had been skinned. He stilled, then very gently covered the sore with ointment and wrapped it as if it hadn’t sent chills down his spine.

It was one of the ae’Magi’s favorite games. The inner arm was tender, and a man who was skilled with a skinning knife could cause significant pain without incapacitating his victim. The ae’Magi usually did something extremely nasty first to soften his victim.

Carefully, Wolf opened Aralorn’s mouth and examined the inside of her cheek, the roof of her mouth, under her tongue, and her teeth. Nothing. He looked inside her ear and said a few soft words of magic. Nothing. As he turned her head to look at her other ear, something sparkled in the sun. Her eyelids.

Carefully Wolf held her face where the sunlight fell on it fully. Both of her eyelids, on careful examination, were slightly swollen, but it was the seepage that told the real story.

He held his open hand several inches over her eye and murmured another spell. When he took his hand away, he held four long, slender, steel needles, each barbed on the end like a fisherman’s hook. The needles were sharp enough that they slid in with little pain, but every time the eye moved, the sharpened edges of the needle cut a little more. They were not the expensive silver needles, but the cheaper iron-based steel—made primarily for coarser work.

He looked at them for a minute and they melted, leaving his hand undamaged. As he removed four more from her other eye, he wished passionately, and not for the first time in his life, that he knew more.

True healing was one of the first things taught to a shapeshifter; but for a human magic-user, it was one of the last arts learned. Increasing the efficacy of herbs was the best he knew. He doubted that in this case even a shapeshifter could heal her eyes—he seemed to remember something about wounds made with cold iron being more difficult than others.

He put her in a soft cotton shirt that reached to her thighs. When he was finished, he put a cold-spelled compress over her eyes and bound it tightly in place.

He had reached the end of his expertise. Tiredly, he covered her with another blanket and lay down next to her, not quite touching. He slept.

Her world consisted of vague impressions of vision and sound. She saw people she knew, strangely altered. Sometimes they filled her with horror, other times they drew no emotion from her at all. There was Talor as he’d been the last time she’d seen him in Sianim—then something happened to him, and he was dead, only he was talking to her and telling her things that she didn’t want to hear.

Sometimes she floated in a great nothingness that scared her, but not as much as the pain. Her body was a great distance away, and she would pull back as far as she could because she was afraid of what she would find when she returned. Then, like the stretchy tubris rope that children played with, something would snap, and she would find herself back in the midst of the pain and heat and terror. Someone screamed, it hurt her ears, and she wished the sound would stop.

This time her return was different. Besides being hot, she was also wet and sticky. The pain was dimmed to bearable levels; even the ache in her side was less. There was something that attracted her attention and she concentrated—trying to figure out what it was. It had called her back from her nothingness into a place she’d much rather not be. She decided in a moment of pseudorationality that she needed to find it and kill it so she could be free to go away.

She looked for it in her dreams and fragments of impressions touched her. There was something terribly wrong with her eyes. Cold iron whose wounds were permanent. It had bitten and chewed and . . .

She shied away and found another piece of memory. Magic horribly distorted and twisted, making dead men breathe. It frightened her. There was no safety in death here, and she wanted the sanctuary that death should offer. Then the cold iron cut off her awareness of the dead things that shared her space. She had never felt so helpless; it gave her a dispirited claustrophobia that made her strain repeatedly against the bonds, until she exhausted herself. Bonds that most well-trained, full-blooded shapeshifters might have gotten out of, but she had all the weaknesses and too little power.

There . . . while she was fighting . . . she almost had it. The thing that had pulled her back and made her hurt again. It was sound, familiar sound. Why should that bother her?

She was so tired. She was losing her concentration, and pictures came more rapidly until she was lost in her nightmare memories again.

They’d been camped in the same place for three days. It worried him because they were much too close to the ae’Magi’s castle, but the thought of moving her worried him more. Instead of getting better since being out of the cell, she seemed worse. Her eyes were seeping with the pus of infection. Her fever was no higher, but it was no lower either. Her breathing was more difficult, and when she coughed, he could tell that it hurt her ribs.

As he watched her, he tormented himself with guilt. Had he been quicker to find her, she would have stood a better chance. The needles had been used on her eyes only recently. He could have found her in his first search if he’d only remembered that she might be wearing someone else’s face.

As it did when he was angered, the other magic in him flickered fey—nudging him, tempting him. Usually he used it, twisting it toward his own ends, but this time he was tired with worry, guilt, and sleeplessness. The magic whispered, seducing him with visions of healing.

His eyes closed, without conscious thought he stretched out carefully beside Aralorn. Gently, he touched her face, seeing the wrongness there—the slight fracture in the skull that he hadn’t been aware of.

As he gave control away to the seductive whispers of his magic, he found that he could feel her pulse, almost her thoughts. Sex notwithstanding, this was closer than he’d ever been to another human being. With anyone else, he would have lashed out, done anything just to get away—to be safe alone.

But this was Aralorn, and he had to heal her, or . . . He caught a flick of the desperation of that thought, but was soon lost in the peace of his magic. He floated with it for what could have been a hundred years or a single instant. Gradually, his fear of the loss of control, so well learned when his searing magic had leapt out burning, hurting, scarring, crept upon him—breaking the trance he’d fallen into.

He opened his eyes and gasped for air. His heart was pounding, and sweat poured off his body. Great shudders racked him. He turned his head enough to look at Aralorn.

The first thing that hit him was that he was looking at Aralorn. The guise she’d donned was gone. The bruises on her legs looked much worse on her own relatively pale skin. Fever had brought unnatural color to her pale cheeks.

When he could, he bent over and removed the bandage from her eyes. The swelling had almost completely gone and her eyes appeared normal when he carefully lifted her eyelids. He hadn’t looked before—he knew what those needles had done. He felt carefully with his fingertips where he’d seen the break in her skull and could locate nothing.

Almost too tired to move, he pulled her head onto his shoulder and drew blankets neatly around them. He knew he should stay up and keep watch—there was no warhorse to share guard duty with—but he hadn’t been this tired since his early apprentice days.

It was morning when Aralorn awoke, still slightly delirious. She’d had dreams of the quiet sounds of the forest before, and she let herself take that comfort now. She knew that all too soon she would have to face reality again. The nice thing was that the times reality crept in were getting farther and farther apart.

She thought about that for a minute before she realized that there was a man beside her. Delirium took over then, and she was drowning slowly. It was very hard to breathe, and she lost track of the forest while she strangled.

The soft sounds of a familiar voice lent her comfort and strength, but there was something wrong with the voice. It was too soft, it should be cold and rough, harsher. She associated unpleasant things with the warmer tones. The voice she wanted to hear should be dead like the Uriah, like Talor. She could hear someone whimpering and wondered who it was.

She ate and it tasted very good, salty and warm on her sore throat. She drank something else and a part of her tasted the bitter herb with approval, knowing that it would help her breathe. Wasn’t there some reason that she didn’t want to get better?—but she couldn’t decide why she wouldn’t want to get well, and while she thought about it, she drifted back to sleep.

Wolf watched her and waited. Without the unquenchable energy that characterized her, she looked fragile, breakable. Awake, she had a tendency to make him forget how small she was.

He gritted his teeth and controlled his rage when she cried out in terror. Although she babbled out loud, she said nothing that would have been any use to the ae’Magi were he listening.

She was quiet finally, and Wolf sat propped up against a tree, near enough to keep an eye on her but far enough away that he wouldn’t disturb her slumbers.

He should never have been able to heal her. Indisputably, he had. Even if he did nothing more than eliminate the paths the needles had cut into her eyes, it was more than human magic allowed for. Less dramatic but even further outside the bounds of magic, as he understood it, was the fact that she now wore the appearance that was hers by birth.

He’d always had the ability to do things beyond the generally accepted bounds of human magic—taking wolf shape for extended periods of time was one of those. Always before he could have attributed this to the enormous power he wielded. Human magic could heal, but it required a more detailed knowledge of the human body than he had acquired—killing required much less precision. Human magic could not recognize a shapeshifter’s natural shape and restore her to it . . . as he had done.

His magic had blithely crashed through the laws of magic established for thousands of years. What was he that he could do such things?

He found no answers. He’d seen the woman who bore him only once that he could remember. She’d seemed ordinary enough—for a woman who had spent a decade in the ae’Magi’s dungeon. But the ae’Magi had got a son on her and kept her alive afterward. She must have been more than she seemed.

Wolf had been the result of an . . . experiment perhaps: one that had gotten out of hand.

Aralorn stirred, catching his attention. He got to his feet with relief at being drawn from his thoughts, and went to her.