Masques

EIGHT

Aralorn was in the habit of waiting until she knew where she was and who she was supposed to be before she opened her eyes—a habit developed from frequently being someone other than herself. For some reason, it seemed more difficult than usual. The warm sun on her face seemed as much out of place as the sound of a jay squeaking from its perch somewhere above her.

She moved restlessly and felt a warning twinge from her side that was instantly echoed from various other parts of her body. As a memory aid, she found it effective—if crude.

The problem was, she had no idea how she had gotten from the ae’Magi’s dungeon to where she was.

Deciding that it was unlikely that she would come to any earth-shattering conclusions lying around feigning sleep, she opened her eyes and sat up—an action that she had immediate cause to regret. The abrupt change in position caused her to start coughing—no pleasant thing with cracked ribs. She collapsed slowly back into her prone position and waited for her eyes to quit watering.

Breathing shallowly, she restricted herself to turning her head to examine her current environment. She was alone in a small clearing, surrounded by thick shrubs that quickly gave way to broad-leafed trees. She could hear a brook running somewhere nearby. The sun was high and edging toward afternoon. Mountains rose, not far away, on at least three sides. They were smaller than their Northland counterparts, but impressive enough. Also unfamiliar, at least from her angle.

The blankets in which Aralorn was more or less cocooned were of a fine intricate weave and finer wool. She whistled softly at the extravagance. Just one of them would cost a mercenary two months’ salary, and she was wrapped in two of them, with her head pillowed on a third. She should have been too warm, bundled up so heavily—but it felt good.

The bandaging on her hands and wrists was neatly tied and just snug enough to give support without being too tight. Whoever had tied it was better at binding wounds than she was—not a great feat. She didn’t bother to examine the other bandages that covered her here and there, preferring not to scrutinize her wounds in case too many body parts were missing or nonfunctional.

It occurred to her then that her eyes should belong to the category of missing and nonfunctional items. The method the ae’Magi had used to blind her had been . . . thorough. Enough so that she had not thought that even shapeshifter magic could heal her.

She shivered in her blankets. She had the unwelcome thought that it might be possible for a strong magician to create the illusion of this meadow. She didn’t know for sure, but from her stories . . . Much more likely than someone breaking her out of the ae’Magi’s dungeons. Much easier, she was certain, than it would be to heal her eyes.

She looked around, but she was still the only occupant of the clearing.

Deciding that if it were the ae’Magi who was going to show up, she didn’t want to face him lying on her back, she found a slender tree growing near her head. She pushed herself back until she bumped into it—the effort it took was not reassuring. Gradually, so as not to trigger another fit of coughing, she raised herself with the tree’s support until she was sitting up with her back against it. She waited for a minute. When she didn’t start coughing, she slid herself up the tree, the bark scraping her back despite the wrapping job someone had done—that felt real enough. Finally, she was standing—at least leaning.

She didn’t hear him until he spoke from some distance behind her. His voice was without its usual sardonic overtones, but it was still blessedly Wolf’s. “Welcome back, Lady.”

Sheer dumb relief almost sent her crashing to the ground. Wolf. It was Wolf. He, she was willing to believe, could rescue her and heal whatever needed healing. Safe.

She swallowed and schooled her face—he wouldn’t enjoy having her jump on him and sob all over him any more than she’d have enjoyed the memory of it once she got her feet safely under her again.

When she was sure she could pull off nonchalant, she turned her head with a smile of greeting that left her when she saw his face. Only years of training kept her from giving her fear voice, even that couldn’t stop the involuntary step backward that she took. Unfortunately, her feet tangled in one of the blankets, she lost the support of the tree, and fell.

Definitely cracked ribs, but not even pain could penetrate her despair.

The Archmage.

Unwilling to let her enemy out of her sight, she rolled until she could see him, which set off a coughing fit. Eyes watering from pain, she saw that he, too, had stepped back, albeit more gracefully. He raised a hand to his face and then dropped it abruptly. He waited until she finished coughing and could talk—and there was no expression on his face at all.

Aralorn found herself grateful that she was unable to speak for a minute because it gave her a chance to think. The ae’Magi’s face it might be, but Wolf’s yellow eyes glittered at her—as volatile as the face was not.

It was Wolf, her Wolf. The still, almost flight of his body told her that more than his eyes. Illusion could reproduce anyone’s eyes, but she was unwilling to believe that anyone but her knew Wolf’s body language that well.

Cain was the ae’Magi’s son, but no one had ever told her how much the son resembled the father. If the ae’Magi’s son had shown the world his magic-scarred face, the one she knew best, surely someone would have mentioned the scars. Perhaps the ae’Magi didn’t want people to remember how much he looked like his demonized son. She could believe that if he didn’t want people to comment, they wouldn’t. Her next thought was that Wolf didn’t look like a man only a few years older than Myr—a few years younger than she was. Her third thought, as her coughing slowed down, was that she’d better figure out a way to handle this—she didn’t want to hurt him again.

Before she could say anything, Wolf spoke. “If I thought that you could make it to safety alone, I would leave you in peace. Unfortunately, that is not possible. I assure you that I will leave as soon as you are back . . .”

She ended his speech with a rude word and assumed as much dignity as she could muster while lying awkwardly on the ground amid a tangle of blankets. “Idiot!” she told him. “Of course I knew who you were.” She hadn’t been certain—he’d just made her short list, but she didn’t need to tell him that. “Just how many apprentices do you think the ae’Magi has had? I know the name of every one of them, thanks to Ren. He seemed to think that information might be valuable someday. How many mages do you think would have the power to do what you did to Edom?” Two or three, she thought, but one of those was Kisrah—who had not been on her list. “Just how stupid do you think I am?” She had to pause to keep from coughing again—but he didn’t attempt to answer her question with any of his usual sarcasm, and that worried her. So she turned her defense into an attack. “Why did you hide from me again? First the wolf shape, then the mask and the scars.” She let her voice quiver and didn’t give in to the temptation to make it just a little too much. “Do you distrust me so much?”

“No,” said Wolf, and the hint of a smile played around his mouth—more importantly, he no longer looked like he’d rather be anywhere than there. “I forgot.” He waved a hand in the general direction of his face. “The scars are legitimate. I acquired them as I told you. It wasn’t until I left there . . .” Left his father, she thought. “I realized that I could get rid of them the same way that I could take wolf shape. But for a long time, it didn’t matter because I was the wolf. When I decided to act against him instead of continuing to run—all things considered, I preferred to keep the scars.”

Aralorn certainly understood why that would be. “So why change now?”

“When I got you out of the dungeon, it was necessary to appear to be the ae’Magi in order to get past the guards. I was . . . I forgot to resume the scars, the mask.” He sat beside her. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Startle. Yes, that was one way to put it.

With an expression that didn’t quite make it to being the smile she intended, Aralorn told him, “When I die of heart failure the next time you frighten me like that, you can put that on my gravestone—‘I didn’t mean to startle her.’”

As she talked, she looked at him carefully. Seeing things that hadn’t been apparent at first. His face was without the laugh lines around the eyes and mouth that characterized the ae’Magi’s. There was no gray in the black hair, but the expression in his eyes made him look much older than his father had. Wolf eyes, Wolf’s eyes they were—with a hunter’s cold, amoral gaze.

“So why didn’t I know that Cain was scarred?” she asked him.

“My father kept them hidden.”

“Does Myr know who you are?” She found that was important to her—which told her that she’d never given up Reth, being Rethian, the way she’d given up Sianim. Myr was her king, and she wouldn’t have him lied to.

He nodded. “I told him before I offered my assistance. It was only fair that he knew what he was getting into. And with whom.”

There was a slight pause, then Aralorn said, “The ae’Magi asked me about you, about Cain.” That much she could remember.

“Did he?” Wolf raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t as calm as he appeared. If he had been in his wolf shape, the hairs along his spine would have been raised: She recognized that soft tone of voice. “What did you say?”

Aralorn raised her eyebrow in return. “I told him that you were dead.”

“Did he believe you?” he asked.

She shrugged and started to tug discreetly at the heap of blankets that intermingled with her feet. “At the time he did, but since you chose to rescue me, he’ll probably come to the conclusion that I lied to him.”

“Let’s get you into a more comfortable position”—he indicated her troublesome hobble with a careless hand—“and back under the covers with you before you catch your death, shall we?” His voice was a wicked imitation of one of the healers at Sianim.

Even as he untangled her and restored her makeshift bed to its previous order, she could feel an imp of a headache coming on. “Wolf,” she said softly, catching his hand and stilling it, “don’t use the scars. You are not the ae’Magi—you don’t have to prove it.”

He tapped her on the nose and shook his head with mock despair. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are overbearing, Lady?” That “Lady” told her that things were all right between the two of them.

That knowledge meant that the crisis was over, and she was suddenly exhausted. He resumed his efforts and tucked a pillow behind her head.

“Where are we, and how long have we been here?” It was an effort to keep her eyes open any longer, and her voice slurred as she finished the sentence, ending in a racking cough. As she hacked and gasped for breath, he lifted her upright. She didn’t notice that it helped any, but the feel of his arms around her was pleasant.

The hazy thought occurred to her that the greater part of the reason she’d left Reth to go to Sianim in the first place was to get away from the feeling of being protected. Now she was grateful for it. She didn’t think that he’d notice that the last few coughs were suppressed sounds of self-directed amusement.

“We’re about a day’s brisk walk away from the Master Magician’s castle. We’ve been here for three days. As soon as you wake up, we’ll start on our way.”

He said something more, she thought, but she couldn’t be bothered to stay awake for it.

He bent down and whispered it again. This time she heard it. “Sleep. I have you safe.”

The next time Aralorn regained consciousness, she was ruthlessly fed and dressed in a tunic and trousers she recognized as her own before she had a chance to do any more than open her eyes. She was propped up with brisk efficiency beside a tree and told to “stay there.” Wolf then piled all of the blankets, clothes, and utensils together and sent them on their way with a brisk wave of his staff.

“Where did you get my clothes?” Aralorn asked with idle curiosity from where she sat leaning against a tree. Her tree.

“From Sianim, where you left them.” With efficient motions, he was cleaning the area they had occupied until only the remains of the fire would give any indication that someone had camped there.

She’d known that. Had just needed him to admit it to her.

She raised an eyebrow at him, crossed her arms over her chest, and said in a deceptively mild tone, “You mean the whole time that I was all but bursting out of the innkeeper’s son’s clothes, wearing blisters on my feet with his boots—you could have gotten mine for me?”

He grunted without looking at her, but she could see a hint of a smile in his flawless profile. He was, she decided, without it soothing her ire in the least, more beautiful than his sire.

“I asked you a question,” she said in a dangerously soft tone she’d learned from him.

“I was waiting for the tunic seams to finally give way . . .” He paused to dodge the handful of grass she threw at him, then shrugged. “I am sorry, Lady. It just never occurred to me.”

Aralorn tried to look stern, but the effort turned into a laugh.

Wolf brushed the grass from his shoulders and went back to packing. Aralorn leaned back against her tree and watched him as he worked, trying to get used to the face he now wore.

In an odd sort of way, he looked more like his father than his father did. The ae’Magi’s face was touched with innocence and compassion. Wolf’s visage had neither. His was the face of man who could do anything, and had.

“Can you ride?” he asked, calling her back from her thoughts.

Aralorn considered the state of her body. Everything functioned—sort of, anyway. Riding was certainly better than any alternative she could think of. She nodded. “If we don’t go any faster than a walk. I don’t think that I could sit a trot for very long.”

He nodded and said three or four brisk words in a language she didn’t know. He didn’t bother with the theatrics in front of her. The air merely shimmered around him strangely. Not unpleasant—just difficult to look at, much nicer than when she changed shape. The black horse who had replaced Wolf snorted at her, then shook himself as if he were wet. His eyes were as black as his hide, and she found herself wishing he’d kept his own eyes no matter how odd it would have seemed for a horse to have yellow eyes.

She stood up stiffly, trying not to stagger—or start coughing again. When she could, she walked shakily up to him, grateful to reach the support of his neck.

Unfortunately, although Wolf-as-a-Horse wasn’t as massive as Sheen, he was as tall, and she couldn’t climb up. After her third attempt, he knelt in the dust so that she could slip onto his back.

He took them down an old trail that had fallen into disuse. The only tracks on it were from the local wildlife. The woods around them were too dense to allow easy travel, but Wolf appeared to know them—when the trail disappeared into a lush meadow, he picked it up again on the other side without having to take a step to the left or right. Wolf’s gaits, she found, were much smoother than Sheen’s; but the motion still hurt her ribs.

To distract herself when it started to get unbearable, she thought up a question almost at random. “Where did you find a healer?”

A green magic-user would never be anywhere near the ae’Magi’s castle. Other than her, she supposed, but she was no healer—green magic or not.

Speaking had been a mistake. The dust of the road set her coughing. He stopped, turning his head so he could watch her out of one dark eye.

When she could talk again she met his gaze and didn’t like the worry in it. She was fine. “You got rooked if you paid very much; any healer worth his fee would have taken care of the ribs and cough, too.”

Wolf twitched his ears and said in an odd tone, even for him, “He didn’t have enough time to do much. Even if there had been the time, I wouldn’t have trusted him to do more than what was absolutely necessary—he . . . didn’t have the training.”

Aralorn had an inkling that she should be paying more attention to the way he phrased his explanation, but she was in too much misery between her ribs and her cough to do much more than feel sorry for herself.

Then she had it. The conviction when she’d first heard his voice after waking alone in the little camp he’d set up. Of course Wolf had gotten her out and fixed her eyes so she could see.

But Wolf was a human mage. Son of the ae’Magi. And human mages might be okay at some aspects of healing—like putting broken bones together. But no human mage could have dealt with what had been done to her eyes.

Wolf kept to a walk, trying to make the ride as smooth as possible for her. He could discern that she was in a lot of pain by the way her hands shook in his mane when she coughed, but she made light of it when he questioned her. As the day progressed, she leaned wearily against his neck and coughed more often.

Worse, after that one, brief conversation, she’d quit talking. Aralorn always talked.

He continued until he could stand it no more, then he called a halt at a likely camping area, far from the main thoroughfares and out of sight of the trail they’d been following. As soon as he stopped, before he could kneel to make things easier, Aralorn slid off him, then kept sliding until her rump hit the ground. She waved off his concern, breathing through her nose, her mouth pinched.

Wolf regained his human form, then turned his attention to making a cushion of evergreen boughs and covering the result with the blankets, keeping a weather eye on his charge. By the time he finished, Aralorn was on her feet again—though, he thought, not for long.

“I’m moving like an old woman,” she complained, walking toward the bed he’d made. “All I need is a cane.”

She let him help her lie down and was asleep, he judged, before her eyes had a chance to close.

While Aralorn slept, Wolf stood watch.

The night was peaceful, she thought, except for when she was coughing. It got so bad toward the morning that she finally gave up resting and stood up. When she would have reached for the blankets to start folding them, Wolf set her firmly down on the ground with a growl that would have done credit to his wolf form and finished erasing all traces of their presence.

Dawn’s light had barely begun to show before they were on their way.

Once she was sitting up rather than lying down, Aralorn’s coughing mercifully eased. It helped that today they were cutting directly through the woods, which were thinned by the higher altitude. There was no trail dust to exacerbate the problem. When her modest herb lore identified some beggersblessing on the side of the road, she made Wolf stop so she could pick a bunch. With a double handful of the leaves stuffed in her pocket and a wad of them under her tongue, she could even look at the day’s journey with some equanimity.

The narcotic alleviated the pain of her ribs and some of the coughing, although it did make it a little more difficult to stay on Wolf’s back as it interfered with her equilibrium. Several times, only Wolf’s quick footwork kept her from falling off.

Wolf decided that the giggling was something he could do without but found that, on the whole, he preferred it to her silent pain. When they stopped, Wolf took a good look at Aralorn, pale and dark-eyed from the drug she’d been using. She’d refused food, because beggersblessing would make her sick if she ate while under its influence.

The end result, he judged, was that she was weaker than she’d been when they started that morning. He had not transported them by magic because he was afraid that his father would be able to track them and find where they went. But if they continued at this donkey’s pace, it was even odds whether his father would find them before she got too sick to ride at all.

He donned his human form once again, with his scars, and after a moment’s thought added the silver mask. It was a difficult spell, and without the mask and scars, he was uneasy. He didn’t need anything distracting him.

“Wolf?” she asked.

“We’re taking another way back,” he told her, lifting her into his arms—and took them into the Northlands.

Transporting people by magic was difficult enough that most mages preferred travel on horseback or coach rather than by magic, even in the spring, when the roads were nothing more than a giant mud puddle. Transporting someone into the Northlands, where human magic had a tendency to go awry, was madness, but he aimed for the cave where he had brought the merchant the day Aralorn had joined them. That would leave them with only one day’s ride to the camp and only a few miles to travel before the ae’Magi’s magic would be hampered if he found out where they had gone.

Concentrating on the shallow cave, he pulled them to it, but something caught them and jerked them on with enough force to stun Wolf momentarily . . .

He landed on his knees in darkness on a hard stone floor. His instinctive light spell was too bright, and he had to tone it down.

He was in the cave that housed his library.

Warily, he stood up and looked around—with his eyes and his magic. Aside from the irregular oddness that had become a familiar part of working his magic in the Northlands, nothing seemed wrong.

He laid her on the padded couch and pulled his cloak over her. It would only take him a minute to let Myr know he was back.

In the castle of the Archmage, the ae’Magi sat gently drumming his fingers on the burled wood of his desk. He was not in the best of moods, having tracked an intruder from castle to hold trying to discover who would be foolhardy enough to trespass and powerful enough to get away with it.

And now he knew who it had been—and what he’d been looking for.

The room that he occupied was covered in finely woven carpets. Great beveled windows lined the outside wall behind the desk, bathing the room with a warm golden glow. On the opposite wall was a large, ornate fireplace that sat empty in deference to the warmth of late summer. In front of the fireplace, the pretty blond girl who was his newest pet combed her hair and looked at the floor.

She trembled a bit. A month as his leman had made her sensitive to his mood, which was, he admitted, quite vile at the moment.

Facing the desk was one of the dungeon guards, who held his cap deferentially in his hand. He spoke in the low tones that were correct for addressing someone in a position so much higher than his own. Though he was properly motionless, the ae’Magi could tell that his continued silence was making the man nervous. As it should. As it should.

Finally, the ae’Magi felt he could control himself enough to speak. “You saw Cain take one of the female prisoners? Several nights ago.”

“Yes, Lord.” The guardsman relaxed as soon as the ae’Magi spoke. “I remembered him from when he lived here, but I didn’t realize who it was until he’d already gone. Last time I saw him, he were all scarred up, but I ’membered meself when he were a tyke he looked a lot like you, sire.”

“And why did it take you so long to report this?”

“You weren’t here, sire.”

“I see.” The ae’Magi felt uncouth rage coil in his belly. Cain had been here, here. “Which prisoner did he take?”

As if he had to ask. Dead, she’d told him. Cain was dead. And he’d believed her—so much so that when he found someone sneaking around in his territories, he’d never even considered it might be Cain.

“That woman Lord Kisrah brought in, sir.”

There was a darned patch on the guardsman’s shoulder. It had been so well done that the ae’Magi hadn’t noticed it until he got closer. He would see to it that the guardsmen’s uniforms were inspected and replaced when necessary. No one in his employ should wear a darned uniform.

This guardsman, the ae’Magi thought, enjoying himself despite his anger, wouldn’t be needing a new uniform ever again. He took his time.

“Clean up the dust and leave me.”

Shuddering, the sixteen-year-old silk merchant’s daughter swept the ashes of the guard into the little shovel that was kept near the fireplace. She did a thorough job of it but wasted no time.

After she had gone, he sat and ran his finger around one of the burls on his desk.

“I had him,” he said out loud. “I had the bait, and he came—but I lost my chance. I should have felt it, should have known she was something more.” He thought about the woman. What had been so special about her that would attract his son?

Moodily, he took the stopper off the crystal decanter that sat on a corner of his desk and poured amber wine in a glass. He held it up to the light and swirled the liquid, admiring the fine gold color—the same shade as Cain’s eyes. He tipped the glass and drank it dry, wiping his mouth with his wrist.

“There are, however, some compensations, my son. I know that you are actively working against me. You cannot remain invisible if you want to move to attack, and I will find you. The woman is the key.”

He whispered a minor summoning spell and waited only a short time before he was answered by a knock on the door. At his call, the Uriah who had once been a Sianim mercenary entered the study. The mercenaries had made fine Uriah. They were lasting longer than the ones he made from peasants. This one might last years rather than months. The old wizards had done better—theirs were still functioning though they had been created in the Wizard Wars.

He wished the second half of that book hadn’t been destroyed. He’d been looking for another copy of it for years, but he feared that there were no more.

“You’re that one who told me that you were familiar with the woman you took from Myr’s campsite?” the ae’Magi asked.

The Uriah bowed his head in assent.

“Tell me about her. What is her name? Where do you know her from?”

Another problem with the Uriah, besides longevity, the ae’Magi had found, was that communication was not all that it could be. Information could only be gotten with detailed questions, and even then a vital fact could be left out. They were good soldiers but not good scouts or spies.

“Aralorn. I knew her in Sianim,” it replied.

Sianim. Had his problem spread beyond Reth?

“What did she do in Sianim?”

The Uriah shrugged carelessly. “She taught quarterstaff and halfstaff. She did some work for Ren, the Spymaster, I don’t know how much.”

“She worked as a spy?” The ae’Magi pounced on it.

“Ren the Mouse doesn’t formalize much. He assigns whoever he thinks will be useful. From the number of her unexplained comings and goings, she worked for him more often than most.”

“Tell me more about her.”

“She is good with disguises and with languages. She can blend in anywhere, but I think she used to be Rethian.” The Uriah smiled. “Not much use with a sword.”

He’d liked her, the ae’Magi thought. The man had liked her. The Uriah was nothing more than a hungry beast, but he remembered what the man had known.

And then the Uriah said, “Ran around with a damned big wolf. Found him in the Northlands and took him home.”

“A wolf?” The ae’Magi frowned.

“Those yellow eyes made everyone jumpy,” the Uriah said.

The ae’Magi remembered abruptly that he’d recently had another escape from his castle. The girl had been aided by a wolf—or wolf pack—that had killed a handful of the ae’Magi’s Uriah, who had inexplicably gone after it rather than after the girl they’d been ordered to chase.

He tried to remember what this Aralorn had looked like—surely he’d have noticed if she were as exotic as his Northland beauty.

“Describe her to me.”

“She is short and pale-skinned even with a tan. Brown hair, blue-green eyes. Sturdily built. She moves fast.”

Not her, then, but still . . . green eyes. He’d bought that slave because she had gray-green eyes, shapeshifter eyes. Blue-green, gray-green—two names for the same color.

“You say she was good with disguises?”

Aralorn was too tired to wake up when the covering was pulled back, letting the cool air sweep over her warm body. She moaned when gentle hands probed her ribs, but felt no urgent need to open her eyes. She heard a soft sound of dismay as her hands were unwrapped. A touch on her forehead sent her back into sleep.

It was the sound of voices that woke her the second time, a few minutes later, much more alert. The nausea that was the usual companion to beggersblessing use had dissipated.

She noticed that she was in the library, covered with a brightly colored quilt. A familiar cloak, Wolf’s, lay carelessly tossed over the back of the sofa. Men’s voices were approaching.

She wondered how she’d slept through the trip to camp—because he’d said that he couldn’t have brought the merchant all the way here.

She started to sit up, only to realize that the clothing scattered on the floor was what she had been wearing. Hastily, she pulled the blankets up to her neck to protect her dignity just as Myr came around a bookcase.

“So,” said Myr with a wide smile, “I see that you’re more or less intact after your experience with the ae’Magi’s hospitality. I must say, though, that it will be a long time before I loan you any of my clothes again. I didn’t bring many with me.” The pleasure and relief in his voice was real, and she was surprised and not a little flattered that he cared so much about someone he’d known such a short time.

Aralorn smiled back at him and started to say something, but noticed that Wolf, who had followed Myr, was focusing intently on her hands. She followed his gaze to where her hands gripped the top of the blanket. Ten healthy nails dug into the cloth. The beggersblessing had left her wits begging, too; she hadn’t even noticed that she didn’t hurt at all.

Aralorn answered Myr absently. “Yes. Though he wasn’t the best of hosts. I only saw him once or twice the whole time I was there.”

Myr perched on the end of the sofa near Aralorn’s feet and looked, for once, as young as he was. “And he prides himself on his treatment of guests,” he said with a mournful shake of his head. “It doesn’t even look like he left you any mementoes.”

“Well,” said Aralorn, looking at her hands again, very conscious of Wolf’s doing the same thing. “You know he did, but I seem to have lost them. The last time I looked, my hands were missing the fingernails.”

“How is your breathing?” asked Wolf.

Aralorn took a deep breath. “Fine. Is this your healer’s work?” She wouldn’t have asked, would have assumed that it had been Wolf, but he was looking particularly blank.

Wolf shook his head. “No, I told you that he was not experienced enough to do more than he did.”

Wolf glanced at Myr. “I saw a few new people here, are any of them healers?”

“No,” replied Myr, disgust rich in his voice. “Nor are they hunters, tanners, or cooks. We have six more children, two nobles, and a bard. The only one who is of any help is the bard, who is passably good with his knives. The two nobles sit around watching everyone else work or decide to wander out in the main cave system so that a search party has to be sent after them.”

“You might try just letting them wander next time,” commented Wolf, whose attention was back on Aralorn’s healed hands.

Myr smiled. “Now there’s an idea.” Then he sighed. “No, it wouldn’t work. With my luck, they’d run into the dragon and lead it back here.”

“Dragon?” asked Aralorn in a startled tone, almost dropping her blanket.

“Or something that looks an awful lot like one. It’s been seen by two or three of the hunting parties although it hasn’t seen them, yet,” replied Myr.

Dragons were even more interesting than her healed hands. She remembered something. “That day I went out”—she glanced at Wolf and away again, not wanting to set him off—“I found some tracks. Tracks of something big. It was about six miles away and traveling fast. Where have you sighted it?”

“East and north, never closer than ten miles. Do you know anything about dragons? Something along the lines of whether or not they eat people would be helpful,” asked Myr in a hopeful tone, sitting down on one arm of the couch. “Some of my people are inclined to panic.”

“’Fraid not,” she answered. “The only ones that I’ve heard of are in stories. They do eat people in stories, but for some reason, they seem to confine themselves to virgins chained to rocks. Since I haven’t heard of anyplace nearby where there is a steady supply of virgins chained to rocks, I would suppose that it is a safe bet that this one has differing dietary requirements.” She nodded at Wolf. “Why don’t you ask the magical expert around here?”

Wolf shrugged. “The closest that I’ve ever gotten to one was the one asleep in the cave underneath the ae’Magi’s castle. Since it had been asleep for several centuries, I didn’t learn much. I thought, though, that it was supposed to be the last of its kind—the reason that it was ensorcelled rather than killed.”

“Well,” said Myr, with a lifted eyebrow, “if this creature isn’t a dragon, then it is closely related.”

“Wyverns are supposed to resemble dragons,” Aralorn suggested. “Smaller, dumpy dragons.”

“Wyvern or dragon, I’m not too sure that I’m comfortable with its being so close,” Myr said.

“Maybe it’ll eat the nobles that are giving you such a bad time,” suggested Aralorn. “You might try chaining them to a rock.”

She found that she was starting to get tired, so she leaned back against a cushion and closed her eyes. She didn’t sleep but drifted quietly, listening to the other two talk. She found it comforting. There was something she wanted to ask. She sat up abruptly when she remembered what it was.

“Astrid,” she said, interrupting them in the middle of a discussion on the best method of drying meat—something neither of them seemed to be too sure of—“did someone find her?”

“Yes,” said Wolf.

“The Uriah got her,” answered Myr at the same time.

Aralorn swallowed, and in a hoarse voice not at all like her own she asked, “Will she . . . ?”

“Will she what?” asked Myr.

Aralorn watched her hand as it traced patterns in the quilt, and asked in a low voice, “Will she become one of them now?”

Myr started as if to say something, but held back, wanting to hear Wolf’s answer first.

“No,” answered the ae’Magi’s son, “there is a ritual that must be followed to turn men into Uriah. She was simply eaten.”

Myr looked at him sharply.

“I’d always heard that they were the creation of some long-forgotten magician who left them to infest the Eastern Swamp,” Aralorn said. “Maybe protecting something hidden there, long forgotten. I assumed that the ae’Magi just found some way of controlling them.”

“He found out how to control them, yes. He also found out how to make them—it was in the same book”—Wolf reached casually to a shelf near Myr’s head and pulled out a thin, ratty volume—“this book, as a matter of fact. His version has only the first half of the book.”

Myr said, “That’s why you spelled the graves of the two people Edom killed.”

Wolf nodded, replacing the book on the shelf. “The runes that Aralorn traced over the bodies, and the fact that Edom hadn’t completed the ritual—the heart must be consumed—should ensure that they rest quietly. I just didn’t want to take chances.”

“Talor was one of them,” Aralorn told Wolf. “I was starting to head back to camp that day when I heard Talor’s signal.”

“He always was a little off pitch,” said Wolf.

“I thought that he was caught by the Uriah and needed help.” Her agitated hands gripped the quilt with white knuckles although her voice was calm. “I guess that was more or less the case, but there was no way that I could help him.”

There had been more than just Talor, she realized. She hadn’t even noticed at the time—or she’d been too dazed from the blow to the head to realize what she had been seeing: the features of friends in the faces of the Uriah.

A sharp sting on her cheek brought her back shaking and gasping. Wolf sat on the couch beside her, and she buried her head against his shoulder and shuddered dry-eyed, grateful for the firm arms wrapped around her back.

“He knew me, too,” she whispered. “It was still Talor, but he was one of them. He talked to me, sounded just like himself—but he looked at me like a farmer looks at dinner after a hard day’s work. I didn’t even know that Uriah could talk.”

Then, with difficulty, because she didn’t have much practice, she cried.

Myr took Wolf’s cloak and covered her back where the quilt left her exposed. He touched her hair a little awkwardly, and said quietly to Wolf, “She won’t appreciate my presence when she recovers. I’ll tell the others that she’s well. Stanis has been blaming himself for her capture—he won’t eat. It will be a weight off his back to find out that she’s been rescued and is here unhurt.”

Wolf nodded and watched him go. He rocked Aralorn gently and whispered soft reassurances. He was concentrating on her so that the voice took him by surprise.

“Tell her to stop that.”

Wolf brought his head up, alarmed at the strange voice. It was heavily accented and firmly masculine if a bit fussy. It also didn’t seem to come from anywhere, or rather there was no one where the voice came from.

“Tell her to stop that, I said. She’s driven my Lys away, and I simply won’t abide that. I have allowed her here because Lys likes her—but now she’s made Lys go away by thinking of all of those bad things. Tell her to stop it, or I will have to ask her to leave no matter what Lys says.” The voice lost a little of its firmness and became sulky.

The sound of someone else in the room distracted Aralorn, and she pushed herself up away from Wolf’s chest. Reaching down, she grabbed her tunic off the floor and used it to wipe her nose and eyes.

She, too, looked at the conspicuously empty space at the end of the sofa near her feet. Magical invisibility consisted of blending into shadows and turning eyes away rather than absolute invisibility; when someone actively looked, the invisible person could be seen. Wolf knew what she was doing—but there was nothing at the end of the sofa.

“Can you see him?” she asked Wolf.

When he shook his head, she directed her questioning to the man who wasn’t there. “Who are you?”

“That’s better,” said the voice, and there was a distinct pop of air that accompanies teleportation.

That pop made Wolf confident enough to say, “He’s gone.”

“What do you think?” asked Aralorn, settling back onto Wolf, her voice husky from crying. “Was that our friend who gives us a hand with the books and healed me?”

“I can’t imagine that there is an endless supply of invisible people here.”

Wolf knew he should be more concerned, but he’d suddenly become aware that Aralorn was naked under the quilt. It hadn’t bothered him before, when she’d been upset.

He started to shift her off him, with the end goal of getting as much distance on his side as possible. But as soon as his hands touched her hip—on top of the blanket—they wanted to pull her toward him, not push her away.

Self-absorbed, he only caught the tail end of Aralorn’s question. “Say that again?” he asked.

“I asked how long you left me alone in the library.”

“Not more than fifteen minutes. Less probably.”

She made a sound of amazement. “I’ve never heard of anyone who could heal that fast. No wonder I feel like a month-old babe; by all rights I should be comatose now.”

“Powerful,” Wolf agreed.

Aralorn nodded. “It was odd in a voice that young, but he sounded a bit querulous, maybe even senile.” She closed her eyes, and he couldn’t make himself shove her away. More asleep than awake, she murmured with a touch of her unquenchable curiosity, “I wonder who Lys is.”

When Wolf made no attempt to add to or answer her question, she drifted off to sleep.

Wolf cradled her protectively against him. He thought about shapeshifters, children, and refugees who unerringly found their way to Myr’s camp. And he remembered the ae’Magi’s half-mad son who wandered into these caves to find solace one night, led by a small gray fox with ageless sea-green eyes.