Wolfsbane

FOUR

The chill wind weaved its way through Aralorn’s heavy woolen cloak with the ease of a skilled lover, and she shivered in spite of the layers of clothing she wore. Although the keep was barely out of sight, the bones of her hands ached from the bitter chill. It always took weeks for her to acclimate to the cold northern winter.

Wolf, warm under his thick pelt, observed her attempts to tame her cloak, and asked, “Why did you decide to walk? Sheen would be much faster, not to mention warmer.”

“The shapeshifters’ village is difficult to reach by horse—sometimes impossible—and that area of Lambshold is too dangerous to leave him tied for any length of time.” Aralorn winced at the sharpness of her voice. His question had been reasonable; there was no need to give him the edge of her tongue because she was disappointed.

Before first light, they had visited the bier room and attempted to use the sword to slay the creature. Neither she nor Wolf, who, plague take the man, was a much better swordsman, had been able to even touch the shadow-thing with Ambris. The shadow had melted away from the sword with laughable ease.

Wolf hadn’t been able to tell anything more about the spells that held her father than he had before. Black magic had been used, but the pattern of the spelling was too complex to decipher while distracted by the creature who lurked in the bier room.

The only good thing to come out of the visit was that, as far as Wolf could determine, her father was no worse off this morning than he’d been last night. Scant comfort when his condition was so close to death that most people could not tell he was alive.

Wolf gave the clear skies a skeptical glance. “No clouds—I suspect it will be colder than sin. Why don’t you shapechange? Your mouse and goose aren’t much good here, but the icelynx is adapted for this area.”

The wind gusted, blowing snow into Aralorn’s face.

“Good idea” said Aralorn. “Then the shepherds will attack me, too.” She took a deep breath and reined in her temper. Snapping at Wolf was not going to free her father any faster, and for all that Wolf appeared so impassive, she knew better than most how easy it was to wound him. “Sorry. It’s all right. I’ll warm up as we walk.”

“I would not fret much about a bunch of sheepherders.”

Aralorn slanted a glance at him, unable to tell if he was serious or teasing. “They are my father’s men. No use stirring them up unduly if we don’t have to—besides, I’d just as soon talk to anyone we see. You never know what kernels of information might prove useful.”

They followed one of the main paths for several miles; this close to the keep, it was usually well traveled even in the dead of winter. They didn’t meet anyone, but it surprised her how much livestock had been left in the high pastures. Usually, they’d have been brought down to the lower, warmer valleys before any snow fell.

The first few herds they passed were distant, but she could tell they were not sheep from their color. When she had lived in Lambshold, there had been few herds of cattle; they were better suited for more temperate climates.

By chance, they came upon a herd unexpectedly close, and she caught a good look at the short, stout animals with long red hair that would have done credit to one of the mountain bears.

She stopped where she was and frowned at them a moment. Softly, so the animals wouldn’t be alarmed and charge, she said, “Ryefox.”

“Crossbred, by those horns,” Wolf replied. “I saw a ryefox drive away a bear once. Good eating, though.”

“If they’re only half as nasty as their full-blooded relatives, I’d rather face a half dozen Uriah,” commented Aralorn. “Naked,” she added, as one of the animals took a step toward them.

“They’re almost as sweet-tempered as you are this morning,” observed Wolf.

“Hah,” she said, forgetting that she’d been trying to keep quiet so as not to arouse the ryefox crossbreeds. “Look who’s talking, old gloom and doom.”

Wolf wagged his tail to acknowledge the justice of her comment, but only said, “I wonder that he found a cow or bull willing to go near enough to a ryefox to breed.”

“This must be the livestock experiment that Correy was talking about last night. The one my uncle was helping my father with.”

She kept a wary eye on the herd as they walked, but the ryefox appeared to be satisfied that their territory wasn’t being threatened and stayed where they were.

A chest-high rock wall marked the boundary where the grazing ended and the northern croplands began. Aralorn caught the top of the wooden gate barring the path and swung over without bothering to open it. Wolf bounded lightly over the fence a few feet away and landed chest deep in a drift of snow. He eyed her narrowly as he climbed back onto the path. Aralorn kept her face scrupulously blank.

She cleared her throat. “Yes, uhm, I was just going to advise you that this area gets windy from time to time—the mountains, you see. And . . . uh, you might want to watch out for drifts.”

“Thank you.” replied Wolf gravely, then he shook, taking great care to get as much of the snow on Aralorn as he could.

As they continued their journey, the path began to branch off, and the one that they followed got narrower and less well-defined with each division.

“Why farm this?” asked Wolf, eyeing the rough terrain. “The land we just traveled through is better farmland.”

“Father doesn’t do anything with this land. His farms are along the southern border, several thousand feet lower in altitude, where the climate is milder. But there is good fertile soil here in the small valleys between the ridges—the largest maybe twenty acres or so. The crofters farm it and pay Father a tithe of their produce for the use of the land and protection from bandits. He could get more gold by running animals here instead—but this makes good defensive sense. The lower fields are easily burned and trampled by armies, but up here it’s too much trouble.”

“Speaking of burning,” said Wolf, “something has burned here recently. Can you smell it?”

She tried, but her nose caught nothing more than the dry-sweet smell of winter. “No, but Correy said that one of the crofts had been burned. Can you tell where the smell is coming from?”

“Somewhere a mile or so in that direction.” He motioned vaguely south of the trail they were following.

“Let’s head that way then,” she said. “I’d like to take a look.”

They broke with the main path to follow a trail that twisted here and there, up and down, through the stone ridges. It had been well traveled lately, more so than the other such trails they had passed, although a thin layer of snow covered even the most recent tracks. As they neared the farm, Aralorn could smell the sourness of old char, but it didn’t prepare her for the sight that met her eyes.

Scorched earth followed the shape of the fields exactly, stopping just inside the fence line. The wooden fence itself was unmarked by the blaze, which had burned the house so thoroughly that only the base stones allowed Aralorn to see where the house had been. All around the croft, the fields lay pristine under the snow.

Wolf slipped through the fence and examined the narrow line that marked the end of the burn.

“Magic,” he said. He hesitated briefly, his nostrils flaring as he tested the air. “Black magic with the same odd flavor of the spells holding the Lyon. Look here, on the stone by the corner of the fence.”

She stepped over the fence and knelt on the blackened ground. Just inside the corner post, there was a fist-sized gray rock smudged with a rust-colored substance.

“Is it human blood?” she asked.

Wolf shook his head. “I can’t tell. Someone used this fire and the deaths here to gather power.”

“Enough power to set a spell on my father?”

Before he could answer, the wind shifted a little, and he stiffened and twisted until he could look back down their path.

Aralorn followed his gaze to see a man coming up the trail they had taken here. By his gray beard, she judged him to be an older man, though his steps were quick and firm. In ten years a child might become a man, but a man only grayed a bit more: She matched his features with a memory and smiled a welcome.

“Whatcha be doing there, missy?” he asked as soon as he was near enough to speak, oblivious to Aralorn’s smile.

“I’m trying to discover what kind of magic has been at work, Kurmun. What are you doing here? I thought your farm was some distance away.”

He frowned at her, then a smile broke over his face, breaking the craggy planes as if it were not something he did often. “Aralorn, as I live and breathe. I’d not thought to see tha face again. I told old Jervon that I’d have a look at his place, he’s still that shook. Commet tha then for tha father’s passing?”

She smiled. “Yes, I did. But as it turns out, Father’s not dead—only ensorcelled.”

Kurmun grunted, showing no hint of surprise. “Is what happens when tha lives in a place consecrated to the Lady. Bad thing, that.”

She shook her head. “Now, that was taken care of long since. You know the family’s not been cursed by the Lady since the new temple was built. This is something quite different, and it may take a few days to discover what. I thought the burning of the farm might have something to do with it.”

The old man nodded slowly. “Hadn’t thought there was a connection, but there might, there might at that. Have a care here, then. Tha father, he took ill here.”

“I didn’t know that.” But she could have guessed.

Black magic had long carried a death penalty. A mage would avoid it as much as possible. It only made sense that the black magic Wolf felt here would belong to the spell on the Lyon.

“Aye, he come here tha day after it burned. Walked the fence line, he did. Got to the twisted pole over there and collapsed.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” said Aralorn thoughtfully. “Why didn’t anyone at the hold mention it?”

“Well,” replied Kurmun, though she hadn’t expected him to answer her question, “reckon they didn’t know. Just he and I here, and I tossed him on his horse and took him to the hold. They was in such a state that no one asked where it’d happened. Only asked what, so that’s all I told they. This is some young men’s mischief, thought I then.” He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the burnt farm. “Tha father was felled by magic. Didn’t rightly think one had much to do with t’other myself. But if tha thinks it so, then so think I now.”

“I think it does,” she said. “Thank you. Did we lose any people?”

He shook his head. “Nary a one. Jervon’s oldest daughter come into her time. The missus and Jervon gathered they children and went up to attend the birth. Lost a brace of oxen, but they sheep was in lower pastures.”

“Lucky,” said Aralorn. “Or someone knew that they were gone.”

Kurmun grunted and scratched his nose. “The Lady’s new temple ha’ been cleaned and set to rights. Word is that there’s a priestess there now; I be thinking tha might want to be stopping in and talking to her. Happens she may help tha father. Happens not.” He shrugged.

“Ridane’s temple is being used?” There had been a lot more activity in the gods’ temples lately. She didn’t see how that could have any bearing on the Lyon’s condition, but she intended to check out anything unusual that had happened recently. “I’ll make certain to visit.”

“I’ll be on my way then,” he said, tipping his head. “Told my son’s wife I’d find a bit of salt for her out of the hold stores.” As he turned to go, his gaze met Wolf’s eyes. “By the Lady,” he exclaimed. “Tha beast’s a wolf.”

“Yes,” agreed Aralorn, adding hastily, “He doesn’t eat sheep.”

“Well,” said the old man, frowning, “see that he don’t. I’d keep him near tha so some shepherd doesn’t get too quick with his sling afore he has a chance to garner that tha wolf doesna eat sheep.”

“I intend to.”

“Right.” Kurmun nodded, and, with a last suspicious look at Wolf, he was on his way.

As soon as he was out of sight, Wolf said, “He called the death goddess the Lady?”

Aralorn smiled briefly. “Lest speaking her name call her attention to him, yes. The new temple is nearly five centuries old. ‘New,’ you understand, differentiates it from the ‘old’ temple that my long-dead ancestor had razed to build a hold. There wasn’t much left of the new temple when I last saw it; it’s been deserted for centuries. I wouldn’t think it would be possible to resurrect anything from the piles of stones. In any case, the temple is on the other side of the estate, so we’ll have to go there another day.”

She tapped her finger on a fence post. “This burned down before my father came here. Wouldn’t it have to happen at the same time?”

“There are ways to store power or even set spells to complete when certain conditions are met—like having your father come to this place.”

“It was a trap,” said Aralorn, “set for my father. The burning of the croft served both as bait and bane. Anyone who knew my father would know that he’d investigate if one of his people’s houses burned.” She shuffled snow around. “This farm is not too far from the shapeshifters’ territory. Other than knowing that it is possible for them to use blood magic, I don’t know what they would do with it or how. My uncle will know.”

“It could be a human mage,” said Wolf. “But any mage who came by here could tell that there was black magic done here. Why would they risk that? My father’s reign excepted, the ae’Magi’s job is to keep things like this from happening. They kill black mages, Aralorn. Only my father’s assurances and his power kept them from killing me—and they had no proof such as this. When we discover who did this, he will die. Why risk that merely to imprison the Lyon when killing would have been easier? What did he accomplish that was worth that?”

Silence gathered as Aralorn stared at the blood-splattered rock.

“Nevyn could do this,” said Wolf. “As long as no one knows I’m here, he will be the first one Kisrah ae’Magi will suspect. Nevyn first trained under old Santik.”

Aralorn frowned. She’d forgotten that as the ae’Magi’s son, Wolf would know a lot of the politics and doings of the mageborn. “Santik is someone Kisrah would associate with black magic?”

Wolf sighed. “His reputation wasn’t much better than mine—it wouldn’t surprise me or anyone else to find that he’d slipped into dark ways. Certainly, his library would have had the right books; nearly all the great mages have books they aren’t supposed to.”

“Nevyn’s first master was a great mage, too? Was that because of his family’s station?” Aralorn asked. “I thought the reason they married him off to my sister was that he wasn’t good enough to be a wizard proper. I’ve never seen him use magic at all.”

“He can work magic,” Wolf said. “They’d never have wasted Kisrah—or Santik, for that matter—on just any apprentice. But between Santik and being a Darranian-born mage, Nevyn learned to hate being a wizard. When Kisrah was satisfied that Nevyn could control his magic, he let him choose his own path.”

“You knew Nevyn,” said Aralorn slowly. It wasn’t in the details; those were something any wizard might know of another. It was the sympathy in Wolf’s voice. “Why didn’t you say something to me before?”

“We weren’t friends,” he said. “Not even acquaintances, really. Kisrah was a particular favorite of my father’s—”

“Because your father enjoyed playing games with honorable men,” muttered Aralorn.

“—whatever his reason,” continued Wolf, “and Kisrah brought Nevyn to the ae’Magi’s castle several times. Nevyn was quiet, as I remember him, always trying to disappear into the background. He had plenty of courage, though. I think I frightened him to death, but he never gave ground.”

“Ten years ago you were just a boy,” said Aralorn. “Nevyn’s a couple of years older than me—which makes him more than five years older than you.”

“I frightened a lot of people, Aralorn,” Wolf said.

She ruffled the fur behind his ears. “Not me. Come, let’s go visit my uncle so you can frighten him, too.”

As they climbed higher in the mountains, the area became heavily wooded, and they left behind all signs of cultivation. Here and there great boulders were scattered, some the size of an ox and others as big as a cottage. The narrow path they followed was obviously traveled by humans and game alike, and few enough of either. The dense growth, steep slopes, and snow made it difficult to find a place to leave the path. At last, Aralorn found a shallow, frozen creek to walk on.

“It must be uncomfortable to do this in the spring,” commented Wolf, stepping onto the snow-covered ice.

“It’s not easy anytime,” replied Aralorn, momentarily busy keeping her footing. After a moment, she realized his comment had more to do with the streambed they followed than the difficulty of the trail. “You don’t have to come this way exactly. All that’s necessary is to find someplace in this part of Lambshold that is not often traveled. Then you can find the maze.”

“The maze?” Wolf sounded intrigued.

She smiled, stopping to knock the snow that had packed itself around the short nails that kept the leather soles of her walking boots from slipping on the ice and snow. “You’ll see when we find it. But if you’d care to help, keep your eye out for a bit of quartz. I need it to work some magic. There should be quite a bit of it in the steep areas, where there’s no snow to cover it.”

They came to a small clearing bordered on two sides by the sharp sides of a mountain. Aralorn crossed the clearing and began searching for rocks on the steep areas where the sun and wind had left large sections bare.

“It doesn’t have to be quartz,” she said finally. “Sandstone would work as well.”

Wolf lifted his snow-covered nose from a promising nook under a clump of dead brush. “You could have said so earlier and saved yourself a case of frostbite. There is sandstone all over here.”

Aralorn tucked her cold, wet hands underneath her sweaters and warmed them against her middle as Wolf searched back and forth over the area they’d just covered. She’d taken her gloves off to push aside the snow that the afternoon sun had begun to thaw. They had too far to travel to risk getting her gloves wet. When she could feel her fingers again, she pulled the gloves out of her belt and slipped them over her hands.

“You know,” she said, as he seemed to be having no success finding the sandstone, “aren’t the crystals on your staff quartz?”

“I ought to let you try casting a spell using one of them,” said Wolf, not lifting his gaze from the ground, “but I find that I have become more squeamish of late. Ah, yes, here it is.”

Aralorn bent to pick up the smooth yellowish brown stone Wolf had unearthed and polish it free of dirt on her cloak.

“Sandstone is for perseverance,” she said, “quartz for luck. Which is why I started out looking for quartz: I suspect we’ll be spending the night up here.”

Wolf lowered his eyelids in amusement. “If you want luck, I have some opal you could use.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Aralorn demurred. “Ill luck I don’t need.”

She held the stone in her closed hand and raised her arm to shoulder height. Closing her eyes, she began singing. The song she chose was a children’s song in her mother’s tongue—though the words didn’t matter for the magic, just the pattern of the music, which would be their key to entering her mother’s world.

Slowly, almost shyly, awareness of the forest crept upon her. She could feel the winter sleep encasing the plants: wary curiosity peering at them from a rotted-out cedar in the form of a martin; the brook waiting for spring to allow it to run to the ocean far away. Finally, she found what she had been searching for and brushed lightly against the current of magic threaded throughout the forest. When she was certain it had perceived her, she stopped singing and allowed the awareness to pass from her. She looked down at the rock in her hands and, just for a moment, could see an arrow.

“Now, why doesn’t it surprise me that we have to travel up the side of the mountain?” she grumbled. She showed the arrow to Wolf, then tossed the stone back on the ground since it had served its purpose. “I should have brought some quartz from home. Irrenna won’t have disturbed my stashes of spell starters.”

“The maze would have been different?” asked Wolf, pacing beside her as she started up the mountain.

“It’s always different,” replied Aralorn. “The magic I worked to find the start of the maze will only work with sandstone or quartz—someone’s idea of a joke, I suspect. You know—‘Only with luck or persistence will you find the sanctuary hidden in the heart of the mountains.’ The kinds of words storytellers are fond of. I prefer to start with luck.”

The mountainside looked rougher from the bottom than it actually was, an unusual occurrence in Aralorn’s experience. All the same, she almost missed the stone altogether, hidden in plain sight as it was in the midst of a dozen other large boulders.

“Good,” she said, turning abruptly off her chosen path upward and taking a steep downward route that brought her skidding and sliding to the cluster of granite boulders. “The maze remembers me.”

“Ah?”

Aralorn nodded, touching a stone half again as tall as she was and twice as wide. “This stone is the first. The identity stone—for me that has always been granite.”

“Granite for compromise,” rumbled Wolf, “or blending.”

“Right,” she smiled. “Blending—that’s me. You’ll have to touch it, too.”

Wolf pawed it gently, drawing back quickly as if he had touched a candle flame. “That’s not magic,” he said, startled.

“No,” agreed Aralorn, waiting.

“It’s alive.”

“That’s the secret of the maze,” she agreed.

She drew a simple rune on the granite boulder with a light touch of her finger. As with the sandstone, a directional arrow appeared, outlined in shimmering bits of mica. It pointed across the mountain.

As they started on the indicated route, Wolf was silent. Aralorn left him to his thoughts and concentrated on staying aware of their surroundings. The stones could be difficult to find. She was so busy peering under bushes that she almost missed the waist-high rock standing directly in her path, as out of place in its environment as a wolf in a fold.

“Obsidian,” observed Aralorn soberly, touching the black, glasslike surface. The second stone would be Wolf’s. The maze’s choice surprised her at first; she’d half expected hematite, for war and anger. But the stones of the maze had read deeper than that, identifying Wolf’s nature as clearly as they had seen hers. He wore the mask of anger on his face, but his heart was enclosed in sorrow.

“This one’s yours,” she told him, in case he’d missed its significance. “Obsidian for sorrow. The rest we find will be something about both of us.”

“Sorrow?” commented Wolf.

“Yes,” said Aralorn. “Like the maze as a whole, the first stones can tell you more than that. They’ll show you a bit about yourself and the pattern you’re living now—if you interpret what they’re saying correctly. I’ve always mostly ignored what the maze had to say about me, but you can try it if you’d like. Touch the stone for a minute or two, and it will tell you something.”

He hesitated, then took a step sideways and leaned against it, saying as he did so, “I’m not certain this is wise. I’ve never been fond of prophecy.”

“Mmm. Remember, it’s not a prediction of things to come: It’s an assessment of who you are now. And they’re not infallible.”

After a bit, he stepped away. He didn’t say anything, so she didn’t ask him what he’d seen. She drew the rune she’d used before, and the arrow appeared on the top of the stone, sending them at a shallow angle downward.

“The next stones are less personal and intended to help predict the near future—some of the time. The language of stones is pretty limited. Mostly it will just present attributes we have or will need.”

“Not very helpful,” said Wolf, and Aralorn grinned at him.

“Not that I’ve ever noticed.”

During the next several hours, they wandered from stone to stone, finding serpentine for wit, quartz for luck, and malachite for lust (she snickered a bit at that one). They ate the salted meat and cheese Aralorn had brought with them. As the sun reached its zenith, they started down the path the malachite had chosen for them. The stone they found was amethyst, protection against evil. When they came to a second, then yet a third amethyst, Aralorn grew concerned.

“I wonder if the stones will let us through,” she said, crouching in the snow beside the melon-sized crystal. “They might not if they think that harm will enter with us.”

“Do you want me to wait here?” Wolf asked softly. “You might find this easier on your own.”

Realizing he’d taken the message incorrectly, she raised her eyebrow. “Amethyst may be protection from evil, but the stones have already appraised you and have named you sorrowful. If they had judged you as harshly as you judge yourself, we would never have come this far.”

“Then you took quite a chance not coming here alone.”

She braced both hands on her hips. “I took no chances.”

“Stubborn as a pack mule,” he said.

Since she’d heard a number of people claim that, she couldn’t disagree.

She drew another rune and saw that their path led upward, as it had for the past few stones.

“I hope this ends soon,” she grumbled. “I really don’t want to spend the night outside. It’s cold, it’s getting late, and we still have to make the trip back.”

Waiting at the top of the climb was a wolf-sized chunk of white marble.

“Judgment,” said Aralorn in satisfaction. She thought it would be the last one, but found another maze stone at the top of a twisting bramble-and-brush-filled gorge.

“Rose quartz,” murmured Wolf. “It seems we are welcome here.”

Even so, Aralorn was unsurprised when the stone pointed them down the gorge.

“I knew I should have held out for luck,” she said. “Sometimes, there are ways around the gorge.”

There was no trail. Aralorn tore the knee out of her pants and almost lost her cloak before they arrived safely at the bottom. Wolf, of course, had no difficulty at all.

They emerged from the deep undergrowth into a small grotto. From the cliffs overhead, a solidly frozen waterfall plunged into an ice-covered pool. The transformation from the dense gray vegetation to the pristine little valley was shockingly abrupt, as if they had stepped into someone’s neatly kept castle garden. Even the snow that covered the ground was evenly dispersed, unmarred by footprints.

“This is it,” announced Aralorn with satisfaction. After a moment, she nodded toward the waterfall. “I spent one summer trailing streams in this part of Lambshold, trying to find every stream anywhere near here, and never found one that came through this grotto. I even tried to back-track this one, but I never managed it. I’d look away for a moment, and the stream would be gone.”

“I could do that with a variation of the lost spell.” Wolf eyed the rushing water speculatively.

“If you say so.” She heaved a theatrical sigh. “ ‘Frustrating’ is what I called it.”

He laughed. “I’ll bet you did. Isn’t there supposed to be someone here?”

“No, this is just the end of the maze. There’s a trail over by the waterfall,” Aralorn said, and began picking her way up the path that edged the pond.

A thin layer of snow turned to a sheet of ice as they approached the waterfall. Aralorn set her feet carefully and kept moving. Wolf drew to a halt and growled.

“I know,” said Aralorn quietly, stepping behind the shimmering veil of the frozen waterfall. “Someone’s watching us. I had expected them earlier.”

The difference between the bright daylight and the shadow of the falls caused her to stop to allow her eyes to adjust. Wolf bumped into her, then slipped past, examining the stone surface of the cliff face behind the waterfall. Behind a thin sheet of ice over the rock where a few last trickles of water had frozen, there was a small tunnel in the rock.

“That goes in about ten feet and ends,” said Aralorn. “I stayed there overnight once, but it was summer.”

The far end of the narrow path behind the falls was frozen over, but a few hits with the haft of one of her knives broke a small hole, and her booted foot cleared a space large enough to climb through.

Once out from under the waterfall, their way twisted up the side of the mountain. The path was cobbled, and the smooth stones were slicker than the natural ground. Aralorn tried to walk beside the path as much as she could. The climb was thankfully short, only to the top of the falls.

Over the years, the stream that formed the waterfall had cut a deep channel between the two mountains that fed it with the runoff from the snowy peaks. The path was cut into the side of one mountain several feet above the stream, winding and twisting with the course of the water.

After walking a mile or so, the path turned abruptly away from the mountain, through a thicket of brush and into a wide valley.

Wolf could still feel the eyes watching them, though he couldn’t tell where the spy was. It was not magic that told him so much, but the keen senses of the wolf. Not scent, nor sight, nor hearing, but faint impressions gathered from all three. It distracted him as he examined the place to which Aralorn had brought them.

The valley was surrounded by steep-sided hills that reminded him of the valley in the Northlands where he’d spent the past winter, although that had been far smaller. Someone had taken a lot of time to find a place this sheltered. The stone path, now half-buried in the snow, led up a slight incline to a pair of gateposts. Other than those, the valley appeared empty. Perhaps, he thought as he followed Aralorn, the village was located over the next rise.

Then, between one step and the next, magic rose over him from the ground, momentarily paralyzing him with its strength. Defensively, he analyzed it: a blending illusion that utilized the lay of the land to hide something in the valley.

Without conscious act, he found himself holding the magic to break the spell, magic that had nothing to do with the familiar, violent forces he normally worked. This was a surge of power that took its direction from the brief alarm he’d felt at the sudden wall of magic. It flared in an attempt to twist out of his fragile hold and attack the ensorcellment before him. The effort it took to restrain it challenged his training and power both.

“Wolf?”

Even wrapped as he was in the grip of his power, her voice reached him. Fear of what his magic would do to her gave him the strength to contain it, just barely.

“Wolf?” Aralorn said again, kneeling beside him.

She didn’t dare touch him as he swayed and shook with rhythmic spasms. Gradually, the spasms slowed and stopped. He took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at Aralorn.

“Problems?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to wait for me back by the waterfall?”

“No,” he said. “It’s all right now. It just took me by surprise.”

She looked at him narrowly for a moment before deciding to accept his word on the matter.

“Fine, then. There is some kind of protective illusion over the village. I don’t think we ought to tamper with it, but if we approach, I suspect we’ll be met.”

“Such an illusion is not the usual practice?” He sounded as controlled as he usually did, though he was so tense she could see the fine trembling of his muscles.

Aralorn shook her head in answer. “Not when I lived here.”

Though the village was hidden, the gateposts that marked the entrance were still there. Wolf, the ruff on his neck still raised from his battle for control of his magic, ranged in random patterns to either side.

“Stay on the path,” she warned him. “They wouldn’t have left the gateposts here if they didn’t have something nasty protecting the village from people who aren’t polite enough to enter by the proper way.”

When she tried to walk between the gateposts, a barrier of magic stopped her. It wasn’t painful, just solid.

Aralorn drew the rune she’d used in the maze on the left-hand pillar, but the barrier remained. She frowned but didn’t try to force her way through the gate.

Instead, she spoke to the watcher who’d accompanied them from the waterfall. “I have come to speak with Halven, my uncle.” Her tongue fought her a little as she curled it around the shapeshifter language that she hadn’t used since she’d last been here.

Beyond the posts, the wind stirred the snow into random swirls. The quiet was oppressive and uncomfortable.

Turning to Wolf, Aralorn said, “They may make us wait for a long time. Sometimes, the oddest things strike them as humorous.”

Without reply, Wolf made himself comfortable though he fairly vibrated with tension. Aralorn shivered as a cold breeze ran under her cloak.

“It is cold here,” said a man behind her in the same tongue she’d used. “You must want to talk to this uncle very badly.”

Wolf came to his feet with a growl; he hadn’t heard the man approach.

She put a hand on his head, then turned to face the stranger.

Shapeshifters were hard to identify: They could assume any features they chose. Nothing in the beautiful face and artfully swept-back bronze hair was familiar. Voices, though, were more difficult to change, and given a moment to recover, she knew who it was. She smiled.

“Badly,” she agreed, switching to Rethian for Wolf’s sake. “I would have waited a lot longer than this, Uncle Halven.”

“You might have indeed,” he replied without altering his language, “had I not seen you myself. I am not high in favor at this moment, and you never were.”

“You flatter me,” Aralorn replied. She continued to speak Rethian. If he was going to be rude, she’d follow his lead. “As I recall, I was too insignificant to warrant animosity.”

Halven smiled like a cat—with fangs and cold eyes. “Aralorn the half-breed certainly was, but the Sianim spy is a different matter altogether.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Spy? Who says I am a spy?”

“If you would talk,” said Halven mildly, “it would best be done here.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I apologize in advance for keeping you out in the cold.”

“Not at all.” Halven was suddenly all gracious host, though he’d yet to switch to Rethian, which he would have if he’d really been in an accommodating mood. “What brings you and your dog here on this chilly morning?”

Wolf was sometimes mistaken for a dog by people who hadn’t seen him move because he lacked the usual gray coat. It surprised her that Halven would mistake him, though, and she almost turned to look at Wolf. But she didn’t want to draw her uncle’s attention to him.

Assuming the shapeshifters were as resistant to the ae’Magi’s magic as she had been, there was no reason they would be upset about his death; but she would rather they didn’t know any more about Wolf than was necessary. Unlike the people at Lambshold, if Halven looked closely, he might be able to tell that Wolf was a shapeshifter—and a both green and human mage of great power. With that much information, it was only a step to identify him as Cain ae’Magison, who killed the ae’Magi. The shapeshifters didn’t talk much to people in the outside world, but that was one thing she would rather no one knew. The ae’Magi’s spells ensured that almost everyone loved him—and if they knew where Cain was, they would try to kill him.

The maze stones knew what, and who, Wolf was already, but they seldom spoke anymore.

“Have you heard that my father’s been taken ill?” she asked.

“I’d heard he was dead,” replied Halven flatly.

“Yes, well these things do get exaggerated upon occasion, don’t they?” Aralorn said. “I’m pleased to tell you that he’s alive, but there is some sort of magic binding keeping him in a deathlike trance. I wondered if you might know something about it.”

For a moment, her uncle’s expression changed, too quickly for her to catch what it was he felt; she hoped he was glad the Lyon wasn’t dead.

Seeing her face, Halven laughed with real humor that pierced the armor of his outward charm like a ray of sunlight through a stained-glass window. “You want to know if I did it, eh?”

“That was the general idea,” she replied.

“No, child, I haven’t done anything to him. As a matter of fact, we have begun to exchange favors.” He shook his head in bemusement. “I never thought I would deal with a human, but the Lyon is nothing if not persistent—much like his daughter.”

Relief swept through her. Halven prided himself on being truthful in all things. If he’d hurt her father, he’d have told her or found some clever way of not admitting one way or the other.

“Would you be willing to come and look at him? I’ve never seen anything like the spell that holds him—I can’t even tell if it is green magic or human.”

Halven was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “No. Call down one of the human mages. My position in the quorum of elders is touchy enough without risking a visit to the human stronghold. They feel I have compromised our safety, though they agreed before I helped your father with his breeding project.”

“The ryefox,” said Aralorn thoughtfully. “That’s the reason for the new glamour and protection for the village. Too many people know you’re here. What did my father give you for your help?”

“The Lyon has deeded this section of Lambshold to me and my kindred by special dispensation of the new king. We also have a treaty calling for the protection of our land by the Lord of Lambshold in perpetuity.”

“If the Lyon said it, it is true,” said Aralorn. Then she raised an eyebrow. “If he had time to tell my brother Correy about it. You can’t expect Correy to take your word on the matter, given the suspicion that you yourself might have caused my father’s strange condition.”

The Lyon wouldn’t have left it to chance, she knew. He would have recorded it immediately—but Halven might not know that.

“Your manipulation is heavy-handed, Aralorn,” he said.

She shrugged. “I only tell you what you have been telling yourself. The Lyon probably told my brother. Probably my brother will hold to my father’s word—even with the suspicion that will be aimed toward the shapeshifters. But it would be better for you if the Lyon was returned to health. Irrenna has sent word to the ae’Magi, but the spells are black magic. Kisrah may be quite brilliant, but his reputation does not make him an expert in the dark arts.”

“And I am?” he asked.

“How old are you?” asked Aralorn. “Kisrah is only a few years above forty. How many more centuries have you spent learning? Don’t tell me that you have nothing more to offer us than a human mage.”

“Persistent,” he said chidingly. “I told you his affliction was none of my doing, child. Making an agreement with the Lyon is one thing; going to the keep is an entirely different matter. I will not endanger my people further.”

Aralorn met his gaze. “Come. Because I ask it of you. Because my mother would have done so if she had lived.”

His eyelids fell to cover the expression in his eyes as he thought. She wasn’t certain her appeal would be enough, especially because she had no idea if her mother cared enough for the Lyon to come to his aid.

It might just be possible that he would want to come. No one could resist the Lyon’s charm when it was directed at them, not even, she hoped, Halven. If he liked her father enough . . .

Wolf watched Aralorn’s uncle with sympathy—Aralorn could talk a cat into giving up its mouse. He could only understand her half of the conversation, but he could tell quite a bit from Halven’s gestures and Aralorn’s speech.

Wolf wondered, for a moment, why Aralorn had told him once that her uncle was indifferent to her. The poor man hadn’t even taken his eyes off her long enough to notice that her pet was a wolf. The shapeshifters had few children—Halven, Wolf knew, had none at all.

“Leave the humans to their own trials, my dear,” said a lark as it landed on Halven’s shoulder. Her voice was light and high-pitched, making it difficult to understand her.

He shrugged irritably, sending the small bird to perch on top of a gatepost. “Does this concern you, Kessenih? Tend to your own business.”

Aralorn could have cheered. Nothing was as likely to persuade her uncle to go to the hold as his wife’s opposition.

“Very well, Aralorn,” he said, “I’ll accompany you to see your father. Is that silly goose still the only bird you do?” He stopped abruptly and frowned. “That dog”—he paused, frowning at Wolf—“wolf of yours is going to slow us down.”

Halven had looked at Wolf but hadn’t been able to detect his nature. Shapeshifters always knew their own—but Halven hadn’t seen Wolf for what he was any more than Aralorn had at first.

“Why don’t you meet me there?” she suggested. “I’ll walk back with Wolf. Maybe the stones will aid our travel.”

Halven frowned. “All right. I will ask the stones to speed you to Lambshold. Sometimes that helps.” In a flutter of hawk feathers, he was gone.