Wolfsbane

FIVE

“So, you’ve grown up, halfling,” observed the lark, having fluttered to one of the gateposts after Halven made his abrupt switch.

Aralorn bowed shallowly to the yellow-and-black-banded bird. Not certain how much Rethian her aunt understood, she switched back to the shapeshifters’ tongue Kessenih had used. “As you see, Aunt.”

“No good will come of this.” The lark’s beady eyes focused malevolently on Aralorn. “If it is known he is gone to the castle again, he will be cast out. They came close to doing it when he helped the Lyon with his cattle breeding. He was told not to contact the humans again without the approval of the quorum.”

Aralorn looked at the snowy ground for a moment. She didn’t know how far to trust Kessenih. Her aunt hated her husband almost as much as she despised Aralorn herself.

“It is his decision to make,” Aralorn said at last, a little fiercely. “I have no choice but to ask him to make it.”

“Selfish child,” her aunt decreed.

“Perhaps so,” agreed Aralorn, “but the fact remains that the shapeshifters benefit as much from my father’s continued existence as I do, if not more. It is in your best interest to keep Halven’s activities a secret, as you will share his fate if he is exiled.”

“Then you’d best be gone from here before someone notices,” snapped Kessenih as she exploded into flight.

Wolf waited until she was gone before speaking. “She said something that upset you?”

Aralorn nodded, switching back to Rethian. “My uncle is risking a lot to help us.”

“He’s going to help? I couldn’t tell.”

“He’s meeting us at the castle.” She shrugged, feeling discouraged as well as guilty for asking Halven to risk so much.

“He says he didn’t have anything to do with Father’s current problem. There appears to be opposition to the aid Halven gave Father in breeding the ryefox. Judging from my aunt Kessenih’s attitude, I think that there could be enough opposition to having humans know of their presence that they might be willing to kill to stop the association with humans.” Aralorn gave him her best smile. “It would be simpler if the shapeshifters didn’t have a hand in this. If the people here are convinced that my father’s affliction came at the hands of the shapeshifters, it would mean war.”

“We’ll have to see to it that doesn’t happen.” He paused. “If necessary, we could provide them with a villain.”

She glanced at him, and said sharply, “Oh, no, you don’t. You’ve been maligned quite enough as it is. Let the late ae’Magi’s evil son disappear from view after his father’s death.”

She started hiking back toward the waterfall. “My uncle might be able to do something about the creature that is guarding the Lyon. He’s a lot older than he looks—and powerful. If nothing else, he should be able to tell us what the shadow-thing is.”

As they exited the waterfall, Wolf glanced over his shoulder, then froze, pricking his ears. Aralorn followed his gaze and saw that the smooth surface of snow behind them was unmarred by any sign of their passage.

“It’s always that way,” murmured Aralorn. “There are never any trails—not even of casual wildlife. I don’t know why the stones extend the effort since no one can come here without first going through the maze. They are very old, though, and have their own ideas of what’s important.”

She headed for the place they’d entered the grotto, where the undergrowth was thinner. Ascending the gorge was worse than climbing down had been—at least while they’d been going downhill, when she slipped it was in the right direction. It didn’t help that Wolf seemed to have no trouble at all and spent most of his time waiting for her to struggle through the underbrush.

They emerged finally into a level meadow, where frozen strands of grass poked gracefully through the snow at the bases of fifteen gray monoliths set in a circle, each one the height of a man. It looked nothing at all like the place that had been at the start of their descent earlier that day.

“The maze stones as they are from this side of the maze,” said Aralorn. “Do you want to take a closer look?”

Without replying, Wolf stepped into the circle.

“The story is that each of the stones was once a shapeshifter. They gave their lives to protect the remnants of their people,” she said.

High above them, a red-tailed hawk called out.

Aralorn looked up. “That’s my uncle. We’d best be on our way.”

“You know where we are?” asked Wolf, leaving the circle after a last thoughtful look.

She shook her head. “After we pass through the center of the maze stones, there is a barrier to cross outside the circle—here it is, do you feel it?”

The wolf shivered briefly as he started through it. Quickly, Aralorn grabbed a handful of fur and followed.

“Sorry,” she said, releasing his pelt. “If you cross separately, we’ll end up in two different places.”

“Ah?” Wolf turned to look behind him. There was no clearing, no monolithic stones, only dense forest. “A translocation spell? It didn’t feel like it.”

Aralorn frowned, smoothing the fur she’d ruffled on his back. “I don’t know how like your translocation spell it is. With green magic it is possible to build . . . pathways from one area strong with magic to another. The stones direct the paths and work magic constantly to keep the valley safe.” She smiled. “If they listened to Halven, it shouldn’t take us long to get home.”

The woods closed in upon them, and the path they trod became a knee-high growth of evergreens amid the older trees. Here and there, it became so choked with brush that they had to leave it altogether and look for a better way around. It was in the middle of one such detour that they came upon an old abandoned stone hut in a small clearing.

“The hermit’s cottage,” exclaimed Aralorn in surprise. She looked around the forest and shook her head. It was funny how familiar everything suddenly looked when she knew where she was. “I should have figured it out earlier: This is the only part of Lambshold that has so much forest. We’re not as close to the keep as we could be, but if we head due south from here, we should make it before dinner.”

As she turned to look at Wolf, something crashed through the trees half a dozen yards away. She turned to see an animal as tall as Sheen and even more massive emerge from the forest. It let out a hoarse moaning sound that started deep in its chest and rose to a high-pitched mewl.

The terrible cold of its breath touched her face though she shouldn’t have been close enough to feel it. The animal was covered with a thick white coat that darkened to a dirty yellow in the heavy mane that ringed its neck. Its blunt-featured face was similar to a bear’s, but the intelligence in the eyes above the yellow-fanged mouth made it much more threatening.

“Howlaa,” murmured Aralorn in disbelief as she stumbled back.

The creatures were rare, even in the Northlands, where they hunted with the winter winds. She’d never heard of one this far south, but, she recalled abruptly, the trappers had been whispering about an increase in the magical creatures of the Northlands for the past few years. Frightening as the beast was, the storyteller in her captured images of the creature.

Her fascinated gaze traveled from the howlaa’s fangs to its glittering diamond eyes and stopped. Awareness of anything but the howlaa faded to insignificance. Distantly, she felt an odd dizziness that rapidly increased to nausea. Though she knew she stood firmly planted on the ground, she could feel nothing solid under her feet. As she swayed, torn adrift from her moorings, the wind touched her—gently at first.

Sadness, despair. It is out of place here and dying from the warmth. Aralorn winced away from the alien deluge but could not escape the net the howlaa had caught her in.

There were some things a human mind was never meant to understand . . . the color of warmth and the voices that rode the winter winds. How to ride the blue currents of biting ice. The many textures of evil and its seductive, icy grip. Evil gave generously to those who knew ITS call . . . IT had sent this one to look for a shapechanger. IT wanted the wolf dead and promised a return to icy sheets that went on forever in all directions.

A pained whine added itself to the growing cacophony surrounding her. Ice-colored eyes turned from her.

Without the grip of the colorless gaze, Aralorn fell to her hands and knees, unable to feel the bite of the snow, for she’d been touched by something even colder. The wind blew past her. Gathering its chill thoughts and whispering to her in a thousand thousand voices, voices that murmured and shrieked of death, of evil and all its incarnates. She couldn’t pull any one thing out of the deluge, only flinch from it and cower in terror.

A muffled grunt sounded from nearby, this time as human as the howlaa’s whine was not.

Wolf, she thought. The thought of him allowed her to pull her hands to her ears, and the voices ceased with blessed suddenness. Awareness returned, and she looked up at Wolf in human guise, his back to her, confronting the howlaa.

Despite the blood that dripped from his shirt to melt the snow, Wolf wielded his black staff with cool grace. The crystals that grew from one end of the staff glittered like the eyes of the howlaa, while the finger-long, sharp metal talons on the other end dripped blood.

The talons were a weapon of a sort. Against a human opponent, they could be deadly—but against the howlaa’s thick hide and inner layer of fat, the short blades were virtually useless. It was unlike him to choose such an inept method of attack—unless he hadn’t known the things were immune to magic. His education in such matters was a bit haphazard—gleaned from books rather than teachers. His magic would have been an excellent weapon against a natural creature like a bear or wild boar, but it would help him not at all against the howlaa.

Stumbling to her feet without using her hands (as they were covering her ears against a cacophony of voices that couldn’t possibly be there), Aralorn noticed there was something wrong with her vision as well. Some things were blurry, while others were incredibly detailed.

Focusing on the fight, she drew her hands away from her ears and frantically stripped away her hampering cloak before the voices could claim her again. She had left her sword at Lambshold, worried that such a powerful weapon would antagonize the shapeshifters; now she wished she’d brought it along.

Aralorn drew her knives, one in each hand, and watched the rhythm of the fight to see where she could best attack.

Come on, concentrate, she thought. The effort of ignoring the muttering tones caused her to break out in a light sweat in spite of the ice and wind.

Wolf struck with the clawed end of his staff, and the howlaa turned away, bawling angrily as the sharp points scored its side. With a growl, it snapped at the staff and received another slash. Had the talons on Wolf’s staff moved, or was it merely an effect of whatever the howlaa’s gaze had done to her?

Aralorn shook her head in an attempt to drive away thoughts and voices alike. She needed to know where the battle would move, not what Wolf’s staff was doing. It was hard to read the purpose of Wolf’s pattern of attack. He wasn’t looking for a possible fatal hit, just using his staff to poke and prod the creature in the sides. He wasn’t trying to back away to the woods, where the howlaa’s size would work against it. It was as if . . . of course, Wolf was trying to pull the howlaa away from her—just like one of the idiotic, plaguingly foolish heroes in a bard’s tale. He probably could have backed off and conjured something more useful than his pox-eaten staff if he hadn’t been worried about her.

Wolf’s next attack should come there, and the howlaa would close from the right. Just as it had kept away pain, cold, and terror over the years, the taste of battle forced the voices into the background at last.

As silent as Wolf himself, Aralorn edged around the battle until she was behind the howlaa. When all of its attention was on Wolf, she ran and sprang into the air, leaping on the howlaa’s back as if it were a horse and she a youngster trying to show off. She clamped her legs beneath its shoulder blades and plunged her sharp steel knives into either side of its neck, where the fat was not as thick.

Rising on its haunches, the howlaa sang, a high, piercing death-song that the wind answered and echoed. Aralorn clung to its back as it rose, her face against the coarse, musky-smelling fur while the creature’s blood warmed her cold hands and made the hafts of her knives slick.

The howlaa jerked again as Wolf hit it in the throat with his staff, sinking the talons deep into flesh. He shifted his grip on the staff and braced his weight against it to force the dying animal sideways.

If not for Wolf’s quick action, the howlaa would have fallen backward on top of Aralorn. As it was, she loosed her hold on her knives, jumped off the animal, and ran out of the reach of the powerful claws, which were flailing about wildly.

From opposite sides, she and Wolf watched the creature’s death throes. It struggled for a moment more, then lay still. Aralorn shivered and retrieved her cloak from the snow where she’d tossed it.

“One of your relatives?” asked Wolf, cleaning the end of his staff in the snow.

Aralorn shook her head, pulling the enveloping folds of wool around her, trying to still the shudders of cold and battle fever. “No, it’s a howlaa.”

The fight done, the murmuring voices fought for her attention, though they were quieter than before. She knew she should do something, but she couldn’t remember what.

Wolf finished cleaning the ends of his staff, then buried it in the snow so he could tuck his hands under his arms to warm them. He walked over to the dead animal and nudged it gently with a foot. “What is a howlaa doing so far south?”

“Hunting,” replied Aralorn softly. She noticed that the wind was dying down.

Wolf left off examining the dead beast. “Aralorn?”

“It was sent to get you, I think. I ...” The wind died down to nothing, taking the voices with it. Cautiously, she relaxed.

“Are you all right, Lady?”

She smiled at him, trying for reassurance. “Ask me tomorrow. What about your shoulder?”

He shook his head. “A scratch. It’ll need cleaning when we get to the keep, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

She insisted on seeing it anyway, but he was right. She’d held on to the rush of battle until she was certain he was all right. Her worry satisfied, she relaxed.

Taking the edge of his black velvet cloak, Wolf wiped the smudges of tree sap and howlaa blood off her face. Finishing her nose, he pulled a few sticks out of her hair and pushed it back from her eyes.

“I don’t know why you bother,” said Aralorn. “Ten steps through the trees, and it will look just as bad.”

Wolf’s amber eyes glittered with amusement. He made a motion toward his mask as if he were going to take it off, when his gaze passed by her, and he stopped. Aralorn turned to see the red-tailed hawk perched on the dead howlaa.

“Where did you find a shapeshifter powerful enough that I could not tell he was anything other than a wolf who followed at your heels?” Her uncle spoke in his native tongue.

Without replying, Aralorn translated his speech into Rethian for Wolf. She was too tired for verbal battles—though translating wasn’t much better.

“She found me, and I followed her home,” said Wolf dryly.

“So why do you need me, child?” Halven switched to Rethian, though his tone lost none of its hostility. “I felt the force of the magic he called when you were imperiled; your shapeshifter is surely as capable as I.”

“No,” said Wolf.

“He only knows human magic,” said Aralorn, when it became obvious that Wolf had said all that he would on the matter.

Her uncle let out a coughing sound and ruffled his feathers. “I am not stupid. No human mage could hold the shape of a wolf for so long without being trapped in his own spelling.”

“His father, who raised him, was a human mage,” she said cautiously, not wanting to give too much away. “We think his mother was a shapeshifter or some other kind of green mage. His ability to work green magic . . . fluctuates.” She wouldn’t tell her uncle how badly it fluctuated, not now. Perhaps later, when he was in a better mood. “In green magic, he has only the little training that I’ve been able to give him, and you know how poorly trained I am.”

“Your own fault,” he snapped.

“Of course,” she said, happy to have distracted him to a more familiar frustration. “Wolf has already looked at the spells holding Father. Perhaps you might be able to tell how they were cast, but neither of us could figure it out. There is this also: Father is guarded by some sort of creature that I have never even heard stories about. We thought you might be able to identify it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about all this before?” asked Halven in a dangerously soft voice.

Tired as she was, Aralorn found the energy to grin.

“What?” she said. “And use my best ammunition first? I thought that you would be much harder to convince, and I’d have to pull out the shadow-thing to draw you to the keep out of curiosity. I wasn’t counting on Kessenih doing half the work for me.”

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw an answering amusement rising in her uncle’s eyes.

“We think,” said Wolf slowly, “that your people have nothing to do with this. If you can banish the creature who guards him, or tell us how to do it, then with luck we can unwork the spell and identify the caster.”

Halven raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t heard that you could trace a black spell back to the wizard.”

“If it is human cast, I can,” said Wolf.

The shapeshifter cocked his head. “So if I can help you rid the Lyon of this creature, you can deal with the black magic binding him?”

“If it is black magic, worked by human hands—yes.”

“I thought,” said Halven with soft intent, “that human mages proscribed black magic. A mage caught using it is killed.”

“Working black magic is,” replied Wolf. “But unworking it usually requires no blood or death.”

“You are very familiar with something that is supposed to have been forbidden for so long.”

“Yes, and you are not the first to note it,” agreed Wolf, without apparent worry, though Aralorn curled her hands into fists. He took such a risk. Her uncle would figure out who he was, and she no longer knew him well enough to predict what Halven would do. If he told any of the humans about it, Wolf would become a target for anyone. The Spymaster, Ren, liked to say that anyone could be killed, given enough time, money, and interest in accomplishing that person’s death.

“If I am seen by a human mage,” Wolf continued, “he will most certainly attempt to see that I am killed. It is to spare myself needless effort defending myself that I spend so much time as a wolf.”

The wind had been teasing the treetops, but as the sun moved down and removed that slight source of warmth, it began to blow in earnest once more. Aralorn lost track of the conversation, unable to tell one voice among many. Keeping her face impassive, she slipped her hand onto the curve of Wolf’s elbow and kept her mouth closed for fear of echoing the shrieks reverberating in her head.

Wolf glanced at her face, then said something to Halven.

The hawk cocked its head and gave a jerky nod. With a leap and a thrust of wings, it took flight.

Wolf waited until the hawk was out of sight before turning back to Aralorn. The wind howled through the trees, making Wolf’s cloak snap and crackle around her as he drew her under its shelter.

“What is it, Lady?” he asked, the rough velvet of his voice penetrating the chaos that rang in her head.

“The wind,” she whispered. “It’s the wind. I can hear them.”

“ ‘Them’?” He frowned at her. “Who do you hear?”

“Voices.” She saw the worry in his eyes and tried to explain better. “An effect of the howlaa’s gaze, I think.”

He didn’t speak again; she drew comfort from the warmth of his body and the strength of his arms. Her hands weren’t sufficient to block out the noise, but they helped. She wasn’t aware of time’s passing, but when the wind finally died down, the sky was noticeably darker, and a light skiff of snow had begun to fall.

She pulled away slowly, meeting Wolf’s worried gaze with one of her own. “In the Trader Clans, when a man goes insane, they say that he is listening to the wind. I have always wondered what the wind said.”

Wolf nodded slowly. “I have heard that the Traders have another saying—may your road be clear, your belly full, and may you never get what you wish for.”

Aralorn summoned a grin. “Just think of the legends I can spawn now . . . the woman who could hear the wind—it has a certain rhythm to it, don’t you think?”

“More likely it would be the woman who died in the winter because she couldn’t quit talking long enough to get out of the cold,” replied Wolf repressively.

Her smile warmed into something more genuine. “By all means, let us avoid such an ignominious fate.” She gestured grandly to the underbrush that covered the old trail. “Away, then, to the Lyon’s keep.”

He bowed low. “Allow me to retrieve your knives first?”

“Of course,” she said, as if she hadn’t forgotten them. She slipped the knives, cleaned by Wolf, back into their sheaths and strode into the woods.

Her heroic stride was shortened somewhat by the waist-high aspen seedlings and drifts of snow nearly as high, but her spirits lifted all the same—how many people could claim to have met a howlaa and survived? Her optimism was greatly helped by the wind’s continued absence.

By the time they reached the keep, the snowfall was no longer so light, and Aralorn was grateful to have Wolf’s eyes to depend upon rather than her own feebler senses—he had shifted back to lupine form as soon as the keep was in view. The sentries allowed her entrance through the gates without challenge.

She took the time to shake out her cloak and dust the worst of the snow off Wolf before she opened the door into the keep. As the warmth of the hall fire touched her cheek, a red-tailed hawk landed lightly on her shoulder. Ignoring the surprised expressions of the servants, she transferred the bird to one of her arms, which were protected by the layers of clothing she wore, and handed off her cloak. The hawk climbed her arm and perched once more on her shoulder. Her sweaters had slipped to one side, leaving only a single layer of clothing between her skin and the hawk’s sharp talons.

“You be careful,” she admonished her uncle. “I don’t want any more scars. I look odd enough in an evening gown as it is.”

Halven flexed his talons lightly without gripping hard enough to hurt.

“All right,” she said.

The hawk unfurled his wings slightly to keep his balance as she strode through the keep. Wolf trailed silently behind. With the funeral preparations on indefinite hold, most of the visitors had left, and the servants were busy with dinner, so the back ways through the keep were empty—at least until they passed by a turret staircase near the mourning room.

“Why does Mother let you bring your pets into the keep when we can’t even bring in our dogs? Is she frightened of you? Or do you have her bewitched like Nevyn says?” asked a young voice coolly.

Aralorn took two steps back until she could see the area under the stairs clearly. In her hurry, she hadn’t seen the dim light cast by the oil lamp, but now that her attention had been drawn to it, she could see that a small study had been neatly tucked into the cramped space beneath the stairs. The keep was not overly large, and with a family the size of the Lyon’s brood, it took cleverness to find a place unclaimed by anyone else.

The boy who’d spoken sat perched on a stool with a large book on his lap. He was on his way to gaining the height of the rest of the family—already he was taller than Aralorn—but he was painfully thin. His wrists were bare for several inches where he had outgrown his shirt, an oddly vulnerable touch for such a self-possessed young man. It took a moment for her to see the toddler she knew in the man he was becoming.

“No coercion,” replied Aralorn lightly. “I doubt a . . . howlaa could frighten Irrenna. I’ve seen her face down Father a time or two, and he’s much more scary than I could ever be. Nor sorcery either—I don’t have the kind of power that can influence people’s thoughts.” Once she would have said that no one did, but recent history had proven otherwise. “The wolf would worry the shepherds if he wandered freely about, Gerem. It’s safer for everyone if he stays with me.”

Gerem was a year younger than Lin. Aralorn remembered him as a quiet little person with an unexpected stubborn streak. The icy blue eyes that glittered with dislike and fear were something new. This kind of moment was why she’d left Lambshold. Bad enough that Nevyn felt that way about her; to have her family fear her was more than she could bear. She felt a sudden empathy with Wolf.

“And the hawk?”

“Hmm,” said Aralorn, trying not to let his coldness hurt—she had, after all, left when he was a toddler; he couldn’t know her. “Lady Irrenna doesn’t know about the hawk yet.”

“If the Lady Irrenna objects, I will shift back to human,” said the hawk softly. “But I prefer to stay as I am.”

“Shapeshifter,” Gerem whispered, his eyes widening.

Aralorn nodded. “Yes. I told Irrenna ...”

“Is he the one who did it?”

Aralorn gave him an assessing look. There was something in his voice that led her to think that he was attempting offense rather than speaking out of belief.

“You overstep yourself, accusing a guest of this house.” She dropped the friendly tone she’d been using and replaced it with ice. “He did nothing but volunteer to look at the workings of the spell.”

The hawk tilted its head to the side. “I will answer the boy, Aralorn Sister’s Daughter. You need not come to my defense. I have not ensorcelled the Lyon at any time, Master Gerem. If I were inclined to use my magic in such a fashion, I would certainly have done it decades ago, when it might have done me some good. As it is, his incapacity has inconvenienced me greatly.”

Gerem looked embarrassed. His rudeness, thought Aralorn, had been directed at her.

Recalled to his manners, the boy bowed graciously, if briefly. “My apologies, sir. My words were ill directed.”

The hawk bent to preen his wing. Aralorn nodded formally and proceeded on her way.

“I think we just saw Nevyn’s influence,” commented Wolf, once they were out of earshot.

“Ah yes, Nevyn—the wizard who dislikes magic.” Halven sounded amused.

Aralorn smiled without humor. “Something tells me I’m going to have a long talk with Nevyn before I leave. Speaking of people who do stupid things, why did you announce your presence to my brother? Kessenih informed me that you’ve taken a serious risk coming here.”

“As if no one would have thought ‘shapeshifter’ when you came into the keep with a hawk on your shoulder,” murmured Wolf. “A hawk like the one that brought you here as a baby.”

“Plague take it,” said Aralorn. “I didn’t think of that. The howlaa must have stolen all that was left of my wits.”

“Peace, child,” replied the hawk with amusement. “Kessenih worries overmuch. I have dealt with the quorum before, and I will again. They need me more than I need them.”