“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.”
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.”
SIX
There was a guard seated just outside the entrance to the bier room. She’d told Irrenna the room was warded, but apparently someone thought that Aralorn’s wards would be insufficient to keep people away. Since they might have been right—if Aralorn had set the wards—she was amused rather than offended.
The guard rose to his feet as they entered. “Lady Aralorn.”
“It might be wise if you leave for a candlemark or two,” she said. “My uncle has agreed to look at the Lyon, and he might work some magic. If anyone asks you, tell them it is on my authority.”
He probably wouldn’t be in any danger, but the shadow that guarded the Lyon worried her. There was no way to tell what it was capable of until they knew more about it. If Wolf and Halven were going to be prodding it with magic, she’d prefer to keep the defenseless away.
The guardsman glanced at the hawk riding her shoulders and blanched a bit, letting his gaze slide to the safety of her human face. “As you say, Lady. I’ll report to the captain, then return in two candlemarks.” So saying, he started off with suspiciously brisk steps.
But she must have been wrong about how much her uncle frightened him because he stopped abruptly and turned back. “The Lyon gave me my first sword and taught me to use it.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“Luck and the Lady be with you,” he said, then executed an about-face and continued on his way.
As soon as the guard was out of sight, Wolf trotted to the entrance to the alcove where the Lyon lay in state. He sniffed at it suspiciously.
“What is it?” asked Aralorn.
Wolf shifted abruptly to human form, wearing his usual mask to hide his face from her uncle. He ran his fingers carefully over the edge of the entrance.
“Someone’s attempted the warding,” he said.
“What?” asked Aralorn. She touched the stone where he had, but she could only feel the power of his wards. The human magic was beyond her ability to decipher for subtleties.
“Someone started to unwork the wards I set this morning. He left off halfway, as if something interrupted him, or he decided not to go on with it.”
“Maybe he couldn’t get through,” she suggested.
He shook his head. “No, he knew what he was doing—he could have dispelled it.”
“Nevyn?” she suggested.
He shrugged, then touched the air just in front of the curtain, letting his hands rest on the surface of the warding. “I can’t tell, but it must have been him. Unless there are other mages who live in Lambshold. I wonder if he recognized my work.”
“Could he?”
“Maybe.”
“Irrenna said she was calling on Kisrah for help—though I wouldn’t have thought she could get a message to him so soon,” Aralorn said. “Nevyn is the more likely candidate. As far as I know, there are no other trained mages on my father’s lands right now. I’ll ask around, though.” What if Nevyn figured out Wolf was here?
“If the wards were not breached, what does it matter?” asked Halven.
“Wolf is not very popular among the wizards right now,” said Aralorn. Though Geoffrey ae’Magi had disappeared without a trace in a keep filled with hungry Uriah, rumor had attributed his death to his son Cain—who was also her Wolf.
“Oh Mistress of the Understatement,” murmured Wolf, “I salute you.”
Her uncle clacked his beak in an irritated fashion and launched off her shoulder, taking human shape as he landed.
“I know of a human mage that many of the mages are searching for,” he said.
Aralorn raised her chin, and Halven laughed. “No need to look daggers at me, child. I can hold my tongue. What need have I to please a scruffy lot of bungling human mages?”
She stared at him, but Wolf, either easier to appease or not as worried, released the warding with a quick gesture of his left hand, saying, “Past time we attended to our immediate business.” He threw back the curtain and exposed the Lyon’s dark chamber to the light from lamps in the mourning room.
Aralorn’s father lay unchanged upon the bier. Wolf reached into a shadowed area and pulled out his staff from wherever it had been since he left it in the woods. As he took it up, the crystals that grew out of the top flared brightly before settling into a blue-white glow that chased the darkness from the room where the Lyon rested.
Halven strode through the entrance and Aralorn followed him, leaving Wolf to close the curtains and hide their activities from prying eyes.
Halven looked closely at the bier for a moment before turning to Aralorn. “I thought you said there was a creature guarding him. I see—by faith!”
Aralorn twisted around to look toward Wolf also. Against the wall, where there should have been no shadows at all, there was a subtle dimness that oozed slowly down the stone. It was only a little darker than the room itself, almost as if it were her imagination painting monsters. She turned back to Halven and opened her mouth to speak, when her uncle’s rough grip pulled her aside and behind him.
Wolf, too, had turned to see what caused Halven’s exclamation. The shadow caught his eye just as it touched the floor and abruptly shot forward. It rippled swiftly over the stones, flowing around Wolf on both sides, like a stream of water around a rock—though no part of the shadow touched him. It drew to a halt in front of Halven, stopped by the barrier of the shapeshifter’s magic.
* * *
Shielding, thought Wolf, recognizing the patterning though the magic Halven used was different. Even as he thought it, the shadow-thing oozed through a hole in the shield spell that hadn’t been there an instant before. Halven responded with another shield, but that obviously wouldn’t answer for long.
The power of Halven’s magic called answering force from Wolf. He could feel magic seeping in from the old stones that surrounded him, enticing him with its nearness, but he feared its abilit
y to do more than its designated task. With an effort so fierce that it left him with a headache, he forced the green magic away.
Instead, he reached for the more familiar forces he had always worked with. Though outwardly more destructive than green magic, the raw magic that was the stuff human mages could weave responded to his control as a harp to an old bard.
With careful dispatch, he created an adaptation of the magelight spell, seeking to cancel shadow with light. His spell should have flared with white light as it touched the shadow, but nothing happened. The creature might have expanded a little, but he wasn’t certain. It paused, then threw the light spell at Halven.
Wolf felt the surge of force Halven called upon to block both the light and the creature, felt it as if it were coming from his own hands. The brilliant light was swallowed by Halven’s open palm, and once more, the creature was turned away.
Wolf knew the other mage had begun to tire; the flow of Halven’s magic had become erratic though no less powerful. The shapeshifter was doing all he could to keep the creature back; it was up to Wolf to stop it from getting Aralorn. Oh, it might have been trying to get her uncle, but bone-deep instinct told him that was not true.
Something about the way the thing absorbed his spell reminded him of demons—which reminded him of a spell.
Before he started to gather magic, he found himself abruptly filled with more than he could use. Startled, he paused, and the magic began to form its own spell. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized the magic he held was green magic.
He controlled his frustration and ruthlessly broke the weaving already begun, stripping the natural magic of its essence and turning it back to the chaotic energy of the wild, but less willful, magic human wizards used. This he wove and focused, ignoring the pain that backlashed through him from his struggles.
The spell he chose was only to be found among the books of the black mages, for it had one use: to hold demons safely when they were summoned unbound. However, the spell required neither death nor blood, so he patterned it—hoping anything that could hold a demon would hold the shadow-creature as well.
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