He remembered and wept where there was no one to see.
* * *
Aralorn fretted through dinner. Her theory was a fishing net with holes a sailing ship could get through.
She knew the story about Anslow was true. She’d had it from Ren the Mouse, who’d been a personal friend of the thief-taker. Was she wrong in thinking that the odd vision she’d had of Nevyn as a tree split down the middle meant he had no idea of what his darker half had done?
For that matter, why was she certain it was Nevyn? Kisrah might have depths she’d never seen. Why couldn’t he be the one who was dreamwalking? It was he who said that Geoffrey and Nevyn were the only ones who could dreamwalk. He might have lied. Maybe he and Nevyn were in it together.
Aralorn stared at the ceiling. Matters that had seemed so clear riding back from Ridane’s temple now seemed muddled. She really did not have enough evidence to know who was behind the Lyon’s bespelling—only that it was not Geoffrey.
“Aralorn, are you all right?” asked Irrenna.
Aralorn glanced up and realized that everyone was looking at her—obviously she’d missed something. Or maybe she’d been staring at the pickled eel on the flat of her knife for too long.
“Yes, sorry,” she answered. “Just tired.”
She set the black stuff back on her plate. Snake she could take or leave, but freshwater eel was beyond horrible—especially pickled. She vowed not to let herself get so distracted at mealtime again if the results could be so hazardous.
“I was asking you when you needed to be back at Sianim,” said Irrenna.
“Uhm.” She smiled. “I didn’t exactly take a formal leave of absence. Just left them a note. If they need me, they know where to find me.”
She would tell Wolf that she knew that it wasn’t Geoffrey, so he could take what precautions he could. When her father was back on his feet, they’d figure out the rest.
* * *
Wolf came back while she was getting ready for bed, surprising her by teleporting himself right into the room. She knew that he preferred to find somewhere private because the first few moments after he translocated, he was disoriented. He looked pale, but she thought it might just be the result of the spell.
“Any luck?” she asked.
“I have what I need,” he responded, swaying slightly where he stood.
He closed his eyes, and she ran to offer a supportive arm.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just dizzy.”
She was near enough to him to smell the familiar scent of the cave. “My nose tells me you’ve been to the Northlands. I thought you were going to check your father’s library.”
“My dear Aralorn,” he said, without opening his eyes, “a fair portion of my father’s library is in the cave.”
She laughed and hugged him, tucking her head against him in a manner that had become familiar.
“Did you find what you needed?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, tightening his arms until she squeaked.
“I figured out something, too,” she said.
“Oh?” He nuzzled at her neck, scratching her a little with the faint roughness of beard that was new-grown since that morning.
“Wolf, stop that—it tickles. It isn’t your father.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?”
He switched his attentions to her ear, and she shivered at the effect of his warm breath against her sensitive skin.
“He would—Wolf ...” She couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Hmm?”
“I asked Ridane’s priestess. She says he’s dead and not influencing anyone here.”
He stilled, then kissed the top of her head. “Smart.”
“Always,” she said smugly.
“I love you,” he said.
“Of course you do,” she said, to make him laugh—which it did. “I love you, too. Now you can kiss me.”
He bent down to her ear again, and whispered, “How long were you going to take before you told me that the priestess bound us together unto death?”
Now it was her turn to still. She felt guilty for half a breath, then she realized what his words really meant.
“How long have you known? Plague take you, Wolf.”
She tried to take a step away, but he held her too tightly. His breath seemed to be behaving oddly—then she realized he was laughing. She hit him—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to express her displeasure.
“Aralorn, Aralorn,” he tried to croon between laughs and pretending her halfhearted blows were hurting him. “Did you think I wouldn’t feel it when the priestess set a blood-bond between us? I am a black mage, my love. I understand about blood-bonds—and I can break them if I wish.”
“This one was set by a goddess,” she informed him.
“Maybe she could set a bond between us I could not break,” he told her. “But this one I could. If I wanted to.”
He lifted her off the floor to allow himself better access to her mouth—as well as various and sundry other sensitive areas. Aralorn caught her breath and braced her hands on his shoulders.
“I know you love me,” he told her, the laughter dying from his eyes.
She found herself blinking back tears as she heard how profoundly that knowledge had affected him.
“I know you love me, too,” she said, before her mouth was occupied by things other than speech.
* * *
Afterward, he slept. Snuggled tightly against him, Aralorn closed her eyes and wished she didn’t have to ask him to use the dark arts. He had tried to kill himself once rather than use them, but for her he would take the part he had been given. She didn’t know that she was worth it.
No good comes from black magic, Kisrah had said. Ridane’s priestess had told her that someone would die before long. Aralorn shivered and shifted closer to Wolf as if she could protect him by her presence.
It hadn’t been said, but the assumption Wolf had led them all to was that he would remove the spell tomorrow. Surely that would give the dreamwalker something to fret about.
Maybe he’d be walking again tonight.
She decided the best place to keep watch would be in Nevyn’s room. It might already be too late, but there was still a fair portion of the night left—and it had been about this time that she’d seen “Geoffrey” talking to Kisrah.
She started to slide out of bed.
“Aralorn?” Wolf sounded sleepy.
“I’m going spying for a couple of hours,” she said quietly, though he was already awake. She should have known that she couldn’t sneak out on him. “I have a few questions to clean up, and this might be my only chance to do it.”
He cupped her face in the darkness and pulled her until she rested her forehead on his for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Be careful.”
She tilted her face until her lips met his. “I will.”
She dressed in the dark, not bothering with shoes. Though, after a brief moment of thought, she grabbed her sword to go along with her knives. If she ended up facing an enraged sorcerer, she’d just as soon have Ambris’s help as not.
In the darkness, Wolf said softly, “I love you.”
Aralorn looked back, but the bed was too shadowed. She could distinguish nothing more than the shape of him in it. “I love you, too. See you in a few hours.”
“Yes,” he said.
He waited in the darkness and counted slowly to a hundred before getting to his feet. He dressed with care. He’d done many hard things in his life; in some ways this was not the worst. At least this time it was clearly the best answer for everyone.
He wished that he could postpone it, but he was unlikely to get another such opportunity soon. He’d been cudgeling his brain for a way to keep her away from him for long enough. Trust Aralorn to make things easy for him. He took his knife from his belt and tested it lightly against the ball of his thumb. A drop of dark liquid ran down the edge of his hand, and he licked it clean.
* * *
She darted up the stairs, blessing the stone under her feet for its silence—it was far more difficult to sneak up a wooden stairway. If she had been in a hall, she would have found a dark corner to hide in, but the stairway was too narrow for that. The best that she could hope for was to meet them at the top of the stairs.
She told herself that there was no reason to feel nervous about meeting someone walking the halls here, but she had been a spy for too long. Her instincts kept her on edge.
As she rounded the last stair, she came face-to-face with Gerem. He couldn’t have heard her, but he gave no evidence of surprise.
“Gerem?” she asked.
He frowned at her, but vaguely, as if he were concentrating on something else. “What are you doing here?” he asked, but without real interest.
“I was just going to ask you that.” There was something wrong with him, she thought. His words were soft and slurred as if he’d been drinking, though she smelled no alcohol when she leaned closer to him.
“Death walks here tonight,” he said, not at all dramatically, rather as if he were talking about grooming his horse.
An ice-cold chill swept up her spine, as much from his tone as from what he said. “Gerem, why don’t I take you to your room. Wouldn’t you like to go back to sleep?”
He nodded slowly. “I have to sleep.”
He took a step forward, forcing Aralorn down a step from the landing, giving him as much of an advantage in height as Falhart had over her.
Gently she took his arm and tried to turn him, stepping up as she did so. It was a move she often used on stubborn pack animals that refused to go where she wanted them; turning worked much better than pushing or pulling. “Your room is this way, brother mine. You can sleep there.”
He shook his head earnestly. “You don’t understand. I have to go to the stables.”
“The stables? What’s in the stables?”
He stopped tugging against her hold and bent down until his face was level with hers. “I killed Father,” he whispered.
“Stuff and nonsense, Gerem. Father is not dead.” She looked around for the nearest source of help. This wasn’t near anyone’s sleeping chambers—those were a floor above them. No one would hear her . . . But then she remembered that Irrenna had given Kisrah the Lyon’s library to sleep in.
“Kisrah!” she shouted, hoping her voice would penetrate the thick oak door.
“Let me go. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“No more do I,” she muttered.
Gerem pulled a knife with a slow and awkward movement. Once he had it out, he held it as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that it was in his hand.
Misled by that and by his earlier claim of clumsiness, Aralorn tried a simple grab to relieve him of the weapon. She should have realized that the Lyon wouldn’t let any of his sons go without training. As smoothly as he must have done it a hundred times in practice, he caught her hand in his free one and used leverage to twist her around until her back was against him, her arms caught firmly by his off hand, and the cool edge of his knife laid against her throat.
Without the knife, she’d have gotten out of it easily enough—a former thief of the Trader Clans had taught her a number of interesting tricks—but the knife made any movement on her part highly stupid. Half-grown though he was, he was still stronger and bigger than she was—and better trained than she’d thought. She didn’t want him to grow to adulthood knowing that he’d killed his sister, so she remained very still.
“What are you going to do in the stables, Gerem?” she asked as unaggressively as possible. Give him some time to break the hold the dreamwalker has woven, she thought. Keep him talking.
“Sleep.” His arms relaxed a shade but not enough.
“Why do you need to sleep in the stables?” She kept her voice in big-sister-to-little-brother tones, not frightened-victim-with-knife-at-throat. If you reminded someone you were at their mercy too often, they just might decide to kill you and get it over with.
He tightened his grip. “I killed Father. Don’t you understand?”
Abruptly, he twisted, thrusting her at someone who’d been approaching from behind. She knocked the man flat and heard Gerem running down the stairs.
She swore like any guttersnipe and leapt to her feet, noting only peripherally that it was Kisrah she’d landed on.
Though instincts would have sent her tearing off after Gerem, she took the time to change. The goose would be faster gliding down the stairs than the icelynx would be since the stone offered no grip to claws.
“What the—” croaked Kisrah as he sat up in time to witness the last part of the change.
“After him,” she said, and took flight.
By now, Gerem was already down the stairs. He didn’t bother with the more polite methods of getting to the stables but threw the bolts on the shutters of a window and jumped through.
He’s going to break a leg doing that, thought Aralorn. The window might be waist high inside the keep, but it was better than half a story higher on the outside. Closing her wings, she darted through the open window after him.
Hurry, said the wind’s unwelcome voice. Death is waiting.
Let it wait, then, she thought.
She’d overshot Gerem and was close to the stables before she could turn around. Goose wings were meant for great sweeping turns, not falcon-quick maneuvering. Especially a domestic goose that had to work far too hard to fly. She started to turn back when she saw the howlaa.
It waited in front of the stables in the moonlit courtyard, the wind carrying its scent away from the sensitive noses of the horses in the stables. She thought about how unexpectedly the last howlaa had come upon her and wondered if it could control the wind and keep its scent from prey.
The dead one’s mate, said the wind, as clearly as if someone were whispering into her ears. Dream-called and hungry for blood.
Closer, she could see differences between this one and the one she’d killed before. Its mane was longer and darker, with red as well as yellow tints. Its eyes, though, were the same, crystal so deep she could drown in its depths.
Spelled, she thought. It had magic to compel its victims to meet its eyes. It wasn’t just stupidity on her part that had let her be caught by the first howlaa.
Called by the howlaa, she let herself get too close. Only when it moved was she able to break the hold of its eyes. It rose to its hind legs with lethal swiftness and struck. Aralorn tucked her wings and dove to the ground, avoiding the crushing blow by a margin so slim as to be nonexistent.
The wind laughed alternately in thunderous then high tones that hurt her ears. Wind-touched, it said. Howlaa bait. How could you think to approach it unnoticed?
Gerem ran into the courtyard. He dropped his knife and looked at the howlaa. It returned his look, freezing him where he stood. Ignoring Aralorn, it took a step forward, then cried out in the chilling, whining tones she’d heard before.
* * *
Alone, so alone without the harmonies its mate provided. She wanted to find the one who brought them to this cursed place and rip his mind away, but the caller was too strong and could not be disobeyed. This child must die first.
Aralorn launched herself from the ground, changing in midflight to her own human form. When she dropped, she landed on the howlaa, much as she had its mate—and this time she had Ambris instead of her knives.
But the howlaa dropped as soon as Aralorn touched her, rolling agilely on the cold ground, making Aralorn scramble to get off it in time without coming within reach of the creature’s talons. She wasn’t wholly successful.
Blood poured down her arm as she backed away rapidly, and she’d lost Ambris; the sword lay on t
he ground behind the howlaa. It was easily within Gerem’s reach, but her brother hadn’t moved since he’d come to the courtyard. The howlaa stood between Aralorn and her brother—between Aralorn and the sword.
Well, she thought wryly, at least she had its attention. Without a weapon, she wasn’t going to hold its attention long—not unless it was hungry. But—there was help in the stables. She gave a long, shrill whistle as she backed up one slow step, then another.
She was grateful for every second she’d shaved off the time it took to change to icelynx form, for as soon as the howlaa realized what she was doing, it charged.
Aralorn’s vision was still trying to adjust to the difference between human and cat when the howlaa was upon her. She barely managed to avoid the howlaa’s swipe by running underneath it and out the other side. This put her on the right side of the howlaa to retrieve her sword if she wanted to take human form. She hesitated and decided not to risk changing again. It was just possible that the icelynx would have a better chance than a human bearing a sword. As soon as the thought occurred to her, she changed.
She shook her head and tried to ignore the lingering itches and tingles the shift had left her. Tension caused her to yowl irritably at her bulky foe—between its noise and hers, they were going to have the entire keep out here soon. Not that it would be a bad thing to have a few more people to help with the howlaa.
She and the wind demon paced back and forth, Aralorn keeping between the howlaa and its intended prey. That the howlaa didn’t just attack was a hopeful sign. She hadn’t been absolutely certain that howlaas were vulnerable to the poison of an icelynx bite, but the larger animal’s caution gave her hope. She was careful to avoid looking the howlaa in the eye, watching instead for the slight tensing of muscles that would presage a charge.
She had no illusions about her chances for survival. Thank the gods, she thought, that Wolf can break Ridane’s bond if I happen to get my stupid self killed.
Kisrah, who must have taken a safer route through a door, entered the courtyard wearing only a pair of light-colored sleeping pants. When he saw the howlaa, he stopped.
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