Aralorn drew in her breath and puffed out her chest and prepared to defend herself. Before she could open her mouth, she was engulfed in Falhart’s arms.
“Thanks,” he said.
When Falhart set her down, Correy picked her up in a similar fashion, then gave her to an older man she recognized as one of the Lyon’s fighting comrades—and she wasn’t the only woman passed from one embrace to the next. From there the gathering took on the festiveness of Springfair.
Out of the corner of her eye, Aralorn saw Wolf find a place under one of the food-laden tables. Knowing from his actions that Nevyn was safely out of the curtained alcove, she relaxed and enjoyed herself.
Nevyn had no intention of working magic while under the watchful eye of Aralorn’s companion, who had inexplicably followed him.
He usually loved four-footed beasts of all kinds, but the cold yellow eyes of the wolf gave him chills. Would it have followed him if it were only a pet wolf as she claimed? Was it some relative of hers? He couldn’t tell the shapeshifters from any of the other creatures of the forest.
After completing a brief inspection of the room, Nevyn rejoined the guests. He would return to the Lyon when everyone was gone.
The tenor of the evening had changed during the short time he’d been gone. The quiet, hushed crowd had grown boisterous and loud, forgetting, in their joy at Aralorn’s news, that the Lyon still was in danger.
Nevyn watched his wife dance with Correy for a moment, but he was uncomfortable with the noisy crowd. He disliked strangers and gatherings of people. Not even eleven years in Lambshold had managed to change that. Without so much as a touch of envy, he watched the others celebrate: He liked knowing that so many people cared for the man who’d been a much better father to him than his own.
Smiling faintly, he turned and left the room, taking care to leave unseen. If Freya knew he’d gone, she would follow him—not understanding that he wanted her to enjoy herself. He loved her more because they were different, and had no desire to change her.
The smile grew more comfortable on his face as he took the servants’ stairs to reach the suite he shared with his wife. He felt better than he had for a long time. Aralorn’s discovery took a large portion of the weight of responsibility off his shoulders. He’d dreaded the thought that he would have to stop the burial himself despite the assurances he’d received to the contrary.
He felt guilty for what had been done to the man he loved as a father. But that would soon be over as well. He also hadn’t wanted to hurt Aralorn, and she would be hurt when she realized that she was responsible for her father’s condition: She was too smart not to make the connection. At least she wasn’t in any danger, not now.
He truly believed that she was something unnatural—even evil—but part of him still had a tender spot for the funny, teasing girl who had welcomed him to Lambshold. For that child’s sake, he hoped this would soon be over. He’d hurt her tonight. He hadn’t meant to, but he had to remind himself what she was lest he begin to forget the terrible things that magic could do no matter how good the man wielding it.
He entered his bedroom with a sigh of relief. One of his cats jumped down from the chair it had been sitting on to strop itself against his leg.
Nevyn stripped off his formal dress, leaving it where it fell. The cat mewed imperatively, and he picked it up before lying down in the bed he shared with Freya.
“Problems, Nevyn?” whispered an accentless voice in Darranian from the shadow-laden window alcove.
Nevyn jumped, still unused to the way the mage could appear out of nowhere. “My lord,” he greeted him. “I was just thinking. It happened as you said it would. Aralorn discovered the spell, though she managed to stay out of the trap as you feared she might.” He was glad of it, he thought with unusual defiance.
The sorcerer emerged from the alcove and stood in the light of the single candle Nevyn had left burning. He was taller than Nevyn and moved like a warrior despite the wizard’s robes he wore. His hair was the same color as the black cat that rested on Nevyn’s lap. His eyes were cobalt blue.
“Don’t fret,” he said, his voice matching the perfection of his face. “She could only escape because he was there.”
Nevyn shook his head. “I saw no one enter the room but Aralorn, Irrenna, and Correy.”
“Nonetheless,” said the other man again, “it was his magic that stopped the banishan from completing its work. That you did not see him enter is hardly surprising. My son is capable of great magics. There is a door into the bier room—a lock would be no barrier to a mage of his caliber.” He paused, then snapped his fingers. “Of course,” he said softly. “I should have thought . . . The girl, Aralorn, has been known to travel quite often with a large black wolf. Was he there?”
“Yes,” answered Nevyn. “What does that have to do with her escape from the trap, my lord ae’Magi?”
The other man looked thoughtfully at Nevyn. Then he smiled. “Since my son’s attempt on my life, I no longer hold that title—it belongs to Lord Kisrah, who holds the Master Spells. You may address me as Geoffrey, if you like.”
“Thank you,” said Nevyn.
“My son is the wolf,” said Geoffrey. “It is some effect of the combination of my magic and his mother’s that allows him to take that shape as if it were his own. Be careful when he is about.”
Nevyn nodded. “I’ll do that.”
“Thank you.” Geoffrey smiled. “You look tired now. Why don’t you sleep. Nothing more will happen tonight.”
Nevyn found that he was more tired than he remembered. He was asleep before Geoffrey left the room.
In her bedchamber, Aralorn stepped behind the screen to remove the torn dress and the shoes as well. Pulling her toes up to stretch her protesting calf muscles, she listened to the sounds of Wolf stirring the coals in the grate.
“Did you get a good enough feel for the spelling to tell if it was a human mage who attacked my father?” she asked, pulling a bedrobe off the screen and examining it, curious. It was the shade of old gold embroidered with red, and the needlework was far finer than any she had ever done. “I couldn’t get close enough to tell.”
“I don’t know,” replied Wolf after a moment. “The magic in that room didn’t feel like human magic—at least not always. Nor did it feel the way green magic does.” There was a pause, then he continued in a softer voice. “There’s black magic aplenty, though. It might be some effect of the corruption that makes it difficult to say whether it is a human or one of your kinsmen responsible.”
“Most everyone here is a kinsman of mine,” she said, and wrapped the robe around herself.
She sighed. The robe was unfamiliar because it quite obviously belonged to one of her sisters. The sleeves drooped several inches past her hands, and the silk pooled untidily at her feet. She felt like a child playing dress-up.
“If it is human magic, Nevyn is the most obvious culprit.”
Reading her tone, Wolf said, “You find that so far-fetched?”
“Let’s just say that I’d suspect the shapeshifters—I’d suspect myself—before I’d believe that Nevyn harmed my father,” she said, standing on her toes without appreciably affecting the length of fabric left on the ground. “Me, yes—but not my father. When Nevyn came here . . . something in him was broken. My father accepted him as one of us. He bellowed at him and hugged him, and Nevyn didn’t know what to make of him.” Aralorn smiled, remembering the bewildered young man who’d waited to be rejected by the Lyon as he’d been rejected by everyone else. “Nevyn wouldn’t hurt my father.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’d like to find my mother’s brother and see what he has to say. If he did this, he’ll tell me so—my uncle is like that. If not, I’d like him to take a look at the shadow-thing. He’s familiar with most of the uncanny things that live here in the mountains.”
She tried rolling up the sleeves. “By the way, did you ward the alcove to keep cur
iosity seekers out, or are we relying on Irrenna’s guards?” The soft fabric slid out of the roll as easily as water flowed down a hillside.
“I set wards.”
Deciding there was nothing to be done about the robe, Aralorn stepped around the screen. Unmasked and scarred, Wolf set the poker aside and turned to face her. He stopped and raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes glinting with unholy amusement.
“You look about ten years old,” he said, then paused and looked at her chest. “Except, of course, for certain attributes seldom found in ten-year-olds.”
“Very funny,” replied Aralorn with all the dignity she could muster. “Some of us can’t magically zap our clothing from wherever we put it last. Some of us have to make do with what clothing is offered us.”
“Some of us can do nothing but complain,” added Wolf, waving his hand at her.
Aralorn felt the familiar tingle of human magic, and her robe shrank to manageable size. “Thanks, Wolf. I knew there was a good reason to keep you around.”
He bowed with a courtier’s flair, his teeth white in the dim light of the room. “Proper lady’s maid.”
Aralorn snorted. “Somehow,” she said dryly, “I don’t think you convey the right air. Any Lady worthy of her title would not let you close enough to tie her laces . . . untie perhaps, but not tie.”
Wolf walked by her on the way to the bed and ruffled her hair. “I prefer mercenaries.”
She nodded seriously. “I’ve heard that about you wizards.”
She was drifting contentedly off to sleep snuggled against Wolf’s side when he said, “I’ve been assuming this was a spell, but it could be something the shadow-creature is doing to him.”
She moaned. “Sleep.”
He didn’t say anything more, but she could all but feel him thinking.
“All right, all right,” she groused, and rolled over onto her back with a flop. “Why do you think it is the shadow-thing holding my father?”
“I didn’t say that,” he corrected. “But we know nothing about it, or about the spell holding your father. You’re the story collector. Have you heard any stories about a creature who holds its victims in an imitation of death?”
“Spiders,” she answered promptly. She was very awake now. For some reason she’d assumed that since the Lyon was still alive, he’d stay that way until she and Wolf figured out how to rescue him.
“You know what I mean,” Wolf said. “Is there something that uses magic to bind prey as large as a human?”
“No,” she said, then continued reluctantly, “not explicitly—but there are a lot of strange creatures I don’t know much about. The North Rethian mountains were one of the last places settled. Many of the old things were driven here from other places as humans moved in. Supposedly, the Wizard Wars destroyed most of the really dangerous ones—but if the dragon survived, other things might have made it as well. That leaves a lot of candidates, from monsters to gods.”
“Gods?” he asked.
She tapped his chest in objection to the sneer in his voice. Wolf, she had long ago realized, was a hopeless cynic. “If the Smith built weapons to kill the gods, there must have been gods to kill. I’ll have you know that this very keep was cursed once. Family legend has it that one of the Great Masters who began the Wizard Wars razed a temple dedicated to Ridane, the goddess of death, before erecting his own keep here.” She lowered her voice and continued in a whisper. “It is said that Her laughter when he died was so terrible that all who heard it perished.”
“Then how did anyone know that She laughed?” Wolf asked.
She poked him harder. “Don’t ruin the mood.”
His shoulder shook suspiciously, but he was quiet. She settled back against him, slipping her hand under his arm.
“My uncle,” she said, “told me that the shapeshifters lived in these mountains before humans ever came this far north. They were driven into hiding here by a creature they called the safarent—which translates into something like big, yellow, magic perverter.” She waited for his reaction.
“Big, yellow, magic perverter?” he said, his voice very steady, making the name even more ridiculous.
“Sort of the way your name, in several Anthran dialects, would translate into hairy wild carnivore which howls,” she replied. “Would you prefer the Great Golden Tainter of Magic?”
“No,” he said dryly.
“Anyway,” she said, happy to have her attempt to amuse him succeed, “the shapeshifters were already hiding when humans came. It’s probably why they survived here and nowhere else.”
“So what happened to the . . . safarent?” asked Wolf, when Aralorn didn’t continue.
“Probably the Wizard Wars,” she said. “But the stories are pretty vague.” She closed her eyes and hugged his arm to still her fears. “I’ll get my uncle to look at the Lyon tomorrow.”
Wolf grunted and began nibbling at the soft place behind her ear, but she was too worried about her father to follow his mood.
“Wolf,” she said, “do you think I should try my sword? It might be able to rid us of that shadowy thing, or even break the spell that holds my father.”
Carrying an enchanted sword wasn’t the most comforting thing to do. It intimidated her to the point where she tried to ignore it most of the time. Since she’d used it on Wolf’s father, she hadn’t even practiced with it—though she carried it with her always so that no one else picked it up.
Wolf nipped her ear sharply and rolled her on top of him, shifting her until he could see her face.
“Ambris, once called the Atryx Iblis,” he said thoughtfully.
“Magic eater,” she translated.
“Devourer sounds much more impressive,” he said, “if we’re still debating translations. That name is the only thing we really know about it, right?”
“What do you mean? There are lots of stories, not about the sword, I grant you, but the Smith’s weapons—”
“—cannot be used against humankind,” he broke in.
“They were built to defeat the gods themselves: the black mace, the bronze lance, and the rose sword. ‘Only a human hand dare wield them—’ ”
“ ‘—against the monsters of the night,’ ” she said completing the quotation. “I know that.” Then she thought about what he’d said. “Oh, I see what you mean. You think the stories might be wrong.”
“My father was a monster, but he was a human monster. You, my sweet, are not human.”
“Half,” she corrected absently, “and I’m not so certain about your father. Other than your Geoffrey and a few Uriah, I don’t think I’ve ever actually ever so much as wounded anyone with it. I seldom use it except for training, where the idea is not to cut up your opponent. For real fighting, I use weapons I’m more competent with. Wolf, if your father was human, Ambris shouldn’t have worked against him.”
Wolf tapped his fingers absently on her rump with the rhythms of his thoughts. “Perhaps the Smith’s interpretation of human was broader than ours. He might have included half-breed shapeshifters as human. My father was trying to become immortal like the gods—maybe he succeeded far enough that the sword could be used against him.”
“For the spell holding my father, it doesn’t matter what its capabilities, does it? I’m not going to try and kill anyone with it—just break a spell. It did break through the ae’Magi’s wards—”
“No, it didn’t.”
She sat up then so she could look at him. “What do you mean?”
“Ah,” he said. “You wouldn’t know. My father’s wards protected him by preventing any weapon from doing physical damage. Magical damage is more difficult to guard against by warding, and he believed that he was more than capable of protecting himself from magical attack. Your sword never did draw blood. The wards stayed there until his magic died.”
He threw back the covers, set her off him, and arose. “There’s an easy way to see if it can break spells as well.”
He pulled a small bench to a clear spo
t in the room and made a few signs in the air over it. Stepping back, he shook his head. “We might as well test it against a more powerful spell, since that is what we will be facing.” He made a few more gestures. “Now nothing should be able to touch this bench.”
Still tucked warmly under the covers, Aralorn snickered. “The Bench No Axe Could Touch Nor Rump Rest Upon,” she intoned, as if it were the title of some minstrel’s song.
“At least not until the magic wears off in a week or two,” said Wolf. “I’ve worked a series of spells on this bench. Do you want to try your sword on it?”
Aralorn left the warmth of her bed and found Ambris where she’d tucked it under the mattress before attending the gathering. Unsheathing it, she watched the reflected glow from the fire shine on the rose-colored blade.
It was small for a sword, made for a young boy or woman rather than a full-grown man. Except for the metal hilt, it could have been newly forged—but no one made swords with metal grips anymore. After the Wizard Wars, when most of the mages were dead, metal hilts hadn’t been much of a problem. Being connected to a dying magician by metal was a very bad idea. Now hilts were made of wood or bone, and had been for the past few centuries as the mageborn slowly became more numerous again.
The metal hilt hadn’t worried Aralorn when she’d chosen it from the armory before she’d left Lambshold. She’d always been able to tell mageborn from mundane. The sword had been the right size and well balanced, so she’d taken it. For years, she’d carried it, never realizing that she held anything other than an odd-colored, undersized sword fit for an undersized fighter.
She approached the bench and examined it thoughtfully.
“It won’t attack back,” said Wolf, apparently amused at her caution. “You can just hit it.”
She gave him a nasty look. She always felt awkward with the blasted weapon even though years of practice had made her almost competent. The recent change in their relationship had made her, to her surprise, a bit shy around him. She wanted to impress him, not remind him just how poor a swordswoman she was.
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