The Shape-Changer's Wife

by Sharon Shinn

  “Am I really? But why?”

  “I have never been interested in taking students. They waste one’s time and interrupt one’s schedule.”

  “Why did you agree to take me, then?”

  If anything, the smile became more malevolent. “Because Cyril convinced me that you were special.” There seemed to be no answer required to that.

  Aubrey was delighted to learn that Glyrenden was to leave again in two short days, and this time be gone more than a week. More time to exercise his newfound abilities. He did not say so, of course. “Perhaps someday you will take me with you,” he said instead, though by now he knew Glyrenden would never invite him. By now he was glad of it.

  Glyrenden laughed. “It would inconvenience me greatly to have you at my side—this time, at least. Maybe sometime in the future. If you beg me hard enough.”

  Aubrey forced a smile to hide his distaste. “I begged once or twice when I first came here, and you never accepted my escort. You are not moved by begging.”

  “Indeed, you are wrong. I enjoy it very much.”

  “Perhaps then, if I plead hard enough, you will teach me something new,” Aubrey said, to turn the subject. “I have not been successful yet today, and I would like something fresh to practice while you are gone.”

  Glyrenden regarded him narrowly for a moment, and then his mouth drew back in a feral smile. “I know just the lesson,” he said, and moved over to the narrow ebony desk pushed against the back wall. After a moment’s debate, he picked up a small silver statuette in the shape of a nude woman with her arms stretched luxuriously above her head.

  “I have a fondness for this piece,” he said. “But its color no longer pleases me. Can you turn it to gold?”

  Smiling, Aubrey took the figurine from Glyrenden’s hands, feeling the silken metal cool and smooth against his fingers. “I can try,” he said, and silently invoked the spell.

  Despite his earlier failures this day, he was astonished when the silver woman did not immediately metamorphose to gold. Having learned to change the complex circuitry of his body, he had not expected to have trouble altering any mundane inert material. How had he miscued the spell? He tightened his fingers and tried the enchantment again.

  Glyrenden, as usual, was talking. “A perfect woman, is she not?” he said, in his light voice. “Such detailing in the face, in the breasts—you can almost imagine the color and texture of her skin, if she were alive, if she were human. What does she reach for, with her hands lifted up like that? For the kiss of a man? For the heat of the sun? I think she just likes to feel the suppleness and elasticity of her own body. I think she has just risen from her bed, where her lover lies sleeping, and she is thinking that now, in the daytime, her body is her own again. But at night it is his, and she knows it is his—it was his the night before and will be his again this night, but for now she feels solitary and purified and free.”

  As always, Aubrey was distracted by the sense of Glyrenden’s words, for the wizard generally indulged in strange, seductively sinister monologues when he was trying to destroy Aubrey’s concentration. Yet even so, had he been alone in the room and Glyrenden nowhere nearby, Aubrey knew he would have been unable to change the silver statue to gold. He could send his mind to the simplest, deepest level of the cast metal; he could feel the molecular bindings that held one infinitesimal fragment to the other, but he could not dissolve those bindings and rearrange them. The woman resisted his alchemy. The knowledge made him furious, but he would not let Glyrenden see. Glyrenden was teaching him something—or proving a point, it was hard to tell—and only meek deference would allow Aubrey to learn which.

  He set the statue back on Glyrenden’s desk. “I cannot change her,” he admitted. “She is impervious to my magic.”

  Glyrenden smiled, well-pleased. He fondled the figurine, letting her stand where Aubrey had placed her. “And yet, she is receptive to sorcery,” the wizard said. “For she was not always a woman clothed in silver.”

  Aubrey understood then. “She has been changed already,” he said.

  Glyrenden nodded. His fingers still played lovingly over the curves and surfaces of the metallic body. “A beautiful piece,” he said. “Carved from cherrywood dark as port. The striations of the tree made black loops around her waist and ringed her wrists with bracelets. But I stroked her breast once and found a splinter in my hand, and that was the end of that wooden girl.”

  Glyrenden laughed; some irony, not apparent to Aubrey, amused him. “Now who would want a woman made of wood?” he asked. “Who would embrace a dryad? Give me flesh and blood any day.”

  Aubrey was tired of this posturing; he wanted to know the moral. “So the silver lady,” he said. “Will she be silver forever? Or might you make her gold?”

  Glyrenden gave him a quick, sharp look from those lightless black eyes. “I could make her gold, if I chose,” he said haughtily. “I changed her, and her shape responds to my calling. But you cannot. For you she will never alter.”

  So Glyrenden was proving a point after all. “Never? Can you not teach me the spells to change something that has been shaped from something else?”

  “They are the same spells,” Glyrenden said, “but what has been transfigured by one man cannot be modified by another. What I have converted to stone or silver or diamond will remain stone or silver or diamond, no matter how many spells you cast.”

  “Once, long ago, you changed a piece of the ocean to fire, and I changed it back to water,” Aubrey said. “Why was that possible, while this is not?”

  “Because I meant you to find the ocean in the flame. I put no baffles in my incantation.”

  “You are far more powerful than I am, and I realize that,” Aubrey said in a level voice. “But might a stronger wizard circumvent your spells?”

  “No,” Glyrenden said. “Because the shape-changer’s magic is incontrovertible.”

  Aubrey met the black eyes, keeping his own limpid and submissive, and knew that the man was lying. It scarcely mattered; Aubrey had failed to counteract Glyrenden’s spell this time, and it was likely he would fail again if he tried once more. But that did not mean the magic was unalterable. It did not mean Glyrenden could, with impunity, change every last object that came within his sight. It just meant that, to defeat him, Aubrey needed to find a better wizard—or to become a better wizard himself.

  Ten

  IN THE MORNING, Glyrenden was gone. Two days later, Royel Stephanis came to visit.

  That morning, Aubrey and Lilith were lingering late over breakfast. Since returning from Faren Rochester’s house, Aubrey had made it a point to spend as little time alone with Lilith as possible, but he could not force himself to give up those intimate morning meals. Sometimes they sat at the breakfast table until nearly noon, saying very little but loath to leave the room. This day, it was close to the hour of ten o’clock when a rusty, discordant clamor tumbled through the house.

  “What in this world—” Aubrey began, starting up from his chair, although Lilith still sat serenely in hers.

  “The bell. On the front porch. Someone has arrived.”

  Aubrey sat down again. “A visitor? But who? You never have visitors.”

  She shrugged, and picked up her glass of honeyed milk. “Someone for Glyrenden, most likely.”

  She sipped at her milk. Arachne, who was cleaning up after the meal, continued to scrub furiously at the countertops. Orion had long since left the house.

  “Aren’t you going to answer the door?” Aubrey asked finally.

  “Perhaps whoever it is will go away,” Lilith said. “Perhaps he has already.”

  Indeed, the horrendous clangor had died down and finally ceased. Aubrey wondered who could have come to seek out the wizard.

  “It could have been someone from town,” he said. “Glyrenden might have ordered more gowns to be made for you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Perhaps it was a tradesman, then, with a bill that Glyrenden forgot to pay.�
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  “We are never dunned here.”

  “Well, then—”

  But before Aubrey could offer further speculation, the wretched noise started up again, filling the house with its hoarse summons. Aubrey came to his feet. “A persistent someone,” he said. “I’ll go see who it is, shall I?”

  Lilith shrugged, and Aubrey left the room. He noticed, as he stepped gingerly through the dusty front hallway, that there was no longer any sign of the footsteps he and Lilith had left there the day her gowns had arrived. In this house, traces of human habitation were silted over quickly; even the stone and brick seemed to resent their occupation and attempted to obliterate their presence.

  The massive front door was not locked, but the catch was stiff, and it took Aubrey a moment to pry it open. When he had finally managed to throw back the door, he wished he had not bothered; he wished he had stayed in the kitchen with Lilith. He had no desire to invite Royel Stephanis inside.

  “My lord,” Aubrey said, his words polite but his voice edged. “The master of the house is not at home. Is there something I can help you with?”

  Plainly, Royel was as chagrined to see Aubrey as Aubrey was to see him. “I—that is—no, he isn’t at home,” the young man said, stuttering in his discomfort. “He is at the king’s court. I know he is. He arrived a day or two—you see—that is, my father has sent me to court to serve the king, so I—”

  “Well, then, you’d best go back there,” Aubrey said unkindly.

  He made as if to swing the door shut, but it was as hard to close as it was to open, and Royel moved more quickly than Aubrey expected. He was inside the disgraceful hallway before Aubrey could stop him.

  “Is she here?” he asked quietly.

  “The wizard’s wife?” Aubrey asked with some emphasis. “Yes.”

  “She is the one I want to see.”

  It was not Aubrey’s house; he could not deny another man entry unless Lilith or Glyrenden told him whom to turn away. He sighed inaudibly and headed toward the kitchen. “Back this way,” he said over his shoulder. He heard Royel scuff along behind him through the dirt.

  In the kitchen, nothing had changed. Arachne still attacked invisible stains on the wooden countertops, Lilith still sat at the table and took tiny swallows of her milk. The shape-changer’s wife looked neither surprised nor annoyed when Royel tripped into view; nor did she look pleased or embarrassed or self-conscious. She did not care at all.

  “My lady,” Royel said, giving her an unearned courtesy title and a bow deep enough to impress a queen. “I have hoped that I could see you again.”

  Scowling, Aubrey dropped into the chair closest to Lilith and waved at an empty chair across from him. “Well, since you’re here, you might as well sit down,” he said, supremely ungracious. “Have you eaten? Are you hungry?”

  Royel did not take his eyes from Lilith’s face; by feel, he found a chair, pulled it out, and seated himself. “Hungry?” he repeated. “I don’t—it doesn’t seem that I’m hungry.”

  Again, Aubrey stifled a sigh. “Arachne, if we have any food left, would you serve him a plate?” he asked. Arachne’s muttering grew momentarily louder, a form of protest, and then she clattered some utensils together to prepare Royel’s meal.

  “You are as beautiful as I remember,” Royel was saying to Lilith. “I have thought about you constantly for the past few weeks. I have thought of nothing else but your white skin and green eyes.”

  Aubrey rose abruptly. “I have things I must do,” he said. “Royel, you might remind yourself that the lady is a married woman. There are servants in the house, and I will be within call. Do not do anything to dishonor your father’s name.”

  Lilith’s eyes lifted to his when he stood. She had not said a word since Royel entered the room, and she said nothing now, although Aubrey hesitated, thinking she might. But she merely watched him for the briefest moment, then looked down at her plate again. Aubrey left the room.

  As he had promised Royel, he stayed within earshot of the house for the next few hours, chopping wood and making an ineffectual effort at weeding the flower garden that circled the house. He did not, however, really expect Royel to attempt any physical declaration of passion; the boy was too innocent, for one thing, and too well-bred, for another. But Aubrey was troubled by wondering what Lilith would say or do if such a situation arose. Would she cry out for help? Struggle in the young man’s arms? Grab some convenient weapon and assault her assailant in turn? Or would she shrug and submit, as she submitted to so many indignities in her life, not seeming to care who held her, who desired her, who loved her; having no respect at all for the limits of her body or the requirements of her soul?

  It was nearly twilight, and Aubrey was getting hungry, when Royel emerged from the house alone. The young man glanced around as if checking for the familiar reference points of earth and sun; when he spotted Aubrey, he came over to join him. Never had Aubrey seen a face so sorrowful and disconsolate.

  “She will not listen to me,” the young man said without preamble. As if, Aubrey thought in some exasperation, I am his confidante and his abettor; as if he expects me to commiserate. “I tell her that I love her, and she turns away.”

  “What did you expect her to do?” Aubrey asked. “She has a husband.”

  “She does not love him.”

  “She shared this information with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what great insight told you so?”

  “It is true. I am sure of it. She does not love him—she could not.”

  Aubrey had said much the same thing to himself many times, but he had no proof of it. “She stays with him,” he said coldly. “And she has ample opportunities to leave.”

  “Perhaps she has nowhere else to go. But—if she could come to me—”

  “Perhaps she will,” Aubrey forced himself to say, “if she knows she has the choice.”

  For a moment Royel did not reply. He stared down at his expensively shod feet and toed the dry dirt. “I have thought of nothing else but her,” he said at last, his voice low and hopeless. “Since she first walked into Faren Rochester’s fortress, I have had the picture of her in my mind day and night. I cannot talk to the other women at my father’s house or in the king’s court—their voices sound harsh to me; their shrill laughter falls on my ears and gives me actual pain. I have spent maybe one full day in her presence, and maybe three minutes out of those hours has she met my eyes with hers, and yet the memory of her face is so clear to me that I know nothing else will move me so greatly until the day that I die. I feel drugged. I feel bewitched. I know that her husband is a sorcerer, and I wonder if he has laid a charm on me. But I would not ask him to undo the words, revoke the spell—and I would not ask him to make me forget her.

  Even if I cannot be with her another day in my life, I have had this much time, and it will do me—it will see me through the other blank, empty days of my life.”

  Aubrey absolutely could not respond to that extraordinary speech. He felt as if the young poet had found a halted, stumbling text printed in his own brain, and turned the sentiments into verse. Royel shot him a hooded look from under his thin, dark brows.

  “I know,” the young lord continued, a little more rapidly, “that there is something odd about her. I know she is not like other women. All my life, I have been drawn to people who were disfigured or crippled or strange. At my father’s house, there was an old hunchback, a terrifying man—all the children hid from him, all the women shrieked when he came near. But he was my friend, and he taught me many things. I have been drawn to the witchwomen of villages and the peasant boys who were born simpletons though they had amazing abilities with animals. If a beggar on the road accosts me, he is sure to have six fingers or one eye blue and the other black. I know there is something in me that is out of key—that responds only to others with the same broken music. But I cannot help it. I cannot change. And I love her.”

  Aubrey lifted a hand and gently laid it acros
s the boy’s back. “Your love for the wild and the strange does you credit,” he said softly. “You were born to be a saint, perhaps—certainly a poet. But it does you no good to love this one. You would do better not to return here.”

  Royel pulled away from him, a fresh surge of determination routing his momentary despair. “She does not love him,” he said with conviction.

  “I don’t believe she loves anybody,” Aubrey replied.

  ROYEL STEPHANIS LEFT at nightfall, although Aubrey felt obliged to offer him a bed, which he refused. Lilith watched him go, a dark shape against the lingering red line of sunset, but she did not seem to be sorry.

  They had eaten dinner, and watched Arachne clean the kitchen, and played three games of Drain the Well before Aubrey broached the subject of the young lord’s visit.

  “He seems like a nice young man,” was his opening gambit.

  “Who?”

  “Royel Stephanis. Who else would I mean?”

  She shrugged.

  “Do you like him?” Aubrey pursued.

  “I don’t dislike him,” she said.

  “That’s not saying very much.”

  Her swift smile came and went. “What is it that you want me to say?” she inquired obligingly. “Just tell me, and I will say it.”

  “I want you to tell me what you thought of him.”

  “He seems like a nice young man,” she replied, giving him back his own words.

  Aubrey shook his head, but he could not help smiling. “He thinks he is in love with you,” he said.

  “So he told me.”

  “Did you not care about that—one way or another? Were you pleased or angry or flustered or touched?”

  “No,” she said.

  He did not want her to love Royel Stephanis, but the cold answer disconcerted him a little. “But it means so much to him,” he persisted. “Surely you could find it in your heart to be kind to him because he cares for you so greatly.”

  Lilith laid her cards down and let him see the skeptical, ironic look on her face. “I do not know what men mean when they say they love me,” she said. “I have heard the words ‘desire’ and ‘passion’ and ‘lust,’ and they are just words to me. I know the word ‘love’ is supposed to encompass these things and more—tenderness, you would say, some kind of empathy for the object of the emotion. I feel none of these things, therefore I do not know how another feels when he says he is experiencing love. What am I supposed to say to him? It does not matter if he loves me or not.”