The Shape-Changer's Wife

by Sharon Shinn

  “That is a dreadful thing to say,” Aubrey said, very quietly.

  “Well, it is the truth. I thought that is what you were interested in.”

  “You say you don’t know what a man’s love feels like,” Aubrey said. “And yet your husband loves you.”

  “My husband’s love,” she said, “is the most suspect of all.”

  “So you do not care for him,” Aubrey said.

  “No. I do not care for him.”

  “Why did you marry him, then?”

  She regarded him steadily and did not answer.

  “And you care for nobody? In the world?”

  “I told you,” she said, “I do not know what the words mean.”

  “But,” he said, very slowly, afraid to say it but wanting to know the worst, “you told me. In the coach, as we arrived at Faren Rochester’s. You told me it mattered to you, whether I stayed or went. You said that. Did you not mean it?”

  She did not drop her eyes, but her expression changed, became thoughtful, as if she was just now recalling her own words and deciding what they meant. Aubrey waited, utterly motionless.

  “You make my life more bearable,” she said at last. “I meant what I said.”

  It was more than he had expected. “You consider me a friend—is that it?” he asked, feeling himself breathless as he said the words.

  “I have not had much experience with friendship, either,” she said. “Is that what you are? A friend?”

  “I care what happens to you—I would do what I could to help you,” he said, stammering a little. As bad as Royel Stephanis, but more adept at guile. “If there is something you would have me do, ask me—”

  “I can think of nothing you can do for me,” she said curtly. There was silence between them for a moment. Then she said, as if the words surprised her even more than they surprised him, “But I thank you for the offer.”

  PERHAPS IT WAS because of Royel Stephanis’ impassioned words, or perhaps it was because the air was so fine the next morning; for whatever reason, Aubrey could not bring himself to leave Lilith alone at the breakfast table the following day.

  “I’m restless and tired of my own company,” he said. “Would you walk with me in the woods today? We have not gone exploring together for weeks.”

  “I would be glad to,” she said, rising at once to her feet. It was the first time he had ever heard her claim to feel any emotion at all.

  So they spent the whole day together, strolling the green pathways of the forest. They said very little, but their silence was companionable. Lilith, when questioned, proved to know the name of every bush and tree that grew together in disorganized fashion throughout the length and breadth of the woods, and she named each one for Aubrey as they passed. About wildflowers, however, she was strangely ignorant, and she had no interest in the names of the birds or the habits of the foxes or the formations of the clouds. Aubrey told her what he knew, but he did not flatter himself that she bothered to remember his lecture.

  He was afraid to spend another day alone in her company, for that day had been, without exception, the most pleasant day of his life. He did not know what to do; he was sure his heart would break. He could not stay, he could not go, and he did not believe that if he asked her, Lilith would come away with him. It was not that she harbored any affection for Glyrenden. Oh, no. She had made her detestation of her husband plain enough—and yet, she seemed strangely unwilling to forsake him. Any other unhappy wife, abandoned for days at a time in a remote house on the far reaches of civilization, would have surprised her husband with an empty house one day when he came back from his wandering; but Lilith stayed. And never spoke of leaving.

  The same was true of the other inmates of the house, a fact that puzzled Aubrey almost as much, and worried him as well. For Orion was clearly afraid of the wizard; he cowered when Glyrenden came too close, and never stayed in any room with him longer than was strictly necessary. Arachne seemed to have no emotions of any kind, but she kept herself always more than arm’s length from the shape-changer, and ducked her head nearer to her chest any time he walked into a room. So they had no love for him, and as far as Aubrey could tell, he paid them no wage. So why did they stay?

  Because they want him to change them back.

  The thought came to Aubrey late that night, far past midnight, as he lay sleeplessly listening to a storm crashing through the forest. It clawed at his closed shutter and raged across the eaves and turrets, and it made him restless enough to stand, light his candle and begin pacing his uneven floor. Lately, it took magic to make him sleep through the night, and even in his dreams his stomach held a stone in it, heavier each day and darker in color.

  They want him to change them back.

  Surely that could not be true; surely his wild suspicions were lunatic, unfounded. A strange man and a strange woman, who had been made briefly beautiful with magic; why did he believe they had ever been anything other than what they were now?

  But the stone rocked and turned in his stomach.

  They want him to change them back.

  Aubrey spent the next three days alone in the forest, undergoing a variety of transformations. He became a deer again, and then a hawk, and he caught one night’s supper in that winged and taloned form. He made himself a cougar, sleek and deadly; an owl, wide-eyed and impassive; a fish, mindlessly joyous. He thought of Orion and made himself into a bear, slow-witted but cunning; he thought of Arachne, and changed himself into a spider, quick and industrious. That last transformation was the most difficult of all and the hardest to return from. He came back to his own shape nauseous and sweating. The spider was too far removed from the human shape to allow for easy interrelation, but at least the experiment had been valuable; it had answered that question and stretched his ability. The next day he made himself a moth and an ant and a firefly, and that day it was easier.

  He became, in a few short days, so skilled that he could move from one form to another without becoming a man in between, although he could not do it rapidly. He made himself a dove, a cardinal and a jay; a squirrel, a weasel and a beaver; a wolf, a hound and a fox. He made himself every kind of animal he could think of; he was within a very few days almost every species known to the kingdom, but none of them felt familiar to him. Not one of them reminded him of Lilith, and the stone in his stomach grew larger.

  For he was in love with her and she would break his heart; she had not been born a woman but even now he did not know what she was.

  IT WAS THEN that Aubrey decided he needed to visit Faren Rochester’s home again, to talk with the lord’s sorcerer.

  “I’ll be gone a day or two,” he told Lilith.

  She did not ask where he was going; did not care, probably. “What shall I tell Glyrenden if he returns before you do?” she asked.

  “I don’t think he will,” Aubrey replied. “If he does, say you have no notion where I am.”

  He had walked half a mile along the road toward Rochester’s before he paused and began to ready himself for travel. Having given this a good deal of thought in the past few days, he was prepared. He took off his clothes, the thinnest ones he owned, and carefully folded them into a flat, lightweight pack. He slipped the pack over his shoulders, tying it carefully under his arms and around his waist till it did not bind anywhere. Once it was in place, he spoke the spellwords, and melted into wolf shape.

  He took a few tentative steps, and then tried a light run, but the pack was still inconvenient. He turned himself to a man and tried again, this time tying the bundle so that it lay against his chest. Back in wolf shape, he trotted forward again, his stride settling into an easy lope as the ropes of the pack grew more familiar.

  The colorless miles flashed by; the acres of forest that he had found so uninspiring on his first trip this way now seemed thick with noise and incident and odor. He stopped for water at a running stream. When he was hungry, he caught an indolent rabbit and ate it raw. His mind turned on the most immediate problems: the pr
esence of game, the sensation of thirst, the occasional whisper of danger. Toward nightfall, he heard men’s voices far ahead and caught the pungent whiff of their campfire. He altered his course and ran invisibly around them.

  When he tired, he turned himself into a man again, and slept. He would have liked to remain in animal form, but it was still too new to him; he could not be sure his borrowed instincts would keep him safe in the night. It seemed more sensible to sleep as a man, to face only the dangers a man might face, so that if he woke in peril he could respond in the ways with which he was most familiar.

  He rose early the next morning, resumed his wolf appearance, and raced on through the forest. It was still a few hours before noon when he arrived on Faren Rochester’s land and came to a halt. His legs grew thicker and his eyes remembered color; he felt his skin turn smooth and thin. He changed back into a man.

  He did not want to present himself at the door. Faren Rochester seemed like the sort who would wonder why one wizard was seeking the counsel of another, and Aubrey did not particularly feel like explaining. So he caught a morning breeze and endowed it with a message, and sent it skirling into the magician’s chamber. Then he dressed himself and smoothed down his hair, hoping he did not present a ragged appearance. He felt as if a trace of wildness lingered somewhere in the slant of his eyes or the fierceness of his posture; the longer he stayed a wolf, the more difficult it would be to become wholly human again.

  Sirrit did not make him wait long, but came strolling through the forest within an hour. He picked his way through the undergrowth with the aid of a silver and ebony cane, and he navigated without circuit to the glade Aubrey had chosen.

  “Good morning,” the elder wizard greeted the younger, nodding as casually as if they were in the habit of meeting for conferences in the woods. “You’re traveling some distance from home.”

  “I felt the need for company,” Aubrey said with a quick, cursory smile.

  Sirrit glanced around, but Aubrey was sure it was a deliberate charade. “Where’s your horse?”

  “I came on foot.”

  Sirrit glanced down to see Aubrey’s feet covered only in thin woolen socks; his boots had been too heavy to carry in his pack. “Not on those feet, I’ll wager,” the wizard said dryly.

  “No,” Aubrey said. “I have been practicing my newest skills.”

  “Ah.” Sirrit pointed with his cane, and led Aubrey to the trunk of a mammoth fallen tree. They both sat. “So Glyrenden is in fact teaching you to be a shape-changer.”

  “That is what I came to him to learn.”

  “Well, he is the master. But he has not been overfond of taking students, in the past.”

  “I wonder why he took me, then.”

  Sirrit gave him a sidelong look and seemed to consider. “Glyrenden believes in getting to know his enemy.”

  “His enemy? I was never that,” Aubrey said—and then fell silent. For he knew that was, now at least, a lie.

  “Some years ago,” Sirrit said, settling himself more comfortably on the log, “we were better friends. Glyrenden, and Cyril and I, and men whose names you would not know if I told them. Cyril, who could always forecast better than any of us, took his scrying crystal and told us each our futures. I was to grow old and fat in some lord’s service, Cyril was to win respect and acclaim, Mintele was to travel to foreign lands to battle some ancient magical creature. Prophecies like that. Glyrenden was told that his fate lay in the hands of a young magician whose name he would recognize when he heard it.”

  “His fate,” Aubrey repeated. “What does that mean?”

  Sirrit shrugged. “Who knows? Was this young man to save Glyrenden’s life or make his reputation or utterly destroy him? Cyril could not be more specific.” Sirrit gave Aubrey another sideways glance. “But I have to believe your name sounded familiar to Glyrenden, and so he took you on when you applied.”

  “It was Cyril’s idea that I go to Glyrenden,” Aubrey said. “He would not teach me the shape-changing spells himself.”

  “But Glyrenden has shared them with you?”

  “Some of them. Some I have puzzled out on my own. Some of them—” Aubrey hesitated, shrugged and then burst out: “Sirrit, I am learning some things I wish I had never known.”

  “Knowledge is always double-edged,” the sorcerer replied.

  “That cannot be true.”

  “Believe it,” Sirrit said. “There is not a spell you will learn from now until you die that cannot be misused or misdirected.”

  “I have learned the most barbarous spell there is,” Aubrey said, very low.

  “And that is?”

  “How to create a human being from something that was not human at all.”

  Sirrit planted his cane between his feet and rested his clasped hands on its silver handle. “Oh,” he said, “that is not so barbaric.”

  Aubrey turned shocked eyes to him. “How can you say that? You were the one who lectured me about the existence of the universal soul—”

  Sirrit held up one hand to silence him. “Very well. Barbaric, then, but not surprising. The oldest urge in the range of human desires is to create another being in a familiar image. To create another being to love. That is why you were born, why I was born—why any of us is alive today and traveling from city to city—because the human drive to procreate is as strong as the drive to live.”

  “Yes—but—that is a natural act, an inevitable progression of the race. But to make something—a being, a man or a woman—from material that was something else—”

  Sirrit shrugged. “Wizards take shortcuts,” he said. “And they like to improve upon the imperfect human process.”

  “It is outrageous!”

  “No doubt, but it’s not amazing,” Sirrit said. “The secondstrongest human urge is to find something helpless and control it.”

  “That’s not true!” Aubrey said hotly.

  Sirrit regarded him for a moment with a half-smile. “Well, perhaps you’re right,” he conceded. “But for some men it is an irresistible urge.”

  Aubrey stared at him. If this man was as unprincipled as Glyrenden, if the whole race of wizards was addicted to such games of power, then he had cast his last spell; he could not bear to practice magic another day. “Have you ever,” he asked, his voice almost a whisper, “called forth such a creature? Done such a thing?”

  “This was not a branch of magic that appealed to me,” Sirrit said dryly. “I never learned the spells.”

  Aubrey felt a rush of relief; he knew it colored his face rosy.

  “Cyril knows them but he will not use them, nor will many of the other great sorcerers. But you have learned them,” Sirrit said softly. “And having learned them, you cannot unlearn them. That is one of the other dark prices of knowledge.”

  “I did not come here to ask you to teach me how to forget,” Aubrey said.

  “Why, then?”

  “To ask you how to undo another magician’s spell.”

  There was a long silence. “The easiest way,” Sirrit said, “is to kill him.”

  “That is not the way I would choose.”

  “No, and it is not always effective, either,” Sirrit said with a certain amount of regret. “Usually it is! I was in Cannewold when the sorcerer Talvis died, and I saw with my own eyes the ocean surge through the dams he had constructed to keep the city safe. I saw the houses fall to the blue hunger of the waves, and I saw sea foam swirl around the high spire of the viceroy’s castle. A thousand men perished in that flood, and all because the magic died with the man.”

  “But when Soetan died, the roses still bloomed on Virris Mountain, and it was his spell that had turned that barren earth fruitful,” Aubrey said. “And no wizard, not you nor Cyril nor Talvis himself, was able to reverse the spell that Soetan laid on King Reginald, and so the man finished his days blind and mute.”

  “Well, Soetan was a man of exceptional gifts,” Sirrit said. “And it is hard indeed to break a spell when a powerful wizard does
not want it to be circumvented.”

  “How is it done, then?” Aubrey said. “Because I must know.”

  “You have to be a better wizard,” Sirrit said simply.

  Aubrey just looked at him.

  “There is more, of course,” the old sorcerer continued. “You must love the thing itself, the thing that you are restoring—not the thing that it has become, which is sometimes more beautiful and more useful than the thing it was, but the thing that it was brought into the world to be. The reason none of us could return King Reginald to his former state was that none of us, really, liked him, and we had all rather preferred the world when he could not watch our doings or comment upon them. None of us would have visited his infirmities upon him, I believe, but we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to correct his problems.”

  “How can you love something you have never seen in its primeval state?” Aubrey asked. He had grown chilly at the wizard’s words; he knew what it was to prefer the alteration to the original.

  “That’s the first unanswerable question,” Sirrit said. “There is another.”

  Aubrey looked over with dread. “What?”

  “When you release something from the grip of magic, or when you reverse magic, you put that person or that object at tremendous risk. Magic changes people—things—it sometimes makes them unfit to exist on their own. How do you keep from destroying the very thing you are trying to restore?”

  “How?” Aubrey demanded.

  Sirrit shook his head. “I don’t know. No one knows. Magic, my friend, is even more capricious than love. Only you know how much your own is to be trusted.”