Wolfsbane s-2

by Patricia Briggs

  “Very well, Aralorn,” he said, “I’ll accompany you to see your father. Is that silly goose still the only bird you do?” He stopped abruptly and frowned. “That dog”—he paused, frowning at Wolf—“wolf of yours is going to slow us down.”

  Halven had looked at Wolf but hadn’t been able to detect his nature. Shapeshifters always knew their own—but Halven hadn’t seen Wolf for what he was any more than Aralorn had at first.

  “Why don’t you meet me there?” she suggested. “I’ll walk back with Wolf. Maybe the stones will aid our travel.”

  Halven frowned. “All right. I will ask the stones to speed you to Lambshold. Sometimes that helps.” In a flutter of hawk feathers, he was gone.

  FIVE

  “So, you’ve grown up, halfling,” observed the lark, having fluttered to one of the gateposts after Halven made his abrupt switch.

  Aralorn bowed shallowly to the yellow-and-black-banded bird. Not certain how much Rethian her aunt understood, she switched back to the shapeshifters’ tongue Kessenih had used. “As you see, Aunt.”

  “No good will come of this.” The lark’s beady eyes focused malevolently on Aralorn. “If it is known he is gone to the castle again, he will be cast out. They came close to doing it when he helped the Lyon with his cattle breeding. He was told not to contact the humans again without the approval of the quorum.”

  Aralorn looked at the snowy ground for a moment. She didn’t know how far to trust Kessenih. Her aunt hated her husband almost as much as she despised Aralorn herself.

  “It is his decision to make,” Aralorn said at last, a little fiercely. “I have no choice but to ask him to make it.”

  “Selfish child,” her aunt decreed.

  “Perhaps so,” agreed Aralorn, “but the fact remains that the shapeshifters benefit as much from my father’s continued existence as I do, if not more. It is in your best interest to keep Halven’s activities a secret, as you will share his fate if he is exiled.”

  “Then you’d best be gone from here before someone notices,” snapped Kessenih as she exploded into flight.

  Wolf waited until she was gone before speaking. “She said something that upset you?”

  Aralorn nodded, switching back to Rethian. “My uncle is risking a lot to help us.”

  “He’s going to help? I couldn’t tell.”

  “He’s meeting us at the castle.” She shrugged, feeling discouraged as well as guilty for asking Halven to risk so much.

  “He says he didn’t have anything to do with Father’s current problem. There appears to be opposition to the aid Halven gave Father in breeding the ryefox. Judging from my aunt Kessenih’s attitude, I think that there could be enough opposition to having humans know of their presence that they might be willing to kill to stop the association with humans.” Aralorn gave him her best smile. “It would be simpler if the shapeshifters didn’t have a hand in this. If the people here are convinced that my father’s affliction came at the hands of the shapeshifters, it would mean war.”

  “We’ll have to see to it that doesn’t happen.” He paused. “If necessary, we could provide them with a villain.”

  She glanced at him, and said sharply, “Oh, no, you don’t. You’ve been maligned quite enough as it is. Let the late ae’Magi’s evil son disappear from view after his father’s death.”

  She started hiking back toward the waterfall. “My uncle might be able to do something about the creature that is guarding the Lyon. He’s a lot older than he looks—and powerful. If nothing else, he should be able to tell us what the shadow-thing is.”

  * * *

  As they exited the waterfall, Wolf glanced over his shoulder, then froze, pricking his ears. Aralorn followed his gaze and saw that the smooth surface of snow behind them was unmarred by any sign of their passage.

  “It’s always that way,” murmured Aralorn. “There are never any trails—not even of casual wildlife. I don’t know why the stones extend the effort since no one can come here without first going through the maze. They are very old, though, and have their own ideas of what’s important.”

  She headed for the place they’d entered the grotto, where the undergrowth was thinner. Ascending the gorge was worse than climbing down had been—at least while they’d been going downhill, when she slipped it was in the right direction. It didn’t help that Wolf seemed to have no trouble at all and spent most of his time waiting for her to struggle through the underbrush.

  They emerged finally into a level meadow, where frozen strands of grass poked gracefully through the snow at the bases of fifteen gray monoliths set in a circle, each one the height of a man. It looked nothing at all like the place that had been at the start of their descent earlier that day.

  “The maze stones as they are from this side of the maze,” said Aralorn. “Do you want to take a closer look?”

  Without replying, Wolf stepped into the circle.

  “The story is that each of the stones was once a shapeshifter. They gave their lives to protect the remnants of their people,” she said.

  High above them, a red-tailed hawk called out.

  Aralorn looked up. “That’s my uncle. We’d best be on our way.”

  “You know where we are?” asked Wolf, leaving the circle after a last thoughtful look.

  She shook her head. “After we pass through the center of the maze stones, there is a barrier to cross outside the circle—here it is, do you feel it?”

  The wolf shivered briefly as he started through it. Quickly, Aralorn grabbed a handful of fur and followed.

  “Sorry,” she said, releasing his pelt. “If you cross separately, we’ll end up in two different places.”

  “Ah?” Wolf turned to look behind him. There was no clearing, no monolithic stones, only dense forest. “A translocation spell? It didn’t feel like it.”

  Aralorn frowned, smoothing the fur she’d ruffled on his back. “I don’t know how like your translocation spell it is. With green magic it is possible to build . . . pathways from one area strong with magic to another. The stones direct the paths and work magic constantly to keep the valley safe.” She smiled. “If they listened to Halven, it shouldn’t take us long to get home.”

  The woods closed in upon them, and the path they trod became a knee-high growth of evergreens amid the older trees. Here and there, it became so choked with brush that they had to leave it altogether and look for a better way around. It was in the middle of one such detour that they came upon an old abandoned stone hut in a small clearing.

  “The hermit’s cottage,” exclaimed Aralorn in surprise. She looked around the forest and shook her head. It was funny how familiar everything suddenly looked when she knew where she was. “I should have figured it out earlier: This is the only part of Lambshold that has so much forest. We’re not as close to the keep as we could be, but if we head due south from here, we should make it before dinner.”

  As she turned to look at Wolf, something crashed through the trees half a dozen yards away. She turned to see an animal as tall as Sheen and even more massive emerge from the forest. It let out a hoarse moaning sound that started deep in its chest and rose to a high-pitched mewl.

  The terrible cold of its breath touched her face though she shouldn’t have been close enough to feel it. The animal was covered with a thick white coat that darkened to a dirty yellow in the heavy mane that ringed its neck. Its blunt-featured face was similar to a bear’s, but the intelligence in the eyes above the yellow-fanged mouth made it much more threatening.

  “Howlaa,” murmured Aralorn in disbelief as she stumbled back.

  The creatures were rare, even in the Northlands, where they hunted with the winter winds. She’d never heard of one this far south, but, she recalled abruptly, the trappers had been whispering about an increase in the magical creatures of the Northlands for the past few years. Frightening as the beast was, the storyteller in her captured images of the creature.

  Her fascinated gaze traveled from the howlaa’s fangs to
its glittering diamond eyes and stopped. Awareness of anything but the howlaa faded to insignificance. Distantly, she felt an odd dizziness that rapidly increased to nausea. Though she knew she stood firmly planted on the ground, she could feel nothing solid under her feet. As she swayed, torn adrift from her moorings, the wind touched her—gently at first.

  Sadness, despair. It is out of place here and dying from the warmth. Aralorn winced away from the alien deluge but could not escape the net the howlaa had caught her in.

  * * *

  There were some things a human mind was never meant to understand . . . the color of warmth and the voices that rode the winter winds. How to ride the blue currents of biting ice. The many textures of evil and its seductive, icy grip. Evil gave generously to those who knew ITS call . . . IT had sent this one to look for a shapechanger. IT wanted the wolf dead and promised a return to icy sheets that went on forever in all directions.

  A pained whine added itself to the growing cacophony surrounding her. Ice-colored eyes turned from her.

  Without the grip of the colorless gaze, Aralorn fell to her hands and knees, unable to feel the bite of the snow, for she’d been touched by something even colder. The wind blew past her. Gathering its chill thoughts and whispering to her in a thousand thousand voices, voices that murmured and shrieked of death, of evil and all its incarnates. She couldn’t pull any one thing out of the deluge, only flinch from it and cower in terror.

  A muffled grunt sounded from nearby, this time as human as the howlaa’s whine was not.

  Wolf, she thought. The thought of him allowed her to pull her hands to her ears, and the voices ceased with blessed suddenness. Awareness returned, and she looked up at Wolf in human guise, his back to her, confronting the howlaa.

  Despite the blood that dripped from his shirt to melt the snow, Wolf wielded his black staff with cool grace. The crystals that grew from one end of the staff glittered like the eyes of the howlaa, while the finger-long, sharp metal talons on the other end dripped blood.

  The talons were a weapon of a sort. Against a human opponent, they could be deadly—but against the howlaa’s thick hide and inner layer of fat, the short blades were virtually useless. It was unlike him to choose such an inept method of attack—unless he hadn’t known the things were immune to magic. His education in such matters was a bit haphazard—gleaned from books rather than teachers. His magic would have been an excellent weapon against a natural creature like a bear or wild boar, but it would help him not at all against the howlaa.

  Stumbling to her feet without using her hands (as they were covering her ears against a cacophony of voices that couldn’t possibly be there), Aralorn noticed there was something wrong with her vision as well. Some things were blurry, while others were incredibly detailed.

  Focusing on the fight, she drew her hands away from her ears and frantically stripped away her hampering cloak before the voices could claim her again. She had left her sword at Lambshold, worried that such a powerful weapon would antagonize the shapeshifters; now she wished she’d brought it along.

  Aralorn drew her knives, one in each hand, and watched the rhythm of the fight to see where she could best attack.

  Come on, concentrate, she thought. The effort of ignoring the muttering tones caused her to break out in a light sweat in spite of the ice and wind.

  Wolf struck with the clawed end of his staff, and the howlaa turned away, bawling angrily as the sharp points scored its side. With a growl, it snapped at the staff and received another slash. Had the talons on Wolf’s staff moved, or was it merely an effect of whatever the howlaa’s gaze had done to her?

  Aralorn shook her head in an attempt to drive away thoughts and voices alike. She needed to know where the battle would move, not what Wolf’s staff was doing. It was hard to read the purpose of Wolf’s pattern of attack. He wasn’t looking for a possible fatal hit, just using his staff to poke and prod the creature in the sides. He wasn’t trying to back away to the woods, where the howlaa’s size would work against it. It was as if . . . of course, Wolf was trying to pull the howlaa away from her—just like one of the idiotic, plaguingly foolish heroes in a bard’s tale. He probably could have backed off and conjured something more useful than his pox-eaten staff if he hadn’t been worried about her.

  Wolf’s next attack should come there, and the howlaa would close from the right. Just as it had kept away pain, cold, and terror over the years, the taste of battle forced the voices into the background at last.

  As silent as Wolf himself, Aralorn edged around the battle until she was behind the howlaa. When all of its attention was on Wolf, she ran and sprang into the air, leaping on the howlaa’s back as if it were a horse and she a youngster trying to show off. She clamped her legs beneath its shoulder blades and plunged her sharp steel knives into either side of its neck, where the fat was not as thick.

  Rising on its haunches, the howlaa sang, a high, piercing death-song that the wind answered and echoed. Aralorn clung to its back as it rose, her face against the coarse, musky-smelling fur while the creature’s blood warmed her cold hands and made the hafts of her knives slick.

  The howlaa jerked again as Wolf hit it in the throat with his staff, sinking the talons deep into flesh. He shifted his grip on the staff and braced his weight against it to force the dying animal sideways.

  If not for Wolf’s quick action, the howlaa would have fallen backward on top of Aralorn. As it was, she loosed her hold on her knives, jumped off the animal, and ran out of the reach of the powerful claws, which were flailing about wildly.

  From opposite sides, she and Wolf watched the creature’s death throes. It struggled for a moment more, then lay still. Aralorn shivered and retrieved her cloak from the snow where she’d tossed it.

  “One of your relatives?” asked Wolf, cleaning the end of his staff in the snow.

  Aralorn shook her head, pulling the enveloping folds of wool around her, trying to still the shudders of cold and battle fever. “No, it’s a howlaa.”

  The fight done, the murmuring voices fought for her attention, though they were quieter than before. She knew she should do something, but she couldn’t remember what.

  Wolf finished cleaning the ends of his staff, then buried it in the snow so he could tuck his hands under his arms to warm them. He walked over to the dead animal and nudged it gently with a foot. “What is a howlaa doing so far south?”

  “Hunting,” replied Aralorn softly. She noticed that the wind was dying down.

  Wolf left off examining the dead beast. “Aralorn?”

  “It was sent to get you, I think. I ...” The wind died down to nothing, taking the voices with it. Cautiously, she relaxed.

  “Are you all right, Lady?”

  She smiled at him, trying for reassurance. “Ask me tomorrow. What about your shoulder?”

  He shook his head. “A scratch. It’ll need cleaning when we get to the keep, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

  She insisted on seeing it anyway, but he was right. She’d held on to the rush of battle until she was certain he was all right. Her worry satisfied, she relaxed.

  Taking the edge of his black velvet cloak, Wolf wiped the smudges of tree sap and howlaa blood off her face. Finishing her nose, he pulled a few sticks out of her hair and pushed it back from her eyes.

  “I don’t know why you bother,” said Aralorn. “Ten steps through the trees, and it will look just as bad.”

  Wolf’s amber eyes glittered with amusement. He made a motion toward his mask as if he were going to take it off, when his gaze passed by her, and he stopped. Aralorn turned to see the red-tailed hawk perched on the dead howlaa.

  “Where did you find a shapeshifter powerful enough that I could not tell he was anything other than a wolf who followed at your heels?” Her uncle spoke in his native tongue.

  Without replying, Aralorn translated his speech into Rethian for Wolf. She was too tired for verbal battles—though translating wasn’t much better.

  �
��She found me, and I followed her home,” said Wolf dryly.

  “So why do you need me, child?” Halven switched to Rethian, though his tone lost none of its hostility. “I felt the force of the magic he called when you were imperiled; your shapeshifter is surely as capable as I.”

  “No,” said Wolf.

  “He only knows human magic,” said Aralorn, when it became obvious that Wolf had said all that he would on the matter.

  Her uncle let out a coughing sound and ruffled his feathers. “I am not stupid. No human mage could hold the shape of a wolf for so long without being trapped in his own spelling.”

  “His father, who raised him, was a human mage,” she said cautiously, not wanting to give too much away. “We think his mother was a shapeshifter or some other kind of green mage. His ability to work green magic . . . fluctuates.” She wouldn’t tell her uncle how badly it fluctuated, not now. Perhaps later, when he was in a better mood. “In green magic, he has only the little training that I’ve been able to give him, and you know how poorly trained I am.”

  “Your own fault,” he snapped.

  “Of course,” she said, happy to have distracted him to a more familiar frustration. “Wolf has already looked at the spells holding Father. Perhaps you might be able to tell how they were cast, but neither of us could figure it out. There is this also: Father is guarded by some sort of creature that I have never even heard stories about. We thought you might be able to identify it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about all this before?” asked Halven in a dangerously soft voice.

  Tired as she was, Aralorn found the energy to grin.

  “What?” she said. “And use my best ammunition first? I thought that you would be much harder to convince, and I’d have to pull out the shadow-thing to draw you to the keep out of curiosity. I wasn’t counting on Kessenih doing half the work for me.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw an answering amusement rising in her uncle’s eyes.