Masques s-1

by Patricia Briggs

  Had that been a dig? Don’t bait him, she thought urgently. Don’t bait him.

  The magician smiled understandingly. “I’ll summon your servants for you.”

  Myr shook his head. “I left them outside with orders to meet me an hour before dark.”

  “The gods follow you, then.” The Archmage paused. “I hope you know that your father was so proud of your courage and strength—you do credit to your lineage. I wish that my own son had been more like you.”

  To Aralorn’s sensitive ears, the magician’s voice held just the right amount of pain. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed before she’d been assigned here that his emotions were always perfectly calculated.

  “Lord Cain could not be termed a coward or weak, sir.” Myr’s voice held a matching amount of sympathy, as false as the ae’Magi’s. He should have just thanked him and left, gotten out of his sight and hoped the ae’Magi forgot all about Reth and its young king.

  “No,” the ae’Magi agreed, “I think that it would have been better for all of us if he were a coward. He would have done less harm.”

  The ae’Magi kept his dark magics secret, but his son had performed them in the broad light of day.

  Aralorn had never met Cain: He’d disappeared before she’d become involved in her present occupation. She’d heard the rumors, though—they got worse with each telling. But Myr would have known him; the ae’Magi and his son had been frequent visitors to his grandfather’s court.

  The stories put the ae’Magi in the role of a grieving father, forced to strip his son of magic and exile him. Aralorn suspected that the boy had died rather than been exiled. It would have been inconvenient if someone had questioned where the ae’Magi’s son had learned so much about forbidden magic. As he’d told her himself, the ae’Magi preferred to avoid controversy.

  “Be that as it may”—with apparent effort the ae’Magi dismissed the thought of his son—“your servants will probably be awaiting you even now.”

  “Yes, I should go. You may be sure I shall remember your gracious offer of assistance if ever I need help.” With that, Myr bowed once more and left.

  Watching Myr’s broad back as he strode through the room, the ae’Magi smiled—the slight imperfection of one crooked eyetooth lending charm to the more perfect curve of his lips. “What a clever, clever child you have grown to be, Myr.” His voice purred with approval. “More like your grandfather every day.”

  It was late before the crowd began to thin and later still before everyone had gone. Aralorn couldn’t control her apprehension as each person left, knowing that the meager protection their presence offered would soon be gone. After seeing the last couple out, the ae’Magi walked slowly over to the cage.

  “So,” he said, swaying gently back on his heels, “the Rethian doesn’t see my lovely Northland bird.”

  “My lord?” she said neutrally. Having had most of the night to reflect upon the incident, she’d been pretty sure that the ae’Magi had figured that much out. She’d also had time to come to the conclusion that if he thought Myr was immune to magic, the ae’Magi’s primary power, Myr would die.

  The Archmage smiled and flicked a silver bar of her cage with his forefinger chidingly. “When he looked at you, he looked where your eyes are, not where the eyes of the falcon would have been.”

  Plague it, Aralorn thought. The ae’Magi put one hand through the bars and caressed her neck. She leaned against him and rubbed her cheek on his hand, forcing herself to obey the vague compulsion of the charismatic spell that had kept his guests happy instead of throwing herself backward and huddling in the far corner of the cage.

  The ae’Magi tilted her face so that her eyes met his, and said in a leading tone, “I wonder how he broke through my illusion.”

  He couldn’t expect a slave to understand what had happened, he was talking to himself. But he’d given her an opening—this was going to hurt.

  “But he didn’t break through your spell, Master,” she answered in bewildered tones.

  He looked down at her expressionlessly, and she quit fighting the urge to curl into a ball on the floor of the cage. He made a small motion with a finger, and she screamed as her body twisted helplessly under the fire of his magic.

  Each time he did this to her was worse than the time before. Aralorn watched as the tendons pulled and stretched, protesting the sensations they endured. When it finally stopped, she didn’t fight the tremors that shook her, telling herself that she was playing her part—but wondering deep inside whether she could have stopped had she tried.

  After she lay still, the ae’Magi said softly, “I don’t like to be contradicted, child. He knew you were not a falcon.”

  It was over. Over. He probably wouldn’t do that again tonight. Or if he did, he’d at least give her some time to recover. She could tell herself that anyway.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said hoarsely, from her position on the floor of the cage. “Of course he knew, I didn’t mean to contradict you—how could I? I misunderstood what you meant. You knew his magician broke the spell for him, how else would he have known?”

  “What magician?” The ae’Magi’s voice was sharp, almost worried.

  “He was standing over behind that pillar.” She pointed to someplace vaguely on the far side of the room, and the mage turned swiftly as if to look for someone still there.

  “What made you think that he was a magician?”

  “He made gestures like you do sometimes. He left with the young king.” Aralorn kept her voice to a whisper such as a frightened girl might use. No anger. No protest. People in his thrall felt pain all right, but they adored him even while they shuddered in fear of what he could do. She’d seen them.

  “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know, he stayed in the shadows. He was dressed all in blue, my lord.” Blue was the ae’Magi’s favorite color—a good third of the people in the room had been wearing some shade of blue.

  “What did the boy say to you?” He held the word “boy” just a little longer than necessary, apparently liking it better than “king.”

  “I don’t remember . . .”

  Whatever he did with his spell didn’t work only on her body—though her muscles cramped hard enough that she thought she could hear the bones begin to break. The pain weakened Aralorn’s natural resistance to his other spells and gradually the newly familiar feeling of shame crept over her. She should try harder to please him. Why wasn’t she more obedient? Look at what she made him do to her. As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped, leaving her shuddering and crying helplessly.

  “When I ask you something, I expect an answer.” The ae’Magi’s voice was gentle.

  “He asked if I wanted to be freed. I told him I wanted to be here. I live only to serve you, my lord. It is my honor to serve the ae’Magi ...” She let her voice trail off. That’s it, she cheered herself silently, placate him, stay in character; the gasps as she fought against crying and the whimper at the end were a nice touch; artistic really—it was too bad that she hadn’t thought to do them on purpose.

  He reached a hand out to her, and she pressed against it, getting as close to him as she could though the pain had gone and, with it, the full effect of his magic. She almost wished that the magic he used to increase his charisma stayed as effective on her as it was when he hurt her. Instead, she experienced an overwhelming desire to bite the manicured fingers—or throw up. The cold, metal edge of the cage dug into her side.

  “What else did you say to him, little one?”

  Aralorn pulled back from him and gave him a wide-eyed, somewhat confused look, even as she felt herself regain some clarity of thought. “Did you want me to say something else to him? I didn’t because I wasn’t sure if you would want me to.” She deliberately widened her eyes as if she were pleading with him to be pleased with her, trying to keep herself from tensing in anticipation of the wild, twisting pain.

  “No. You did well.” He absently patted her cheek. “I’ve b
een working on other things lately and haven’t had the time to do more with you. Tomorrow, when I’ve completed this spell, I’ve got a use for you.”

  If she were in any doubt about what he was talking about, the hand that ran lightly down her breast would have clarified it for her. The ae’Magi seemed satisfied that the shudder that ran through her at his touch was in response to desire. He smiled warmly at her and, humming a sweet tune, walked lightly through an archway.

  Aralorn stared at herself in the mirror at the back of her cage. The ae’Magi must have dispelled his illusion, because she didn’t see a bird anymore. The flickering light from the torches gave a dancing appearance to the fine, blond hair. The fragile face that stared expressionlessly back at her was extraordinarily beautiful. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead, and the misty, sea-green eyes looked dazed and vulnerable.

  Abruptly irritated with that vulnerability, Aralorn stuck her tongue out at her reflection. It didn’t make her feel any better.

  She wrapped both arms tightly around her legs. Head bowed on her knees, she listened to the sounds the servants made as they banked the fireplaces and snuffed the torches, trying to think over the uncontrollable panic that the thought of his intimate touch brought on.

  “Patience, Aralorn, patience,” she warned herself, speaking almost soundlessly. “If you leave now—granting that you can leave—he is going to doubt what you told him about Myr, which may not matter in the long run anyway.” She tilted her head back and addressed her words to the reflection, summoning up a tone of bleak humor. “But if I don’t get out of here, I’m going to break and tell him everything I know, from the name of my first pony to the bald spot on the top of Audreas the Vain’s head.”

  It was the truth. Four days—she didn’t count the time she’d spent locked up alone. A fifth day here would break her. And someone needed to let the Spymaster know what dwelled in the ae’Magi’s castle.

  Decision made, she waited while the sounds of the castle diminished and the moon hung high in the sky, revealed by the clear panels in the ceiling.

  When she was more or less satisfied that the people who were going to sleep were asleep, she knelt in front of the cage door. Grasping each edge, she began to mutter quietly, sometimes breaking briefly into song or chant to help focus her magic. She pushed aside the doubt that kept trying to sneak in: Doubt would cripple the small gift that she had. She was grateful to the ae’Magi’s vanity that her cage was made of precious silver rather than the iron that would have kept her prisoner until her bones crumbled to dust.

  First her fingers, then her hands, began to glow a phosphorescent green. Gradually, the light spread to the metal between her hands. When all the metal of the gate held the soft, flickering glow, she stepped through, leaving the spells on the locks intact. Her body ached from the ae’Magi’s magic, but nothing that wouldn’t fade in a day or two. It wouldn’t slow her down much, and that was all she was worried about.

  The light of her magic died, leaving the great hall black as pitch. She stood still and waited for her eyes to start adjusting before venturing out into the room.

  The only light in the room came from the skylights high above, only a faint reflection of the moon, which made it difficult to find the doorways. She took the first doorway that she could find, hoping that it was one of the two that traversed the outer wall of the castle.

  She bent low, occasionally putting a hand on the ground to help keep her balance. It was awkward, but people generally look at eye level, so from her lower vantage point she should be able to see any guards before they saw her. Her position also had the secondary benefit of making her a smaller target if she was seen.

  The corridor was lighter than the great hall had been, although not by much. The stone of the floor was dry and cool, and she ran a hand lightly over the walls. It took her longer than she thought that it should to find the small opening she was searching for.

  Panic clawed at her, and the temptation to run blindly down the hallway was almost overwhelming. This, she thought with wry humor, must be how a pheasant feels just before it jumps out of hiding and into the path of the arrow. She bottled up the panic and stored it away where it wouldn’t get out until this was all over.

  She had almost decided to look for another way to leave when she found what she was looking for. Just above the bottom row of blocks, her fingers scraped over one end of a pipe cut flush with the wall. Silently, Aralorn blessed the old man she’d met at a bar one night who told her the story.

  Centuries ago, an apprentice to one of the ae’Magis discovered an old rain spell in a book he was reading while the master was away. Three weeks later, when the Archmage came back, the castle was flooded, and the apprentice was camped outside. The Archmage drained the castle expediently by placing a drainpipe every sixteen stones in the outer corridors.

  One such drainage pipe was under her fingers. It was bigger than she’d hoped for; being about four fingers in diameter. It cut directly through the thick stone wall of the castle to the outside. The air coming through it smelled like a moat. Like freedom.

  She took a deep breath and concentrated. The familiar tingle spread though her body until it was all the sensation she could absorb, leaving no room for any of her other senses. Unable to see or feel, Aralorn focused on each part of her body shifting into one part of the mouse at a time; nose first, then whiskers. It took her only as long as it took to breathe deeply three times before a very small mouse crouched where she had stood.

  The mouse who was Aralorn shrank against the wall underneath the pipe for a minute and waited for the ae’Magi to investigate the magic she’d used—but he didn’t come. Human magicians weren’t usually sensitive enough to detect someone else using magic, but the ae’Magi was a law unto himself.

  The mouse shook herself briskly, twitched her whiskers, and scratched an itchy spot where the tingle hadn’t quite worn off yet; then she climbed up into the pipe.

  It was dark, which didn’t bother her much, and smelly, which did. Centuries of sludge had built up in the opening, and if several other bold rodents hadn’t foraged through (perhaps to escape a castle cat), she wouldn’t have made it. As it was, she was belly deep in slimy stuff. Busy not thinking about the composition of the muck, she almost fell out of the pipe and into the moat some distance below—only saving herself by some ungraceful but highly athletic scrambling.

  Poised on the edge of the old copper pipe, Aralorn shivered with nervous energy. Almost. Almost out. Just this one hurdle, and she would be away.

  The little slime-coated mouse leapt. The air blurred, and a white goose flapped awkwardly over the water, one wing dripping goo from the moat. There were plenty of birds who could fly better than a domestic goose—most birds, actually, since the goose could manage little better than a rough glide. But the goose was the only bird Aralorn knew how to become.

  Hampered by the wet wing, Aralorn was unable to gain any altitude and came to a flapping halt several hundred yards beyond the moat, in front of the bushes that signaled the beginning of the woodland surrounding the castle. She straightened her feathers and waddled toward the woods, carefully leaving the ooze-covered wing stretched away from the rest of her body.

  A black form erupted from the shadows, its ivory fangs catching the light of the moon as it halted directly in Aralorn’s path. The goose squawked and dodged backward, resuming a human form just in time for Aralorn to fall on her rump rather than her tail.

  Her own rump, too. She was back in her own skin: short, brown-haired, and plain-faced. Her anger fueled the speed of her transformation.

  “Allyn’s blessed toadflax!” she sputtered, using her father’s favorite oath. There had been no need for drama, and she’d been scared enough for ten lifetimes in the past few days. “Wolf, what are you trying to do to me?” Mindful of the proximity of the castle, she lowered her voice to a soft tone that didn’t carry but did not lack for force either. But anger faded into sheer relief, and the abrupt transitio
n left her giddy.

  “I could have died of shock”—she put her hand theatrically over her heart—“then what would you have done? Why didn’t you warn me you were here?”

  The wolf stood over her, fey and feral, with the stillness of a wild thing. The snarl had disappeared at her furious whispers, and he waited for a moment after she finished, as if he wanted to make certain she was done.

  His macabre voice, dry and hoarse, was passionless when he spoke—he didn’t answer her question. “You should have told me that you intended to spy on the ae’Magi—if I had known that you were contemplating suicide, I would have killed you myself. At least it would be a cleaner death than any he would bestow.” Fathomless golden eyes gazed at her coolly.

  A green mage could speak in animal form—though it required practice and a great deal of uncomfortable effort. Wolf wasn’t a green mage, though, not as far as she could figure him out. And those few human mages who could transform themselves to animals were lucky if they remembered to transform themselves back again. Wolf was an endlessly fascinating puzzle who didn’t fit into any category she could find for him.

  A reassuring puzzle, though.

  She watched him for a moment.

  “Do you know,” she said, after weighing his words, “that is the first time I have ever heard anyone say anything against him? I even asked why I was being sent to spy there—and none of it struck me as strange at all.”

  She nodded at the dark shape of the castle where it stood on the top of the mountain, its silhouette almost blacking out the sky to the east. “The Mouse said that there were rumors of an assassination plot, and I was to investigate it and warn the ae’Magi if necessary.” Her customary grin restored itself, and if it felt a little stiff, that was all right.

  Safe. She was out, Wolf was with her, and she was safe. “If there is such a plot, I can only wish them luck in their endeavors.”

  “It has always amazed me how well he can blind people, even when he is not using magic to do it,” replied the wolf. He glanced at the castle, then away. His yellow eyes glistened, glowing with a light that might not all have been a reflection of the moon. He looked back again, as if he could not resist the impulse. A growl rose low in his throat, and the hair on his neck and back stiffened.