Masques s-1

by Patricia Briggs

  Aralorn cautiously set a hand on his fur, smoothing it down. In all the time she’d known him, he’d always been slow to warm from his customary reserve, and though she’d seen him kill several times, she’d never seen him quite this upset. “What’s wrong?”

  The wolf quieted and lowered his head for a moment. Then he shook himself, and said softly, “Nothing. Perhaps it is the moon. I find that it sometimes has this effect on me.”

  “The moon.” She nodded solemnly. “That must be it.” She caught his gaze and raised one eyebrow. The wolf stared back at her. Aralorn gave up the contest without a fight, knowing that he was perfectly capable of continuing the stare-down all night. “Shall we go, or do you want to wait for the ae’Magi so we can destroy him and win the world back for goodness and light?”

  The wolf grinned ferally. “If we killed him, the world would be more likely to draw and quarter us than praise us as saviors. So by all means, let us make haste so as not to be forced to destroy the ae’Magi.” The sarcasm in his voice clearly dismissed any chance he thought they’d have of destroying the Archmage.

  He turned and made his way back through the brush, leaving Aralorn to follow.

  Several hundred yards from the edge of the woods, her gray stallion was tied to the trees. At their approach, he whickered a greeting. Aralorn laughed as the animal lipped the plain tunic she wore, then drew back in obvious disgust at the taste.

  “Why how did you find your way here, Sheen?” She slanted a look at the wolf, and said to him, “Thanks, I wasn’t looking forward to walking back.”

  Over the years, she’d learned not to question him too closely—mostly because he wouldn’t answer her. If he wanted to be a wolf, who was she of all people to question it? Still, the knot that attached the colorful cloth reins to the tree would have been difficult for someone with no fingers to tie.

  Aralorn untied the reins and mounted, only to dismount and shorten the stirrups. She sighed loudly as she untied the leather strings that were woven into the saddle to keep the stirrups at one length. Someone with much longer legs than hers had ridden the horse last.

  “Sheen, how many times have I told you not to give strangers a ride? You never know where they might take you.”

  She might not question him out loud, but she liked to make it obvious that it was cooperation and not stupidity.

  The wolf tilted his head to one side, and there was a hint of amusement in his eyes. She laughed and continued to unweave the strings. He’d even remembered to bring her sword and knives.

  Sometimes she thought that he might be a renegade shapeshifter, one of her mother’s people—though he lacked the gray-green eyes that were characteristic of the race. Someone more skilled than she and able to hide what he was from her. It shouldn’t be possible, but nothing he was should have been possible.

  That he was a human magician was very unlikely because human magic didn’t lend itself well to shapeshifting. Instead of blending in with the forces of nature, it sought to control them and required immense concentration that was impossible to maintain for extended periods of time. To turn oneself into an animal for a prolonged period would require the strength of the ae’Magi . . . or his son.

  Her normally deft hands faltered at their familiar task, so she stopped and gazed almost impersonally at her hands, which trembled without her consent. The mindless babbling fear threatened her as she worked her way through her suspicion. It was very unlikely that Wolf was a human mage, she reminded herself again. She glanced at the wolf and then back to her saddle. The ae’Magi’s son had disappeared six years ago. There were other green-magic users than her own people, and she’d never heard of a human mage who could take and keep an animal’s shape so long, not in all the stories she’d ever collected, ae’Magi or not. Still, her body would not release the panic it insisted on; terror was a difficult emotion to reason with. She’d noticed that before.

  She looked at him again, and he caught her gaze and held it, his gold eyes no more readable than a pair of amber gemstones. She remembered the fever-bright agony that had been in them when she first met the wolf.

  It had taken only a week for her to heal his leg, but he’d fought the fever for almost a month. He’d left as soon as he could stand up, at least for a while. One day she’d looked up to find him watching her with his uncomfortably canny eyes. After that, he came and went, sometimes staying away for months at a time, then appearing as suddenly as he had left.

  She remembered how long she’d worked to gain his trust. It had taken time to get him to let her touch him, more time before he would eat food she gave him, and almost a year before he trusted her enough to reveal for certain that he was more than just a wild animal. She compared his remoteness to the ae’Magi’s easy smile and beautiful voice. If she ever met a corpse that talked, she imagined that its voice would be similar to her wolf’s.

  * * *

  The wolf watched her and saw the wear of her time with the ae’Magi. He saw the tremor of her hands and smelled the sweat of her fear. He saw that she’d used the cheerful demeanor that was her habit as a mask, and he lost the hope that she had by some miracle escaped unscathed from the ae’Magi’s games. The desire to kill the Archmage rose in his throat and was set aside for future use. He saw the fear in her eyes, but until he stepped closer to comfort her, he didn’t realize that she was afraid of him.

  Instantly, he halted. This was the one thing that he hadn’t expected. Four years, and never had he seen the fear that he’d inspired in everyone else he’d ever met. Not even when she’d had reason to fear.

  The old ache of bitterness urged him to flee. If they had been somewhere else, he would have left without a backward glance, but here, near the castle, she was still in desperate danger; already he could smell the excitement of the ae’Magi’s “pets.” She wouldn’t be able to lose them on her own despite her training and surprisingly formidable combat skills—she wasn’t very big to be so dangerous. After three weeks in confinement, she was hardly at her best, so he waited.

  * * *

  Whoever he was, whatever he was—he was not anything like the ae’Magi. She was jumping at shadows. But that certainty had come too late; she could see it in the stillness of Wolf’s body.

  She crouched down to look him in the eye; she didn’t have to lower herself far—he was tall and she wasn’t. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . just a little shaky”—she gave a half laugh and held up an unsteady hand—“as you can see. He’s got me doubting everything I know.” She moved the hand to touch him, and he quietly moved just out of reach.

  She knew that she had hurt him, but before she could fix it, the stallion snorted softly. She turned back to him and saw that he was twitching his ears back and forth and shifting his weight uneasily.

  “Uriah,” commented the wolf, looking away from her. “If they are getting close enough that even Sheen can smell them, we’d best be on our way. There are riding clothes in the saddlebags. Put them on, we may have a long ride ahead.”

  She wiped herself off as best she could on the simple cotton slave tunic she wore. Ten years of being a mercenary had destroyed any vestige of ladylike modesty she might once have felt, but she hurried into the clean clothes anyway, as they could use every second to avoid a confrontation with the Uriah.

  She swung into the saddle and let the wolf lead the way at the brisk trot dictated by the rough country and the dark. Had the Uriah been closer, she would have risked a fall with a faster gait, but for now there was no need for panic.

  When she had scrounged for her clothes, Aralorn found that the saddlebags also contained oatcakes. She pulled a couple out and ate one as she rode, feeding the other to the horse, who knew how to eat and move at the same time. When she offered one to the wolf, he refused. She let him pick the way, trusting him to do his best to rid themselves of the Uriah.

  The Uriah were vaguely human-looking creatures that appeared more dead than alive though they were almost impossible to kill. The insatiable hunger that
drove them gave them a berserker’s ferocity. They were normally found only in the far eastern regions that bordered the impassable Marshlands, but in the last decade or so they’d begun to turn up in unexpected places. But to find them this far west was almost unheard of. Especially since the ae’Magi could certainly . . .

  “Stupid!” she exclaimed out loud. The warhorse, slightly spooked by the nasty smell behind them and miffed by the slow pace they were taking, took exception to the sudden sound and bucked hard. She didn’t fall off, but it was a near thing, and it took a while to stop the curvetting completely. “The sudden upswing in Uriah attacks, their appearance in places where there have never been Uriah before—that’s all him, isn’t it?”

  The wolf waited until the show stopped, then said, “They belong to him.” Without commenting further, he continued on, leaving Aralorn to follow as she could.

  The sun began to rise on the silent travelers. Aralorn was quiet at first because she didn’t know how to undo the damage she’d done to him with her distrust; after a while, it was fatigue that kept her silent. Three weeks with no exercise left her feeling as if she were recovering from a prolonged illness. Despite her tiredness, when the wolf halted and told her they were stopping for the afternoon, she protested.

  “If we don’t stop and let the horse graze and get some rest, you’ll be walking tomorrow.” He spoke slowly and clearly, and his voice managed to pierce through her exhaustion.

  She nodded, knowing he was right, but the urge to run away from the castle was stronger than her common sense, so she didn’t dismount. The horse arched his neck and blew, as if ready for battle, responding to the invisible signals of his rider.

  Wolf was silent until he saw her sway in the saddle from sheer tiredness. “I will stay on watch, Lady. I know when the ae’Magi or his playthings are near, and I won’t let them take you back.” His voice softened.

  Again she nodded, but this time she dismounted and, with more instinct than willpower, began to untack the horse. The light saddle seemed to weigh more than she remembered, and it was an effort to reach high enough to get the bridle off—but she managed. Sheen needed no restraint to keep him close.

  She untied the sleeping roll and climbed in it without even dusting off her clothes. The wolf stretched out beside her, his big warm body warding off the chill of lingering fear even better than her blankets. The last thing she noticed before sleep claimed her was the comforting sound of the stallion munching grass.

  TWO

  Aralorn breathed in ragged gasps and rubbed a shaky hand across the wetness on her cheeks. Sweating, and still half-caught in her nightmare, she curled under her blanket and covered her ears with her hands to shut out the soft seductive voice of the ae’Magi.

  She’d fought in the regular troops and knew that nightmares were part of the territory. They’d get better, but for right now, every time she drifted to sleep, her dreams all led back to the Archmage’s fine-boned hand holding the ornate silver dagger he used to butcher his sacrifices. The young brown-eyed boy, no older than some of her brothers the last time she’d seen them, was so caught by the spell that he smiled as the ae’Magi drew his knife. At least it was daylight when she opened her eyes—and the dirt under the leather comprising the outer layer of her bedroll felt a lot different from marble.

  She sat up abruptly and wiped at her wet cheeks. Sheen stood nearby, dozing with one hind foot cocked and his convex nose lowered almost to knee level. Near Sheen, Wolf lay still, his muzzle on his paws. He was looking away from her. Aralorn knew that he must have heard her when she woke up, so his inattention was deliberate. Her momentary fear had hurt him—she hadn’t realized he worried about her opinion. She hadn’t thought he worried much about anyone’s opinion of him.

  She addressed his back. “That place—it . . . twists everything. There is so much magic in the castle, it makes the air heavy, and when I breathed it . . . He loves it, you know—playing games and making people into his puppets. Power.”

  She shuddered slightly, and continued, “I watched him drink the blood of a child he’d just killed, and I found myself thinking how beautifully the light of the candles reflected off his hair. It’s . . . not pleasant not to know whether your feelings are your own.” She brought her legs up until she could wrap her arms around them.

  She’d begun in an attempt to explain herself to Wolf—to show him that it wasn’t him she’d distrusted but her own perceptions. Once she’d started talking, she couldn’t stop. “I have never been so frightened in my entire life,” she whispered. “I always thought that I was strong-willed, but even with my mother’s blood to help me resist the spells, I couldn’t completely block the feeling that I wanted to please him.” Her voice died.

  For a long time there were only the sounds of the forest—the wind in the trees, a creek nearby, and a cricket singing.

  She sighed. “I might have been able to block it entirely toward the last—when I knew what the spells were and how he worked them; but I couldn’t, because I had to act as if the spell were having its effect on me. Sometimes I think . . . that maybe I didn’t want to block the spell because it made me feel so much better . . .” She knew that she would have bruises in the morning from gripping herself so hard. She took a shuddering breath and put her forehead down on her knees. “I can’t get him out of my mind. I think some of it is still his magic, but I see his face every time I close my eyes.”

  Slowly, Wolf stood up and left his place. He sat down and leaned against her. She loosed her grip on her legs and ran a hand in the thick pelt.

  A cold nose worked its way under her arm, and his warm, wet tongue licked at her chin until she squealed and pulled away with a quavering laugh, wiping at her face with her sleeves.

  The wolf smiled, as wolves do, and rolled over against her on his back. She rubbed his stomach (something that he didn’t allow in public) and one back leg snapped rapidly back and forth as she caught just the right spot.

  After he felt he had cheered her up, he said in his usual cool voice that sounded wrong coming out of a wolf getting his stomach rubbed, “Don’t worry about it, Lady. Living in that place for any length of time will twist your thoughts and feelings until what you feel and what he wants you to feel are tangled together in a knot that would baffle a sailor.” His voice was gentler, sounding like velvet on gravel. “Time will help.”

  “I know,” replied Aralorn, then continued in a lighter tone, “but I’m not looking forward to the next decade or so.”

  Wolf rolled over with improbable quickness and nipped her lightly on the hand in response to her quip, tacitly agreeing with her unspoken decision that the discussion was too serious.

  Aralorn tilted her head to the side, a slow grin twisting her lips. “So you want to fight, do you?” She tackled him and began a wrestling match that left them both flat on the ground and panting.

  “Will you be able to sleep now?” he asked, rather hoarsely, even for him. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”

  She nodded and rolled over until she was on the bedding, unwilling to use enough energy to get up and walk. She mumbled a good night that lost most of its consonants. He touched his nose to her cheek and woofed softly before curling up against her.

  * * *

  In the end, it was the stallion that woke them both. The high-pitched whistle split the night.

  Aralorn leapt to her feet and had the bed rolled up almost before she opened her eyes. Bridling and saddling took somewhat longer as the obstinate beast wouldn’t stand still. As she worked, she kept an eye on the wolf as he stared into the night. At his signal, she left what was not already attached to the saddle and mounted the stallion, who was already trotting. Although not built for running, Sheen managed a very credible speed as he followed the wolf’s lead. The Uriah were close enough behind them that they could hear the howls the beasts made when they found their camp.

  Aralorn had fought the Uriah before, and she knew that they were faster than any horse—certain
ly faster than Sheen. The creatures were too close behind and gaining quickly. She drew her sword and slowed the stallion in preparation for facing them.

  Noticing that Sheen was slowing, the wolf darted back and nipped at the stallion’s heels, nimbly dodging the war-trained horse’s well-placed kick.

  “No,” Wolf snarled at her. “You don’t stand a chance against the number that we have behind us. If you keep going, I can lure them away.” With that, he began to veer off, but Aralorn guided Sheen to block his path.

  She shook her head and shouted over the sounds of the Uriah, “It’s me that they want. They won’t follow you, and even if they did, it would mean that you would have to face them alone. Together, we might stand a chance.”

  “You know better than that, Lady.” His tones rang with impatience. “Against two or three maybe, but there are many more than that. You needn’t worry about me, I can keep ahead of them on my own.” Here the wolf paused a moment, as if he were choosing his words carefully. “They will follow me if given a choice between the two of us.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Then, before he could answer, she said, “Cursed obscure Wolf. Never mind. We don’t have time to argue.” It was getting difficult to talk and keep Sheen from bolting as the howls grew nearer.

  He flashed his fangs at her in a mock smile as only a wolf can do. “Lady, this isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with them. Nor will it be the last.”

  She didn’t want to leave him. If she hadn’t known he was no ordinary wolf, she wouldn’t have even considered leaving. But, against so many Uriah, she would have been more of a hindrance than a help. She heard the wails of the Uriah increase exponentially as they sighted their prey.

  “Right,” she said abruptly. “I’ll see you in Sianim. But, plague it, Wolf, take care not to let them ruin your fur coat.” With that, she turned Sheen in their original direction and urged him on. The wolf stayed in the path of the Uriah and watched with yellow eyes as they came closer. When the tone of their calls changed and became even more frantic, he broke into a swift run, leading them away from the path taken by his companions. Aralorn, looking back, saw that Wolf had been correct: All of the grotesque, humanoid forms followed the wolf’s trail, ignoring her entirely.