Myr followed Aralorn as she led Sheen into a solitary cave a hundred feet from the entrance—one big enough to hold the animals they had. “I’ve been told they can track a man as well as a hunting dog and travel faster than a man on horseback.” Myr spoke in a soft voice designed not to carry to anyone but Aralorn. “I don’t have much experience with Uriah. All that I know is that they are very hard to kill and are almost as immune to magic as I am.”
Aralorn nodded. “They don’t like fire, so make sure that there are torches ready. This lot”—she swung a hand in the general direction of the others in the cavern—“will fight better with torches than swords.”
Myr gave her a tired smile. “And no worries about how to light the torches either, with this assortment of amateur magic-users. I think that the only one who can’t light a torch with magic is I. Haris!” He caught the attention of the smith, who was organizing the storage of supplies. “I want a bonfire laid in the entrance and someone who can light it from a distance stationed somewhere safe to watch for the Uriah.”
Haris waved an acknowledgment, and Myr returned his attention to Aralorn. “There are three or four here who should be able to light the fire from a good distance. I’ll station them in relays.”
Aralorn shivered in her still-damp clothes. “We could be lucky. There is some kind of warding near the entrance. You can see the markings if you want to look. I suspect that the warding was the reason that Edom wouldn’t enter the caves. Do you remember? When he lost Astrid?” She’d given it a lot of thought and decided they’d have to plan as if the warding wasn’t there. But still, a little hope couldn’t hurt.
Myr nodded.
Aralorn continued, “If it works like the shapechangers’ spells do, the Uriah won’t even see the caves unless we are lighting fires and running in and out to attract their attention. The trail that we took up here is virtually a stream from the melting snow, so in a little while there will be no sign that we came this way. With luck, we’ll have that time. The cold makes them slower than usual. That’s the reason Sheen and I beat them here.”
“I’ll see that everyone stays inside.” Myr started to go—someone was calling his name—then turned around. “Aralorn?”
She pulled off Sheen’s bridle and vainly patted her clothing in search of something she could use to dry him off. But he was dryer than her clothing. “Yes?”
“I’ll send a couple of the older children in with toweling to dry your horse. You change your clothes, before you catch lung fever. My packs are marked over against the far wall; find something in them.”
It made sense. “Thanks.”
She made her way to his packs, unmistakable because of the embroidered dragon that glared at her as she riffled through his belongings. A true shapeshifter could probably alter the clothes that she was wearing, but Aralorn had no idea how to go about it. She pulled out a pair of plain trousers and a tunic of a dark hue and, best of all, a pair of dry cotton stockings. With clothes in hand she hunted down an unoccupied cranny and exchanged the wet clothes for the dry ones.
The oil coating on the boots worked better in snow than in rivers. The water had run in from the top and been prevented from leaving by the oil on the outside so that they were marshy inside. Aralorn dried them out as best she could and pulled them on over her newly acquired socks. She had hoped for better results.
She surveyed herself wryly when she was done. Myr was not tall—for a man—which left him only a head or so taller than she. He was, however, built like a stone wall.
Well, she thought, tugging at the front of the tunic, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about its being too tight.
The camp was starting to look organized again. Aralorn went back to check and found Sheen had been dried. He stood quietly with head lowered and one hind foot cocked up—a sure sign that he was as tired as she was.
Stanis found her there, her head resting against the horse’s neck, more asleep than awake.
“Aralorn, I think Astrid went back to camp.”
It was enough to wake her up. “What?”
“I can’t find her anywhere, an’ neither can Tobin, we searched an’ searched. She was crying all of the way up here because she left the doll her mother made her at camp. We tried to tell her that it would be all right, everyone knows that Uriah don’t eat dolls, just people. But I haven’t seen her since you came in, and neither has anyone else.”
“How many people have you told this to?” She fitted her bridle to the fastest of the camp horses. Sheen was too tired to run.
“Lots of people know I’m looking for her, but you’re the only one I told what I thought happened to her. I tried to tell Myr, but Haris was talking to him and lots of other people.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to sneak out of here and go look for her. I don’t want you to tell anyone that I’ve gone.” There was no use sending out more than one person. She was more than enough to bring back one little girl if the Uriah hadn’t found her yet. If they had made it to camp, then there was no sense in sending more people to die. “Keep looking for her here. She was pretty excited about the man who helped her find her way out of the caves. She may have just wandered deeper into the cave to see if she could find him. Wait until Myr isn’t busy, then tell him where I’ve gone. That should take long enough that I’ll either be back or I’m not coming back. Tell him that I said not to send anyone else after me. There aren’t enough people to spare. I’m just going to sneak down to our camp and see if I can spot her. If I don’t see her, I’ll ride right back up.”
She paused only long enough to get her sword. As she belted it on, the thought occurred to her that if she were going to have to keep using it against Uriah, it would behoove her to get more proficient at using the plaguing thing.
It wasn’t easy, with her limited magical powers, to sneak through a cave filled with magic-users, albeit weak ones. The gelding, sulky at leaving the other horses munching dinner, didn’t make matters any easier. She almost left him behind, but although he made it a little bit more difficult to escape undetected, he also gave her an edge if the Uriah were there.
Once out of the occupied caves, she gave up trying to remain unseen. The guards didn’t challenge her as she took the horse past them. They were looking for Uriah coming in, not people going out.
The camp gelding was a lot skinnier than Sheen and not so well trained. She stayed off the trails and followed a creek bed to the far side of the valley near Wolf’s camp, so the Uriah couldn’t easily follow her back trail to the caves. It wasn’t until she got to the valley that she realized that Astrid would have followed the main trail down and back.
Tired and cold and stupid.
It was quiet and peaceful, so she turned the horse directly toward camp. He took three strides forward, stiffened, and spooked wildly. She clung to his back, cursing silently, as the animal’s distressed cry and crashing branches gave whatever had scared him no doubt that there was someone riding on the mountainside above them.
Apparently the ae’Magi’s pets were capable of stealth.
She’d just gotten the horse under control when she heard a whistle from down below.
She would have known it anywhere. Talor had always been tone deaf—giving his signals a peculiar flat sound all their own, as well as making it unclear exactly what he was signaling. In this case it could have been either “all clear” or “help.” Given the circumstance, Aralorn picked the latter.
Without hesitation, she urged the horse down the slope. The only excuse that she had for her action was that she was exhausted and reacting from instinct. Gods bless them, was all she could think, somehow Ren had known. Somehow he’d sent them help from Sianim.
Her borrowed horse was not as sure-footed as Sheen and fought her all the way down. The horse made a lot of noise and ended up sliding most of the way on a small avalanche of his own making.
The gelding was still sliding uncontrollably when she ran into a small group of Uriah.
As they easily pulled down her mount, Aralorn jumped clear, hoping that the horse, poor thing, would distract most of them and give her a chance to find either Talor or Astrid.
Her jump took her clear of the feeding frenzy and earned her only a scraped shin and modest bruises. By the time she regained her feet, there were two Uriah nearly upon her. She used the split second before they attacked to search for a possible escape, but everywhere she looked there were more of them converging.
Bleakly, she thought of another of Ren’s homilies—rashness eventually exacts a full, fell price. She used her sword in a useless attempt to defend herself and waited to die.
It seemed like it took forever. She swung, and limbs fell, still writhing as if unwilling to accede to death with somber dignity. She swung until her arms were heavy and her tendons burned like slow acid in her shoulders. Her body was covered with myriad scrapes.
Surprisingly, none of her wounds was in itself serious; but collectively, they sapped her strength and dulled her reflexes. The Uriah just kept coming. The horse’s screams had stopped, for which she was profoundly thankful. It had been stupid of her to come running; any human who had been here was beyond anyone’s ability to help. The gelding had died for her foolishness, and she would soon follow.
She had little talent as a mindspeaker, but she sent a distress cry on a thread of magic to Wolf or any gods who happened to be listening anyway. Then she bit her lip and grimly hacked away.
Her arms were numb by the time that it dawned on her what was going on. She timed her strokes to the refrain in her head: stupid, stupid, silly bitch.
They could have killed her anytime they wanted to, but they didn’t want to. They were trying to capture her to take back to the ae’Magi for questioning. The thought of that redoubled her efforts. If she could win herself enough space, she could draw her knife and eliminate the chance of being questioned by the ae’Magi again. Her sword, although shorter than normal, was still too awkward to kill herself with before they stopped her.
She spun around, slicing a creature open across the belly when she heard some disturbance behind her, more a lack of attackers than a noise. She caught a quick glimpse of Talor’s face before she struck. Frantically, she avoided hitting him by a narrow margin, leaving her sword in an awkward place for defense. But that was all right, because it was Talor.
She blinked sweat out of her eyes. Something was wrong with him. Bile rose in her throat as she brought the sword back up again, but before she could strike she was caught from behind and held helpless.
What happened next was enough to top her worst nightmares. Talor smiled—and it was Talor despite the rotting flesh—and it said in Talor’s teasing voice, “I told you to always follow through on your strokes, or you would never make a swordmaster.”
She thought that she screamed then, but it might have been just the sound of a Uriah lucky enough to feast on the horse.
SEVEN
The wolf leapt neatly over the small stream that hadn’t been there the week before, and landed in the soft mud on the other side. The moon’s light revealed other evidence of the recent storm—branches bent and broken from the weight of a heavy snowfall, long grass lying flattened on the ground. The air smelled sweet and clean, washed free of heavy scents.
Knowing that the camp was near, Wolf increased his speed to a swift lope despite his tiredness. He reached the edge of the valley and found it barren of people. He felt no alarm. Even if the storm hadn’t driven them to the caves, the meltwater from the heavy snow that turned most of the valley bottom to marsh would have.
With a snort, he started down the valley side nearest where he had made his private camp. He decided to stop there and get his things before going on to the caves. Aralorn’s bedroll was gone, but his was neatly folded and dry under its oilcloth cover.
He muttered a few words that he wouldn’t have employed had there been anyone to hear and took on his human form. Wearily, he stretched, more than half-inclined to stay where he was for the night and join the others in the morning.
He’d always been solitary. As a boy and while an apprentice, he’d spent time alone as often as he could manage. He had become adept at finding places where no one would look.
When he left his apprenticeship behind him, he’d taken wolf shape and run into the wilds of the Northlands, escaping from himself more than the ae’Magi. He had avoided contact with people at all costs. People made him uncomfortable, and he frightened them—even Myr, though that one hid it better than most. He had a grudging respect for the Rethian king but nothing that approached friendship.
For Wolf, the only person who mattered was Aralorn.
Absently, Wolf moved his bedroll with the toe of his boot. He made a sound that was not humorous enough to be a laugh. He’d been running away from and back to Aralorn for a long time. She had caught him in a spell, and he hadn’t even known that she was weaving one.
Four years ago, he’d told himself that he followed her because he was bored and tired of hiding. Maybe it had even been true at first. She was always doing something. But then he’d heard her laugh. Until then, laughter had never made Wolf feel anything but repulsed (the ae’Magi laughed so easily).
He needed to see her.
Needing someone made him very uncomfortable. He didn’t remember ever needing anyone before, and he hated the vulnerability of it almost as much as he . . . as he loved her.
It wasn’t until he’d found out that Aralorn was spying on the ae’Magi that he knew how much she meant to him. Even the thought of her there made him shake with remembered rage and fear.
He wasn’t quite certain when his interest had turned to need. He needed her to let him laugh, to be human and not a flawed creation of the ae’Magi. He needed her trust so that he could trust himself. Most of all, he needed her touch. Even more than laughter—he associated touch with the ae’Magi—a warm hand on his shoulder (cut it so, child), an affectionate hug (it won’t hurt so much next time . . .).
Aralorn was a tactile person, too, but her touch didn’t lie. It still made him uncomfortable to feel her hands on him, but he craved it anyway. He picked up the bedroll and went down into the valley since it was the shortest way to the caves. When he arrived at the valley floor, even his dulled human nose caught the scent.
Uriah.
Not panicking, he took a good look around him and noticed the signs of hasty packing as well as the fact that the tents (including the one that Myr had worked so hard to get finished) had been torn into pieces by something other than the wind. He also noticed that there were no obvious bones.
He walked briskly though the camp to get a closer look. Here the scent was stronger, and everywhere were signs of anger vented on inanimate objects. That was good, he assured himself. Anger meant they had missed their prey.
There was a small bone—chicken. Haris would be unhappy about that. Human bones were conspicuously absent, and he felt a faint sense of relief. Myr must have had enough warning to get the camp into the caves. As long as the Uriah hadn’t been within sight when the people entered the caves, the wards would keep the entrances hidden from them.
Wolf had started once more for the caves when he saw something white in the drying mud: a horse’s skeleton. Too small to be Sheen.
It was picked clean, with only a wisp of mane to distinguish it. The leg bones had been cracked so that all the marrow could be sucked out. It wasn’t until he noticed the distinctive patterns on the silver bit that lay nearby that he knew that Aralorn had been riding the horse.
He found another pile of bones, also picked clean, fifteen or twenty paces away. They all had the peculiar twists of the Uriah. He found several skulls—she’d accounted for three of them. He had hoped that he would find her among the dead—something inside him howled with mocking laughter at the thought. But dead would be . . .
He could have followed her there easily.
He left his bedroll forgotten among the ruins of the camp and took wolf shape to run toward
the caves because it was faster. On the way there he found the pitiful remains of a small child—a dirty battered doll lay nearby. Astrid—he remembered the doll. He knew then why Aralorn had confronted the Uriah.
Rage sang in his blood. He restrained it with a pale sense of hope that Myr would know something to help his search. If he let the rage take him, there was no telling who would die. If everyone was dead, he reminded himself, no one could tell him if a search had been made. And Aralorn wouldn’t want him to kill her friends.
He planned quickly as he ran so that he wouldn’t think too much about the wrong things. He was conscious of a numbness that crept over him, covering hot rage with a thin coating of ice.
The furious arguments were audible even before he entered the darkness of the cave.
“Silence!” Myr’s voice cracked with tiredness but its power was still enough that it stopped the bickering. “There is nothing that we can do. Aralorn and Astrid are gone. I will not send out parties to be picked off two at a time by the Uriah. We will wait here until I am satisfied that they are gone. Even if Aralorn and Astrid were still alive, even if our whole party went down to the camp and found them prisoners of the Uriah, it wouldn’t matter. We could not take them. A hundred, she said, and she didn’t strike me as a person who exaggerated.”
Only in her stories, Wolf thought. Not when it mattered.
He stopped in the shadows of the entrance to one of the great caverns. Myr stood in front of him, facing the main room so that Wolf had a clear view of his profile. The light from the torch revealed the tired lines of his face. “It wouldn’t matter because twenty Uriah could destroy all of us, however we were armed. They would kill us, and we’d be lucky if we killed ten of them. Aralorn knew that when she went out looking for Astrid. She stood a better chance than any of us because she has dealt with them before. Had I known what she was doing, I would have stopped her, but I didn’t. I will, however, stop any of you who try to leave now. When the sun comes up, I will look.”
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