by Jean Johnson
From the way one golden equine eye surveyed her, then winked slowly and deliberately, he was remembering the last time the two of them had been together like this, too. For a long, shocked moment, Alys couldn’t have moved even if both of her uncles had suddenly appeared behind her. Considerations of modesty were swept away, though, as the memory of the pleasure she had found in riding him bareback rose within her like an incoming tide. Breathless, warm under her bodice vest, blouse, and Kelly-style trousers, she wiped damp palms on her hips and eyed him speculatively.
Just as he shifted his weight impatiently, she made up her mind and lunged at him. With a yank on his mane and a thrust of her legs, she managed to leap up just enough to hook one leg over his back, then hauled herself, grunting and puffing, up onto his back all the way. Squirming a little, grinning, and blushing, she got herself settled in just the right spot.
Strangely enough, the position didn’t remind her of the previous horseback trip. Instead, it recalled a time from ages and ages ago, when she would climb onto his back and he’d trot around, his elbows hooked under her knees, pretending to snort and whinny like a horse to entertain her as a little girl. So she thumped him lightly with her boot-clad heels.
“Okay, horsie! Let’s go!”
From the equine snort he gave, he wasn’t expecting her playful reaction to being up on his back. But he seemed willing enough to play the game. Swishing his tail, he pranced toward the eastern gate. Trevan was already there, in the act of swinging open the doors to attend to some chore.
With a cheerful wave, Alys passed him, mounted on his brother’s back. She clung as Wolfer headed down the sloping, zig-zagging road that led eventually to the eastern beaches. A few minutes later, a golden-copper eagle soared into the sky over their heads, veering off to the left, flying toward the northern half of the island. Wolfer veered to the right, venturing into the forest along a deer trail that led to the south.
Her childhood joy in riding didn’t linger long. The uneven way he picked through the jungle floor, over fallen trees, around thick stretches of bushes, up little ridges, and down into small valleys, rocked her body over his brown-hided spine. The awareness she had of the last time added to her stimulation, until within half an hour of beginning their ride, Alys was impatient for him to find a spot to stop. She didn’t want to experience her pleasure riding his back this time; she wanted to experience it riding him.
Wolfer, however, had a specific destination in mind. When they finally reached it, he stopped at the edge of a little swale in the forest. It was carpeted with moss so thick, one could dig for half a foot before reaching actual dirt. If it had been a rug, it would have fitted his bride-to-be’s requirements, for it carpeted the forest floor in an area roughly twelve feet by twenty, forming a sort of oval next to a trickle of a stream. A snort and a twist of his head made her blink.
“You want me to dismount?” Alys asked. The nod of his long, brown, equine head had her slithering reluctantly off his back. Instantly, her right hand had a hold of, not his mane down by his withers, but the hair growing at the nape of his neck as he transformed back to his natural shape.
His musky male odor mingling with the scent of moss and water, tree and earth, Wolfer quickly divested her of every scrap of her clothing. Letting her hands roam over his body, he enjoyed the impatient way she removed his garments. But when she started to tug him down toward the mossy bed he had located for them, he shook his head.
“No . . . let’s go for that ride again,” Wolfer murmured, running his fingers through the inevitable tangle of curls he had helped her brush out when they had dressed earlier in the morning.
Alys lifted her eyes to his, wide and uncertain. “Like . . . like this? Naked? But . . . your brothers . . .”
A smile curved his lips. Leaning in close, Wolfer dipped his head and nuzzled her ear. “Saber is either busy with his own bride or working in his smithy, Kelly is no doubt sewing if she isn’t with my twin, Dominor is missing, Evanor is moping inside the castle over his brother’s absence, Trevan roams the northern half of the isle for his territory, while I claim the south, Rydan is asleep at this hour, Koranen is most likely in his own forge, and Morganen was due to go down to the salt-block warehouses to replenish the spells on the wagons this morning.
“If any but Trevan and Morganen stir outside the walls, it will be toward the western cove. The trading ship that is still out there will be leaving with the morning tide and will have no reason save the purchase of our salt to come up to the castle . . . and less than no reason to come all the way out here. Even if they could find us in this part of the island.” His teeth nipped her earlobe quickly, gently, making her breath catch. “Besides, after our first morning ride, I longed more than you can know to have you naked on my back, wet with your pleasure, and so ready for me all I had to do was transform, twist, and fill you.
“I would take you on the beach, but I do not think sand would feel all that nice if it clung to certain intimate places on either of us,” he added with a grin, pulling back slightly to show her he was teasing her. “This moss will be a wonderful bed for both of us . . . and a good place for you to get in touch with the wild that lies within you. A good shapechanger cannot transform into a new animal shape all that easily without getting in touch with her animal side, after all . . .”
Nuzzling her throat as she absorbed his words with a shudder, Wolfer nipped at her soft skin with his teeth. The bite was a sting that didn’t come anywhere close to harming her, but it did make her suck in a sharp breath. It also made her sway into him, her bare breasts touching his bare chest, her belly brushing against his erection; their thighs slid together, bodies rubbing in satiny warmth.
Alys clutched at his shoulders; Wolfer’s hands cupped the curves of her buttocks. He lifted his mouth from the curve of her neck and smiled down at her. Smiling back, she started to lean close enough for another kiss, then sighed, thinking.
“We should do the shapechanging first.”
“Oh, we should, should we?” Wolfer returned, arching a brow at her.
She nodded reluctantly. “I need to be fresh and strong, when I try this. And you . . . make me all weak inside. During and, um, afterward,” she added, cheeks warming with the topic. “It’s nice. I like it, but . . . I think I should concentrate on the lesson. You know. First.”
Sighing, Wolfer nodded his head. A squeeze of her rump and he stepped back, releasing her. “All right. We’ll start with your pookrah shape. It’s dog-like. It has the same general bone structure and musculature, the same internal organs. Now, can you do partial transformations?”
Alys nodded, trying not to look at his naked form directly. All those muscles were rather distracting. Her intermittent lessons with Morganen had certainly involved far less interaction than this. “Yes. They’re, um, easier for me in some ways.”
“They usually are,” he agreed. “Can you do a partial transformation between shapes?”
“Um . . . a little. It’s easier for me to go back and forth from human.”
“Well, we’ll try anyway. Transform,” he instructed her. The sooner the better, too; her body was dappled here and there with sunlight, highlighting a patch of breast, a bit of bicep, and shining in golden highlights through her dark blond curls.
Nodding, Alys took a deep breath. “Um . . . don’t hurt me. I’m not really a pookrah, remember.”
Wolfer rolled his eyes. She really was silly, sometimes—and in the span it took him to glance skyward and back, she had reshaped herself into a brindled-gold, horse-sized wardog. Elongated canines protruded past the lips of a narrow snout. Gray eyes narrowed warily, and triangular ears flattened slightly in uncertainty. She now stood as tall as Wolfer on long, lean legs that connected to narrow hips and chest.
Claws the length of a little finger tipped each toe on her paws, digging into the moss cushioning the floor of the glade. They were strong and sharp, designed to rend and tear more readily than a normal dog’s claws. There were more m
uscles on her frame than there would be on a coursing hound; pookrahs were designed to be strong as well as fast. Fierce and cunning, too. Their minds had been magically altered to be smarter than the average canine’s, and hardwired to chase down and rend anything that looked like prey or that they had been trained to consider an enemy.
A string of saliva dripped off one of her canines, and she licked her lips, panting a little.
“That’s a . . . a very realistic transformation.” And an unnervingly accurate one, Wolfer thought. There had been only a few pookrah attacks in the three years that he and his brothers had been exiled here . . . but there had been some. Careful to move slowly, in case the instincts of her current shape were strong, Wolfer lifted his hands, making a shrinking motion. “Can you make yourself smaller? Wolves aren’t the size of horses.”
The pookrah licked her lips again. The ears flattened a little; the tail and hind legs trembled. She shrank a little, but not far, by a finger-length or so in height. Craning her head, she looked at herself and tried again. A thumb-length, this time. A whine of frustration rose from her throat, an odd sound for a species Wolfer had only ever heard baying for his siblings’ blood.
“Come on,” he encouraged her. “A lot more than that. Shrink down. Make yourself smaller!”
She strained again, and again . . . and rippled back into her normal flesh. Bracing her hands on her knees, she panted for a few moments. A shake of her head, and she looked up at him. “I’m used to doing this in a mirror . . . I just don’t have a good enough body-sense to do it without looking at myself.”
Wolfer’s brows rose at that. “That’s strange; most shapechangers I know have a harder time transforming while they watch themselves. They’ll use a mirror to check their progress, but the visual disorientation during the actual attempts usually throws them off their stride.”
“It doesn’t throw me, but we don’t have a mirror out here. Maybe if we went back to your rooms?” Alys offered, folding her arms across her breasts. She wasn’t too comfortable, being naked in front of him. Not because she was naked, exactly; it was more because she was using her magic openly in front of him. On top of being naked in front of him.
Shaking his head, Wolfer lifted his hand toward the stream. “Nucsolk!”
A bubble the size of his chest rose up out of the trickling water. It flattened and elongated into an oval, shimmering as he directed it with his will. Angling and spreading horizontally as well as vertically, it hung in the air next to her. Another muttered word and the doubled surface hardened. It was a little misty, not like a good glass mirror, but it did display both of them with enough clarity to be useful.
Alys blushed at their reflections, surrounded by semitropical foliage. “We look like temple images of Jinga and Kata, as lover and maiden at the Dawn of Time . . .”
Moving up behind her, Wolfer wrapped his arms around her. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“Wolfer!” She tried to elbow him, but he held her still until she stopped struggling. Another kiss dropped onto her curls, then he released her. Stepping back, he gave her room to transform.
“Again. Pookrah, and make it small.”
A swirling ripple of flesh, and the horse-sized wardog stood in her place. She studied her reflection, narrowed her eyes a little . . . and shrank. A finger-length at a time, but she shrank all the same. Ears pricked forward with concentration, tail-tip twitching, the lean, short-haired canine reduced itself to the size of a hound over the span of a minute or so.
“Good . . . good,” Wolfer praised her. “Now, hold that size. Feel it from your bones to your skin, and hold it . . . Good,” he repeated as she stood there, studying herself. “Now, come back to yourself . . . and then transform to that size of a pookrah.”
A breath, and Alys resumed her natural form. Another lungful, and she shrank and shifted shape, getting it in one go. Wolfer caught himself before he could shout with pleasure; she was still a pookrah, however small, and he was essentially defenseless. Not to mention naked. He did have his magic, but she might be fast enough to chew on certain parts of his anatomy before he could cast a protective spell, if he startled her badly.
“Very good,” he murmured quietly instead. “Now come back to yourself. I’m going to shift my own shape into a wolf, and I want you to examine me all over. Touch, smell, sight, all of me. You’ll need to feel the fur to know how to grow it, and feel as well as see how much more stocky and muscular a wolf is, compared to a wardog.”
Transforming, Alys nodded. The mirror was really helping. So was his gentle tone of voice. She knew she had a lot of work ahead of her, though. Shrinking her size was just one of dozens of adjustments she would have to make.
It was nice to have a teacher in the same place as her, for once.
THIRTEEN
Morganen stared down into the mirror resting on his workbench. The soft chime had interrupted one of his experiments, but the alerting spell let him know a certain someone was about to communicate. The oval looking glass misted for a long moment, then two patches cleared. On the left appeared the face of Donnock of Devries, bruised in-law to the Corvis bloodline. On the right was the face of Broger of Devries . . . in-law and usurper of the bloodline.
How easy it would be to reach through and smash both of them . . .
All it would take would be a subtle alteration of his spying spell, a casting of a powder very similar in composition and enchantment to the one he’d used on his main mirror to bring Kelly from her world to his . . . and the reach of his will, extended into the hearts of both men. A simple matter, were it not for the fact that Morganen simply didn’t like to kill. Alas, the youngest of the eight mage-brothers wasn’t a murderer by nature. He much preferred to fix things, rather than smash them. Any fool could smash and destroy; it took someone with far greater skill to create and mend.
Definitely more of a lover than a fighter, he thought with a sigh, reaching for his mug of stout. Not that he had much of an opportunity to be a lover either, right now. His gaze slid to the cheval mirror in the corner, but it was quiescent. Mind back on your work, he chided himself into paying attention as Broger and Donnock spoke.
“What do you mean, ‘what trip to Nightfall’?” Broger demanded of his younger brother. “You’re on the gods-be-damned boat! Didn’t it go there?”
“I don’t . . .” Donnock’s face, peering up through the surface of the looking glass, blinked in a somewhat stupid, confused fashion. “I don’t remember. Why am I here, again?”
Broger wasn’t slow-witted. Unfortunately. “Damn and blast! They’ve probably cast a forgetfulness spell on you. I’d love to know who colored your face with all those bruises, too. Get back here immediately. Hire a mirror-Gate and come straight back to the castle.”
“Why?” Donnock asked, still looking a bit dazed and lost.
“I’m going to have to crack open your memories, that’s why.”
Donnock shook his head, as if trying to rid it of some internal pain. Or more accurately, trying to think clearly through the fog Morganen had imposed upon him. “But . . . won’t that risk damaging my mind?”
Eyes squinted shut in his bewilderment, the younger Devries brother missed the sardonic look of his eldest sibling. “That’s a risk we’ll have to take. I need a clear scrying of the island. I’ll assume that you’ve been there, since you cannot remember a thing about your visit. They must have some reason to suspect a visit from you is not as friendly as it seems. Yet they do not know anything. Otherwise they would have ordered you bound in enspelled chains.
“Well. It matters not what sort of suspicions they might have regarding me,” the older man dismissed. “The news I just bought is all the excuse I need for a full assault. So long as there are no witnesses, their deaths will be blamed on the Disaster of Prophecy.” Broger smirked up at Morganen’s face, though he didn’t know it, thinking his scrying link with his brother was secure. “Come back quickly. Your life is val
uable to me, now. As are the contents of your mind. I need a clear visual of that island.”
The communication ended with a flick of his hand. The mirror on the table misted and turned gray for a moment, then cleared. When it showed only his own reflection, Morganen sat back, thinking. What news could he have “bought” that gives him leave to think he could kill us with . . . impunity. Of course! Kelly talked with that Council mage. They know there’s at least one woman on the Isle, and that means they expect a Disaster any day, now.
Which means I should keep a closer eye on the Council. They might not believe Dom’s kidnapping is sufficient to mark a Disaster large enough to be prophesied . . .
But what does he mean by his brother’s life being valuable to him, now? Wouldn’t it be valuable to begin with? It was a conundrum to ponder. Of course, Broger wasn’t Morganen; the man’s mind worked in twisted ways that Morganen didn’t necessarily want to follow. Perhaps a consultation with Alys; she knows him well enough to guess what he might have in mind. Certainly she’ll know what he last had in his menagerie, what he would inundate us with in his “full assault.”
The corner of his mouth curved up as he contemplated finding a moment to have a private chat with his soon-to-be next sister-in-law. Presuming Wolfer doesn’t try to eviscerate me just for looking at her, of course . . .
Oh!” Alys squeaked, hands releasing her victim and flying up to cover her mouth. “Oh!—I did it!”
Kelly twisted from her sprawled flop, shifting onto her side. Planting her hand under her cheek, she arched a strawberry blond brow at her student. “Yeah, you certainly did. You did it very well, too. With actual power and oomph behind that throw. But you also did something wrong, at the very end.”
