Masques (28 page)

But this was Aralorn, and he had to heal her, or . . . He caught a flick of the desperation of that thought, but was soon lost in the peace of his magic. He floated with it for what could have been a hundred years or a single instant. Gradually, his fear of the loss of control, so well learned when his searing magic had leapt out burning, hurting, scarring, crept upon him—breaking the trance he’d fallen into.

He opened his eyes and gasped for air. His heart was pounding, and sweat poured off his body. Great shudders racked him. He turned his head enough to look at Aralorn.

The first thing that hit him was that he
was
looking at Aralorn. The guise she’d donned was gone. The bruises on her legs looked much worse on her own relatively pale skin. Fever had brought unnatural color to her pale cheeks.

When he could, he bent over and removed the bandage from her eyes. The swelling had almost completely gone and her eyes appeared normal when he carefully lifted her eyelids. He hadn’t looked before—he knew what those needles had done. He felt carefully with his fingertips where he’d seen the break in her skull and could locate nothing.

Almost too tired to move, he pulled her head onto his shoulder and drew blankets neatly around them. He knew he should stay up and keep watch—there was no warhorse to share guard duty with—but he hadn’t been this tired since his early apprentice days.

It was morning when Aralorn awoke, still slightly delirious. She’d had dreams of the quiet sounds of the forest before, and she let herself take that comfort now. She knew that all too soon she would have to face reality again. The nice thing was that the times reality crept in were getting farther and farther apart.

She thought about that for a minute before she realized that there was a man beside her. Delirium took over then, and she was drowning slowly. It was very hard to breathe, and she lost track of the forest while she strangled.

The soft sounds of a familiar voice lent her comfort and strength, but there was something wrong with the voice. It was too soft, it should be cold and rough, harsher. She associated unpleasant things with the warmer tones. The voice she wanted to hear should be dead like the Uriah, like Talor. She could hear someone whimpering and wondered who it was.

She ate and it tasted very good, salty and warm on her sore throat. She drank something else and a part of her tasted the bitter herb with approval, knowing that it would help her breathe.
Wasn’t there some reason that she didn’t want to get better?
—but she couldn’t decide why she wouldn’t want to get well, and while she thought about it, she drifted back to sleep.

Wolf watched her and waited. Without the unquenchable energy that characterized her, she looked fragile, breakable. Awake, she had a tendency to make him forget how small she was.

He gritted his teeth and controlled his rage when she cried out in terror. Although she babbled out loud, she said nothing that would have been any use to the ae’Magi were he listening.

She was quiet finally, and Wolf sat propped up against a tree, near enough to keep an eye on her but far enough away that he wouldn’t disturb her slumbers.

He should never have been able to heal her. Indisputably, he had. Even if he did nothing more than eliminate the paths the needles had cut into her eyes, it was more than human magic allowed for. Less dramatic but even further outside the bounds of magic, as he understood it, was the fact that she now wore the appearance that was hers by birth.

He’d always had the ability to do things beyond the generally accepted bounds of human magic—taking wolf shape for extended periods of time was one of those. Always before he could have attributed this to the enormous power he wielded. Human magic could heal, but it required a more detailed knowledge of the human body than he had acquired—killing required much less precision. Human magic could not recognize a shapeshifter’s natural shape and restore her to it . . . as he had done.

His magic had blithely crashed through the laws of magic established for thousands of years. What
was
he that he could do such things?

He found no answers. He’d seen the woman who bore him only once that he could remember. She’d seemed ordinary enough—for a woman who had spent a decade in the ae’Magi’s dungeon. But the ae’Magi had got a son on her and kept her alive afterward. She must have been more than she seemed.

Wolf had been the result of an . . . experiment perhaps: one that had gotten out of hand.

Aralorn stirred, catching his attention. He got to his feet with relief at being drawn from his thoughts, and went to her.

EIGHT

Aralorn was in the habit of waiting until she knew where she was and who she was supposed to be before she opened her eyes—a habit developed from frequently being someone other than herself. For some reason, it seemed more difficult than usual. The warm sun on her face seemed as much out of place as the sound of a jay squeaking from its perch somewhere above her.

She moved restlessly and felt a warning twinge from her side that was instantly echoed from various other parts of her body. As a memory aid, she found it effective—if crude.

The problem was, she had no idea how she had gotten from the ae’Magi’s dungeon to where she was.

Deciding that it was unlikely that she would come to any earth-shattering conclusions lying around feigning sleep, she opened her eyes and sat up—an action that she had immediate cause to regret. The abrupt change in position caused her to start coughing—no pleasant thing with cracked ribs. She collapsed slowly back into her prone position and waited for her eyes to quit watering.

Breathing shallowly, she restricted herself to turning her head to examine her current environment. She was alone in a small clearing, surrounded by thick shrubs that quickly gave way to broad-leafed trees. She could hear a brook running somewhere nearby. The sun was high and edging toward afternoon. Mountains rose, not far away, on at least three sides. They were smaller than their Northland counterparts, but impressive enough. Also unfamiliar, at least from her angle.

The blankets in which Aralorn was more or less cocooned were of a fine intricate weave and finer wool. She whistled softly at the extravagance. Just one of them would cost a mercenary two months’ salary, and she was wrapped in two of them, with her head pillowed on a third. She should have been too warm, bundled up so heavily—but it felt good.

The bandaging on her hands and wrists was neatly tied and just snug enough to give support without being too tight. Whoever had tied it was better at binding wounds than she was—not a great feat. She didn’t bother to examine the other bandages that covered her here and there, preferring not to scrutinize her wounds in case too many body parts were missing or nonfunctional.

It occurred to her then that her eyes should belong to the category of missing and nonfunctional items. The method the ae’Magi had used to blind her had been . . . thorough. Enough so that she had not thought that even shapeshifter magic could heal her.

She shivered in her blankets. She had the unwelcome thought that it might be possible for a strong magician to create the illusion of this meadow. She didn’t know for sure, but from her stories . . . Much more likely than someone breaking her out of the ae’Magi’s dungeons. Much easier, she was certain, than it would be to heal her eyes.

She looked around, but she was still the only occupant of the clearing.

Deciding that if it were the ae’Magi who was going to show up, she didn’t want to face him lying on her back, she found a slender tree growing near her head. She pushed herself back until she bumped into it—the effort it took was not reassuring. Gradually, so as not to trigger another fit of coughing, she raised herself with the tree’s support until she was sitting up with her back against it. She waited for a minute. When she didn’t start coughing, she slid herself up the tree, the bark scraping her back despite the wrapping job someone had done—that felt real enough. Finally, she was standing—at least leaning.

She didn’t hear him until he spoke from some distance behind her. His voice was without its usual sardonic overtones, but it was still blessedly Wolf’s. “Welcome back, Lady.”

Sheer dumb relief almost sent her crashing to the ground. Wolf. It was Wolf. He, she was willing to believe, could rescue her and heal whatever needed healing. Safe.

She swallowed and schooled her face—he wouldn’t enjoy having her jump on him and sob all over him any more than she’d have enjoyed the memory of it once she got her feet safely under her again.

When she was sure she could pull off nonchalant, she turned her head with a smile of greeting that left her when she saw his face. Only years of training kept her from giving her fear voice, even that couldn’t stop the involuntary step backward that she took. Unfortunately, her feet tangled in one of the blankets, she lost the support of the tree, and fell.

Definitely cracked ribs, but not even pain could penetrate her despair.

The Archmage.

Unwilling to let her enemy out of her sight, she rolled until she could see him, which set off a coughing fit. Eyes watering from pain, she saw that he, too, had stepped back, albeit more gracefully. He raised a hand to his face and then dropped it abruptly. He waited until she finished coughing and could talk—and there was no expression on his face at all.

Aralorn found herself grateful that she was unable to speak for a minute because it gave her a chance to think. The ae’Magi’s face it might be, but Wolf’s yellow eyes glittered at her—as volatile as the face was not.

It was Wolf, her Wolf. The still, almost flight of his body told her that more than his eyes. Illusion could reproduce anyone’s eyes, but she was unwilling to believe that anyone but her knew Wolf’s body language that well.

Cain was the ae’Magi’s son, but no one had ever told her how much the son resembled the father. If the ae’Magi’s son had shown the world his magic-scarred face, the one she knew best, surely someone would have mentioned the scars. Perhaps the ae’Magi didn’t want people to remember how much he looked like his demonized son. She could believe that if he didn’t want people to comment, they wouldn’t. Her next thought was that Wolf didn’t look like a man only a few years older than Myr—a few years younger than she was. Her third thought, as her coughing slowed down, was that she’d better figure out a way to handle this—she didn’t want to hurt him again.

Before she could say anything, Wolf spoke. “If I thought that you could make it to safety alone, I would leave you in peace. Unfortunately, that is not possible. I assure you that I will leave as soon as you are back . . .”

She ended his speech with a rude word and assumed as much dignity as she could muster while lying awkwardly on the ground amid a tangle of blankets. “Idiot!” she told him. “Of course I knew who you were.” She hadn’t been certain—he’d just made her short list, but she didn’t need to tell him that. “Just how many apprentices do you think the ae’Magi has had? I know the name of every one of them, thanks to Ren. He seemed to think that information might be valuable someday. How many mages do you think would have the power to do what you did to Edom?” Two or three, she thought, but one of those was Kisrah—who had not been on her list. “Just how stupid do you think I am?” She had to pause to keep from coughing again—but he didn’t attempt to answer her question with any of his usual sarcasm, and that worried her. So she turned her defense into an attack. “Why did you hide from me again? First the wolf shape, then the mask and the scars.” She let her voice quiver and didn’t give in to the temptation to make it just a little too much. “Do you distrust me so much?”