Wolfsbane (21 page)

Kisrah spared her a brief glare before continuing into the room. She lit a magelight as she followed him in, but he lit his own as well. Obviously, she thought with amusement, he didn’t trust her. Smart man.

She tugged the curtain shut behind her, stopping just inside the alcove, where she could see the sorcerer without interfering with his magic.

Like Wolf, he placed a hand on her father’s forehead and made a gesture that looked somewhat similar. Watching him closely, Aralorn saw the Archmage’s full lips tighten with some emotion or perhaps just the effort he put into the spell. When he was done, he stepped back for a moment, then began another spell.

At Aralorn’s side, Wolf stiffened and took a swift step forward, crouching slightly. Aralorn felt a swift rush of fear; had she trusted too much to her knowledge of this man?

In spite of her suspicions, she really didn’t believe he would actually harm her father. His reputation aside, Aralorn had access to more rumors than a cat had kittens, and she’d never heard a word to indicate he was dishonorable; and
someone
had taken great care to keep from harming her father. She knew too much about magic to make the mistake of interrupting Kisrah, but she watched him narrowly and trusted Wolf to stop it if need be.

Whatever the spell the Archmage wrought, Aralorn could tell by the force of the magic gathering at his touch and the beads of sweat on his forehead that it was a powerful one. When he was through, Kisrah leaned against the bier for support.

“Cursed be,” he swore softly, wiping his face with impatience. He turned to Aralorn, “Quickly, tell me the names of the magic-users who live within a day’s ride of here.”

“Human mages?”

“Yes.”

Aralorn pursed her lips but could think of no reason to lie to him. “Nevyn, for one. I think Falhart’s wife Jenna might be a hedgewitch—someone said something like that once—but you’d have to talk to them to be sure. I know she’s the local midwife. Old Anasel retired to a cottage on the big farm over on the bluffs about a league to the south. I believe that he’s senile now. That’s it as far as I know—though there are probably a half dozen hedgewitches.”

Kisrah shook his head. “Wouldn’t be a hedgewitch. Anasel . . . Anasel might have been able to do it. I’ll speak to Lady Irrenna about him. It is certainly not Nevyn. I know his work.”

Aralorn tapped her fingers lightly on her thigh. Hedgewitches aside, Kisrah should have been able to answer the question about wizards for himself. He was, after all, the ae’Magi. All the trained human wizards, except for Wolf, were bound to him.

“Ask Irrenna about other mages as well—she might know something I don’t, but after you do that, you might see if you can contact one of the Spymaster’s wizards in Sianim. Tell them you’re asking for me, and they won’t charge you. If there is another wizard here, Ren will know.”

Kisrah looked startled for a moment at her helpfulness, but he nodded warily. “I’ll do that.”

That night, comfortably ensconced in the bed, Aralorn watched as Wolf, in human form, scrubbed his face with a damp cloth.

“Wolf, what do you know about howlaas?”

He held the cloth and shook his head. “Something less than a story collector like you, I imagine.”

She shrugged. “I was just wondering how long I’ll be listening to the wind.”

“Is it bothering you now?”

“Not as long as I stay away from windows.”

“Give it a few days,” he said finally. “If it doesn’t stop soon, I’ll see what I can find out.”

She nodded. The thought that it might never fade was something she didn’t want to dwell on. She came up with a change of topic.

“What was the second spell Lord Kisrah tried to work?” she asked. “The one you were worried about.”

Wolf shrugged off his shirt and set it aside so he could wash more thoroughly. “I believe it was an attempt to unwork the spell holding your father.”

Admiring the view, she said, “I thought that was what he was doing with his first spell?”

Wolf shook his head. “No. He was checking to make certain your father was still alive.”

She thought about that, frowning. “Why did his second spell bother you?”

He wiped dry and took off his loose-fitting pants. “Because he didn’t examine the spell before he tried to unwork it.”

“Which means?”

“He knew what the spell was already.”

She pulled back the cover from Wolf’s side of the bed and patted it in invitation. “You think that Kisrah cast it?”

He joined her and spent a moment settling in. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what it means.”

“Then why couldn’t he remove it?” she asked, scooting over until her head rested on his shoulder. “And why was he surprised by the baneshade’s presence?”

“I think that another wizard has his hands in the brew. Remember, Kisrah asked about other wizards in the area.”

Aralorn nodded. “So he can’t release the spell until he finds the other mage?”

“Right.”

“If he cast the spell with this other wizard, then why doesn’t he know who it is?”

“Perhaps he set the spell in an amulet,” said Wolf, grunting even before she poked him. “Seriously, I don’t know.”

“Nevyn,” she said with a sigh. “It must have been Nevyn. I’ve heard that poor Anasel can hardly feed himself.”

But Wolf shook his head. “If it was Nevyn, I’d expect that Kisrah would know it. Kisrah was telling the truth when he said it wasn’t Nevyn—he’s a terrible liar.”

She wriggled her toe in the covers for a minute, then she twisted around and braced her chin on Wolf’s chest. “So Kisrah decided that you and I had a hand in the former ae’Magi’s death. In a fit of vengeance, he uses black magic on Father to draw me, and therefore you, into coming here, where he could exact vengeance. Then another wizard steps in to add his two bits’ worth—I don’t buy it.”

“That’s because you are trying to make whole cloth from unspun wool.”

She grinned in the darkness. “You’ve been hanging around Lambshold too long. ‘Sheepish’ comments aside, I suppose, you’re probably right. Do you have a better idea?”

“I have a suspicion, but I’ll wait until I’ve had a little more time to think on it.”

She yawned and shifted into a more comfortable position. “I think I’ll sleep on it, too.”

She really didn’t expect to gain any insight while she lay dreaming, but it was several hours before morning when she awoke with her heart pounding.

“Wolf,” she said urgently.

“Umpf,” he said inelegantly.

She sat up, letting the chilly night air seep under the warm blankets. “I mean it, Wolf, wake up. I need your opinion.”

“All right. I’m awake.” He pulled the covers snug around his neck.

Almost hesitantly, she asked, “Did Kisrah look tired to you? I thought so, but I don’t know him very well.”

“Yes. There are a lot of people around here who haven’t gotten enough sleep.” Sleep-roughened as it was, his voice was almost difficult to understand.

Aralorn smoothed the covers as they lay over her lap, not at all certain her next question was important enough for the pain it would cause him. “When you saw her, the one time you saw her, did your mother have red hair?”

He withdrew instantly without moving at all.

“It’s not an idle question,” she told him. “I thought of something while I was telling stories tonight. I thought it was silly then, but now ...”

“Yes,” he said shortly, “she had red hair.”

“Was it long or short?”

“Long,” he bit out after a short pause. “Long and filthy. It smelled of excrement and death.”

“Wolf,” said Aralorn in a very small voice, looking at the bump her toes made under the quilts, “when you destroyed the tower, were you trying to kill yourself?”

She felt the bed move as he shifted his weight.

This question seemed to bother him less than the one about his mother. The biting tone was missing from his rough voice, and he sounded . . . intrigued. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

She ran her hands through her hair. “I’m not sure how to tell you this without sounding like a madwoman. Just bear with me.”

“Always.” There was a bit of long-suffering in his tone.

She leaned back against him and smiled wryly. “Ever since you left this last time, I’ve been having nightmares. At first they weren’t too different from the ones I had after you rescued me from the ae’Magi’s dungeons, and I didn’t think much more about them. About a week ago, they became more pointed.”

She thought about them, trying to pick out the first that had been different. “The first set seemed to have a common theme. I dreamed that I was a child, looking for something I had lost—you. In another dream, I was back in the dungeon, blinded, and the ae’Magi asked me where you were—just as he did when he had me at the castle. It was so real I could feel the scratches on my arms and the congestion in my lungs. I’ve never had a dream that real.”

She reached out a hand to rest on Wolf’s arm for her own comfort. “I saw Talor again, and his twin. They were both Uriah this time, though Kai died before he could be changed.”

She paused to steady her voice and wasn’t too successful. “They asked me where you were.”

“You think they were more than dreams?” She couldn’t tell what he thought from his voice.

“I didn’t at first, though I thought it was strange that in my dreams they never asked where ‘Wolf ’ was—I don’t think of you as ‘Cain’ very often. That’s what my father asked me. He said, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten where you put Cain.’ ” She laughed softly, shaking her head. “As if you were a toy I’d misplaced.” She grinned at him. “I thought that one was just worry because you’d left so abruptly.”

She lost her smile. “That’s where the color of your mother’s hair comes in. The last dream, the one I had in the inn on the way here, was even odder than the others. At least they seemed to come from my experiences: This one wasn’t about anything I’d ever seen.”

“It concerned my mother?”

Aralorn nodded. “Partially, yes. It was more a series of dreams. They all concerned you—things you had done.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Unpleasant ones. Like when your mother died. Someone who didn’t know you as well as I do might have thought you didn’t feel anything.”

“I didn’t.”

Aralorn shot him a look of disbelief, remembering the boy’s frozen face, then shook her head at him. “Right,” she said dryly. “At any rate, that was the first part. In another, I was tied down, and you were going to kill me. But I knew there was something wrong, and I fought it. When I did, it . . . altered. I was watching again, and it was the ae’Magi who held the knife. He offered it to you, and you refused.”

“I didn’t always,” commented Wolf softly—he had stiffened again.

Aralorn tightened her grip briefly on his arm. “I know. But you wouldn’t smile while you killed—or talk either, for that matter. At any rate, the last part was when you destroyed the tower. What I saw at first presented you as a power-mad mage, but this time it was easier to shift the dream back to what really happened. I can picture you motivated by rage, hurt, or cold-blooded anger, but greed just doesn’t fit.”

“The story you told tonight made you think that something was sending you dreams like the Dreamer?” repeated Wolf carefully.

“It sounds even stupider when you say it than when I think it,” she commented, but she slid back under the covers and huddled near his warmth just the same. How to explain the alien feel of the dreams without sounding even stupider? “I didn’t know the color of your mother’s hair, or that you were trying to destroy yourself with the tower. We are living in odd times.” Times made odder by the last ae’Magi’s foray into forbidden magics—she didn’t need to say it. Wolf knew his father was in some part responsible for the changes taking place. “Dragons fly the Northland skies, and howlaas venture into Reth.”

She continued without pause. “There has even been a resurgence in the followers of the old gods for the past several years. Look at the temple here. It’s been centuries since there was a priest in residence, but there’s one here now. The trappers have been decimated by nasty critters like the howlaa and other things that haven’t been seen in generations. Is it so impossible that . . . that something else was awakened?”

Wolf broke in. “You mean that the black magic my father worked might have fed the Dreamer you told us about tonight?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “That howlaa today. It was sent, Wolf.”

“Sent?” asked Wolf.

“Uhm.” She nodded. “When I met its gaze, it spoke to me. Something evil sent it searching for us—it was meant to kill you.” She hesitated, then continued. “Then there was the wind . . . Wolf, I believe that there is something evil here.”

Silence lingered for a while as Wolf thought of what she’d said.

“Well,” he said finally, “as long as we are throwing out odd theories, I have developed one of my own, just for you. It even has to do with dreaming.”