“Doesn’t that thing ever bother you?” she asked in an I-am-only-making-conversation tone as soon as the lock popped open with a theatrical puff of blue smoke.
“What thing?” He brushed the remaining blue dust off the cover of the book and opened it to a random page.
“The mask. Doesn’t it itch when you sweat?”
“Wolves don’t sweat.” His tone was so uninterested that she knew that it was a safe topic to push even though he was deliberately avoiding her point. And he did, too, sweat—when he was in human form, anyway.
“You know,” she said, running a finger over a dust pattern on a leather book cover, “when my father took me to visit the shapeshifters, I thought that it would be really fun to be able to be someone else whenever I wanted. So I learned and worked at it until I could look like almost any person I wanted. My father, though, had an uncanny knack of finding me out, and he was a creative genius when it came to punishments. Eventually, I got out of the habit of shapechanging at all.
“The second time that I visited with my mother’s people, I was several years older. I noticed something that time that I’d missed the first time. If a shapeshifter doesn’t like something about himself, she can just change it. If her nose is too long or her eyes aren’t the right color, it is easily altered. If she did something that she wasn’t proud of, then she could be someone else for a while until everyone forgot about it. They, all of them, hide from themselves behind their shapes until there isn’t anything left to hide from.”
“I assure you,” commented Wolf dryly, “that as much as I would like to hide from myself, it would take more than a mask to do it.”
“Then why do you wear it?” she asked. “I don’t mean out there.” She waved impatiently in the general direction of camp.
“It’s that way,” Wolf said, moving her hand until it pointed in a different direction.
“You know what I mean,” she huffed. “I am sure that you have your reasons for wearing a mask out there. But why do you use it to hide from me, too? I am hardly likely to tell everyone who you are if that is what you’re hiding.”
He tensed but answered with the same directness that she had shown. “I have reasons for the mask that have nothing to do with trust or the lack of it.”
She held his eyes. “Don’t they? There are only the two of us in this room.”
“Cave,” he interjected mildly.
She conceded his correction but not the change of subject. “ ‘Cave,’ then. A mask is something to hide behind. If I am the only one here to look at your face, then you are hiding from me. You don’t trust me.”
“Plague take it, Aralorn,” he said in a low voice, stealing her favorite oath. “I have reasons to wear this mask.” He tapped it. There was enough temper in his eyes, if not his voice, that a prudent person would have backed down.
Not even her enemies had ever called Aralorn prudent.
“Not with me.” She wouldn’t retreat.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and opened them again. The glitter of temper had been replaced by something that she couldn’t read. “The mask is more honest than what is beneath it.” There was emotion coloring his voice, but it was disguised so it could have been as mild as sorrow or as wild as the rage portrayed by the mask.
She waited, knowing that if she commented on his obscure statement, he was fully capable of sidetracking her into his peculiar philosophical mishmash until she forgot her purpose.
When he saw that she wasn’t going to speak, he said softly, “I find that trust is hard for me to learn, Lady.”
There was nothing obvious holding the mask on his face, no hidden straps to hinder him when he put his hands up and undid the simple spell. He gripped the mask and took it off smoothly. She probably only imagined the slight hesitation before his face was revealed.
She’d been certain it was his identity that he hid. If she had been another person she might have gasped. But she had seen burn victims before, even a few who were worse—most of those had been dead. The area around the golden eyes was unscarred, as if he’d protected them with an arm. The rest of his face matched his voice: It could have belonged to a corpse. It had that same peculiar tight look as if the skin was too small. His mouth was drawn so tightly that he must have trouble eating. She knew now why his voice had sounded muffled, the words less clearly enunciated than they had been when he took wolf shape.
She looked for a long time, longer than she needed to so that she could think of the best way to react. Then she stood up and walked around the table, bent over, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
Returning to her seat, she said quietly, her eyes on his face, “Leave your mask off when we are here alone, if you will. I would rather look at you than a mask.”
He smiled warmly at her, with his eyes. Then he answered what she didn’t feel free to ask. “It was that spell of which I lost control. I told you that uncontrolled magic takes the shape of flame.” As he spoke, he clenched his fist, then opened it to show her the fire it held. “Human flesh burns easier than stone, and the ae’Magi wasn’t able to extend his shield to me fast enough.”
When he was fifteen, he’d said. It took effort, but she sensed that he was still uncertain, so she grinned at him and playfully knocked his hand aside. “Get that out of here. You, of all people, should know better than to play with fire.” She knew by his laugh that she had taken the right tack, and she was glad for the years of acting that allowed her to lighten the mood.
Obediently, he extinguished the flame, and with no more ceremony than he usually exhibited, he turned back to his book. Aralorn went to the nearest bookcase and picked out another book.
After it had been duly inspected for traps and pitfalls, she opened it and pretended to read as she pondered several other questions that popped up. Things like: Why couldn’t a magician, who could take on the form of a wolf indefinitely, alter his face until it was scarless? The most likely answer to that was that he didn’t want to. That led to a whole new set of questions.
She was so engrossed in thought that she jumped at the sound of Wolf’s voice as he announced that it was time to leave. She set the book she’d opened on the table, on top of the book she’d forgotten to tell Wolf about. Tomorrow was soon enough for both books. As she started after Wolf, she caught a motion out of the corner of her eye; but when she turned, there was nothing there. Nonetheless, she felt the itch of being watched by unseen eyes all the way through the caverns. Places where magic was worked often felt like that, so she didn’t say anything.
As they left the caves, Aralorn noted that there were faded markings just inside the entrance. Some sort of warding was her guess because they had been drawn around the cave mouth. There had been people here long before them, she thought while touching the faint pattern lightly. Under her fingertips, she felt a sweet pulse of green magic.
Outside, the gray skies carried the dimness of early evening. Reluctant drops of rain fell here and there, icy and cold on her skin. There was no wind near the caves but Aralorn could hear its relentless spirit weaving its way through the nearby trees. She looked apprehensively at the sky. It was still too early for snow, but the mountains were renowned for their freak storms, and the icy rain boded ill.
Seeing her glance, Wolf said, “There will be no snow tonight at least. Tomorrow, maybe. If it hits too soon, we might have to move them into the caves. I would rather not do it; it’s too easy to get lost, as has already been demonstrated. Next time there might not be a rescue.” She saw that he had replaced the mask without her noticing when he did it.
Though it did not snow, it might as well have. The storm that hit that night was violent and cold. The wind carelessly shredded the makeshift tents that still comprised most of the camp. Everybody huddled in the tents that leaked the least and waited out the storm. It left as abruptly as it had struck. With the wind gone, the body heat from the huddled people warmed the remaining overpopulated tents. Tired as they were, everyone, with the exception of the second-shift night watch, was soon fast asleep.