He led them to the old camp in the valley, where they were unlikely to have anyone interrupt them. Aralorn found herself holding the containers while, at Wolf’s direction, Myr paced off circles, each bigger than the last until the dirt looked like an archery target. The ground was muddy with last night’s melted snowfall and held the marks of Myr’s feet well.
Wolf disappeared into the underbrush and reappeared, holding a handful of small stones. He set several of them in each ring Myr had shuffled off, though maybe “set” was the wrong word, because they floated about knee high above the ground.
“This shouldn’t be a particularly powerful spell,” Wolf said. “If I can get it to work, it doesn’t need to be. If he doesn’t know that it’s coming, then he won’t know to block it. All that I need it to do is to throw him off-balance for long enough to turn our battle from magic to more mundane means. Aralorn, stand behind me. It won’t hurt Myr, but I don’t know what this would do to a shapeshifter.”
“If I’m behind you, I can’t see what’s going on,” Aralorn complained. “How about if I stand over by the old fire pit?”
It was well off to the side, a dozen paces away from the target range that Myr had drawn out.
“Fine,” he said. “This should be a straight, line-of-sight spell, with a limited range.”
He sat on the cold ground in the middle of the innermost circle.
“How old is the ae’Magi?” asked Aralorn from the fire pit.
Wolf shrugged gracefully and gave her a half smile. “You aren’t going to kill the ae’Magi the way that Iveress killed his master. His master was ill and near death, kept alive only by magic. As far as I know, the ae’Magi is nowhere near death, unfortunate as that may be—at least not from disease.”
“What are our chances if the spell works as it is supposed to?” asked Myr. “Will you be able to kill him? I’ve seen him fight.”
Wolf shrugged. “If the spell takes him by surprise, then the odds are about even. I used to spar with him often, and sometimes I beat him, sometimes not. This spell gives us a chance, but that’s all it does. If he recognizes the spell, it is easy enough to counter. That would leave us with only magic.”
He looked at Aralorn. “I’ve learned some things about what I can do that he doesn’t know, but even so, he would easily best me that way. Without magic, at least we stand a chance of killing him. Perhaps.” No one, not even Aralorn, could have told how he felt about it from his voice.
Aralorn and Myr watched as he emptied the contents of the bottle into the pot. He counted to ten, then poured the mixture onto the ground in front of him, where it gathered into a glowing pool of violet patterned with inky swirls. Dipping a finger into the pool, he used the liquid to draw several symbols in the air. Compliantly, the purple substance hung in the air as if on an invisible wall. Wolf repeated the procedure with his left hand.
He picked up the pool in both hands. It swayed and oozed, never quite escaping the confines of his hands. He held it up in front of his face, then blew on it gently.
Pain hit Aralorn hard enough to knock her to her knees. She fought to maintain consciousness for a moment, but she never felt herself hit the ground.
When she recovered, she felt the hard strength of Wolf’s thigh underneath her ear.
“I don’t know,” said Wolf, sounding vicious.
She blinked cautiously, and when her head didn’t fall off, she pushed herself up.
“Fine,” she told Wolf. “I’m fine. My fault.”
Sitting up, she could see what had happened. The spell was directional all right, but mostly in a forward and backward kind of direction rather than the direction of a loosed arrow. It had knocked down the floating stones in a wide “V” pattern, with Wolf at the apex. The stones directly to either side of where he’d been sitting were still floating, but every stone more than two feet in front of him was on the ground.
She had been sitting on the edge of the path of the spell, but apparently the fire pit hadn’t been far enough away.
“How long was I out?” she asked, noticing that her ears were buzzing and her balance was off. Even sitting flat on the ground, her upper body wanted to sway.
She was propelled down again with a none-too-gentle hand, as Wolf answered, “Not very.”
“How do you feel?” asked Myr, concern evident in his voice.
“Like the entire mercenary army of Sianim just got through marching over my head.” She closed her eyes and let herself enjoy their concern. She loved sympathy.
“Not too bad, then,” said Myr with evident relief.
“Not horrible, but not fun.” Aralorn decided that her headache had subsided enough she could open her eyes again.
“You need to try some magic,” Wolf said grimly.
She would have whined at him, but the hand on her shoulder was shaking a little. For Wolf’s sake, she called a simple light to her hand, then dismissed it.
“Wolf,” asked Myr, “do you think that the ae’Magi will let you complete the spell? It seemed to take a lot of preparation.”
“I won’t need to,” answered Wolf, relaxing against the wall of Haris’s former kitchen. His thumb ran over her collarbone, then stilled. “With a spell this simple, it’ll be easy enough to re-create the effect.”
His relief was more obvious in the amount of words that he was using to explain himself to Myr. “Once I see the pattern to push the magic into,” he said, “I don’t need the physical parts of the casting anymore. It really is something only a beginning magic-user would have created. Take all of the most common spell components mixed together, add the first five symbols learned in magic, and blow—poof: instant spell. What is really amazing is that it didn’t blow up in the apprentice’s face. It came uncomfortably close to doing that with me.” He tapped Aralorn’s nose in emphasis. “Next time I tell you to get behind me, get behind me.”
“What’s next?” asked Myr.
Wolf took off his mask wearily. In the bright light of the winter sun, Aralorn noticed the strain he’d been under written into the fine lines and dark shadows beneath his golden ambient eyes. “What else? I storm the castle of the ae’Magi and challenge him to a duel. Whereupon he engages me in best Aralorn-story-time fashion. Then either I win, and go down in history as the cruel villain who destroyed the good wizard, his father. Or he wins.” Wolf’s voice was coolly ironic.
“If he wins, what happens?” Aralorn spoke from her prone position and showed no intention of moving. “I mean, what is he trying to do? Why does he want everyone to love him?”
While he answered, Wolf played with a strand of hair that had worked its way out of her braid. “You asked me about that once before. I think I know the answer now.”
Myr sat down beside Wolf. “What? Power?”
“I thought that might be it at first,” Wolf said. “Maybe that was even the correct answer at one time. When I was his apprentice, that seemed to be it. He could link with me and use the power that I gathered for his own spells, much, I believe, in the same manner that he now uses the magic released by the deaths of the children he kills. But there was an incident that scared him.” For Myr’s benefit, Wolf briefly explained his destruction of the tower.
Myr whistled. “That was you? I’d heard a story about that, I’ve forgotten who told me. They said that the tower looked like a candle that someone forgot to blow out. The stone blocks looked like they melted.”
Wolf nodded. “He started to try using control spells on me, after that. I left before he had much success. But what surprised me was that he continued to try and get me back under his control. He’s been looking for me for a long time.”
He looked down at Aralorn. “If all he wanted was to kill me, he could have done that easily enough. Or at least come close. If it were only my power he wanted, then he’s wasted a lot more of it trying to find me than he could ever get from me. I am more powerful than most magicians, but Lord Kisrah is very strong as well, and the ae’Magi never attempted to tap into his magic. The magic that he gets from one of the children he kills is also probably more than he could get from me because my defenses are stronger.”