“But you did something, didn’t you? I have seen man-beasts here, monstrosities of Dweomer and warped flesh.”
“Experiments,” Aruan retorted quickly. “The new power we discovered had to be explored and contained. A new set of rules had to be written. Before they were, there were some regrettable . . . accidents. Some of us went too far, it is true.”
“And this no longer goes on?”
“Not if I do not wish it,” Aruan said without looking at him.
Bardolin frowned. “A society glued together by the Dweomer. Part of me rejoices, but part of me recoils also. There is such scope for abuse, for—”
“For evil. Yes, I know. We have had our internal struggles over the years, our petty civil wars, if I can dignify them with that title. Why else do you think that out of all the founders of our country I alone remain?”
“Because you are the strongest,” Bardolin said.
Aruan laughed his full, boisterous laugh again. “True enough! Yes, I was strongest. But I was also wisest, I think. I had a vision which the others lacked.”
“And what do you see with this vision of yours? What is it you want out of the world?”
Aruan turned and looked Bardolin in the eye, the moonlight crannying his features, kindling the liquid sheen of his eyes. Something strange there, something at once odd and familiar.
“I want to see your people and mine take their rightful place in the world, Bardolin. I want the Dweomer-folk to rise up and cast away their fears, their habits of servitude. I want them to claim their birthright.”
“Not all the Dweomer-folk are men of education and power,” Bardolin said warily. “Would you have the herbalists and hedge-witches, the cantrimers and crazed soothsayers have their say in some kind of sorcerous hegemony? Is that your aim, Aruan?”
“Listen to me for a moment, Bardolin. Listen to me without that dogged conservatism which marks you. Is the social order which permeates Normannia so fine and noble that it is worth saving? Is it just? Of course not!”
“Would the social order which you would erect in its place be any more just or fair?” Bardolin asked. “You would substitute one tyranny for another.”
“I would liberate an abused people, and remove the cancer of the religious orders from our lives.”
“For someone who has spent the centuries here in the wilderness you seem tolerably well informed,” Bardolin told him.
“I have my sources, as every mage must. I keep a watch on the Old World, Bardolin; I always have. It is the home of my birth and childhood and young manhood. I have not given up on it yet.”
“Are all your agents in Normannia shifters, then?”
“Ah, I wondered when we would get to that. Yes, Ortelius was one of mine, a valuable man.”
“What was his mission?”
“To make you turn back, nothing more.”
“Our ship carried the Dweomer-folk whom you would like to redeem; they were fleeing persecution, and yet you would have sent them back to the waiting pyres.”
“Your ship also carried an official representative of the Hebrian crown, and a contingent of soldiers,” Aruan said dryly. “They I could do without.”
“And the other vessel, which ran aground and was wrecked on these very shores? Did you have a hand in that?”
“No, upon mine honour, Bardolin. They were simply unlucky. It was not part of my plan to massacre whole ship’s companies. I thought that if I made the carrack, the ship with the leaders aboard, turn back the lesser vessel would follow.”
“Am I then to thank you for your humanity, your restraint, when the beast you ordered aboard was responsible for the foul deaths of my shipmates?” Bardolin was angry now, but Aruan answered him calmly.
“The exigencies of the situation allowed no other recourse—and besides, Ortelius was outside my control. I regret unnecessary death as much as the next man, but I had to safeguard what we have built here.”
“In that case, Aruan, you will have to make sure that none of the members of this current expedition ever leave this continent alive, won’t you?”
There was a small silence.
“Circumstances have changed.”
“In what way?”
“Perhaps we are no longer so concerned with secrecy. Perhaps other things occupy our minds.”
“And who are we? Creatures such as your were-ape Gosa? Why must you always choose shifters as your minions? Are there no decent, proper mages left to you here in the west?”
“Why Bardolin, you sound almost indignant. You surprise me, you of all people.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you earlier.”
“You’ve told me nothing, nothing of importance. What have you been doing here for all these centuries? Playing God to the primitives, indulging in petty power plays amongst yourselves?”
Aruan came close to the sparkling phantom that was Bardolin’s presence.
“Let me show you what we have been doing over these lost years, Brother Mage, what tricks we have been learning out here in the western wilderness.”
There was a change, as swift as breath misting a cold pane of glass. Aruan had disappeared, and in his place there loomed the hulking figure of a full-blooded shifter, a werewolf with lemon-bright eyes and a long muzzle glimmering with fangs. Bardolin’s imp whimpered and hid behind his master’s translucent simulacrum.
“It’s not possible,” Bardolin whispered.
“Did I not tell you, Bardolin, that we had found new and powerful wisdom among the inhabitants of this continent?” Aruan’s voice said, the beast’s muzzle contorting around the words, dripping ropes of saliva which glistened in the moonlight.
“It’s an illusion,” Bardolin said.
“Touch the illusion then, Brother Illusion.”
Of course—Bardolin at this moment was no more than an apparition himself, a copy of his true self, conjured up by the incredible power of this man, this beast before him.
“I am no simulacrum, I assure you,” Aruan’s voice said.
“It is impossible. Sufferers of the black disease cannot learn any of the other six disciplines. It is against the very nature of things. Shifters cannot also be mages.”
The Aruan shifter drew close. “They can here. We all are, friend Bardolin. We all partake of the beast in this country; and now so do you.”
Something in Bardolin quailed before the werewolf’s calm certainty.
“Not I.”
“But you do. You have looked into the very heart and mind of a shifter at the moment of its transformation. More, you have loved one of our kind. I can read this in you as though it were inked across the parchment of your very soul.” The beast laughed horribly.
“Griella.”
“Yes—that was the name. The memory of that moment is burned within you. There is a part of you, deep in the black spaces of your heart, which would gladly have joined her in her suffering, could she but have loved you in return . . .
“Your imp is a poor sort of buffer against probing, Bardolin. Where you yourself might hold out against me, he is a free conduit to the heart of your fears and emotions. You are a book lying open to be read any time I have a desire to read.”
“You monster!” Bardolin snarled, but fear was edging an icicle of dread into his flesh.
The werewolf came closer until the heat and stink of it were all around him and the great head blotted out the stars. They stood on the pyramid once more: Bardolin’s image could feel the stone of it under its soles.
“Do you know how we make shifters in this country, Bardolin?”
“Tell me,” Bardolin croaked. Unable to help himself, he retreated a step.
“For a person to be infected with the black disease, he must do two things. Firstly, he, or she, must have physical relations with a full-blooded shape-shifter. Secondly, he or she must eat a portion of that shifter’s kill. It’s that simple. We have not yet divined why certain people become certain beasts—that is a complex field which would reward more study. A question of personal style, perhaps. But the basic process is well known to us. We are a race of shape-shifters, Bardolin, and now you are one of us as you once secretly wished to be.”