Crouched in her cold dark shelter, Una stared in amazed alarm to see Guarinn place the noose round Thorne's neck. Like most people in Dimmin, she felt like an intruder in Guarinn's company, his glum silences made her a stranger to be kept at arm's length, mistrusted. But she knew that Roulant loved Guarinn as truly as he loved Thorne and had loved his own father. Though she'd heard Thorne invite the binding, saw Roulant standing by in silence, Una watched the dwarf with narrowed eyes.
Each knot he tied was strong, and as he worked, Guarinn's face was like a stark, bleak landscape, scoured by sorrow, forsaken of all but the thinnest hope. Yet he did the rough work carefully and, were it anyone else, Una would have said tenderly. He took great care to cause no hurt, and watching, unable to find any reason for what she was seeing, Una swallowed hard against an ache of tears. Tears for Thorne, bound; for Roulant, who stood as still as the mage, watching. And for Guarinn Hammerfell who, of them all, looked as if he alone hated what was being done.
And she wondered, what WAS being done? And why? From the forest Una heard the clap of an owl's wings; hard on that, the faint, dying scream of a small creature caught in dagger-sharp talons. The wind stirred, cold from behind her as a long, low moaning slid across the night. An uncanny sound, a grievous pleading.
Trembling, with cold fear, she saw Roulant pick up an arrow, nock it to the bowstring, his stance the broad one of a man preparing to put an arrow right through a straw-butt at the bull's-eye. Guarinn moved to the side, moonlight running on the bitter edge of the throwing axe in his hand.
The mage, alone, wearing the light of the moons like a shimmering cloak of red and silver, sank to his knees. Guarinn took two more quick paces to the side, careful not to get between the mage and the wall. Roulant stood where he was, and, after he'd marked Guarinn's position, he never looked away from Thorne.
The night began to shimmer around Thorne, waver like the air above a banked fire. Una, who'd been still as stock, made a sound then, a whisper of boot-heel against stone as she crept closer to the opening of her small shelter to see.
Faint though the sound had been, it was heard.
Thorne jerked his head up, looked directly at her.
Cold fear skittered along Una's skin, cramped her belly painfully. She wanted to reach for her dagger, but she could only sit motionless, caught and stilled by Thorne's eyes — the eyes of an animal lurking beyond the campfire's pale. And the shape of him, she thought, the shape of him is somehow wrong. Something about his face, the length of his arms. But surely that was a trick of moonlight and shimmering air? And crouching there, he didn't hold himself like a man, on his knees. He had hands and feet flat to the ground, as an animal would.
Una pressed her hands hard to her mouth, trying to muffle her cry of horror and pity when she saw Thorne look away, turn all his attention to a feverish gnawing at the rope that bound him.
The rope wasn't doing a good job of holding him now, for his shape was changing rapidly, and in some places the coil was slipping away from what had once been a man's wrist or ankle… and were now the smaller joints of an animal, a broad-chested wolf, its gray pelt silver in the light of two moons, its dripping fangs glistening.
Guarinn cried "Now, Roulant! DO IT!" and instinctively Una shoved herself far back against the broken wall behind her, flinching as rubble slithered down the hill, the clatter of stone loud in the night.
The sound did not distract Guarinn, his axe hit the wolf in the shoulder, biting hard, though not lodging in either muscle or bone. But Roulant hesitated, if only the space of a heart's beat, and so when the wolf leaped at him, it was well beneath the arrow's flight. Roaring, the wolf hit him hard, sent him crashing to the stony ground, pinned him there with its weight.
And then Una bolted out of her shelter, ran across the moon-lighted ruin, her own dagger in hand, before she knew exactly what she meant to do.
They were upon him, the smaller male and the young female, with daggers that would bite deeper than his fangs could. The wolf, who knew nothing about rage or vengeance or any purpose other than survival, heaved up from the one sprawled helpless beneath him, abandoned the enticing scent of blood and meat for immediate survival.
On the wings of pain, like wings of fire, the wolf won its freedom at the price of another agonizing bound over the broken wall. It left blood on the stones of the hillside, all along the path into the forest, and it carried away with it the noose still clinging round its neck.
Guarinn had made a bright, high campfire in the center of the ruin, but Roulant didn't think it was doing much to warm or comfort Una. Nor did it seem to help Una that Roulant held her tightly in his arms — he wondered if she would ever stop weeping. Somewhere to the north the wolf howled, a long and lonely cry. Una shuddered, and Roulant held her closer.
"Una," he said, turning away from the reminder of failure. "Why did you follow me here?"
She sat straighter, her fists clenched on her knees, her eyes still wet but no longer pouring tears. "I've known for two years that you went out into the forest on the Night. And I've known…"
She looked at Guarinn sitting hunched over the fire. The dwarf turned a little away, seemingly disinterested in whatever they discussed. Roulant, who knew him, understood that he was offering privacy.
"You've known what?" he asked, gently.
"That something's come between us. Something — a secret. Roulant, I've been afraid, and I had to know why you went into the forest on the Night, when no one else — "
"Someone else," Guarinn amended. "Thorne and me. And now that you're here, I suppose you think you should know the secret you've spied out?"
Una bristled, and Roulant shook his head. "Guarinn, she's here and that gives her a right to know what she saw."
"Not as far as I'm concerned."
"Maybe not," Roulant said. "But she has rights where I'm concerned. I should have honored them before now."
Guarinn eyed them both, quietly judging. "All right, then. Listen well, Una, and I'll give you the answer you've come looking for.
"This ruin you see around us used to be Thorne's house," he said. "A quiet place and peaceful. No more though. It's only a pile of stone now, a cairn to mark the place where three dooms were doled out this night thirty years ago. Three dooms, twined one round the other to make a single fate."
The wind blew, tangling the smoke and flame of the small campfire. Roulant wrapped his arms around Una again and held her close for warmth.
"Girl," the dwarf said. "Your hiding place tonight was once a bridal chamber. It never saw the joy it was fitted out for…"
"Thorne asked but two guests to come witness and celebrate his marriage. One of them was me, and I was glad to stand with him as he pledged his wedding vows. The other was Tam Potter, and his was a double joy that night, for he was Thorne's friend and the bride's cousin. She was from away south, and I don't think her closest kin liked the idea of her wedding a mage. But Tam was fair pleased, and so he was the kinsman who bestowed her hand.
"Mariel, the girl's name; and she was pretty enough, but no rare beauty. Yet that night she glowed brightly, put the stars to shame; for so girls will do when they are soon to have what they want and need. She needed Thorne Shape-shifter and had flouted most of her kin to have him. No less did Thorne need her.
"The first night of autumn, it was, and the bright stars shone down on us as we stood outside the cottage. Old legends have it that wedding vows taken in the twined light of the red moon and the silver will make a marriage strong in love and faith. Perhaps those legends would have been proven that night. Perhaps. We did never learn that, for another guest came to the wedding — uninvited, unwelcome, and the first we knew of his coming was when he stood in our midst, dark and cold as death.