“Yes,” answered Nevyn. “What does that have to do with her escape from the trap, my lord ae’Magi?”
The other man looked thoughtfully at Nevyn. Then he smiled. “Since my son’s attempt on my life, I no longer hold that title—it belongs to Lord Kisrah, who holds the Master Spells. You may address me as Geoffrey, if you like.”
“Thank you,” said Nevyn.
“My son is the wolf,” said Geoffrey. “It is some effect of the combination of my magic and his mother’s that allows him to take that shape as if it were his own. Be careful when he is about.”
Nevyn nodded. “I’ll do that.”
“Thank you.” Geoffrey smiled. “You look tired now. Why don’t you sleep. Nothing more will happen tonight.”
Nevyn found that he was more tired than he remembered. He was asleep before Geoffrey left the room.
In her bedchamber, Aralorn stepped behind the screen to remove the torn dress and the shoes as well. Pulling her toes up to stretch her protesting calf muscles, she listened to the sounds of Wolf stirring the coals in the grate.
“Did you get a good enough feel for the spelling to tell if it was a human mage who attacked my father?” she asked, pulling a bedrobe off the screen and examining it, curious. It was the shade of old gold embroidered with red, and the needlework was far finer than any she had ever done. “I couldn’t get close enough to tell.”
“I don’t know,” replied Wolf after a moment. “The magic in that room didn’t feel like human magic—at least not always. Nor did it feel the way green magic does.” There was a pause, then he continued in a softer voice. “There’s black magic aplenty, though. It might be some effect of the corruption that makes it difficult to say whether it is a human or one of your kinsmen responsible.”
“Most everyone here is a kinsman of mine,” she said, and wrapped the robe around herself.
She sighed. The robe was unfamiliar because it quite obviously belonged to one of her sisters. The sleeves drooped several inches past her hands, and the silk pooled untidily at her feet. She felt like a child playing dress-up.
“If it is human magic, Nevyn is the most obvious culprit.”
Reading her tone, Wolf said, “You find that so far-fetched?”
“Let’s just say that I’d suspect the shapeshifters—I’d suspect myself—before I’d believe that Nevyn harmed my father,” she said, standing on her toes without appreciably affecting the length of fabric left on the ground. “Me, yes—but not my father. When Nevyn came here . . . something in him was broken. My father accepted him as one of us. He bellowed at him and hugged him, and Nevyn didn’t know what to make of him.” Aralorn smiled, remembering the bewildered young man who’d waited to be rejected by the Lyon as he’d been rejected by everyone else. “Nevyn wouldn’t hurt my father.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’d like to find my mother’s brother and see what he has to say. If he did this, he’ll tell me so—my uncle is like that. If not, I’d like him to take a look at the shadow-thing. He’s familiar with most of the uncanny things that live here in the mountains.”
She tried rolling up the sleeves. “By the way, did you ward the alcove to keep curiosity seekers out, or are we relying on Irrenna’s guards?” The soft fabric slid out of the roll as easily as water flowed down a hillside.
“I set wards.”
Deciding there was nothing to be done about the robe, Aralorn stepped around the screen. Unmasked and scarred, Wolf set the poker aside and turned to face her. He stopped and raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes glinting with unholy amusement.
“You look about ten years old,” he said, then paused and looked at her chest. “Except, of course, for certain attributes seldom found in ten-year-olds.”
“Very funny,” replied Aralorn with all the dignity she could muster. “Some of us can’t magically zap our clothing from wherever we put it last. Some of us have to make do with what clothing is offered us.”
“Some of us can do nothing but complain,” added Wolf, waving his hand at her.
Aralorn felt the familiar tingle of human magic, and her robe shrank to manageable size. “Thanks, Wolf. I knew there was a good reason to keep you around.”
He bowed with a courtier’s flair, his teeth white in the dim light of the room. “Proper lady’s maid.”
Aralorn snorted. “Somehow,” she said dryly, “I don’t think you convey the right air. Any Lady worthy of her title would not let you close enough to tie her laces . . . untie perhaps, but not tie.”
Wolf walked by her on the way to the bed and ruffled her hair. “I prefer mercenaries.”
She nodded seriously. “I’ve heard that about you wizards.”
She was drifting contentedly off to sleep snuggled against Wolf’s side when he said, “I’ve been assuming this was a spell, but it could be something the shadow-creature is doing to him.”
She moaned. “Sleep.”
He didn’t say anything more, but she could all but feel him thinking.
“All right, all right,” she groused, and rolled over onto her back with a flop. “Why do you think it is the shadow-thing holding my father?”
“I didn’t say that,” he corrected. “But we know nothing about it, or about the spell holding your father. You’re the story collector. Have you heard any stories about a creature who holds its victims in an imitation of death?”
“Spiders,” she answered promptly. She was very awake now. For some reason she’d assumed that since the Lyon was still alive, he’d stay that way until she and Wolf figured out how to rescue him.
“You know what I mean,” Wolf said. “Is there something that uses magic to bind prey as large as a human?”
“No,” she said, then continued reluctantly, “not explicitly—but there are a lot of strange creatures I don’t know much about. The North Rethian mountains were one of the last places settled. Many of the old things were driven here from other places as humans moved in. Supposedly, the Wizard Wars destroyed most of the really dangerous ones—but if the dragon survived, other things might have made it as well. That leaves a lot of candidates, from monsters to gods.”
“Gods?” he asked.
She tapped his chest in objection to the sneer in his voice. Wolf, she had long ago realized, was a hopeless cynic. “If the Smith built weapons to kill the gods, there must have been gods to kill. I’ll have you know that this very keep was cursed once. Family legend has it that one of the Great Masters who began the Wizard Wars razed a temple dedicated to Ridane, the goddess of death, before erecting his own keep here.” She lowered her voice and continued in a whisper. “It is said that Her laughter when he died was so terrible that all who heard it perished.”
“Then how did anyone know that She laughed?” Wolf asked.
She poked him harder. “Don’t ruin the mood.”
His shoulder shook suspiciously, but he was quiet. She settled back against him, slipping her hand under his arm.
“My uncle,” she said, “told me that the shapeshifters lived in these mountains before humans ever came this far north. They were driven into hiding here by a creature they called the safarent—which translates into something like big, yellow, magic perverter.” She waited for his reaction.
“Big, yellow, magic perverter?” he said, his voice very steady, making the name even more ridiculous.
“Sort of the way your name, in several Anthran dialects, would translate into hairy wild carnivore which howls,” she replied. “Would you prefer the Great Golden Tainter of Magic?”
“No,” he said dryly.