Masques (18 page)

“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 The glitter of temper had been replaced by something that she couldn’t read.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.

Aralorn woke to the sound of a stallion’s whistle. There was probably a mare in heat. She swore softly, but when Sheen whistled again, she knew she had to go quiet him before he woke the camp. It probably would be a good idea to check on the horses after the storm anyway.

She reached under the furs she slept on—not an easy feat with so many others sleeping on the furs, too—and strapped on her knife. Carefully, she stepped over the slumbering bodies and threaded her way to the door.

Once outside, she jogged toward the corral. Sheen’s light gray underbelly was easy to see against the darkness. Just as he was about to cry out again, he saw her and came toward her, hopping because of the hobble. She looked him over, but saw nothing unusual.

He shifted abruptly, as if the wind brought a scent to his nose. His attention was focused high on the ridge surrounding the valley. Every muscle tensed, and only a quick word from Aralorn kept him quiet.

It could have been only the scent of one of the two guards Myr posted every night in shifts or, more probably, a wild animal of some sort. For her own peace of mind, Aralorn decided to trek up the side of the valley and see if she could locate whatever was disturbing the stallion. She commanded him to silence again, told him to wait, and started the climb.

The terrain was more cliff than anything else. There was an easier trail over more-exposed ground, but she chose to stay in the sparse cover of the tough brush that grew here and there. Once on the crest, crouched in the dense thicket of young willows that surrounded the valley, she glanced back down to see if Sheen was still upset.

His attention was still focused, but he could have just been watching her. Swearing softly to herself, she crept through the brush. If it had been a wild animal, it was probably long gone, or waiting for a nice tasty human to join it for its evening meal—wasn’t it dragons that were supposed to enjoy feasting on young women?

She tripped over it before she saw it—or rather him. He was very dead. She called a dim light ball that would allow her to get a better look at the corpse without drawing attention to herself.

It was one of the guards—Pussywillow, the one-armed veteran. He had been killed recently, because the body was still warm, even in the chill of the wet foliage. What really bothered Aralorn was the way he’d been killed. He’d probably been knocked out, judging by the lump on his head. With him unconscious and unable to struggle, it had been an easy matter to cut his heart out of his chest and carve the skin of his chest with runes. The same runes she’d seen the ae’Magi cut into living skin.

Impulsively, she traced a symbol over one of the bloody runes. She knew that certain symbols and runes held a power of their own, independent of green or human designation. Once when she and Wolf had been traveling, she had seen him trace the symbol with a stick held in his jaws (he’d been in his wolf guise). Curious, as always, she asked him the meaning of it. Wolf told her that it was a symbol that simply promoted good rest and taught it to her at her request. She hoped it would help.

She started to run around the edge of the valley without worrying about cover. She almost hoped to draw the attention of the killer; she was able to take care of herself better than almost anyone else in the camp. From the signs around the body, there had been only one person, but he was skillful.

Heart pounding, and not from effort, she searched the darkness for some clue as to his whereabouts. Less than halfway around the camp, she found the other guard. The woman’s heart lay, still hot, on the grass that was too dark even in the night.

She had probably been killed after Aralorn found the first body. The killer, safe in his knowledge that there was no second guard to worry about, had taken his time and done the ritual more properly, though still without active magic use that might have alerted Wolf (or anyone else in the camp, for that matter). The guard had been awake for the ceremony, gagged so that she could make no sound. A small pewter drinking glass lay near the body, stained dark with blood.

Gently, Aralorn closed the open eyes.

Taking stock of her position, Aralorn realized that she was no more than a hundred yards from Wolf’s camp. It would be wiser to have two people looking for the killer. Finding the camp from her position on top of the rim was not as easy as finding it from the bottom, though; there were no trails to lead her to it.

Just as she decided that her time would be better spent trying to locate the enemy, she saw the light from the meager campfire Wolf preferred. With a sigh of relief, she made her way down the steep slope, taking the path slowly to avoid twisting an ankle.

Without warning, a violent surge of magical backlash drove her to her knees. She waited until the wash of magic dulled to a point that it was no longer painful before struggling back to her feet. Forgetting caution, she grabbed a stick and used it for balance as she slid down the hill, announcing her presence with a modest avalanche of stones and dirt.

She slid to a stop just above the small, flat area that Wolf had appropriated as his camp. Wolf, in human form, lay unmoving on his back, eyes glistening with rage. Narrow luminous white ropes lay across his legs, chest, and neck.

Edom stood over him, his attention momentarily diverted to Aralorn. Half-raised in his right hand, he held a sword that was
not
the sword he’d been using in the sparring match. It glowed gently, with a pulsating lavender light.