Wolfsbane

  Whatever the spell the Archmage wrought, Aralorn could tell by the force of the magic gathering at his touch and the beads of sweat on his forehead that it was a powerful one. When he was through, Kisrah leaned against the bier for support.

  “Cursed be,” he swore softly, wiping his face with impatience. He turned to Aralorn, “Quickly, tell me the names of the magic-users who live within a day’s ride of here.”

  “Human mages?”

  “Yes.”

  Aralorn pursed her lips but could think of no reason to lie to him. “Nevyn, for one. I think Falhart’s wife Jenna might be a hedgewitch—someone said something like that once—but you’d have to talk to them to be sure. I know she’s the local midwife. Old Anasel retired to a cottage on the big farm over on the bluffs about a league to the south. I believe that he’s senile now. That’s it as far as I know—though there are probably a half dozen hedgewitches.”

  Kisrah shook his head. “Wouldn’t be a hedgewitch. Anasel . . . Anasel might have been able to do it. I’ll speak to Lady Irrenna about him. It is certainly not Nevyn. I know his work.”

  Aralorn tapped her fingers lightly on her thigh. Hedgewitches aside, Kisrah should have been able to answer the question about wizards for himself. He was, after all, the ae’Magi. All the trained human wizards, except for Wolf, were bound to him.

  “Ask Irrenna about other mages as well—she might know something I don’t, but after you do that, you might see if you can contact one of the Spymaster’s wizards in Sianim. Tell them you’re asking for me, and they won’t charge you. If there is another wizard here, Ren will know.”

  Kisrah looked startled for a moment at her helpfulness, but he nodded warily. “I’ll do that.”

  That night, comfortably ensconced in the bed, Aralorn watched as Wolf, in human form, scrubbed his face with a damp cloth.

  “Wolf, what do you know about howlaas?”

  He held the cloth and shook his head. “Something less than a story collector like you, I imagine.”

  She shrugged. “I was just wondering how long I’ll be listening to the wind.”

  “Is it bothering you now?”

  “Not as long as I stay away from windows.”

  “Give it a few days,” he said finally. “If it doesn’t stop soon, I’ll see what I can find out.”

  She nodded. The thought that it might never fade was something she didn’t want to dwell on. She came up with a change of topic.

  “What was the second spell Lord Kisrah tried to work?” she asked. “The one you were worried about.”

  Wolf shrugged off his shirt and set it aside so he could wash more thoroughly. “I believe it was an attempt to unwork the spell holding your father.”

  Admiring the view, she said, “I thought that was what he was doing with his first spell?”

  Wolf shook his head. “No. He was checking to make certain your father was still alive.”

  She thought about that, frowning. “Why did his second spell bother you?”

  He wiped dry and took off his loose-fitting pants. “Because he didn’t examine the spell before he tried to unwork it.”

  “Which means?”

  “He knew what the spell was already.”

  She pulled back the cover from Wolf’s side of the bed and patted it in invitation. “You think that Kisrah cast it?”

  He joined her and spent a moment settling in. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what it means.”

  “Then why couldn’t he remove it?” she asked, scooting over until her head rested on his shoulder. “And why was he surprised by the baneshade’s presence?”

  “I think that another wizard has his hands in the brew. Remember, Kisrah asked about other wizards in the area.”

  Aralorn nodded. “So he can’t release the spell until he finds the other mage?”

  “Right.”

  “If he cast the spell with this other wizard, then why doesn’t he know who it is?”

  “Perhaps he set the spell in an amulet,” said Wolf, grunting even before she poked him. “Seriously, I don’t know.”

  “Nevyn,” she said with a sigh. “It must have been Nevyn. I’ve heard that poor Anasel can hardly feed himself.”

  But Wolf shook his head. “If it was Nevyn, I’d expect that Kisrah would know it. Kisrah was telling the truth when he said it wasn’t Nevyn—he’s a terrible liar.”

  She wriggled her toe in the covers for a minute, then she twisted around and braced her chin on Wolf’s chest. “So Kisrah decided that you and I had a hand in the former ae’Magi’s death. In a fit of vengeance, he uses black magic on Father to draw me, and therefore you, into coming here, where he could exact vengeance. Then another wizard steps in to add his two bits’ worth—I don’t buy it.”

  “That’s because you are trying to make whole cloth from unspun wool.”

  She grinned in the darkness. “You’ve been hanging around Lambshold too long. ‘Sheepish’ comments aside, I suppose, you’re probably right. Do you have a better idea?”

  “I have a suspicion, but I’ll wait until I’ve had a little more time to think on it.”

  She yawned and shifted into a more comfortable position. “I think I’ll sleep on it, too.”

  She really didn’t expect to gain any insight while she lay dreaming, but it was several hours before morning when she awoke with her heart pounding.

  “Wolf,” she said urgently.

  “Umpf,” he said inelegantly.

  She sat up, letting the chilly night air seep under the warm blankets. “I mean it, Wolf, wake up. I need your opinion.”

  “All right. I’m awake.” He pulled the covers snug around his neck.

  Almost hesitantly, she asked, “Did Kisrah look tired to you? I thought so, but I don’t know him very well.”

  “Yes. There are a lot of people around here who haven’t gotten enough sleep.” Sleep-roughened as it was, his voice was almost difficult to understand.

  Aralorn smoothed the covers as they lay over her lap, not at all certain her next question was important enough for the pain it would cause him. “When you saw her, the one time you saw her, did your mother have red hair?”

  He withdrew instantly without moving at all.

  “It’s not an idle question,” she told him. “I thought of something while I was telling stories tonight. I thought it was silly then, but now ...”

  “Yes,” he said shortly, “she had red hair.”

  “Was it long or short?”

  “Long,” he bit out after a short pause. “Long and filthy. It smelled of excrement and death.”

  “Wolf,” said Aralorn in a very small voice, looking at the bump her toes made under the quilts, “when you destroyed the tower, were you trying to kill yourself?”

  She felt the bed move as he shifted his weight.

  This question seemed to bother him less than the one about his mother. The biting tone was missing from his rough voice, and he sounded . . . intrigued. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  She ran her hands through her hair. “I’m not sure how to tell you this without sounding like a madwoman. Just bear with me.”

  “Always.” There was a bit of long-suffering in his tone.

  She leaned back against him and smiled wryly. “Ever since you left this last time, I’ve been having nightmares. At first they weren’t too different from the ones I had after you rescued me from the ae’Magi’s dungeons, and I didn’t think much more about them. About a week ago, they became more pointed.”

  She thought about them, trying to pick out the first that had been different. “The first set seemed to have a common theme. I dreamed that I was a child, looking for something I had lost—you. In another dream, I was back in the dungeon, blinded, and the ae’Magi asked me where you were—just as he did when he had me at the castle. It was so real I could feel the scratches on my arms and the congestion in my lungs. I’ve never had a dream that real.”

  She reached out a hand to rest on Wolf’s arm for her own comfort. “
I saw Talor again, and his twin. They were both Uriah this time, though Kai died before he could be changed.”

  She paused to steady her voice and wasn’t too successful. “They asked me where you were.”

  “You think they were more than dreams?” She couldn’t tell what he thought from his voice.

  “I didn’t at first, though I thought it was strange that in my dreams they never asked where ‘Wolf ’ was—I don’t think of you as ‘Cain’ very often. That’s what my father asked me. He said, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten where you put Cain.’ ” She laughed softly, shaking her head. “As if you were a toy I’d misplaced.” She grinned at him. “I thought that one was just worry because you’d left so abruptly.”

  She lost her smile. “That’s where the color of your mother’s hair comes in. The last dream, the one I had in the inn on the way here, was even odder than the others. At least they seemed to come from my experiences: This one wasn’t about anything I’d ever seen.”

  “It concerned my mother?”

  Aralorn nodded. “Partially, yes. It was more a series of dreams. They all concerned you—things you had done.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “Unpleasant ones. Like when your mother died. Someone who didn’t know you as well as I do might have thought you didn’t feel anything.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Aralorn shot him a look of disbelief, remembering the boy’s frozen face, then shook her head at him. “Right,” she said dryly. “At any rate, that was the first part. In another, I was tied down, and you were going to kill me. But I knew there was something wrong, and I fought it. When I did, it . . . altered. I was watching again, and it was the ae’Magi who held the knife. He offered it to you, and you refused.”

  “I didn’t always,” commented Wolf softly—he had stiffened again.

  Aralorn tightened her grip briefly on his arm. “I know. But you wouldn’t smile while you killed—or talk either, for that matter. At any rate, the last part was when you destroyed the tower. What I saw at first presented you as a power-mad mage, but this time it was easier to shift the dream back to what really happened. I can picture you motivated by rage, hurt, or cold-blooded anger, but greed just doesn’t fit.”

  “The story you told tonight made you think that something was sending you dreams like the Dreamer?” repeated Wolf carefully.

  “It sounds even stupider when you say it than when I think it,” she commented, but she slid back under the covers and huddled near his warmth just the same. How to explain the alien feel of the dreams without sounding even stupider? “I didn’t know the color of your mother’s hair, or that you were trying to destroy yourself with the tower. We are living in odd times.” Times made odder by the last ae’Magi’s foray into forbidden magics—she didn’t need to say it. Wolf knew his father was in some part responsible for the changes taking place. “Dragons fly the Northland skies, and howlaas venture into Reth.”

  She continued without pause. “There has even been a resurgence in the followers of the old gods for the past several years. Look at the temple here. It’s been centuries since there was a priest in residence, but there’s one here now. The trappers have been decimated by nasty critters like the howlaa and other things that haven’t been seen in generations. Is it so impossible that . . . that something else was awakened?”

  Wolf broke in. “You mean that the black magic my father worked might have fed the Dreamer you told us about tonight?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed. “That howlaa today. It was sent, Wolf.”

  “Sent?” asked Wolf.

  “Uhm.” She nodded. “When I met its gaze, it spoke to me. Something evil sent it searching for us—it was meant to kill you.” She hesitated, then continued. “Then there was the wind . . . Wolf, I believe that there is something evil here.”

  Silence lingered for a while as Wolf thought of what she’d said.

  “Well,” he said finally, “as long as we are throwing out odd theories, I have developed one of my own, just for you. It even has to do with dreaming.”

  “You didn’t laugh at mine, so I won’t laugh at yours,” she promised.

  “Right,” he replied. “When it became obvious to me that Kisrah had worked the spell, I thought about just what it would have taken to persuade him to do so. I could only think of one thing—and tonight I realized that it was even possible. Let me tell you a little something you may not have known about human magic.”

  “That doesn’t limit the topic much,” she quipped.

  He ruffled her hair. “Quiet, little mouse, and listen. Human mages have different talents; one of them—though it is very rare—is a form of farseeing. The mage’s spirit leaves his body and can travel over vast distances in a matter of moments. In that state, he can speak to others in their dreams or merely watch them. Usually, they are invisible in that form—but occasionally they can be seen as a ghostly mist.”

  “All right,” agreed Aralorn. “I think I’ve heard of that. It’s called spirit travel or something of the sort—but I thought it was rare.”

  “Like shapeshifters,” agreed Wolf.

  “Your point,” she acquiesced, grinning a little in the darkness of the chilly old castle room. “So you think that maybe my dreams might be coming from a human mage? Someone deliberately trying to get information from me?”

  “My father could do it,” said Wolf softly. “I heard him talking about it once with another wizard. They were discussing another mage, I think. I don’t know which one. He said, ‘Of course I’m certain he’s a dreamwalker. I have some talent in that direction myself.’ I think he used his talent to influence his rise to power—by speaking to the other mages as they slept.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I remember, because I marked a rune on my staff that kept him from doing the same to me as soon as I overheard him.”

  Aralorn tightened her arms around him, wondering how he was still sane after all his father had done to him. He squeezed her in return—to comfort her, she thought—and continued to speak without a pause.

  “If the body of a dreamwalker is killed while the spirit is outside, the spirit remains alive for a time. He probably would not be able to work magic as a spirit, but he can persuade others to act on his behalf.”

  “A ghost?” she asked.

  He grunted. “No. Ghosts are . . . bits of memory trapped in place. A spirit is—it’s too late at night for lessons in magic theory, my Lady. Let me get back to the subject at hand. It is possible that my father managed to leave his body before the Uriah killed him. In that state, he could have visited Kisrah—as well as the other mage who appears to have had his hands in the pie—and persuaded them to act in his stead.”

  “You think the only reason Kisrah would use black magic ...”

  “Was if my father asked him to do so,” said Wolf. “Yes.”

  “To use Father as bait for us.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Aralorn stiffened at his cautious tone, which usually meant things had gone from bad to worse. “What do you mean?”

  “My father wanted to live forever, Lady. Do you think that he would be content with mere vengeance?”

  “You think he’s trying to use Father’s body?”

  “Your father can’t work magic; but your father is connected intimately with three mages. Attack him with magic, and my father has a whole selection to choose among.”

  “He would prefer yours since you are the most powerful of the three.” Aralorn shivered and settled closer. “I think I prefer the Dreamer.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Wolf mildly, “we’ll be lucky, and it is only Kisrah trying to kill me.”

  She snickered into his shoulder. “Not everyone would look at that as lucky.”

  “Not everyone is looking at our list of alternatives.”

  “True.” She yawned.

  They fell silent, and she thought Wolf had drifted off to sleep. She patted him gently.

  Her uncle had said that Wolf had a deat
h wish.

  She’d known that he had a tendency to be reckless, thought that it was something they shared. In her dreams (and she was convinced that the memories of Wolf’s experiences were true dreams, however they’d been sent), she’d seen that he’d expected death when he’d destroyed the tower. He’d hoped for death. Apparently, he still did.

  She took in a deep breath of his familiar scent and held it to her heart. She would not lose him.

  “Tomorrow, I think we might visit the priestess of the death goddess,” she said. He had been asleep, because her voice jerked him awake. “If there’s a ghost or a Dreamer out there, the death goddess ought to know—don’t you think?”

  “Could be,” Wolf muttered groggily. “Go to sleep, Aralorn.”

  EIGHT

  “I hadn’t expected this to become an expedition,” muttered Aralorn softly to Sheen as she rocked back and forth with his exuberant stride. He was feeling frisky after his rest, and his steps were animated and quick. Wolf, gliding soundlessly beside the gray warhorse, gave her a sardonic look before turning his attention to the snowy path.

  She shook her head, and said in a tone meant to carry to her escort, “It’s not as if Lambshold is riddled with outlaws. Even if it were, I am fully capable of taking care of myself.”

  “See, Correy,” boomed Falhart from behind her and somewhat to the left, “I told you she’d like to have some company.”

  “She’s been gone a long time. She’s probably forgotten where the temple is,” said Correy solemnly, behind her and to the right. “Dead howlaas aside, an itty-bitty runt like her needs her big brothers to protect her.”

  Aralorn spun Sheen around on his hocks with enough speed to leave the stallion snorting and looking for the enemy. If she’d known what an overprotective streak the howlaa was going to stir up, she would never have let Correy know it was there. Let his stupid sheep get eaten by wolves. Protection she might have to put up with while she was here, but . . .

  She pointed accusingly at Correy. “You promised no more jokes about my size.”

  “Or lack thereof,” added Falhart smugly.

  “No,” said Correy. “Falhart is the one who promised. Besides, I just commented on our size, right, Gerem? Just because your thirteen-year-old brother is a hand and a half taller than you doesn’t mean you’re small. We just happen to be taller than most people.”