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  As she was coming up for air, she heard a newly familiar voice say, “See, I told’ja she had a funny-looking sword. Look, the handle’s made out of metal.”

  Aralorn took her time wiping her face on her sleeve and smoothing her dripping hair away from her face. Stanis and his silent-but-grinning companion, Tobin, stood observing her. She hid a smile when she recognized Stanis’s solemn-faced, feet-apart, hands-behind-his-back pose. She’d noticed that Myr did that when he was thinking.

  “Have you killed anyone?” Stanis’s voice was filled with gruesome interest.

  She nodded solemnly as she rolled up the long sleeves of the innkeeper’s son’s tunic again. Maybe she should cut them, too. The boots were giving her blisters.

  “You’re not supposed to fight with swords that don’t have wooden handles,” said Stanis worriedly. “If you kill a magician with your sword, his magic will kill you.”

  She could have explained that any mage powerful enough to be problematical that way would certainly not need a sword to kill her. But she didn’t want to scare them any worse than they already were.

  “That’s why I only wound magicians with my sword,” she explained. “When I kill magicians, I always use my knife. It has a wooden grip.”

  “Oh,” said Stanis, apparently satisfied with her answer.

  They were silent for a moment, then Stanis said, “Tobin wanted to know if you would tell us about killing someone?”

  “All right,” agreed Aralorn. Far be it from her to give up the chance to tell stories. Her friends rolled their eyes when she started one, but children were always a good audience. She looked around for a good place. She settled on a grassy area, far enough away from the stream so that the ground was relatively dry, and sat down cross-legged. When her audience joined her, she cleared her throat and began the story.

  * * *

  That was where Wolf found her. Her audience had grown to include most of the camp, Myr’s raggle-taggle army as enthralled as any bunch of hardened mercenaries at her favorite tavern. He walked quietly closer until he could hear what she was saying.

  “. . . so we snuck past the dragon’s nose a second time. We had to be careful to avoid the puddles of poison that dripped from the old beast’s fangs as it slept.”

  She had just thrown away her career and her home—no matter what the outcome of this, she had disobeyed orders. If she returned to Sianim, it would be as a criminal and a deserter. She knew that. Knew that Myr’s little band of refugees was doomed unless they had the luck of the gods—and he didn’t believe in luck, not good luck, anyway. Yet here she was, entertaining this grim and hopeless bunch with her relentless cheer.

  “Dragon’s ears”—she spoke in such serious tones that several people in her audience nodded, including, to Wolf’s private amusement, Myr—“though you can’t see them at all, are very acute. There we were, the four of us, loaded down with all sorts of treasures, sneaking past this huge beast that could swallow us all in one gulp. We held our very breath when we neared it. Not a sound did we make, we stepped so soft.” Her voice dropped to a carrying whisper. “Now you remember those bejeweled golden goblets Wikker’d liked so well? Just as we crossed in front of the dragon . . . that great beast, he breathed out, and it was as if we were caught in a spring storm the wind was so bad. It grabbed one of Wikker’s goblets, and it landed right on that giant fiend’s scale-covered muzzle.” She closed her eyes and looked sorrowful for a moment, waiting . . .

  “What happened?” asked a hushed voice from the crowd.

  Aralorn shook her head and spread her arms. “What do you expect happened? It ate us.”

  There was a short silence, then sheepish laughter as they realized that she’d been telling them a tall tale from the beginning. Wolf was close enough to hear Stanis’s disgruntled, “That’s not how it should have ended. You’re supposed to kill the dragon.”

  Aralorn laughed, hopped to her feet, and ruffled the boy’s hair as she passed by him. “There is another ending to the story. I’ll tell you it later. Now, though, I think that I hear someone calling us for lunch.”

  * * *

  Aralorn ate the last of the bread and cheese that was lunch, and Wolf touched her on the shoulder. She dusted off her hands and followed him without a word. They slipped out of camp and scaled one side of the valley. Once on the top, they followed a faint trail through the trees that led to a cliff with several dark openings, including a large, shallow-looking cave.

  Wolf walked past that and took her into a smaller opening twenty paces farther along. As he entered the dark tunnel, the crystals on his staff began emitting a pale blue light. Aralorn hadn’t noticed that he was carrying the staff while they were walking, but she supposed that it was just part of being a mysterious mage . . . or maybe it was just Wolf.

  “These caves would make a much better shelter than the tents. Why aren’t you using them?”

  Wolf motioned to a small branch and halted her with a hand on her arm. He tilted the staff slightly until she realized that directly in front of them was a dark hole. “Aside from the problem of lighting them—which could be managed—there are several of these pits. That one goes down far enough to kill someone, and there are some holes deeper than that. If there were no children, you might risk it, but it’s too difficult to keep them from wandering. We are storing a lot of the supplies in a few caves near the surface, and I drew up a map for Myr of a section that is pretty isolated from the main cave system. If it becomes necessary to move the camp into the caves, we can. But it is safer in the valley.”

  Aralorn looked at the blackness in front of them and nodded. She also stayed close to Wolf the rest of the way through the caves.

  They came to a large chamber that he illuminated with a flick of a hand. The chamber was easily as spacious as the great hall in the ae’Magi’s castle. Carved into all the walls were shelves covered with books. Wooden bookcases were packed tightly with more books and stacked in rows with only a narrow walkway between them. Here and there were careful stacks of volumes waiting to find places on the crowded shelves.

  Aralorn whistled softly. “I thought that Ren’s library was impressive. We’re going to read all of these?”

  Wolf shrugged. “Unless we find something before we have to read them all.” As he spoke, he led her through one of the narrow pathways between bookcases to an open area occupied by a flat table that held an assortment of quills, ink, and paper. On either side of the table were small, padded benches.

  Aralorn looked around, and asked, “Where do you want me to start?”

  “I’ll take the grimoires. Normally, I know, you can tell if something is magic, but for your safety let me look at the books before you open them. There are spells to disguise the presence of magic, and some of the grimoires are set with traps for the unwary. I’d prefer not to spend valuable time trying to resurrect you,” he said.

  “Can you resurrect people?” She kept her voice mildly curious though she’d never heard of such a thing actually happening. He’d brought all of this here from somewhere, just as he’d transported that merchant and the supplies. She was ready to believe he might bring people back from the dead.

  “Let’s not find out,” he said dryly.

  “So, what do I look for, I mean other than a book titled Twenty-five Foolproof Ways to Destroy a Powerful and Evil Mage?”

  He gave a short laugh before he answered. “Look for the name of a mage who fought other mages. Some of these books go back a long ways, when dueling was allowed between mages. If I have a name, I might be able to find his grimoire. You also might note down any object that could be of use. Magical items are notoriously hard to find—even if they’re not the creation of some bard’s overactive imagination—and we don’t have the leisure time to go on a quest.”

  She could go though the books methodically. Doubtless that was what Wolf was doing. But sometimes . . . She blew on her fingers and thought hard on how much a little luck right now would be of use. She didn’t
pull more than a breath of magic for it—luck magic could backfire in unexpected ways. It was best to keep such things small. Then she walked to a random shelf and took out the first book that caught her eye. She ran her fingers lightly over the metallic binding of the book. Originally, it had been silver, but it had tarnished to a dull black.

  She could read the title only because she once coaxed Ren into teaching her the words inscribed on the old wall mosaics in some of the older places in Sianim. Reluctantly, she put it away without opening it, knowing that it wouldn’t have anything of use. The people who used that language had disliked magic to such an extent that they burned the practitioners of it. They had been a trading people, and merchants in general were not overly fond of mages. She thought about the chubby merchant she’d seen in another cave and smiled; maybe merchants had good reason to dislike magic.

  It took several more tries before she found a book that suited her and passed it by Wolf for inspection. He handed it back to her with a perfunctory nod and went back to his work.

  This book was, in her estimation, about three hundred years old and told the history of a tribe of tinkers that used to roam the lands in great numbers. They were scarcer now and tended to keep to themselves. Whoever wrote the book she was reading still believed in the powers of the old gods, and he intermixed history and myth with a cynicism that she thoroughly enjoyed. Taking a piece of blank paper, she kept careful note of anything that might be potentially useful.

  Her favorite was the story of the jealous chieftain whose wife was unfaithful. Frustrated, he visited the local hedgewitch, who gave him a fist-sized bronze statue of the demi-god Kinez the Faithful. When his wife kissed a man in its presence, it would come to life and kill the unlucky suitor. The chieftain had the statue placed in his wife’s wagon, and after several of her favorites died, she sinned no more. Or, noted the author of the book, at least she found another place to sin.

  At last satisfied that his wife would be faithful, the chieftain entered her wagon to engage in his husbandly duties. He forgot to remove the statue first. His widow became chieftain, enjoyed her widowhood, and ruled for many prosperous years.

  * * *

  Wolf wondered why it was that mages had such wretched handwriting. The fine motor skills prerequisite to spellcasting should be reflected in decent writing: His own was very nearly flawless. He painstakingly cross-checked the word he was trying to decipher with several others to compare the letters. As he was writing the actual word neatly in the space above the original in case he ever had to read the book again, he heard Aralorn laugh softly.

  Safe behind the mask, he smiled at the picture she made with her quill scritching frantically along the paper. Her handwriting wasn’t any better than what he’d just been attempting to read. The hand moving the quill was callused and ink-spattered. Ink also resided in blotchy patterns across her face where she’d pushed back her hair.

  Reluctantly, he returned to his reading.

  * * *

  Aralorn finished her book and replaced the slender volume on its shelf. When she found another likely-looking candidate, Wolf was deeply engrossed in his grimoire, so she sat to wait.

  “Wolf,” she said suddenly, startled by a strange thought.

  He held up a hand to ask her to wait while he finished, which she did with some impatience. Finally, he looked up.

  “What is the difference between standard and green magic to you? I have always been told that human mages draw the magic from themselves while green-magic users draw power from the outside world, but didn’t you say that the ae’Magi had found a way to link to outside power? That that’s how he manages to push his influence all the way out to Reth and Sianim? Does that make him a green mage, too? His magic doesn’t feel like green magic to me.”

  In typical Wolf fashion, he started his answer with a question. “How much training have you had in magic?”

  She grinned at him. “Not much. You mages are not especially open to sharing knowledge even among yourselves, and the shapeshifters are not exactly fascinated by intellectual pursuits. The only thing I know even about green magic is how to use it, and in that I’m by no means an expert. I spent enough time with my mother’s people to learn how to shapeshift and a few minor magics. I can feel the difference between the types of magic”—she put a fist against her heart—“here, but I don’t know exactly what it means.”

  He grunted in acknowledgment and paused to choose his words. “I’ve heard that explanation, too. I would even venture that most mages believe it. That human magic is more powerful than green magic.” He tapped his fingers on the table a couple of times, which surprised her. He was so shut down, so self-controlled, that to see him make a movement for no other reason than that he was collecting his thoughts was unusual.

  Finally, he said, “The Ancients believed magic existed in a secret pool in the castle of the goddess of nature, and she used this magic to make the seasons change and the grass grow. One day, a clever man found a way to steal some water out of the pool without the goddess’s knowing about it. He was the first human magician.

  “Picture magic as a pool of raw, unshaped power that gradually seeps into the natural world to act as nature would have it—making the trees grow and the sun rise. My understanding of green magic is that it is the magic already harnessed by nature the green magician uses, persuading it with nudges here and there to take a different course. The magic that he uses is nature’s magic already shaped to a purpose. It is safer and perhaps easier to use, but it is not as flexible as the raw stuff.

  “If you accept that story—even just as imagery—then normal . . . human magic . . .” He hesitated. “At least for most magicians, it works in steps. First, the human magician must tap into the magical pool. It is like drinking through a straw—when one runs out of breath, the liquid stops flowing. The magician then takes the raw power he has gathered and uses it to form a spell or pattern that he shapes himself. The more magic the magician can pull, the stronger he is, but he needs to know the patterns into which to shape the magic and begin the shaping immediately, while he is still drawing it out, so it doesn’t overwhelm him.”

  He looked over her head. Aralorn took a quick look, too, but didn’t see anything that would hold his attention.

  “If he cannot shape the magic, he must release it as raw power. Raw magic let loose in the world will take the form of fire and burn itself out. Few mages can call enough power that their uncontrolled magic will do much more than start a campfire. Because for most mages, it is the gathering of magic that is the most difficult. Containing it and making it follow one’s will is generally a matter of memorizing a spell or two, although a large amount of raw magic is more difficult to shape than a smaller amount.”

  “Are you going to get kicked out of the secret society of mages for telling me all of this?” asked Aralorn, feeling a little breathless at the amount of knowledge he’d just given her.

  “Secret society of mages?” His voice was amused, but it wasn’t happy. “If there were such a society, I ripped myself free of that a long time ago. Trust me, sharing a few stories is the least of my crimes.”

  He looked down at the book in front of him, but she didn’t think he was reading it.

  “The ae’Magi, powerful as he is, could not do this—” His whole body was tight, and he flung a hand outward—she supposed toward outside, though she’d have to think about it for a minute before she could be sure which direction was “outside.” “Could not take over the minds of a whole people without turning to older ways.”

  “Older ways?”

  He slumped, his hands petting the book as if it gave him comfort. “There is a lot of knowledge stored in the ae’Magi’s castle. They brought the things—books, artifacts, and the like—that could not be destroyed there, where they would be safely guarded against misuse. In the forbidden books, the ae’Magi found a way to leach energy so that he could use it to hold open the magical channels longer than he otherwise could have. He has g
reatly increased the amount of power that he can capture at any one time, making him stronger than any wizard living.”

  She looked at him and thought again about Cain, the ae’Magi’s son. But the ae’Magi, by his actions, betrayed a lot of people. The personal knowledge that Wolf had could have come from any of the wizards who’d been close to the ae’Magi. One of his apprentices maybe. There were several who had “died” or disappeared five years or more ago—the study of magic at the higher levels wasn’t any safer than being a mercenary.

  “Earlier, you said that human magic works this way for most magicians, not for you?” asked Aralorn carefully.

  His yellow eyes caught hers like a bird of prey’s. He seemed a stranger to her, hostile almost.

  Aralorn set her chin and stubbornly refused to let herself feel threatened. “How does it work for you?” she rephrased her question.

  Suddenly, he relaxed and loosened his shoulders. Mildly he said, “I forget sometimes, how difficult it is to intimidate you. Very well, then; yes, it is different for me. When I started working magic, it wasn’t obvious just how different I was. Not until I started working the more powerful spells did the difference make itself felt. Most magicians are limited by the magic they can draw into themselves; I am limited more by the amount of magic I can shape into a spell.”

  A lot, Aralorn thought, remembering the merchant he’d transported.

  “I suspect that the ae’Magi”—he paused and touched her hand lightly—“who was my teacher, as you suspect”—he’d learned to read her, too, over the past few years—“knew long before I did, and separated me from the rest of his apprentices. From then on, I lacked anyone with whom to compare myself. When I was fifteen, the ae’Magi decided to try to use me to gather more power. He had me gather all the magic that I could so that he could use it.”

  Wolf fell silent. Aralorn waited for a minute, then asked, “Something happened?”