Masques s-1 Read online

  There was no light in the dungeon other than Wolf’s staff, but it was sufficient. The ring of keys was still kept on its holder near the guardroom door—for convenience’s sake.

  He slid the nearest door open and climbed down the steep, narrow stairs. The prisoners chained to the wall were too far gone to notice him. He took wolf shape because of the wolf’s sharper senses and regretted the necessity. The smells of a dungeon were bad enough to the human nose, but the wolf’s eyes were watering as he backed out of the cell. Returning to his human form, he closed the cell back up. She wasn’t in there. He found the same at the second cell.

  In the third cell, chained corpses littered the floor and hung on the wall like broken dolls, but they moaned and breathed with the pseudolife that animated Uriah. They watched him with glittering eyes as he shifted again to wolf shape to sample the air. But they were too new, too heavily controlled by the ae’Magi’s spells, to give alarm.

  More people in the fourth cell. When he’d lived here, there had seldom been more than one or two people in the whole dungeon. He shifted to wolf, took a breath—and stopped breathing altogether.

  She’s here.

  He pushed the fierce joy of that aside. Time enough to celebrate when he had her safe.

  He found her in the corner of the cell. Her face was different, but she was muttering to herself, and it was her voice, her scent under the filth. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, breaking into heavy coughing when he shifted her against him to take off the irons—the dungeons held so much magic that short of melting the stone, the ae’Magi wouldn’t feel what he did unless he was in the next room. That didn’t mean they could afford to stay here long. Wolf swore at the wounds the cuffs left on her ankles and wrists.

  No time to look for further wounds. He had to get out of here.

  Gently, he picked her up, ignoring the smell of dungeon that clung to her. He stepped over the huddled bodies of her fellow inmates with no more attention than if they had been bundles of straw. Although he had no hands free to carry it, the staff followed him like an obedient dog.

  It wasn’t until he stood outside the cell that he realized he had a problem. The secret door he’d entered through was a crawl space, too narrow to get through with Aralorn unable to move on her own.

  He didn’t have time to dawdle.

  A touch to the mask with his staff and both disappeared. A brief moment of concentration, and the scars followed. He was no shapeshifter. The face he wore beneath the scars was the one he was born with: It was his as much as the scars were also his.

  Trying to avoid causing her any further hurt, he positioned Aralorn on his shoulder, holding her in place with one hand and letting the other hang carelessly free. A ball of light formed over his left shoulder and followed him to the guardroom door.

  As he opened the door, the guards scrambled for their weapons until they saw his face. Wolf carelessly tossed the keys on the rough-hewn table, where they left a track in the greasy buildup as they slid. When he spoke, it was with the ae’Magi’s hated voice, soft and warm with music. The illusion was simple—he didn’t need much to make his face look so near to the ae’Magi’s that in the dark they would not be able to tell him from his father.

  “I think that it would be wiser from now on,” he told them, “for the guard in charge to keep the keys on his person. It is too easy for someone to enter the dungeon by other paths. There is no reason that we should make it any easier to get into the cells than it already is.”

  Without looking at the men again, he walked to the far door, which obediently opened to let him through and closed after him. The wide staircase that led to the upper floors stretched in front of him, leaving but a narrow space against the wall, supposedly to allow access to the area under the stairs that was sometimes used for storage. It was this path that he took, ducking as he moved under the stairway.

  Unerringly, he touched the exact spot that triggered the hidden door. As he stepped through, he whispered a soft spell, and the dust under the stairs rearranged itself until it looked as it had before he walked there.

  He put out the light as the stone door shut behind him. The passage was as dark as pitch, and there was little light for even his mage-sensitive eyes to pick out. Tiny flecks of illumination that found their way through openings in the mortar made the towering walls glitter like the night sky. Their presence was the reason he’d put out the light—lest someone in a dark room on the other side of the wall witness the same phenomenon.

  Wolf kept one hand against a wall and the other securely around Aralorn and felt the ground ahead with his feet. He slowed his progress when a pile of refuse he kicked with his foot bounced down an unseen stairway. With a grim smile that no one could see, he continued blindly down the stairs.

  There were shuffling noises as rats and other less savory creatures scrambled anonymously out of his way. Once he almost lost his footing as he stepped on something not long dead. A growling hiss protested his encroachment on someone’s dinner.

  Only when they reached the last of the long flight of steps did he decide they were far enough down that he dared a light. The floor was thick with dust; only faint outlines showed where he had disturbed the dust the last time he’d been here several years before, raiding one of the hidden libraries—there were more than the one he’d made off with completely.

  Content that the passage had remained undiscovered, Wolf walked to a blank wall and sketched symbols in the air before it. The symbols hung glowing orange in the shadows until he was finished; then they shimmered and moved until they were touching the wall. The wall glittered in its turn, before abruptly disappearing—opening the way to still another obscure passage, deep in the rock under the castle. He continued for some time, his path twisting this way and that, through passages once discovered by a boy seeking sanctuary.

  Twice he had to change his route because the way he remembered was too small for him to take carrying Aralorn. Once, the passage was blocked by a recent cave-in. Several of the corridors showed signs of recent use, and he avoided them as well. They surfaced finally from the labyrinth, several miles east and well out of easy view of the castle.

  He shifted her from his shoulder then, cradling her in his arms, though she was harder to carry that way. There was nothing that he could do until they reached safer ground, so he trod swift of foot through the night-dark forest, listening intently for sounds that shouldn’t be there.

  He wished that he hadn’t had to show himself, because now—after all of his caution—it was going to be obvious that he was mixed up with Myr’s group. The ae’Magi had been seeking him for a long time. So the attacks on Myr’s camp were going to intensify. It was possible that the guards wouldn’t mention the incident to the ae’Magi—but it was always better to be prepared for the worst. He was going to have to stage his confrontation with the Archmage soon.

  He wasn’t looking forward to the coming battle. Old stories of the Wizard Wars—Aralorn could tell them by the hour—spoke of battles of pure power between one magician and another, and the great glass desert, more than a hundred square miles of blackened glass, gave mute evidence of the costs of such battles. If he, with his strange mutations of magic, ever got involved in a battle on those terms, the results could be far worse.

  It might be better by far to let the magician extend his power. Even the best magicians live only three to four hundred years, and the ae’Magi was well into his second century. Expending his power the way that he was now, even taking into account the energy he stole, would take years off his life. A hundred years of tyranny was better than the destruction of the earth.

  The glass desert had been fertile soil once.

  * * *

  He walked until well after the sun rose, following no visible trail—losing the two of them in the wilds as best he might. He stopped when they reached the cache he’d set up on his way to the castle, far enough off the trails that they should be safe for a while. Not safe enough to use magic to tr
ansport them—that the ae’Magi might follow. But he could hide them from this distance—he’d found some spells that worked for that since his time hiding in the Northlands. Spells that had allowed him to follow Aralorn around without worrying the ae’Magi would find him.

  He opened the bedroll awkwardly, unwilling to set her on the hard ground, and gently placed her on the soft blankets. His arms were cramping and sore from carrying her, so he had to stretch a bit before he did anything else.

  Her darker skin hid the flush of fever, but it was hot and dry to his touch. Her breathing was hoarse, and he could hear the fluid in her lungs. He rolled the second blanket up and stuffed it under her head to help her breathe. Efficiently, gently, he cleaned her with spell-warmed water.

  On the dark skin it should have been more difficult to see the bruises, but her skin was gray from illness, revealing the darker patches. Some were obviously old, probably from her initial capture. But fresh bruises overlay the old ones.

  Three ribs were either broken or cracked, he wasn’t well enough trained in healing to tell the difference. The ribs and a large lump on the back of her head seemed the worst of her wounds—both were more likely the result of her initial capture than any torture.

  Her fingernails had been removed, swollen knuckles revealed the violence of the method used to pull them. The toes on her right foot were broken, the smallest torn off completely. She had been whipped with efficiency from the top of her shoulders to the backs of her knees. But those wounds would heal in few weeks (except, of course for the misplaced toe). A woman could live without a toe.

  He pulled out the bag of simples that he had brought with him. He wasn’t a healer, by any means, but he’d picked up enough to bind her wounds.

  When he was through cleaning her back, he covered it with a mold paste and wrapped the bandage around tight enough to help immobilize her ribs. He splinted the toes and cleaned and bandaged her ankles, hands, and wrists.

  It was while he was working on her wrists that he noticed the large sore where the inner side of her arm had been skinned. He stilled, then very gently covered the sore with ointment and wrapped it as if it hadn’t sent chills down his spine.

  It was one of the ae’Magi’s favorite games. The inner arm was tender, and a man who was skilled with a skinning knife could cause significant pain without incapacitating his victim. The ae’Magi usually did something extremely nasty first to soften his victim.

  Carefully, Wolf opened Aralorn’s mouth and examined the inside of her cheek, the roof of her mouth, under her tongue, and her teeth. Nothing. He looked inside her ear and said a few soft words of magic. Nothing. As he turned her head to look at her other ear, something sparkled in the sun. Her eyelids.

  Carefully Wolf held her face where the sunlight fell on it fully. Both of her eyelids, on careful examination, were slightly swollen, but it was the seepage that told the real story.

  He held his open hand several inches over her eye and murmured another spell. When he took his hand away, he held four long, slender, steel needles, each barbed on the end like a fisherman’s hook. The needles were sharp enough that they slid in with little pain, but every time the eye moved, the sharpened edges of the needle cut a little more. They were not the expensive silver needles, but the cheaper iron-based steel—made primarily for coarser work.

  He looked at them for a minute and they melted, leaving his hand undamaged. As he removed four more from her other eye, he wished passionately, and not for the first time in his life, that he knew more.

  True healing was one of the first things taught to a shapeshifter; but for a human magic-user, it was one of the last arts learned. Increasing the efficacy of herbs was the best he knew. He doubted that in this case even a shapeshifter could heal her eyes—he seemed to remember something about wounds made with cold iron being more difficult than others.

  He put her in a soft cotton shirt that reached to her thighs. When he was finished, he put a cold-spelled compress over her eyes and bound it tightly in place.

  He had reached the end of his expertise. Tiredly, he covered her with another blanket and lay down next to her, not quite touching. He slept.

  * * *

  Her world consisted of vague impressions of vision and sound. She saw people she knew, strangely altered. Sometimes they filled her with horror, other times they drew no emotion from her at all. There was Talor as he’d been the last time she’d seen him in Sianim—then something happened to him, and he was dead, only he was talking to her and telling her things that she didn’t want to hear.

  Sometimes she floated in a great nothingness that scared her, but not as much as the pain. Her body was a great distance away, and she would pull back as far as she could because she was afraid of what she would find when she returned. Then, like the stretchy tubris rope that children played with, something would snap, and she would find herself back in the midst of the pain and heat and terror. Someone screamed, it hurt her ears, and she wished the sound would stop.

  * * *

  This time her return was different. Besides being hot, she was also wet and sticky. The pain was dimmed to bearable levels; even the ache in her side was less. There was something that attracted her attention and she concentrated—trying to figure out what it was. It had called her back from her nothingness into a place she’d much rather not be. She decided in a moment of pseudorationality that she needed to find it and kill it so she could be free to go away.

  She looked for it in her dreams and fragments of impressions touched her. There was something terribly wrong with her eyes. Cold iron whose wounds were permanent. It had bitten and chewed and . . .

  She shied away and found another piece of memory. Magic horribly distorted and twisted, making dead men breathe. It frightened her. There was no safety in death here, and she wanted the sanctuary that death should offer. Then the cold iron cut off her awareness of the dead things that shared her space. She had never felt so helpless; it gave her a dispirited claustrophobia that made her strain repeatedly against the bonds, until she exhausted herself. Bonds that most well-trained, full-blooded shapeshifters might have gotten out of, but she had all the weaknesses and too little power.

  There . . . while she was fighting . . . she almost had it. The thing that had pulled her back and made her hurt again. It was sound, familiar sound. Why should that bother her?

  She was so tired. She was losing her concentration, and pictures came more rapidly until she was lost in her nightmare memories again.

  * * *

  They’d been camped in the same place for three days. It worried him because they were much too close to the ae’Magi’s castle, but the thought of moving her worried him more. Instead of getting better since being out of the cell, she seemed worse. Her eyes were seeping with the pus of infection. Her fever was no higher, but it was no lower either. Her breathing was more difficult, and when she coughed, he could tell that it hurt her ribs.

  As he watched her, he tormented himself with guilt. Had he been quicker to find her, she would have stood a better chance. The needles had been used on her eyes only recently. He could have found her in his first search if he’d only remembered that she might be wearing someone else’s face.

  As it did when he was angered, the other magic in him flickered fey—nudging him, tempting him. Usually he used it, twisting it toward his own ends, but this time he was tired with worry, guilt, and sleeplessness. The magic whispered, seducing him with visions of healing.

  His eyes closed, without conscious thought he stretched out carefully beside Aralorn. Gently, he touched her face, seeing the wrongness there—the slight fracture in the skull that he hadn’t been aware of.

  As he gave control away to the seductive whispers of his magic, he found that he could feel her pulse, almost her thoughts. Sex notwithstanding, this was closer than he’d ever been to another human being. With anyone else, he would have lashed out, done anything just to get away—to be safe alone.

  But this was Aralorn, and
he had to heal her, or . . . He caught a flick of the desperation of that thought, but was soon lost in the peace of his magic. He floated with it for what could have been a hundred years or a single instant. Gradually, his fear of the loss of control, so well learned when his searing magic had leapt out burning, hurting, scarring, crept upon him—breaking the trance he’d fallen into.

  He opened his eyes and gasped for air. His heart was pounding, and sweat poured off his body. Great shudders racked him. He turned his head enough to look at Aralorn.

  The first thing that hit him was that he was looking at Aralorn. The guise she’d donned was gone. The bruises on her legs looked much worse on her own relatively pale skin. Fever had brought unnatural color to her pale cheeks.

  When he could, he bent over and removed the bandage from her eyes. The swelling had almost completely gone and her eyes appeared normal when he carefully lifted her eyelids. He hadn’t looked before—he knew what those needles had done. He felt carefully with his fingertips where he’d seen the break in her skull and could locate nothing.

  Almost too tired to move, he pulled her head onto his shoulder and drew blankets neatly around them. He knew he should stay up and keep watch—there was no warhorse to share guard duty with—but he hadn’t been this tired since his early apprentice days.

  * * *

  It was morning when Aralorn awoke, still slightly delirious. She’d had dreams of the quiet sounds of the forest before, and she let herself take that comfort now. She knew that all too soon she would have to face reality again. The nice thing was that the times reality crept in were getting farther and farther apart.

  She thought about that for a minute before she realized that there was a man beside her. Delirium took over then, and she was drowning slowly. It was very hard to breathe, and she lost track of the forest while she strangled.