Masques s-1 Read online

  He heard the horse move and the sound of leather and something heavy hitting the ground. The horse approached the pit and stopped.

  When the mercenary who could do green magic hopped back into his almost grave, she had a rope in her hand.

  He waited for the wolf to stir as she tied him in a makeshift harness that somehow managed to brace his bad leg. But the wolf waited as meekly as a lamb while she worked. When he was trussed up to her satisfaction, she climbed back out.

  “Come on, Sheen,” she told someone. Possibly, he thought, it was the horse.

  The trip out of the hole was not pleasant. He closed his eyes and let the pain take him where it would. When he lay on the ground at last, she untied him.

  Freed at last, he lay where he had fallen, too weak to run. Maybe too curious as well.

  ONE

  FOUR YEARS LATER

  Aralorn paced, her heart beating with nervous energy.

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time. She intended to sneak in as a servant—she was good at being a servant, and people talked in front of servants as if they weren’t there at all. But then there had been that slave girl, freshly sold to the very Geoffrey ae’Magi whose court Aralorn was supposed to infiltrate and observe . . .

  Maybe if the slave girl hadn’t had the gray-green eyes of the old races, eyes Aralorn shared, she wouldn’t have given in to impulse. But it had been easy to free the girl and send her off with connections who would see her safely back to her home—proof that though she had lived in Sianim all these years, Aralorn was still Rethian enough to despise slavery. It was even easier to use the magic of her mother’s people to rearrange her body and her features to mimic the girl and take her place.

  She hadn’t realized that slaves could be locked away until they were needed; she’d assumed she’d have work to do. It was well-known that the Archmage’s passions were reserved for magic, and he seldom indulged in more fleshly pleasures. She’d figured that the girl had been purchased to do something—not sit locked in a room for weeks.

  Aralorn had been just about ready to escape and try again using a different identity when she’d been brought up to the great hall of the ae’Magi’s castle four days ago and put into the huge silver cage.

  “She’s to be decoration for the ball,” said the servant who put her in the cage, in response to another servant’s question. “It won’t be for a week yet, but he wanted her here so he could see the decorations and her at the same time.”

  Decoration. The ae’Magi had purchased a slave to decorate his great hall.

  It had seemed out of character for the Archmage, Aralorn had thought. It took more than power to become the ae’Magi. The man or woman who wore that mantle of authority was, in his peers’ eyes, a person of unassailable virtue. Only such a one could be allowed the reins to control all of the mages—at least all those west of the Great Swamp—so there was never again a wizard war. Purchasing a person in order to use her as decoration seemed . . . petty for such a one as the ae’Magi. Or so she’d thought.

  Four days ago.

  Aralorn shivered. Her shoes made no sound on the marble beneath her feet, not that anyone would have been able to hear them over the music.

  Beyond the silver bars of her cage, the great hall of the ae’Magi’s castle was resplendent. By reputation, if not fact, the room was nearly a thousand years old, kept beautiful by good maintenance and judicious replacement rather than magic.

  Though this room was the heart of the ae’Magi’s home, by tradition no magic was to be done here. This was the place the rulers of men conducted business with the ae’Magi, and the lack of magic proved to one and all that there was no magical coercion taking place. Aralorn now knew that the current ae’Magi didn’t particularly care about following tradition, and coercion was something he used . . . on everyone.

  That first day, she’d been shocked when the stone beneath her feet vibrated with magic. She looked out at the room. Ten centuries old, or at least ten centuries of care and careful preservation by the finest craftsmen available. And the ae’Magi had saturated the stone with magic. No one would think to check, would they? And if they did, they’d just suspect another ae’Magi, an earlier one, because Geoffrey ae’Magi would never defy tradition.

  This evening it was lavishly decorated for the pleasure of the people who danced lightly across the floor. Late-afternoon rays of sunlight streamed through the tear-shaped crystal skylights etched on the soaring ceilings. Pale pillars dripped down to the highly polished ivory-colored marble floor that reflected the jewel-like colors of the dancers’ clothing.

  Aralorn’s cage sat on a raised platform on the only wall of the room that lacked a doorway. From that perch, she could observe the whole room and be observed in return. Or rather they could see the illusion that the ae’Magi had placed on the cage.

  Instead of the tall, white-blond woman that the ae’Magi had purchased to decorate his great hall with her extraordinary beauty, observers would see a snowfalcon as rare and beautiful, the ae’Magi had told her, as his slave, but not so controversial. Some people, he’d told her, licking blood off his hands, disliked slavery, and he disliked controversy.

  He’d decorated the room around his slave for his own amusement. Disguising her as a rare predator was simply a joke played upon the people who’d come here for entertainment.

  A chime sounded, announcing new visitors. Aralorn hugged herself as the ae’Magi greeted his guests with a warm smile. He’d smiled that same smile last night while he’d killed a young boy and stolen his magic.

  The stone floor had been red with blood, but it wiped up cleanly, and only someone able to sense magic might notice the pall that unclean death had left. Or not. The ae’Magi was the lord of mages, after all, and they could only use their powers to the extent he allowed.

  She was scaring herself again—that was really not useful at all. Biting her lip, Aralorn gazed at the dancing nobles in an effort to distract herself. She matched names and countries to the dancers’ faces with the ease that made her the valuable spy she was.

  The ae’Magi had killed an old man, an old man without a spark of magic—human or green—about him and used the power of the death to turn the walls of the great hall a sparkling white. “An illusion,” he’d told her. “It takes some power, and I don’t like to use my own when I might need it at any time.”

  That had been the first night. On the second, he’d brought a man—one of his own guardsmen. With that blood, the ae’Magi had worked some magic so foul that the taste of it lingered on Aralorn’s skin still.

  The boy had been the worst. Only a child, and . . .

  Dozens of the rulers of the kingdoms of the Anthran Alliance were present. Some of them had been members of the Alliance for centuries, others were newer than that. The Empress of the Alliance wasn’t here, but she was six, and her guardians kept a sharp eye on her lest any of her subjects decided to make her cousin the new empress instead. Just because they were allied didn’t mean they were loyal subjects. The squabbles among the Alliance helped keep the coffers of Sianim full.

  Gradually, she managed to replace the boy’s dead eyes with dates and politics, but she still paced her cage restlessly. It wasn’t just the horror of her discovery of exactly what kind of man held the power of the ae’Magi that kept her from sitting down—it was fear. The ae’Magi scared her to death.

  There was a kaleidoscopic quality to the dance: the brilliant colors of the rich fabrics twisting around and around only to stop, rearrange themselves, and swirl into motion once again. More like a clockwork than a dance populated by real people. Perhaps it was a side effect of all the magic. Or maybe it was deliberate, the ae’Magi amusing himself. He liked to make people unwittingly do his bidding.

  She saw the Duchess of Ti and the Envoy of the Anthran Alliance dancing cordially with each other. Ten years ago, the Envoy had had the Duchess’s youngest son assassinated, sparking a bloody feud that left bodies littering the Alliance like a plague.r />
  The Envoy said something and patted the Duchess’s shoulder. She laughed gaily in return as if she hadn’t had the Envoy’s third wife killed in a particularly nasty manner only a month ago. She might have thought it a clever ruse designed to put the other off guard, but the Envoy was not particularly politic or clever. Aralorn wondered if the effect of whatever spell the ae’Magi had apparently cast upon his guests was specific to them and whether it would last beyond this evening. Just how powerful was he?

  When the musicians paused for a break, people crowded around the Archmage, Geoffrey ae’Magi, drawn to his twinkling eyes and mischievous grin the way butterflies surround the flowering coralis tree. When a butterfly landed on the sweet-smelling scarlet flower of the coralis, the petals closed, and the flower digested its hapless prey over a period of weeks.

  There were some times when her penchant for collecting trivia wasn’t an asset.

  Like the coralis, Geoffrey ae’Magi was extraordinarily beautiful, with blue-black hair, high cheekbones, and the smile of a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

  Aralorn had been in his presence before. The Spymaster liked to use her in the rarefied society of which the ae’Magi was a part because she knew how to negotiate it without betraying herself. She’d attributed the wave of magic that surrounded him to his being the most powerful mage in the world. His beauty had stunned her at first, but it hadn’t taken her long to decide that the attraction lay in his gentle warmth and his self-deprecating humor. Four days ago, Aralorn, like every other woman who’d ever laid eyes upon him, had been more than half-enamored of him.

  Aralorn turned her gaze away from the ae’Magi and back to the room. While she’d been watching the Archmage, someone had stopped next to the pillar nearest her cage.

  Leaning lazily against the polished pillar, a short, square-built young man wearing the colors of the royal house of Reth also observed the throng: Myr, Prince—no—King now, of Reth. His face was strong-featured, even handsome in other company. There was a stubborn tilt to his chin that he’d inherited from his paternal grandfather, a formidable warrior and king.

  It wasn’t his appearance that caught her attention; she’d expected that he was the person from whom the ae’Magi had been hiding his slave. It was the expression of distaste that briefly crossed his face as he looked at the crowd, remarkably different from the vacuous smiles that everyone else wore.

  He shifted unexpectedly and met her gaze. He looked quickly down, but then began to make his way through the edges of the crowd toward her cage. When he reached the platform, he tilted his head down so that no one could read his lips, and asked in a low tone, “Do you need help, Lady?”

  Shocked, she glanced quickly at the mirror that covered the back of the cage. The ae’Magi’s illusion of a snowfalcon stared back at her indifferently.

  She knew that Myr was no mage—he wouldn’t have been able to conceal that from her, not with her mother’s blood in her veins. Green magic could usually hide from the tamed stuff that the more human mages used, but the reverse was not true. Still, there was no doubt that he saw a woman and not the rare bird the ae’Magi showed his guests.

  Rethians believed they were the descendants of an enslaved people who had risen up to kill their masters. They were taught at their mother’s knee that to take another human and own him was evil beyond comprehension.

  Even so, even for the King of Reth, it was a bold move to offer to help one of the ae’Magi’s slaves to escape. There were a lot of mages in Reth who owed obedience first to the ae’Magi and second to the king—obedience enforced by their own magic. To move against the ae’Magi could spark a civil war in Myr’s kingdom. His offer was heartfelt and showed just how young this new king was.

  Perhaps it was his rash offer that appealed to her or that she had been born Rethian and part of her still thought of Myr as her king. In any case, she answered him as herself, and not the slave that she played for the ae’Magi.

  “No,” she answered. “I’m here as an observer.”

  There were rumors that the ruling family of Reth had occasionally produced offspring who were immune to magic. There were stories, and Aralorn was a collector of stories.

  “A spy.” It wasn’t a question. “You must be from either Sianim or Jetaine. They are the only ones who would employ women to spy in as delicate a position as this.” Women were important in Reth, and they were far from powerless politically. But they didn’t go to battle, didn’t put themselves in danger.

  With a half smile, Aralorn clarified, “I get paid for my work.”

  “Sianim mercenary.”

  She nodded. “Pardon me for asking, but how did you see past the illusion of the snowfalcon that the ae’Magi placed on the cage?”

  “Is that what you’re disguised as?” His smile made him look even younger than he really was. “I wondered why no one said anything about the beautiful woman he had in the cage.”

  Interesting. He saw through the ae’Magi’s illusion but not her altered shape. No one had ever called Aralorn beautiful. Not in those tones. Maybe it wasn’t only altruism on his part that had him offering to free her. That made sense, though; when she’d taken the likeness of the slave girl, magic had altered her—not just other people’s perceptions of her as the ae’Magi’s illusion did.

  She felt eyes on her and glanced up under her lashes to see the ae’Magi not ten paces away, staring at Myr in fascination.

  Myr might have been young and impetuous, but he wasn’t dumb. He caught the subtle tension of her body.

  “Aren’t you a pretty thing,” he murmured softly, though a little louder than he’d been speaking before. “I wonder if you are trained to glove and jess?”

  “Ah, I see you admire my falcon, Lord.” The deep, resonant voice of the ae’Magi could have belonged to a musician. Not only was the Archmage physically beautiful; he even sounded beautiful.

  Myr straightened abruptly, as if taken by surprise, and turned to look at the ae’Magi, who strolled up to stand next to him in front of the ornate cage.

  “She is extraordinary, isn’t she?” the ae’Magi continued. “I purchased her a month or more ago from a traveling merchant—she was captured somewhere in the Northlands, I believe . . . I thought she would go well with this room.” He waved a casual hand that managed to indicate the rest of the hall.

  Aralorn had grown adept at reading the ae’Magi’s voice, and his tone was just a little too casual. She wondered if he’d also heard the stories of the odd talent said to crop up in the Rethian royal family.

  Reth was a small country in size but rich in minerals and agriculture. It also had a well-trained army, left as the legacy of Myr’s grandfather. Its army had served to keep Reth independent every time the Anthran Alliance had periodically tried to swallow it over the past few centuries. Myr was a very new king, and certain conservative political factions would have been happier had he been the same kind of puppet as his father. But there were enough houses who would support him against all comers that Myr should be safe even from the Archmage. She didn’t know why she thought the ae’Magi might harm Myr. Maybe it was because part of her still believed she owed fealty to the royal house of Reth, and it made her overprotective. Maybe it was the way the ae’Magi reminded her of a cat watching a mouse hole.

  The sweet interest in the ae’Magi’s face gave Aralorn cold chills. Be careful, she silently urged Myr.

  Myr turned to the magician with a smile and more confidence than a boy his age should have had. “Yes, the ivory tinge is the same as the color in the marble here. It’s unusual to see a snowfalcon this far south; you must have paid a great deal for her.”

  The two men talked at length about falconry, something that Aralorn happened to know interested neither of them. When they had exhausted the subject, the ae’Magi abruptly changed topics.

  “My dear Myr,” said the ae’Magi, “please accept my condolences upon the untimely death of your parents. I had no opportunity to talk to you at the
funeral. I sent a note, of course, but I wanted to speak to you face-to-face.”

  Myr started to speak, but the ae’Magi laid a long-fingered hand on Myr’s shoulder, effectively forestalling what the younger man might have said.

  “If you have need of anything, feel free to turn to me. I have connections and substantial power as the ae’Magi, and you may need what aid I can offer. It has never been easy to ascend the throne, especially now with the Uriah restless in the eastern forests. Not to mention that there are always opposing factions or”—he hesitated, waving his hand expressively—“other enemies.”

  With professional interest, Aralorn heard the slight edge of guilt in his voice. It was masterfully done and reminded her that the former rulers of Reth had been killed after leaving one of the ae’Magi’s elaborate parties. No one had ever implied that the accident might have had more sinister causes. She wouldn’t have thought about it on her own—but, given what she now knew, Aralorn would have been astonished to discover the Archmage didn’t have something to do with the king’s death.

  She wondered if Myr knew why the ae’Magi apparently had such interest in him. She could all but smell the wizard’s intent. She just couldn’t tell why he was so intent. Myr suspected something; his distrust was obvious from his little charade.

  Myr bowed his head quickly to acknowledge the offer without accepting it. “I know my parents counted you their friend. I appreciate your offer.” He smiled apologetically. “I have enjoyed our conversation, but I must excuse myself. You see”—he leaned in closer, as if confessing an embarrassing secret—“I just bought a new stallion, and I’m not sure I trust him on the trails after dark.” His face lost its eagerness for a moment. “After what happened to my parents, sir, I feel a need to be overly cautious.”