Masques s-1 Page 23

  “We’d better get back and tell Myr he can relax. It doesn’t appear that the Old Man is going to welcome the Uriah into his cave anytime in the near future,” he said, offering her his arm to lean on.

  “You think those are his wards?” she asked.

  “Someone has powered them up since I looked at them last. It wasn’t me and no one else here has the skill or the power.”

  She caught her breath, smiled, and tucked her arm through his. “Do we tell the whole camp that we are being protected by the Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “It might be the best thing, even if it scares a few of them silly. I have the feeling that we shouldn’t push his hospitality by wandering around too much. The best way to see that it doesn’t happen is to tell them the whole truth—if they’ll believe it.” Wolf slid though a narrow passage with his usual grace, towing Aralorn beside him.

  “We are dealing with people who have some minor magic capabilities; are following a dethroned king who just barely received his coming-of-age spurs; who number among their acquaintances not just one half-breed shapeshifter, but two half-breed shapeshifters—one of whom, incidentally, wears a silly mask. We could tell them that we were in the den of the old gods and that Faris, Empress of the Dead, conceived a sudden passion for Myr and it probably wouldn’t faze them,” Aralorn told him.

  Wolf laughed, and Aralorn pulled him to a halt. “Wait. Did you say that the ae’Magi is Darranian?”

  “Peasant stock,” he confirmed. “Apparently his master was very surprised to find a magician who was Darranian—used to tell jokes about his Darranian apprentice. My father smiled when he talked about how he killed his teacher.”

  “Not the first Darranian mage,” Aralorn said.

  Wolf grunted and started to walk.

  Aralorn let her hand drop and followed thoughtfully.

  Wolf was first in the tunnel that opened into the main chamber. He hissed and jumped back, narrowly avoiding Myr’s sword.

  “Sorry,” said Myr. “I thought that you were one of the Uriah. You should have said something before you came in. Did you find out why the Uriah aren’t coming in?”

  “Is there a reason the King of Reth is guarding the doorway instead of someone more expendable?” asked Wolf.

  “Best swordsman,” said Myr. “Are you going to answer me?”

  “Let’s do this where everyone can hear,” Aralorn said, continuing on so she could do just that. “The Uriah aren’t going to be coming in here.”

  She stepped out into the main cave and saw that most of them had heard her last remark. “Our guardian of the cave doesn’t want them in.” She was in her element, with a captive audience and a story to tell. She projected her voice and told them the story about the origin of the Old Man of the Mountain and finished with the barrier that was keeping the Uriah out.

  * * *

  She made the tale sound as if it were part of shapeshifter history, Wolf decided, rather than a forgotten story in an obscure book. Usually, she did it the other way around—turning an unexciting bit of history into high adventure. He hadn’t realized that she could do it backward.

  As she had predicted, the refugees seemed reassured by her story, not questioning just how far the Old Man’s benign stance would continue. Right then, they wanted a miracle, and Aralorn was giving one to them.

  Responding to Wolf’s look, Myr joined him just outside the cave, leaving Aralorn to her work.

  “We may be locked in here for some time,” Wolf informed Myr. “They might not be coming in, but there is no way to determine how long they are going to howl at our door. Do we have enough food to last us a week or so?” He should have been paying attention, but it was an effort to remember that he was supposed to care about these people. He was trying to be . . . something other than what he was. Someone Aralorn could be proud of. When she’d been hurt, he’d lost all interest in the extraneous details.

  Myr shrugged. “We have enough grain stored to last us into next summer, feeding animals and people. We’re short on meat, which is why I sent out the hunters this morning. They came back with Uriah instead of deer. For a week or two, we can do without. If it turns into a month we can always slaughter a goat or sheep to feed ourselves. Our real problems are going to be morale and sanitation.”

  Wolf nodded. “We’ll have to deal with morale as it comes. I might be able to do something about the sanitation, though. The blocked-off tunnel where you’re storing grain leads to a cave with a pit deep enough that you can throw a rock into it and not hear it hit bottom. It’s fairly narrow, so you should be able to put some sort of structure over it to keep people from falling into it.” Solving logistic problems helped center him.

  “That should relieve Aralorn,” commented Myr, a smile lighting his tired face for the first time since he’d heard the Uriah. “She was really worried that before this was all over, she’d be pressed into digging latrines.”

  Myr laughed wearily and pushed his hair out of his face. “I should have asked this right away. Is it possible that the Uriah can find their way in here through another entrance?”

  “Maybe,” answered Wolf, starting to head toward Aralorn, who was swaying wearily as she finished her story. “The Old Man has been here a lot longer than we have. If this entrance is protected, I suspect that all of them are.”

  * * *

  Outside, the Uriah quieted and sank to their knees as a rider came into view. His horse was lathered and sweating, showing the whites of its eyes in fear of the Uriah. But it had learned to trust its rider, and Lord Kisrah was careful to keep the Uriah motionless with the spells of control that the ae’Magi had taught him.

  He dismounted at the entrance to the cave. He could see the runes just inside the entrance, but he couldn’t touch them to alter their power.

  In the air, he sketched a symbol that glowed faintly yellow and passed easily through the entrance. The symbol touched a rune and fizzled as a man walked into the cave and approached the mouth.

  “You are not welcome, leave this place,” he said. In the light, the man was almost inhumanly beautiful, and Lord Kisrah caught his breath in admiration. Abruptly, the mouth filled with flames, the heat uncomfortably harsh on his face.

  Kisrah backed up and tried to push the flames down again, with no effect. The third time he tried it, the Uriah began stirring as his hold on them weakened. With a curse he desisted. He led the horse back through the Uriah until he had some space.

  “You will stay here until the ae’Magi releases you,” he ordered briskly. “If someone comes out of the cave, you will not harm them. Take them prisoner—you know how to contact me if that happens.” He mounted the horse and let it choose its own speed away from the Uriah.

  * * *

  “Thank you, Lord Kisrah. I am sure that you did your best with the warding—but the old runes are tricky at best, and in the Northlands, they could easily be the work of one of the races that use green magic.” The ae’Magi smiled graciously.

  Lord Kisrah looked only a little less miserable in his seat in the ae’Magi’s study. “I got a look at some of the runes there, and I’ll look them up and see what can be done about them. The magician had no trouble with my magic, though. He’s more worrisome than the runes.”

  “I agree, Kisrah,” purred the ae’Magi. “I intend to find out just who he is. Can you describe him for me again?”

  Lord Kisrah nodded and set aside the warmed ale he’d been drinking. “No more than medium height. His hair was blond, I think, although it could have been light brown. His eyes were either blue or green—the overall effect was so spectacular, it was difficult to pay attention to the details. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four or -five and could have been younger except that he was so powerful. His voice was oddly accented, but he didn’t say enough that I could tell much about the accent other than that the Rethian he spoke was not his native tongue.”

  “There was no way that his hair could have been darker? His eyes golden? No scars?”
queried the ae’Magi softly.

  Lord Kisrah shook his head. “No. His eyes, maybe. They were some light color. But his hair was light.” He yawned abruptly.

  The ae’Magi stood and offered his arm for support to the other mage. “I am sorry, I have kept you up talking, and you are almost dropping from exhaustion.” He led him to the door and opened it, clapping his hands lightly. Before he clapped a second time, a pretty young serving girl appeared.

  “Take Lord Kisrah to the blue room, Rhidan, and see to his comfort.” The ae’Magi turned to his guest. “Pray follow the girl—she will attend to your every need. If you want anything, just ask.”

  Kisrah brightened visibly and wished him a good night.

  Alone in his study, the ae’Magi brooded, disliking the thought of yet another magician in his way. Who could it be? He’d been sure that his son was the last mage of any power who stood against him.

  Abruptly, he got to his feet; all this worry could do no good. It was too late at night to try to think, and he was too frustrated to sleep. He motioned abruptly to the pale young girl who had sat in her corner unnoticed by Lord Kisrah. Obedient to his gesture, she dropped the clothes she wore and stood naked and submissive before him.

  He cupped her chin in one hand and stroked her body gently with the other. “Tonight,” he said, “I have something special in mind for you.”

  TEN

  Aralorn went back to work taking care of the children to give herself something to do since Wolf didn’t need her in the library.

  Keeping them entertained was harder than it had been before. There was no place for them to run and play, and they were restless with the Uriah just outside. To distract them, Aralorn taught them the letters of the alphabet and how they fit together to form words. She told stories until she was hoarse.

  “So Kai bet the whole troop that he could sneak into camp and steal the pot of coffee on the coals with no one seeing him.” Seated on a bump in the floor, Aralorn checked to make sure that most of the children were listening. “He and Talor were raised in a Trader Clan, just like Stanis. When he was little, he had learned how to be very quiet and to sit still in shadows so no one could see him.

  “That night, their commander doubled the guard on the camp and assigned a special guard just to follow Kai around. Two men watched the coffeepot. But despite all of that, the next morning the pot was gone. The guard who was supposed to be following Kai around had actually been following Talor, who looked enough like his twin to be mistaken for him in the dark.” Aralorn smiled at her intent audience. Stories about the twins were always guaranteed attention holders.

  “Kai was not only good enough to get the pot, he also painted a white ‘X’ on the back of every one of the guards without their knowing it.”

  “I bet Stanis could do that,” said Tobin. “He’s sneaky.” Stanis, with his inability to get lost, was more often to be found running errands than hanging out with people his own age. It gave him even more cachet among his followers.

  “Aralorn.” Myr put his hand on her shoulder.

  He looked a bit pale. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Wolf. Stanis ran a message to him in the library for me and came running back a few minutes ago. He says there’s something up—I think perhaps you ought to go check.”

  * * *

  The library was engulfed in shadows when she cautiously peered into it, and it felt warmer than usual. The only light came from the crystals in Wolf’s staff, which were glowing a dull orange. Wolf sat in his usual chair, motionless, his face in the shadows. He didn’t move when she came in, that and the scorched smell in the library suggested that the scene wasn’t as ordinary as it looked.

  Using her own magic, Aralorn lit the chamber. One of the bookcases was missing. Thoughtfully, Aralorn wandered over to where it had been and scuffed a toe in the ashes that had taken its place. The bookcase next to her burst into flames and was reduced to the same state before she even felt the heat. She winced at the destruction of the irreplaceable books.

  “Wolf,” she asked in calculatedly exasperated tones. “Isn’t this hard enough without losing your temper?” She turned to look at him. He wore his mask again.

  “I have it, Aralorn,” he murmured softly. “I have the power to do anything.” Another bookcase followed the first two. “Anything.”

  Her pulse picked up despite her confidence that he’d never hurt her.

  “If I didn’t have so much power,” he said, “I just might be able to do something with it. You see, I found it. I found the spell to remove the ability to use magic from a magician who is misusing his power. I can’t use it. I don’t have the skill or the control, and the spell uses too much raw power. If I tried it, we’d have another glass desert on our hands.” His eyes glittered with the flickering orange light of his staff.

  Aralorn went to him and sat on the floor beside him, resting her head against his knees. “If you had less power, there would be no way to take the ae’Magi at all. You would never have been able to free yourself from the binding spells that keep all of the other magicians bound to his will. There would be no one to resist him. Quit tearing yourself into pieces and winning the battle for the ae’Magi. You are who you are. No better certainly, but no worse.”It was quiet for a long time in the library. Aralorn let her light die down and sat in the darkness with Wolf. No more bookcases burned in magic fire. When Wolf’s hand touched her hair, Aralorn knew that it would be all right. This time.

  * * *

  Aralorn trotted up the tunnels at a steady pace, walking now and again when she ran out of breath—which she felt was far too often. Slowly, though, her strength was coming back, and she had to stop less frequently than she had the day before. Morning and night for the past four days, she had run the tunnels from the library to the entrance, trying to rebuild the conditioning that she’d lost. Also, not incidentally, building up her understanding of how to get from one place to another.

  Her path was free of people for the most part. The library was quite a distance from the main caves, and most of the campers respected Wolf’s claims that the Old Man of the Mountain wanted to keep them out of the tunnels. Aralorn was of the opinion that Wolf didn’t want to spend his time searching for lost wanderers because she’d seen no sign that the Old Man objected to anyone’s presence. Although the path to the library was carefully marked out and considered part of the occupied caves, in practice it was seldom that anyone besides Aralorn, Wolf, or Stanis went there.

  Wolf said that they were waiting for the wrath of the Old Man to fall on them. Myr said that it was Wolf, not the Old Man, that they were frightened of—Myr was probably right.

  Only Oras had ignored the ban on the inner caves. Twice. The first time Myr brought him back. The second time Wolf went after him. Wolf wouldn’t tell Aralorn what he’d done, and Oras didn’t volunteer the information, but he’d come back white-faced and had been remarkably subdued ever since.

  As she came to the outer caves, Aralorn slowed to a walk. There were too many people around for her to dodge at a faster speed. When she started down the path that led to the entrance, the first thing that she noticed was the sound of her own footsteps. It took her a minute to realize that the reason she could hear them was because the Uriah weren’t howling.

  Sure enough, when she reached the entrance, there was no sign of the Uriah. The bonfire Myr had ordered laid near the entrance was still unlit.

  She stepped out slowly, moving cautiously in case there were any lying in wait. After so many days in the caves, the sunlight nearly blinded her. The air smelled fresh and pure, without the distinctive odor that accompanied Uriah. Only the smell of burnt grass and other things marred the fragrance of the nearby pine.

  It looked as if a ball of fire had been spewed from the cave’s mouth. A wide blackened path in the grass and soil began from the entrance and traveled in a straight line a fair distance before disappearing. Within the blackened area were ten or fifteen bodies of Uriah, burnt down to th
e bone. There were some that were less singed, but something had chewed on them.

  Aralorn followed the blackened path up the mountain and found that the trail abruptly stopped on a wide, flat area. She started back and was several lengths down the slope when she realized that she might be thinking backward. What if the fireball hadn’t come from the cave but had been launched at it? Muttering to herself, she trotted back to where the trail stopped.

  Tracking wasn’t her specialty, but it didn’t take her long to find what she sought. When she was looking for them, they were hard to miss—very large, reptilian footprints with marks beside them that could be trailing wings. Just like the ones she’d seen the day she’d been taken by the Uriah.

  “Well, Myr,” she said thoughtfully, going back to examine one of the half-eaten corpses. She hadn’t looked too closely before, assuming that the Uriah had just been practicing their usual cannibalism. Upon closer examination, she could tell that something much bigger than a Uriah had been feeding. “I think I know what dragons eat when there aren’t any virgins chained to rocks.”

  * * *

  “Well, then,” said Myr in dry tones after Aralorn related her discovery. The main cave was almost empty. Myr had sent out a party to look for the hunters who’d been missing since just before the Uriah had come, and a second group out to find provisions. He’d sent a few of the remaining people to keep watches from the best lookout stations.

  He rubbed his eyes and looked at her. “So what now? We’ve exchanged the Uriah for a dragon. The question that begs is, of course, is this a good thing?”

  “The dragon’s quieter and smells better.” Aralorn leaned against the cave wall and watched Myr pace.

  “At least we knew something about the Uriah,” Myr complained. “A dragon. There aren’t supposed to be any more dragons.” He broke off when the sounds of ragged cheers echoed into the cave, followed by the missing hunting party and the searchers—all of them looking cold and tired.