Patricia Briggs - Masques

Aralorn looked at the opening Myr indicated, where daylight shone through.

“Oras aside,” Myr said, “it would be useful to have a bit more information. I’d like an update, and you’re likely to get more information out of our wizard than anyone else.”

Once in the tunnel to the outside, she drew her sword and held it in a fighter’s grip. Someone had painted signs on the walls of the tunnels to facilitate travel, and it was a simple matter to follow the arrows to the outside by the magelight she held cupped in one hand.

The howls were louder as she turned into a cave marked “Door to Outside” over the top. She smiled at the awkward lettering even as the cold sweat of fear gathered on her forehead. Cautiously, she crept forward through the twisted narrow channel.

The Uriah were there, howling with frustrated rage at the wall of flame that covered the entrance. Someone, Aralorn noted with absent approval, had set up the wood for a bonfire where the tunnel began to narrow—it sat unlit, a good ten feet behind the magical fire that blocked the entrance. Aralorn couldn’t feel the heat from the fire, but toasted bodies of Uriah lay twitching feebly just outside the cave as evidence of the effectiveness of the barrier.

Aralorn leaned against the side of the cave and watched as another Uriah, incited by her presence just inside the barrier, dove into the flames. Nausea touched even her hardened stomach as she watched the hungry flames engulf it.

“I told you to stay in the library.”

She’d been expecting him, knowing that the situation would mean that she probably wouldn’t hear him. She didn’t jump, didn’t start, just turned to look at him a little faster than strictly necessary. It wouldn’t have mattered except for the low spot in the roof of the cave.

“Ow,” she said with a hiss of indrawn breath, putting her hand to her head where the rock had cut it.

He came out of the shadows and set his staff down—the crystals on the top blazed as soon as its clawed feet touched the ground. She shut her eyes against the light.

With a hand on her chin, Wolf used the other to explore the damaged area despite the fact that she squirmed and batted at his hand. In clipped tones, he said, “It seems like every time I’ve turned my back on you lately, you are getting hurt one way or another.”

To her surprise, he bent down and pressed his cheek against hers. She hadn’t experienced the healing of a green-magic user very often, barring her more recent experience. Generally she hadn’t been in any shape to know exactly what it was that they did, but she knew enough to know that this was very different. This was not purely physical, there was an emotional link, too—a meeting on a more primal level.

It was over before she could analyze it further. Wolf stepped back as if bitten, and she could hear him gasping for breath beneath his mask. She looked at him in wonder—she knew enough about human magic to know that he shouldn’t have been capable of doing what he had just done.

“Wolf,” she said, reaching out to touch him. He backed away, keeping his head away from her and his eyes closed.

“Wolf, what’s wrong?” When he said nothing, she took a step back to give him room.

He flung his head up then, and blazing yellow eyes met hers. When he spoke, it was a whisper that his ruined voice made even more effective. “What am I? I should not be able to heal you. The other things—the shapeshifting, the power I wield—they could be explained away. But magic doesn’t work this way. It doesn’t take over before I can react and do things that I don’t ask of it. I swore that I would never . . . never let anything control me the way my father did. In the end, even he could not eat my will entirely. This . . . does.”

“It was you who healed my eyes.” She wanted to give herself time to think. There was something that she should be grasping, a puzzle solved if she could just figure out how to look at it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Were you trying to, then?”

He forced himself to adopt a relaxed posture, leaning against the wall as he spoke. “If you mean did I try to heal you with a spell, no. I just . . . wanted you to quit hurting.”

She could almost see the effort he made to open up to her, this man who was so private. It was, she thought, maybe the bravest thing she’d ever seen anyone do.

He continued with his eyes on the mouth of the cave where three Uriah—none of whom resembled anyone she knew—stood motionless, watching them.

“I was so tired,” Wolf told her. “I hadn’t slept much since I found that you were gone.” He looked at her. “You were getting worse, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I do not recall what I was thinking, precisely. I had done all that I could for you and knew that it would never be enough and something made me lie beside you and this magic took over.” He clenched his hands in what was very near revulsion.

“Who was your mother? Do you know?” asked Aralorn. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about Cain, the son of the ae’Magi, but none of them ever mentioned his mother.”

Wolf shrugged, and his voice had regained its cool tones when he answered. “I only saw her once, when I was very young, maybe five years old. I remember asking Father who she was, or rather who she had been, for she was quite dead, killed by some experiment of his, I suppose. I don’t remember being particularly worried about her, so I suspect that it was the only time I saw her.”

“Describe her for me,” requested Aralorn in a firm voice that refused to condemn or to sympathize with the boy he had been. He wouldn’t want that. The Uriah weren’t coming in anytime soon, she thought. She folded her legs and sat on the ground—healing or no, her legs had done as much as they were going to for a while, and it was sit down or fall down.

“I was young, I don’t remember much,” Wolf said. “She looked small next to my father, fragile and lovely—like a butterfly. The only time I ever heard him say anything about her was when some noble asked about my mother. He said she was flawlessly beautiful. I think he was right.”

Aralorn nodded, her suspicions confirmed. “I would have been surprised if she had been anything else.”

He narrowed his gaze.

“Your mother must have been a shapeshifter, or some other green-magic user—but the ‘perfectly beautiful’ sounds a lot like a shapeshifter. That feeling that the magic is taking control of you is fairly common when dealing with green magic because you are dealing with magic shaped by nature first, and only then by magician. You need to learn to work with it so that you can modify it. If you fight it, it will prove stronger than you.”

He stared at her a bit and joined her on the floor without speaking. Maybe his legs wouldn’t hold him up any longer either.

“I suspect,” continued Aralorn, as blandly as she could manage, “if you hadn’t been taught how magic should work, you would have discovered your half-blooded capabilities long since. You were told that you couldn’t heal, so you didn’t try.”

Two of the Uriah stepped forward at the same time. The wards flared, and they burned. Aralorn caught a brief hint of burnt flesh, like cooking pork, then nothing.

“Your theory fits,” said Wolf finally.

“I should have thought about it sooner,” apologized Aralorn. “I mean, I am a half-breed. It’s just that I’ve never met another half-breed. I could tell that you weren’t a shapeshifter, so I just assumed that you were simply an extraordinarily powerful human magician.” She hesitated. “Which you are.”

Wolf gave a half laugh with little humor in it. “It sounds just like an experiment the ae’Magi would try. To a Darranian like him, it would be the ultimate form of bestiality. Just the thing to spark his interest.”