Masques (36 page)

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.

When the welcoming was done, Farsi, who’d led the party, told their tale. “We came upon a herd of mountain sheep and got two so we headed back. About halfway here we stumbled upon some tracks, as if an army were wandering around. We followed the trail, and pretty soon we could smell ’em and knew that they were Uriah. Since their path was the same one we were on, it was obvious that the things were coming here.

“Figuring that we were too late to make much difference, we worked our way up the side of the mountain until we could see the Uriah. We couldn’t see the cave, but the way they were swarming around showed that you must have found a way to keep them out. We decided that there was nothing we could do but wait. Our vantage point was far enough away that the chance of the Uriah seeing us wasn’t considerable.”

Farsi cleared his throat. “Late last night—just after the moon had set—I heard a cry like a swan makes, only deeper. I was on watch, and it wasn’t loud enough to wake anyone else up. Something big flew over us, but I couldn’t quite see it. Afterward, I saw a flash of golden fire down here and heard the Uriah step up their noise. Then it quieted down. I woke up a couple others, and we finally decided that we’d best wait until we had light to see what had happened.” He frowned, evidently still unhappy with that decision. “It was just that whatever it was—from the quiet that followed—it had already happened.”

Myr nodded at him. “Sensible and smart to wait until you could see, especially with Uriah running around.”

Farsi looked like someone had pulled a weight off his shoulders. “This morning, it looked like the Uriah had left, so we started home. The reason it took us so long to get here is that there are still a lot of Uriah scattered about. We were dodging two parties of the things, when we almost ran into a third. It’s a good thing that they smell so bad, or we wouldn’t have made it back at all.”

Over the next few days it became obvious that if the Uriah had been held in concert by the will of the ae’Magi, that was no longer true. It didn’t make them any less dangerous individually, but it did make it possible to kill them in small groups.

Wolf, when appealed to, produced a detailed map of the area on sheepskin, which was hung on a wall of the central chamber. Aralorn suspected he’d made it himself, either with magic or by hand, because it was accurate, with very specific landmarks. At Myr’s command, any sightings of Uriah were recorded on the map, giving them a rough idea where the things were.

Each group of hunters had a copy of the map, and if they ran into a group of Uriah, they would lead them to one of the traps Myr had placed in strategic places. The Uriah were slowed enough by the cold of the deepening fall that the humans could outrun them most of the time, especially since they were careful to go out only when it was coldest.

Haris suggested an adaptation of a traditional castle defense and created a tar trap that was one of the most effective of their traps. The easiest way to kill a Uriah was with fire, so pots of tar were hung here and there, kept warm by magic. Ropes were carefully rigged so that they would not easily be tripped by wild animals. When they were pulled, the pots tipped over, and the motion triggered a secondary spell—something Haris cooked up—that set the tar on fire—dousing the Uriah with flaming tar. The spells on the traps were simple enough that everybody, except for Myr, could do them after a little coaching from Wolf and Haris.

Aralorn watched the small group of refugees become a close-knit community, the grumblers fewer. Every evening, they would all sit down and talk. Complaints and suggestions were heard and decided upon by Myr. Looking at the scruffy bunch of peasants (the nobles, by that time, blended right in with the rest) consulting with their equally scruffy king, Aralorn compared it with the Rethian Grand Council that met once a year, and she hid a grin at the contrast.

Having an enemy they could fight—and defeat—put heart in them all. Even Aralorn, who understood that the Uriah were in truth a minor annoyance. Their real enemy, the ae’Magi, was out there somewhere—and he knew where they were. She suspected he was biding his time. The snow wasn’t accumulating yet, but it had become common to see a white coat on the dirt most mornings. A smart general didn’t attack the Northlands in the heart of winter but waited for spring.

Only Wolf was excluded from the camaraderie, by his own choice. He made them nervous, with his macabre voice and silver mask. Once he saw that they were intimidated by him, he went out of his way to make them more so. Sleeping somewhere deep in the caverns and spending most of his waking time in the library, he was seldom with the main body of the camp. Usually, he attended the nightly sessions with everyone else, but he kept his own counsel in the shadows of the caves’ recesses unless Myr asked him a question directly.

Most mornings Aralorn spent entertaining the children. Occasionally, she went out with a hunting party—or alone to exercise Sheen and check the traps. The afternoons she spent in the library with Wolf, keeping him company and reading as many books as she could.

The nights she spent in the library as well, for she was still having nightmares and didn’t want to wake the whole camp. Night after night she woke up screaming, sometimes seeing Talor’s face, alive with all that made him Talor, but consumed with a hunger that was inhuman and wholly Uriah. Other times, it was the ae’Magi’s face that she saw, a face that changed from father’s to son’s.

Wolf didn’t know about her nightmares, as far as she knew. She had no idea where he was sleeping, but it wasn’t the library.

Late in the afternoons, Myr usually joined them, talking quietly with Aralorn while Wolf read through books on rabbit breeding, castle building, and three hundred ways to cook a hedgehog.

After discovering that the spell he’d been looking for wouldn’t work for him, Wolf had continued to look through the old mage’s books in the hopes of discovering a way to manage the spell more crudely. Most spells, he’d told Aralorn, were refined so they required less power. He had all the power he needed, and an earlier version might work for him. If he could find it.

His temper was biting, and he didn’t rein it in for Myr, nor after the first few visits did he bother with his mask. Myr answered Wolf’s sarcasm with cool control—and sometimes a hidden grin of appreciation. Aralorn rather thought that Wolf’s lack of common courtesy was why Myr liked to visit the library. Here he was a fellow conspirator rather than the King of Reth.

“What’s he doing?” asked Myr, setting his torch to sputter on the stone floor, where, with nothing to burn, it would eventually go out.

Instead of reading, Wolf had cleared the table of everything except a collection of clay pots filled with a variety of powders. When Aralorn had gotten there, Wolf had already been grinding various leaves in a mortar.

She waved a lazy hand at Myr, but didn’t take her attention off what Wolf was doing. “He thinks he’s found a way to manage the spell. We’re going to try it outside when he’s finished. No telling what would happen if he worked it in here with all of the grimoires, especially since we don’t know the range of effect.”

She caught Myr’s arm when he would have approached the table closer. “He doesn’t want us any closer than this,” she said.

They both watched, fascinated, though neither she nor Myr could work this kind of magic or probably even understand half of what was going on. Wolf took a small vial from the leather pack on the table. Opening it, he poured a milky liquid into the gray powder mixture, which became red mush and gave off a poof of noxious fumes. He donned his mask and cloak, then, ignoring his audience, he put a lid on the pot and took it and an opaque bottle and strode toward an exit route that would take them directly outside rather than through the lived-in areas, leaving Aralorn and Myr to trail behind.

“Won’t the spell be affected by whatever it is that restricts human magic in the Northlands?” asked Myr in a whisper to Aralorn, but it was Wolf who answered.

“No,” he said. “It is a very simple spell—its complexity has to do with power management. It should work fine here.”

He led them to the old camp in the valley, where they were unlikely to have anyone interrupt them. Aralorn found herself holding the containers while, at Wolf’s direction, Myr paced off circles, each bigger than the last until the dirt looked like an archery target. The ground was muddy with last night’s melted snowfall and held the marks of Myr’s feet well.

Wolf disappeared into the underbrush and reappeared, holding a handful of small stones. He set several of them in each ring Myr had shuffled off, though maybe “set” was the wrong word, because they floated about knee high above the ground.

“This shouldn’t be a particularly powerful spell,” Wolf said. “If I can get it to work, it doesn’t need to be. If he doesn’t know that it’s coming, then he won’t know to block it. All that I need it to do is to throw him off-balance for long enough to turn our battle from magic to more mundane means. Aralorn, stand behind me. It won’t hurt Myr, but I don’t know what this would do to a shapeshifter.”

“If I’m behind you, I can’t see what’s going on,” Aralorn complained. “How about if I stand over by the old fire pit?”

It was well off to the side, a dozen paces away from the target range that Myr had drawn out.

“Fine,” he said. “This should be a straight, line-of-sight spell, with a limited range.”

He sat on the cold ground in the middle of the innermost circle.

“How old is the ae’Magi?” asked Aralorn from the fire pit.

Wolf shrugged gracefully and gave her a half smile. “You aren’t going to kill the ae’Magi the way that Iveress killed his master. His master was ill and near death, kept alive only by magic. As far as I know, the ae’Magi is nowhere near death, unfortunate as that may be—at least not from disease.”

“What are our chances if the spell works as it is supposed to?” asked Myr. “Will you be able to kill him? I’ve seen him fight.”

Wolf shrugged. “If the spell takes him by surprise, then the odds are about even. I used to spar with him often, and sometimes I beat him, sometimes not. This spell gives us a chance, but that’s all it does. If he recognizes the spell, it is easy enough to counter. That would leave us with only magic.”

He looked at Aralorn. “I’ve learned some things about what I can do that he doesn’t know, but even so, he would easily best me that way. Without magic, at least we stand a chance of killing him. Perhaps.” No one, not even Aralorn, could have told how he felt about it from his voice.

Aralorn and Myr watched as he emptied the contents of the bottle into the pot. He counted to ten, then poured the mixture onto the ground in front of him, where it gathered into a glowing pool of violet patterned with inky swirls. Dipping a finger into the pool, he used the liquid to draw several symbols in the air. Compliantly, the purple substance hung in the air as if on an invisible wall. Wolf repeated the procedure with his left hand.

He picked up the pool in both hands. It swayed and oozed, never quite escaping the confines of his hands. He held it up in front of his face, then blew on it gently.

Pain hit Aralorn hard enough to knock her to her knees. She fought to maintain consciousness for a moment, but she never felt herself hit the ground.