Wolfsbane (3 page)

Awake, Aralorn listened to the muffled sounds of the inn. Hearing no urgent footsteps, she decided that she must not have screamed out loud. This was not the kind of place where such a sound would have been dismissed. She sat up to shake off the effects of the nightmare, but the terror of the eerie, hungry emptiness lingered. She might as well get up.

She’d begun having nightmares when Wolf disappeared a few weeks ago. Nightmares weren’t an unexpected part of being a mercenary, but these had been relentless. Dreams of being trapped in the ae’Magi’s dungeon, unable to escape the pain or the voice that asked over and over again, “Where is Cain? Where is my son?” But this dream had been different . . . it had been more than a dream.

She pulled on her clothes. Her acceptance of what she had seen had been born of the peculiar acceptance that was the gift of a dreamer. Awake now, she wondered.

It had felt like truth. If the ae’Magi were still alive, she would have cheerfully attributed it to an attack by him—a little nasty designed to make her doubt Wolf and make his life a little more miserable. An attack that had failed only because she had a little magic of her own to call upon.

But the ae’Magi was dead, and she could think of no one else who would know the intimate details of Wolf’s childhood—things that even she had not known for certain.

It was a dream, she decided as she headed out to the stables. Only a dream.

The path to Lambshold was all but obscured by the snow, but Aralorn could have followed it blindfolded even though she hadn’t been here in ten years.

As Sheen crested the final rise, Aralorn sat back in the saddle. Responsively, the stallion tucked his convex nose and slid to a halt. The roan gelding threw up his head indignantly as his lead line pulled him to an equally abrupt stop.

From the top of the keep, the yellow banner emblazoned with her father’s red lion, which signaled the presence of the lord at the keep, flew at half mast, with a smaller, red flag above.

Aralorn swallowed and patted Sheen’s thick gray neck. “You’re getting old, love. Maybe I should leave you here for breeding and see if I can talk someone out of a replacement.”

Sheen’s ear swiveled back to listen to her, and she smiled absently.

“There’s the tree I found you tied to down there, near the wall.”

She’d thought she was so clever, sneaking out in the dead of night when no one would stop her. She’d just made it safely over the wall—no mean feat—and there was Sheen, her father’s pride and joy, tied to a tree. She still had the note she’d found in the saddlebags with travel rations and some coins. In her father’s narrow handwriting the short note had informed her that a decent mount was sometimes useful, and that if she didn’t find what she was looking for, she would always be welcome in her father’s home.

The dark evergreen trees blurred in her sight as Aralorn thought about the last night she’d lived at Lambshold. She swallowed, the grief she’d suppressed through the journey home making itself felt.

“Father.” She whispered her plea to the quiet woods, but no one answered.

At last, she urged Sheen forward again, and they walked the perimeter of the wall until they reached the gate.

“Hullo the gate,” she called briskly.

“Who?” called a half-familiar voice from the top.

Aralorn squinted, but the man stood with his back to the sun, throwing his face into shadow.

“Aralorn, daughter to Henrick, the Lyon of Lambshold,” she answered.

He gestured, and the gates groaned and protested as they opened, and the iron portcullis was raised. Sheen snorted and started forward without urging, the roan following behind. She glanced around the courtyard, noting the differences a decade had made. The “new” storage sheds were weathered and had multiplied in her absence. Several old buildings were no longer standing. She remembered Lambshold bustling with busy people, but the courtyard was mostly empty of activity.

“May I take your horses, Lady?”

The stableman, wise to the ways of warhorses, had approached cautiously.

Aralorn swung off and removed her saddlebags, throwing them over one shoulder before she turned over the reins for both horses to the groom. “The roan’s a bit skittish.”

“Thanks, Lady.”

Not by word or expression did the stableman seem taken aback at a “Lady” dressed in ragged clothes chosen more for their warmth than their looks. By then, both the clothes and Aralorn had acquired a distinct aroma from the journey.

Knowing the animals would be well cared for, she started toward the keep.

“Hold a moment, Aralorn.”

It was the man from the wall. She turned and got a clear look at his face.

The years had filled out his height and breadth until he was even bigger than their father. His voice had deepened and hoarsened like a man who commanded others in battle, changed just enough that she hadn’t recognized it immediately. Falhart was several years older than she was, the Lyon’s only other illegitimate offspring. It was he who had begun her weapons training—because, as he’d told her at the time, his little sister was a good practice target.

“Falhart,” she said, her vision blurring as she took a quick step forward.

Falhart grunted and folded his arms across his chest.

Hurt, Aralorn stopped and adopted his pose, waiting for him to speak.

“Ten years is a long time, Aralorn. Is Sianim so far that you could not visit?”

Aralorn met his eyes. “I wrote nearly every month.” She stopped to clear the defensiveness out of her voice. “I don’t belong here, Hart. Not anymore.”

His black eyebrows rose to meet his brick red hair. “This is your home—of course you belong here. Irrenna has kept your room just the way you left it, hoping you’d visit. Allyn’s toadflax, you’d think we were Darranians the way you—” He stopped abruptly, having been watching her face closely. His jaw dropped for a moment, then he said in a completely different voice, “That is it, isn’t it? Nevyn got to you. Father said he thought it was something of the sort, but I thought you knew better than to listen to the half-crazed prejudices of a Darranian lordling.”

Aralorn smiled ruefully, hurt assuaged by the realization that it was anger, not rejection, that had caused his restraint. “It was more complicated than that, but Nevyn is certainly the main reason I haven’t been back.”

“You’d think that a wizard would be more tolerant,” growled Hart, “and that you would show a little more intelligence.”

That turned her smile into a grin. “He’s not all that happy about being a wizard—he just didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

“You could have won him over if you had wanted to, Aralorn.” He had not yet decided to forgive her. “The man’s not as stupid as he acts sometimes.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But, as I said, he wasn’t the only reason I left. I was never cut out to be a Rethian noble-woman, any more than Nevyn could have lived in Darran as a wizard. Sianim is my home now.”

“Do they know you’re a shapeshifter?” he inquired coolly.

“No.” She grinned at him. “You know that the only people who would believe such a story are barbarians of the Rethian mountains. Besides, it’s much more useful being a shapeshifter if no one knows about it but me.”

“Home is where they know all of your secrets, Featherweight, and love you anyway.”

Aralorn laughed, and the tears that had been threatening since she heard about her father fell at last. When Falhart opened his arms, she took two steps forward and hugged him, kissing his cheek when he bent down. “I missed you, Fuzzhead.”

He picked her up and hugged her, stiffening when he looked over her shoulder. He set her down carefully, his eyes trained on whatever he had seen behind her. “That wolf have something to do with you?”

She turned to see a large, very black wolf crouched several paces behind her. The hair along his spine and the ruff around his neck was raised, his muzzle fixed in an ivory-fanged snarl directed at Falhart.