Masques (35 page)

“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 the 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.