Masques (Sianim #1)(31)

Abruptly he stood and looked inward the crispy skeleton that was all that was left of Edom, Aralorn rolled to stand shakily on her three good legs to see what he was looking at. At first she didn't see it, but a flicker of movement caught her eye. It was the sword. Edom, or the thing that was Edom, had kept its grip on the sword. Now it lay a good foot away. Except for the flicker that caught her eye at first, she didn't see it move again. - but it was undeniably closer to her than it had been when she first saw it.

The coldness that numbed her leg seemed abruptly to be spreading and Aralorn lost her precarious balance and fell, missing exactly what Wolf did.

With a harsh, almost human cry of anguish that she heard only partly though her ears, the sword broke. Abruptly the numbness ceased and for a brief moment the pain made her wish it back; then it was only a small cut that bled a little.

The icelynx twitched its stubby tail and exploded to its feet with legendary speed. When she was sure all her legs were working, Aralorn arched purring against Wolf, who was still kneeling beside the blankets.

When she'd stood she heard someone cry out, reminding her that there was an audience. Looking at all the fear and hostility in the surrounding faces, Aralorn decided that it might defuse matters if they weren't being reminded that she was a shapeshifter. She transformed herself into her usual shape and dusted off the innkeeper's son's tunic that was looking the worse from her roll down the wet hillside. Without appearing to, she kept a close eye on the others. It was then that she realized that most of their fear was aimed at Wolf.

He had furnished an excellent display of what happens when a wizard of his power loses his temper. They all must have known that he was powerful, but knowing something and seeing it were different mailers. Most people lacked the casual acceptance of gore that mercenaries had. It didn't help that Wolf didn't wear his mask to sleep in and his horribly scarred visage had been clearly revealed in the flaring light. He wore his mask now, but the knowledge of what lay underneath it was with them all. What was really needed right now was someone to take control.

Aralorn looked around to see if she could find Myr, but he was conspicuous by his absence. There was always the possibility that he was still asleep, unaffected by the magic disturbance that awoke the rest of the camp; but, given what she knew about him, Aralorn thought that unlikely. The noise alone should have brought him by now.

As the thought crossed her mind, Myr - his clothes covered with bits of brush and blood - took the same path down the side of the hill that she had. Plague it! She must have woken him up when she went to check on the horses. If he'd been following her around, there was a good chance that he thought that she'd been the one who murdered the guards. As she had not been trying to hide anything, her footprints would be much more conspicuous than Edom's were.

Myr ignored the commotion in favor of investigating the blackened corpse. Aralorn wondered how much he hoped to learn from the scorched, skeletal remains. When he stood up he seemed slightly paler, though it could have been a trick of the light.

Composedly, he directed his question at Wolf. "Who was it?"

"Edom," answered Wolf in his usual chilling tones. If Wolfs hand hadn't been locked on her shoulder with a bruising grip, Aralorn would have thought him unaffected by the events of the night. It was obvious from the incredulous looks they directed at Wolf that most members of the little gathering were disturbed by his calmness.

"Is he the victim or the attacker?" asked Myr, voicing the question that was on almost everyone's mind.

"The attacker and the victim, though he didn't intend to be the latter," answered Aralorn, deciding to lake part in her defense. She continued to tell them what she had done and the discovery of the dead guards. "When I saw the runes, I knew that the ae'Magi had something to do with it because I've seen him use those patterns before. I came to see if Wolf wanted to help track him down and found Edom with his nasty little sword drawn, standing over Wolf."

An unfamiliar voice asked, "How do we know she's telling the truth? She could have laid a spell on Master Wolf so that he thinks that she has the right of it. Shapeshifters can do things like that. Edom was just a boy. Why would he attack Wolf? As for magic rituals, I spent three days teaching him how to move a stick without touching it. He didn't have hardly any magic at all."

Wolf spoke, and even the most unobservant could see that he was not in control of his temper yet. "Edom was the assailant tonight. I could see what was happening, even if I could do nothing about it.

"I have known Aralorn for some time. She does not have the skill required to deceive my eyes. Also, the sword Edom fought with was a souleater. It did not belong to me; and Aralorn, with her shapeshifter blood, could not have held anything so unnatural for long enough to draw it."

Myr nodded. "It's dark, but from what I could tell, the guards were dead before Aralorn found them."

Tobin spoke up from his position as Stanis's shadow. "Edom had a lot of books in his tent written in Darranian."

There was a brief silence. Aralorn almost smiled as she saw the meaning of Tobin's words echo in the minds of all present. It was Tobin's testimony that bore the most weight. A shapeshifter, being, after all, native to the Rethian mountains, was better than a Darranian. The last war with Darran was not so long past and the stories of the atrocities they committed (doubtless the worse for the telling) were still strong in everyone's mind. If Edom was a Darranian it put an entirely different light on the events of the night.