Masques (Sianim #1)(50)

Aralorn tried to look stern, but it turned into a laugh.

Wolf brushed the grass from his shoulders and went back to packing. Aralorn leaned back against her tree and watched him as he worked, trying to get used to the face he wore.

In an odd sort of way he looked more like his father than his father did. The ae'Magi's face was touched with innocence and compassion. Wolf's visage had neither. His was the face of a man who could do anything, and had.

"Can you ride?" he asked, calling her back from her thoughts.

She considered the state of her body. Everything functioned - sort of, anyway. Riding was certainly better than any alternative she could think of. She nodded. "If we don't go any faster than a walk. I don't think that I could sit a trot for very long."

He nodded and said three or four brisk words in a language she didn't know. He didn't bother with the theatrics in front of her. The air merely shimmered around him strangely. Not unpleasant - just difficult to look at, much nicer than when she changed shape. The black horse snorted at her and then shook itself as if it were wet.

She stood up stiffly, trying not to start coughing again. When she could, she walked shakily up to him, grateful to reach the support of his neck. Unfortunately, although Wolf's rendition of a horse wasn't as massive as Sheen, he was as tall, and in her weakened condition she couldn't climb her way up. After her third attempt, he knelt in the dust so that she could slip on his back.

They were following an old trail that had fallen into disuse; the only tracks on it were from the local wildlife. The woods around them were too dense to allow easy travel, but Wolf appeared to know them: when the trail disappeared into a lush meadow, he picked it up again on the other side without having to take a step to the left or right. His gaits, she found, were much smoother than Sheen's, but the motion still hurt her ribs.

To distract herself she thought up a question almost at random. "Where did you find a healer so near the ae'Magi's castle? I don't remember everything, but I do remember getting hit on the head and having something done to my eyes that was ... unpleasant." The dust of the road set her coughing. When she could talk again she said, "You got rooked if you paid very much; any healer worth his fee would have taken care of the ribs and cough too."

Wolf twitched his ears and said in an odd tone, even for him, "He didn't have enough time to do much. Even if there had been the time, I wouldn't have trusted him to do more than what was absolutely necessary - he ... didn't have the training."

Something felt wrong about his answer. Aralorn had an inkling that she should be paying more attention to the way he phrased his explanation, but she was in too much misery between her ribs and her cough to do much more than feel sorry for herself.

Wolf kept to a walk, trying to make the ride as smooth as possible for her. He could discern that she was in a lot of pain by the way her hands shook in his mane when she coughed, but she made light of it when he questioned her. As the day progressed she leaned wearily against his neck and coughed more often.

He continued until he could stand it no more and then he called a halt at a likely camping area, far from the main thoroughfares and out of sight of the trail they'd been following. Aralorn slid carefully off him and kept sliding until her rump hit the ground.

Wolf regained his human form before making a cushion of evergreen bows and covering the result with the blankets. While Aralorn slept on the makeshift bed. Wolf stood watch, feeling the weight of too many sleepless nights on his eyes.

The night was peaceful, marred only by Aralorn's harsh coughing. It got so bad toward the morning that she finally stood up and started breaking camp, despite the pain in her ribs. Wolf sat her firmly down on the ground with a growl that would have done credit to his wolf-form and finished erasing all traces of their presence.

Dawn's light had barely begun to show before they were on their way.

Once she was sitting up rather than lying down, Aralorn's coughing mercifully eased. It helped that today they were cutting directly through the woods, and there was less trail dust to exacerbate the problem. When her modest herb lore identified some beggar's-blessing on the side of the road, she could look at the day's journey with some equanimity.

The narcotic alleviated the pain of her ribs and some of the coughing, although it did make it a little more difficult to stay on Wolf's back as it interfered with her equilibrium. Several times only Wolf's quick footwork kept her from falling off.

Wolf decided that the giggling was something he could do without, but found that on the whole he preferred it to her silent pain.

Thus the second day of travel was better than the first, and it was the last. When they stopped, Wolf took a good look at Aralorn, pale and dark-eyed from the drug she'd been using. She'd refused food, because beggar's-blessing would make her sick if she ate while under its effects.

The end result was that she was weaker now than she'd been when they started this morning. He had not transported them by magic, because he was afraid that it would be too hard on her, but he didn't think that it could be as severe as trying to continue the way they were. Although it was only four days' ride on a fast horse, at the pace they were holding it would take another eight days to make it to camp.

He donned his human form once again, with his scars, and added the silver mask before he bent and lifted her semiconscious form in his arms. Without a word of warning to her, he transported them into the Northlands.