Masques (Sianim #1)(54)

The sound of someone else in the room distracted Aralorn, and she pushed herself up away from Wolf's chest, wiping her nose and eyes alike with the sleeve of the tunic she snagged from the cave floor. She too looked at the conspicuously empty space at the end of the sofa near her feet. Magical invisibility consisted of blending into shadows and turning eyes away rather than absolute invisibility; when someone actively looked, the invisible person could be seen. There was nothing at the end of the sofa.

"Can you see him?" she asked Wolf, thinking that it might be another side effect of the beggar's-blessing. She never had liked drugs.

When he shook his head, she directed her questioning to the man who wasn't there. "Who are you?"

"That's better," said the voice, and there was the distinct pop of air that accompanies teleportation.

"He's gone," Wolf confirmed.

"What do you think?" asked Aralorn, settling back onto Wolf, her voice husky from crying. "Was that our friend who gives us a hand with the books?"

"If I were a hazarder, I would lay you odds for yes." Wolf's voice was somewhat distracted, as he was feeling slightly uncomfortable with Aralorn lying relaxed and naked in his arms. It hadn't bothered him before, when she'd been upset.

He started to shift her off him with the end goal of getting as much distance on his side as possible. Before he could do more than move his hand to her shoulders, she turned her face into his neck, terminating his resolve with the simple gesture of affection. He'd found himself craving her affection more and more lately. Although, he thought with a touch of self-derision, in this case "affection" might not be the proper expression.

Self-absorbed, he only caught the tail end of Aralorn's question. "Say that again?" he asked.

With her face tucked safely out of sight, she smiled and repeated herself. "I asked how long you left me alone in the library."

"Not more than fifteen minutes, less probably."

She made a sound of amazement. "I've never heard of anyone who could heal that fast. No wonder I feel like a month-old babe: by all rights I should be comatose now."

"Powerful," Wolf agreed. "But something was funny about him; did you catch it?"

Aralorn nodded. "It was odd in a voice that young, but he sounded a bit querulous, maybe even senile." She closed her eyes, and the companionable silence lulled her toward slumber. More asleep than awake, she murmured with a touch of her unquenchable curiosity, "I wonder who Lys is?"

When Wolf made no attempt to add to or answer her question, she drifted unprotestingly off to sleep.

Golden eyes glittering. Wolf cradled her protectively - against him. He thought about shapeshifters, and the ae'Magi's half-mad son who wandered into these caves to find solace one night, led by a small, grey fox with ageless, sea-green eyes.

Chapter Nine

From her station on the couch, Aralorn watched Wolf deposit another armload of books and set them on the floor beside the worktable. The table, her chair, and most of the floor space were similarly adorned.

"Did our apprentice write all of these?" Aralorn made a vague gesture toward the stacks before continuing to put a better edge on her knife.

Wolf turned to survey the piles. He let the silence build and then growled briefly, "Yes." With that he stalked back into the forest of bookcases.

Aralorn grinned, sheathed her knife and levered herself to her feet, weak from days of enforced inactivity in the ae'Magi's dungeon as well as being healed of the damages inflicted during her visit there. Scanning the nearby shelves, she found a book on shapeshifters and wobbled with it to the table, careful not to fall. Wolf had already made it clear that he would rather that she stay put on the couch for a couple of days; if she fell, there would be no living with him. She cleared off her chair and space enough to read. Now that the search had been narrowed to books that were likely to be trapped. Wolf had forbidden her to help. Aralorn decided if she couldn't be useful, at least she could enjoy herself.

Wolf balanced the books he carried on another stack and eyed the collection. "I suppose I might as well start on these."

"I didn't think that even human mages were that verbose," commented Aralorn as she handed him her book.

He looked at it carefully and handed it back to her before he replied. "Most mages restrict their writings to the intricacies of magic; Iveress, 'our apprentice,' fancied himself an expert on everything. There are treatises here on every subject from farming to governmental philosophy. He was long-winded, brilliant and had the annoying habit of sliding in obscure magic spells in the middle of whatever he was writing when the spell occurred to him."

"Better you than me," commented Aralorn sympathetically before burying herself in her book.

The author of Aralorn's book had never met a shapeshifter; they were rare and adept at hiding even in his time. Instead the writer collected all the bits of lore and odd tales ever spun to create a powerful, mythic race whose main hobby seemed to be eating innocent young children who lost themselves in the woods.

Aralorn was interested to observe that shapeshifters could only be killed by silver, garlic or wolvesbane. The author was of the opinion that shapeshifters could lake the shape of only one animal, and he devoted a section to horrific tales of shapeshifter wolves, lions and bears (mice, she supposed, were too mundane).