Masques (Sianim #1)(55)

She shared bits and pieces of the better wolf-tales with Wolf, as he waded through a volume on pig-training. He responded by telling her how to train a pig to count, open gates and fetch. Pigs were also useful for predicting earthquakes. Iveress included three spells to start earthquakes.

Aralorn laughed and returned to her reading. At the end of the book, the author included stories "which my research has proven to be merely folk tales" to entertain his readers. Aralorn supposed that it was no mere coincidence that the "mere folk tales" were the only stories in which the villain was not a shapeshifter.

She read the first story, then thoughtfully closed the book and glanced curiously around the room. Nothing was moving that shouldn't be today. Wolf set the pig book aside and was reaching for another one when Aralorn started to speak in a low voice.

"Once upon a time there was a young shapeshifter who spied a young girl alone in the woods." She didn't need to use the book to help her memory, but kept her eyes on Wolf. "Curious, because she was in a place no young girl should be, he followed her to her home. She lived alone in a cottage near enough to the village that she could walk there easily, but far enough that her visitors were few. She was an empath, forced to live away from her family and relatives by her gift.

"The shapeshifter, entranced by her beauty of face and spirit, took to following her around in the guise of a crow or squirrel. Finally, when he could keep his love hidden no more, he revealed himself to her. She loved him too, for not only was he as comely as all werekind are, he was sweet of spirit as well.

"They lived together for several years with no one knowing of their alliance - for the hatred and fear with which humankind looked upon shapeshifters was more than returned. Once a month the shapeshifter returned to his village to assure his people that he was well. Once a week the empath made her way to the human village.

"One day a Southern Trader saw her as she left the village for her home in the woods. He asked about her and found out that she lived alone. Like most of his kind he was no better than he should be, so when he finished his trading with the villagers, he and his fellows took the path that the girl had used. She would bring good prices in the slave market in the south.

"It happened that it was one of the times that the shapeshifter was visiting his family. He returned to find the cottage empty, with the door swinging in the wind.

"He tracked them as they headed into the wild Northlands. The girl had told them that her lover was a powerful magician, and so they took to the North, where human magic is hindered. The shapeshifter was a child of the Northlands, and the harsh winds brought him news of his beloved's path, but even so he was too late." A moaning sound echoed through the caves as she finished the last words. Wolf tilted his head slightly so she knew that he heard as well.

"When he reached the slavers' camp," she continued, "he found nothing left of the would-be slavers except mindless bodies. The girl, terrified and alone, had evoked an empath's only defense, projecting her terror and pain onto her tormentors. She was alive when the shapeshifter found her, so he took her to a cave, sacred to his kind, where he tried to heal her. The worst of her wounds were of the spirit that even a shapeshifter's magic may not touch; and though her body was whole, she spoke not a word to him, but stared through him, as if he were not there.

Not entirely sane from his grief, the shapeshifter swore to keep her alive until he could find a way to heal her soul. And so he lives on, with his beloved, from that day until this."

Wolf raised an eyebrow at her and nodded slowly. "The Old Man of the Mountain."

"That's what the book says," replied Aralorn. "And 'Lys' is an old version of the shapeshifter word for 'sweetheart.'"

Wolf nodded slowly. "Our voice from last night. But I have never heard of a shapeshifter with the power that the Old Man is supposed to have."

Aralorn rubbed her cheek thoughtfully, leaving behind a streak of black dust. "The older a shapeshifter is, the more powerful he is. Like human mages, it is not unusual for a shapeshifter to live several hundred years. A really powerful shapeshifter can shift himself younger constantly and never grow old. They are a nonviolent race, and the only reason that you don't see a shapeshifter much older than several hundred years is that they are constantly changing to new and more difficult things. It's difficult to remember that you are supposed to be human when you change into a tree or the wind. An uncle of my mother once told me that sometimes a shapechanger forgets to picture what he is changing himself into and he changes into nothing. There is no reason why our Old Man of the Mountain couldn't be several thousand years old rather than just a few hundred. That would make him incredibly powerful - maybe on par with the old gods."

She stopped as something occurred to her. "Wolf, there was a snowstorm the night before the Uriah came. If it hadn't slowed them down, they would have come upon us at night and slaughtered the camp."

Wolf shrugged. "Snowstorms are unpredictable here, but I suppose that it could have been he who caused the storm. I suspect that we'll never know."

They went back to reading. Aralorn found it more and more difficult to concentrate as the little energy she'd regained dissipated. The words blurred in front of her eyes, and soon she was turning pages from habit.

She dozed off between one sentence and the next while Wolf was in the stacks looking for another pile of books. When he touched her shoulder, she jumped to her feet and had her knife drawn before she opened her eyes.