Sianim 01 - Masques

here.”
    “A containment spell of some sort,” commented Wolf. She was exploring a little more closely than he was comfortable with. She needed to be more careful of herself. “It’s probably best if we don’t trigger it.” His voice was calm, but his body was still stiff. He sketched a sign in the air, and the image of the ae’Magi froze.
    “Is he directing the illusion, do you think?” asked Aralorn, bouncing away from the circle toward Wolf.
    “I doubt it. He would not have to. The illusion spell can be given directives, and the trap requires no magic to initialize once it is set.” He regained his human form and picked up Aralorn, setting her on his shoulder, where he’d gotten used to having her. “If I had triggered the containment spell, it would probably have alerted him then.”
    “Like a spider’s web,” said Aralorn.
    “Just so,” agreed Wolf.

    He stared at the illusion of his father and made no effort to move away. It wasn’t a spell; she’d have felt it if something was actually affecting Wolf. Maybe it was something more powerful than magic.
    “Where to now?” Aralorn asked. “Do we wait for the Uriah to attack, or do we look for the ae’Magi?”
    “For someone who should be scared and cowering, you sound awfully eager.” Wolf stood staring at the silhouette of the ae’Magi: His voice wasn’t as emotionless as usual.
    “Hey,” replied Aralorn briskly, “it’s better than spending the winter cooped up in the caves.”
    Wolf made no answer except to run an absentminded hand over the smooth skin of his cheek as if he were looking for something that wasn’t there.
    Aralorn waited as patiently as she could, then said, “He knew that you were coming.”
    Wolf nodded. “He’s been expecting me for a long time. I knew that. I should have been more alert for something like this.” He bowed his head. “I should have asked before. What he said, I have to know. Aralorn, when he had you here, did he . . .” His voice tightened with rage and stopped.
    “No,” she said instantly. “I’d tell you that before a time like this anyway, so you wouldn’t get upset when you need your wits about you. But look here, the first time I was in his castle, he was working on a spell and wanted to save his energy. I was disappointed, but then a slave must wait on the master’s convenience.”
    He was listening. She was taking the right tack, then. “The second time, he was too interested in finding you to worry about it. You shouldn’t let him pull your strings so easily.” She curled her tail against his neck in a quick caress. “I would have lied under these circumstances, you have to know that. But I wouldn’t have hidden something like that when you got me out of there—I don’t think I could have.” And that was as honest as she was comfortable with—but it did the trick.
    The tension eased out of him. “You are right, Lady. Shall we go a-hunting sorcerers in the castle? Perhaps you would prefer a Uriah or two to begin with, or one of my father’s other pets. I believe that there are a few that you haven’t seen before. Would Milady prefer to be outnumbered a hundred to two or just by three or four to two? This task can accommodate your tastes.”
    “Then of course,” said Aralorn, “once you have attained your goal, we can arrange to have the castle fall on us conveniently. That way we’ll escape mutilation from the outraged populace that you have saved from slavery and worse. Sounds interesting—let’s get to it.” She thought that Wolf might have been smiling as he headed downhill and away from the castle, but it was hard to tell from her vantage point.

    The woods grew increasingly dense as Wolf walked farther from the castle. A hoot from an owl just overhead made Aralorn-the-mouse cringe tighter against his neck. “Lots of nasties in these woods,” she said in a mouselike voice devoid of all but a hint of humor.
    “And I,” announced Wolf in a grim voice that was designed to let Aralorn know that it was time to be serious, “am the nastiest of all.”
    “Are you really?” asked Aralorn in an interested sort of tone. “Oh, I just adore nasties.”
    Wolf stopped and looked at the mouse sitting innocently on his shoulder. Most people cowered under that look. Aralorn began, industriously, to clean her whiskers. When Wolf started to walk again, though, she said in a stage whisper, “I really do, you know.”
    They emerged from a particularly thick growth