Sianim 01 - Masques

bandit leader stiffened and drew in his breath, holding up a hand to silence her. He walked slowly around him, then nodded abruptly. “I believe you. Your stallion could be the double of the one cut down under the Lyon at the battle of Valner Pass.”
    “His sire died at Valner Pass,” agreed Aralorn, “fourteen years ago.”
    The bandit produced a faded strip of green ribbon and caught Sheen’s bit, tying the thin cloth to the shank of the curb. “This will get you past my men. Don’t remove it until you come to the Wayfarer’s Inn—do you know it?”
    Aralorn nodded, started to turn her horses, then stopped. “Tell your wife she makes excellent cheese—and take my advice: Don’t let her patch your thieving clothes with the same cloth as her apron. I might not be the only one to notice it.”
    Startled, the bandit looked at the yellow-and-green weave that covered his right knee.
    Softly, Aralorn continued, “It is a hard thing for a woman alone to raise children to adulthood.”
    She could tell that he was reconsidering his decision not to kill her, something he wouldn’t have done if she’d kept her mouth closed; but she could clearly remember the walnut-brown eyes of the toddler who held on to his mother’s brightly colored apron. He wouldn’t fare well in the world without a father to protect him from harm, and Aralorn had a weakness for children.
    “You are a smart man, sir,” she said. “If I had wanted to have you caught, it would have made more sense for me to go to Lord Larmouth, whose province this is, and tell him what I saw—than for me to warn you.”
    Slowly, his hand moved away from the small sword, but Aralorn could hear a nearby creaking that told her that someone held a nocked bow. “I will tell her.”
    She nudged Sheen with her knees and left the bandit behind.

    She crossed the first mountain pass late that night; and the second and last pass before Lambshold the following afternoon.
    The snow was heavier as she traveled northward. Aralorn switched horses often, but Sheen still took the brunt of the work since he was better suited for breaking through the crusted, knee-deep drifts. Gradually, as new light dawned over the edge of the pass, the mountain trail began to move downward, and the snow lessened. Aralorn swayed wearily in the saddle. It was less than two hours’ ride to Lambshold, but she and the horses were going to need rest before then.
    The road passed by another small village with an inn. Aralorn dismounted and led her exhausted horses to the stableyard.
    If the hostler was surprised at the arrival of a guest in the morning, he gave no sign of it. Nor did he argue with Aralorn when she gave him the lead to the roan and began the task of grooming Sheen on her own. The warhorse was not so fierce that a stableboy could not have groomed him, but it was her habit to perform the task herself when she was troubled. Before she stored her tack, she untied the scrap of ribbon from Sheen’s bit. She left the horses dozing comfortably and entered the inn through the stable door.
    The innkeeper, whom she found in the kitchen, was a different man from the one she remembered, but the room he led her to was familiar and clean. She closed the door behind him, stripped off her boots and breeches, then climbed between the sweet-smelling sheets. Too tired, too numb, to dread sleeping as she’d learned to do in the last few weeks, she let oblivion take her.
    The dream, when it came, started gently. Aralorn found herself wandering through a corridor in the ae’Magi’s castle. It looked much the same as the last time she had seen it, the night the ae’Magi died.
    The forbidding stairway loomed out of the darkness. Aralorn set her hand to the wall and took the downward steps, though it was so dark that she could barely see where to put her feet. Dread coated the back of her throat like sour honey, and she knew that something terrible awaited her. She took another step down and found herself unexpectedly in a small stone room that smelled of offal and ammonia.
    A woman lay on a wooden table, her face frozen in death. Despite the pallor that clung to her skin and the fine lines of suffering, she was beautiful; her fiery hair seemed out of place in the presence of death. Arcanely etched iron manacles, thicker than the pale wrists they enclosed, had left scars testifying to the years they’d remained in place.
    At the foot of the table stood a raven-haired boy regarding the dead