Sianim 01 - Masques

of snow melted off the mountain peaks. As it was, the ground near the stream was marshy and made soft, slurping sounds when she walked over to take a drink and throw water on her face.
    The tents were all in the eastern end of the valley near the only obvious trail down the steep, almost clifflike sides. Those sides, heavily covered with brush on the top, were the strongest defense the camp could have, rendering it almost invisible to anyone not already in the valley.
    By the simple expedient of running a split-rail fence across the valley the narrow way, the western end had been turned into a pasture for most of the livestock—two goats, four donkeys, several horses, and a scrawny cow. It was toward this part of the valley that Aralorn headed.
    Knowing how well Wolf liked people, she thought that he would be as far from the tents as he could get—although she couldn’t see him anywhere in the dale. As she neared the pasture, she was welcomed with a soft whinny. Sheen, only slightly inconvenienced by the soft leather hobble that bound his front legs, bounced up to her to get his nose rubbed. She’d hobbled him outside the pasture so that the owners of the two mares didn’t end up with unwanted foals. He followed her for a while before wandering off to forage.
    It took her a little time to find the faint trail running up the steep slope near the fence. The terrain was rough and treacherous with loose stones, and she thought ruefully that a person would have to be part mountain goat to try this very often—or part wolf.
    Grabbing a ragged piece of brush, she pulled herself up a particularly steep area and found herself unexpectedly in a hollow that hadn’t been visible from below. A small smokeless fire burned near a bedroll. The rather large, lank wolf turned amber eyes to her and swayed his tail in casual welcome.
    Since he wasn’t using it, she seated herself on the bedroll and rested her chin on her raised knees. Casually, she threw a few more sticks onto the fire, leaving it for him to break the silence. Typically, he explained nothing but questioned her instead.
    “Tell me about the camp.” His voice was mildly curious.
    “Why? You’ve been here much longer than I have.”
    He shook his head. “I just want to know what you see—how much I need to explain to you.”
    “Well,” she began, “there has been a camp here for several months, probably starting in the spring. Originally, the person or people who started it didn’t know much about camping in the woods, so I’d guess that they weren’t locals. It looks like someone is in the process of reorganizing camp. If I were a gamester, I would place gold that Myr is the reorganizer—since I suspect you wouldn’t bother.” She looked to the wolf for confirmation.
    Wolf nodded, and Aralorn continued to speak.
    “From what I can tell, most of these people came with not much more than the clothes on their backs. There are what, maybe fifty people here?”
    “Fifty-four with you,” Wolf replied.
    “Then over a third of them are children. There is no common class among them. I’ve seen peasants, townsfolk, and several aristocrats. The children are, as far as I’ve seen, without family. They are almost all Rethian.” Aralorn lay back and made herself comfortable. “They have all the earmarks of refugees, and I’d lay my last gold that they are running from the ae’Magi.”
    Wolf grunted an affirmative.
    “How did they all get here, though? I could see northerners finding this valley, but I heard southern Reth accents, too.”
    “You, of all people, should know the reputation of the northern mountains,” replied Wolf.
    Aralorn frowned at him. “I saw you transport the merchant, and my understanding is that teleportation is a difficult, high-level spell. And you managed it in the Northlands.”
    Wolf shook his head. “I wouldn’t have tried it this far north even if we weren’t worried about the ae’Magi finding the valley. Small spells seem unhampered here, but more delicate spells are harder to control. Some people it affects more than others—the ae’Magi won’t travel even as far as the northern lands in Reth. It doesn’t seem to have much effect on my magic”—he nodded at the fire, which flared up, dancing wildly with purple and gold flames—“but I wouldn’t have bet even the merchant’s life on it; so we traveled south.”
    “The stories about that aspect of the Northlands are common enough, even in southern Reth,”