Sianim 01 - Masques

Myr posted every night in shifts or, more probably, a wild animal of some sort. For her own peace of mind, Aralorn decided to trek up the side of the valley and see if she could locate whatever was disturbing the stallion. She commanded him to silence again, told him to wait, and started the climb.
    The terrain was more cliff than anything else. There was an easier trail over more-exposed ground, but she chose to stay in the sparse cover of the tough brush that grew here and there. Once on the crest, crouched in the dense thicket of young willows that surrounded the valley, she glanced back down to see if Sheen was still upset.
    His attention was still focused, but he could have just been watching her. Swearing softly to herself, she crept through the brush. If it had been a wild animal, it was probably long gone, or waiting for a nice tasty human to join it for its evening meal—wasn’t it dragons that were supposed to enjoy feasting on young women?
    She tripped over it before she saw it—or rather him. He was very dead. She called a dim light ball that would allow her to get a better look at the corpse without drawing attention to herself.
    It was one of the guards—Pussywillow, the one-armed veteran. He had been killed recently, because the body was still warm, even in the chill of the wet foliage. What really bothered Aralorn was the way he’d been killed. He’d probably been knocked out, judging by the lump on his head. With him unconscious and unable to struggle, it had been an easy matter to cut his heart out of his chest and carve the skin of his chest with runes. The same runes she’d seen the ae’Magi cut into living skin.
    Impulsively, she traced a symbol over one of the bloody runes. She knew that certain symbols and runes held a power of their own, independent of green or human designation. Once when she and Wolf had been traveling, she had seen him trace the symbol with a stick held in his jaws (he’d been in his wolf guise). Curious, as always, she asked him the meaning of it. Wolf told her that it was a symbol that simply promoted good rest and taught it to her at her request. She hoped it would help.
    She started to run around the edge of the valley without worrying about cover. She almost hoped to draw the attention of the killer; she was able to take care of herself better than almost anyone else in the camp. From the signs around the body, there had been only one person, but he was skillful.
    Heart pounding, and not from effort, she searched the darkness for some clue as to his whereabouts. Less than halfway around the camp, she found the other guard. The woman’s heart lay, still hot, on the grass that was too dark even in the night.
    She had probably been killed after Aralorn found the first body. The killer, safe in his knowledge that there was no second guard to worry about, had taken his time and done the ritual more properly, though still without active magic use that might have alerted Wolf (or anyone else in the camp, for that matter). The guard had been awake for the ceremony, gagged so that she could make no sound. A small pewter drinking glass lay near the body, stained dark with blood.
    Gently, Aralorn closed the open eyes.
    Taking stock of her position, Aralorn realized that she was no more than a hundred yards from Wolf’s camp. It would be wiser to have two people looking for the killer. Finding the camp from her position on top of the rim was not as easy as finding it from the bottom, though; there were no trails to lead her to it.
    Just as she decided that her time would be better spent trying to locate the enemy, she saw the light from the meager campfire Wolf preferred. With a sigh of relief, she made her way down the steep slope, taking the path slowly to avoid twisting an ankle.
    Without warning, a violent surge of magical backlash drove her to her knees. She waited until the wash of magic dulled to a point that it was no longer painful before struggling back to her feet. Forgetting caution, she grabbed a stick and used it for balance as she slid down the hill, announcing her presence with a modest avalanche of stones and dirt.
    She slid to a stop just above the small, flat area that Wolf had appropriated as his camp. Wolf, in human form, lay unmoving on his back, eyes glistening with rage. Narrow luminous white ropes lay across his legs, chest, and neck.
    Edom stood over him, his attention momentarily diverted to Aralorn. Half-raised in his right hand, he held a