Sianim 01 - Masques

spellcasting can be dangerous, and it’s getting difficult to find a virgin who can be forced to submit to the process. The ae’Magi never had a problem with it, though; his villagers could always produce some sort of victim.
    “The depiction was not entirely accurate. It isn’t necessary for the magician to participate in the sexual activities unless he wishes to. He can use a proxy if he wishes.”

    Wolf continued to outline the practices of summoning demons. It wasn’t something she’d want to listen to on a full stomach, and if Aralorn hadn’t been a mercenary, she wouldn’t have been able to sit coolly through it all—but a reaction was what he wanted, and she’d be plague-stricken before she gave it to him. So she maintained a remote facade while she listened. This, she decided, was his way of driving her away after the closeness of last night.
    “. . . so afterward, it is necessary to dispose of the focus, or the demon will be able to use her again to return without summoning. The blood of a woman used in such a fashion is valuable, as are the hair and several other body parts. The most useful method of killing the girl is to slit her throat.” His voice was clinically precise. His glittering eyes never left hers.
    She listened to his detached description of the horrors he’d committed and decided that she must be in love because what she really heard was the self-directed hatred that initiated his lecture. Doubtless he’d participated in the twisted ceremony of demon summoning and probably worse. Aralorn was even more certain that it now revolted him as much as he intended it to appall her. Possibly it had revolted him even then.
    She waited until he was starting to run out of details, cupping her hand under her chin in feigned boredom. When he stopped speaking, she said, “Fine. I understand. You’ve done things that a normal human being would find abhorrent. All right. You’ve stopped doing them . . . I hope. Now can we get back to work?”
    There was a long pause, then Wolf commented in the same dry tones he’d been using before. “You are frustrating at times, aren’t you?”
    She grinned at him. “Sorry, Wolf. I can’t help it; melodrama has that effect on me.”
    “Pest,” he said, his tone not at all affectionate, but then his voice seldom showed what he thought.
    “I try,” she said modestly, and was pleased when his eyes warmed with humor.
    Deciding that the crisis was over, she bounced up and strolled to a bookcase several rows away from the table, out of sight of Wolf to give them both time to calm down and sort things out. Absently, she plucked a book from a nearby shelf. She had started to open it when it whisked itself out of her hands and leapt back on the shelf with a loud thud.
    She stared at it for a minute, then took two quiet steps backward until she could see Wolf, seated half of the room away with his back toward her, muttering to himself as he wrote. There was no one else in the library.
    Carefully, without opening it, she picked up the book again and examined it. Now that she was paying attention, she could see the faint magical aura that was just barely visible woven into the cotton that covered the thin wood that lent the cover its hardness.
    Just to be sure, she took the book to Wolf for inspection.
    “Trapped,” he confirmed, and sent a flash of magic toward the book. A pop, a sharp scent, and a bit of dust floated up and returned to the surface of the book. He opened it and glanced through. “Not a grimoire. Looks like it might be a diary.”
    She sat down with the book—for lack of anything better to do. Rather than a diary, it contained the autobiographical history (exaggerated) of a mediocre king of a long-forgotten realm. As a distraction from the gory details of Wolf’s discourse that kept trying to play themselves out in her head, it ranked right up there with sewing and digging holes in the dirt. She had no idea why anyone would have thought it valuable enough to trap.
    “Wolf,” she said, staring at open pages. Time to ask him rather than trying to figure out what was going on herself.
    “Hmm?”
    “Is there someone besides us in your library?” She kept her tone carefully nonchalant.
    “Hmm,” he said again, and there was a quiet thump as he set his book on the table. Aralorn did the same. “What prompted you to ask?”
    She told him of her odd experiences, leaving out the last incident to spare herself his censure. When she was