Sianim 01 - Masques

herself as a Lady in distress caused her smile to widen a bit. She still wished for his comforting presence.
    Absently she looked at the meadow and admired the pristine beauty of the untouched snow that gleamed subtly with all the colors of a rainbow, more startling because of the dark, dense forest surrounding it. She was deciding whether it was worth crossing the meadow to the river that ran on the other side or if she ought to head up the steep and muddy side hill and circle around back to camp when she noticed that there was something odd about the peaceful meadow.
    She stiffened at the same time that Sheen noticed them.
    “Yawan,” she whispered.
    The filthy word described exactly the way she felt. Stupid, stupid to have missed them when in front of her the whole meadow was moving slowly. The covering of deep snow completely masked their scent, or maybe the cold kept them from rotting. Whatever the case, not two feet in front of her a Uriah rose from its snowy bed. It wasn’t the only one. There must have been at least a hundred of the defiled things, and though none of them was on its feet, their heads were turning toward her. She had never in her life seen so many in one place—or even heard of such a thing.
    The path behind was no escape. The slick mud would slow Sheen much more than it would the Uriah. Cold slowed them, but not enough. The best ways to stop them were fire and running water. There were no fires around that she could see, but running water there was aplenty.
    All this took less than a second to run through her head. She squeezed Sheen with her knees, and bless his warrior’s heart, he plowed right into the meadow filled with moving mounds of snow. The Uriah howled, and Sheen redoubled his speed, leaping and dodging the creatures. One of them stood up reaching for the reins. Aralorn shot it in the eye with a bolt from the crossbow. It reeled back but recovered enough to catch Aralorn’s stirrup. Desperately she hit it hard with the butt of the crossbow, breaking the arm off the body at the shoulder. Sheen struck it with his hind feet as it fell.
    The cold must have had a greater effect on their speed than she thought it would, because—much to her surprise—Aralorn made it to the ice-edged river while the Uriah were still sluggish. Sheen protested the cold water with a grunt when he hit, but struck out strongly for the other side. Aralorn took a good grip on Sheen’s mane and lay flat on the fast-running surface, letting the water take most of her weight.
    The river was deep and swift, but narrow. The horse towed Aralorn to the far bank without mishap. The current had swept them far enough downstream that the Uriah were no longer in sight, but she thought that she could hear them above the rush of the water. When she turned back to mount again, she noticed that the arm she’d severed from the Uriah still held fast to her stirrup.
    There was a story about a man who kept a finger from a Uriah’s hand for a trophy of war. Ten years later the Uriah who owned the finger showed up on the man’s doorstep. Aralorn didn’t believe that story, she told herself. Not really. She just wasn’t enthusiastic about riding around with a hand attached to her saddle.
    Aralorn pried at it with grim haste. The thing was strangely stubborn, so she finally used an arrow as a lever to pull it away. As she worked she noticed that it wore a ring of heavy gold on a raggedly clawed finger—stolen from some poor victim, she supposed. Ren would be fascinated—Uriah were not generally looters; their primary interest was food.
    She threw the arm and its ring in the river and watched in some satisfaction as it disappeared in the depths. She reloaded the crossbow from habit; it obviously wasn’t much good against Uriah. Mounting Sheen, she headed in the general direction of camp, hoping that there would be a good ford over the river between here and there.
    Uriah, normal Uriah, never came where it was cold. Never. But the ae’Magi had Uriah who were—how had Wolf phrased it?—pets. A hundred of them? Ren was fond of saying that it was futile to argue with your own eyes. A hundred of them, then.
    The only thing that Uriah who were the ae’Magi’s pets could be after was Myr—assuming that Wolf was correct in labeling them servants of the ae’Magi. They had obviously been caught by the storm and incapacitated by the sudden cold. Given when the storm had hit, if the snow hadn’t stopped them, they would