Sianim 01 - Masques

swan makes, only deeper. I was on watch, and it wasn’t loud enough to wake anyone else up. Something big flew over us, but I couldn’t quite see it. Afterward, I saw a flash of golden fire down here and heard the Uriah step up their noise. Then it quieted down. I woke up a couple others, and we finally decided that we’d best wait until we had light to see what had happened.” He frowned, evidently still unhappy with that decision. “It was just that whatever it was—from the quiet that followed—it had already happened.”
    Myr nodded at him. “Sensible and smart to wait until you could see, especially with Uriah running around.”
    Farsi looked like someone had pulled a weight off his shoulders. “This morning, it looked like the Uriah had left, so we started home. The reason it took us so long to get here is that there are still a lot of Uriah scattered about. We were dodging two parties of the things, when we almost ran into a third. It’s a good thing that they smell so bad, or we wouldn’t have made it back at all.”

    Over the next few days it became obvious that if the Uriah had been held in concert by the will of the ae’Magi, that was no longer true. It didn’t make them any less dangerous individually, but it did make it possible to kill them in small groups.
    Wolf, when appealed to, produced a detailed map of the area on sheepskin, which was hung on a wall of the central chamber. Aralorn suspected he’d made it himself, either with magic or by hand, because it was accurate, with very specific landmarks. At Myr’s command, any sightings of Uriah were recorded on the map, giving them a rough idea where the things were.
    Each group of hunters had a copy of the map, and if they ran into a group of Uriah, they would lead them to one of the traps Myr had placed in strategic places. The Uriah were slowed enough by the cold of the deepening fall that the humans could outrun them most of the time, especially since they were careful to go out only when it was coldest.
    Haris suggested an adaptation of a traditional castle defense and created a tar trap that was one of the most effective of their traps. The easiest way to kill a Uriah was with fire, so pots of tar were hung here and there, kept warm by magic. Ropes were carefully rigged so that they would not easily be tripped by wild animals. When they were pulled, the pots tipped over, and the motion triggered a secondary spell—something Haris cooked up—that set the tar on fire—dousing the Uriah with flaming tar. The spells on the traps were simple enough that everybody, except for Myr, could do them after a little coaching from Wolf and Haris.
    Aralorn watched the small group of refugees become a close-knit community, the grumblers fewer. Every evening, they would all sit down and talk. Complaints and suggestions were heard and decided upon by Myr. Looking at the scruffy bunch of peasants (the nobles, by that time, blended right in with the rest) consulting with their equally scruffy king, Aralorn compared it with the Rethian Grand Council that met once a year, and she hid a grin at the contrast.
    Having an enemy they could fight—and defeat—put heart in them all. Even Aralorn, who understood that the Uriah were in truth a minor annoyance. Their real enemy, the ae’Magi, was out there somewhere—and he knew where they were. She suspected he was biding his time. The snow wasn’t accumulating yet, but it had become common to see a white coat on the dirt most mornings. A smart general didn’t attack the Northlands in the heart of winter but waited for spring.
    Only Wolf was excluded from the camaraderie, by his own choice. He made them nervous, with his macabre voice and silver mask. Once he saw that they were intimidated by him, he went out of his way to make them more so. Sleeping somewhere deep in the caverns and spending most of his waking time in the library, he was seldom with the main body of the camp. Usually, he attended the nightly sessions with everyone else, but he kept his own counsel in the shadows of the caves’ recesses unless Myr asked him a question directly.
    Most mornings Aralorn spent entertaining the children. Occasionally, she went out with a hunting party—or alone to exercise Sheen and check the traps. The afternoons she spent in the library with Wolf, keeping him company and reading as many books as she could.
    The nights she spent in the library as well, for she was still having nightmares and didn’t want