Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

fifteen, Nevyn should drop unconscious. The first five counts would be the telling ground because after that, he would get weaker fast. Surprise counted for two, then he slammed her against the edge of the door.
    She held on, ignoring the pain for the moment, though she knew that she was going to have a vertical bruise to go with the horizontal one Falhart had given her with his quarterstaff. The second time Nevyn slammed her back, it hurt worse because he managed to catch her howlaa-wounded shoulder on the door, so she bit his ear to distract him. He tried to twist away and stumbled, which would have been all right except that it gave him an idea that she would rather he not have thought of.
    He threw himself backward on the floor, and the air left her lungs with a faint hint of protest.
    Twelve, she thought.
    He managed to bring his shoulders up and smash her head onto the floor.
    Fourteen, plague it, go to sleep .
    He repeated his previous move with such success that Aralorn was starting to feel woozy herself. Luckily, it was the last one he made.
    Lying under him, she waited to catch her breath before sending Nevyn into a more lasting sleep with the dregs of her magic. She’d never have been able to do it with him awake.
    Should have just hit him over the head, she thought when she was finished, and touched her bottom lip gently with her tongue to inspect that damage he’d wrought with the back of his head, so there’s a chance I’d have killed him. I could have lived with that.
    “Aralorn?”
    Nevyn’s body blocked her view of the door, but she knew Kisrah’s voice.
    “I suspect she’s under him somewhere, but she’s small enough that it might take us a while to find her,” observed Gerem a bit shakily.
    “Ha-ha,” she said coldly. “Never tease a person who knows enough about you for blackmail.”
    “Never get grumpy with someone you need to help drag bodies off you,” replied her brother, sounding somewhat calmer after ascertaining that Nevyn was still alive. “What have you done to Nevyn—and why hasn’t Freya woken up?”
    “Sleep spell—not mine. I did Nevyn, though,” she replied, then allowed a touch of whine to her voice. “Want to lever Nevyn off before we have a long conversation? I need to find Wolf and see if he can get a message to my uncle and get him here before Nevyn wakes up. It might also be nice to breathe.”
    “Aralorn?” asked a third voice, right on cue. “You were looking for me?”
    Kisrah and Gerem between them managed to drag poor Nevyn off to the side.
    “I should have known that you couldn’t resist sticking around when things were about to get interesting, Uncle,” said Aralorn, sitting up gingerly: Her head hurt, her back hurt, and her shoulder felt as if she’d been clawed by a howlaa and beaten against the door a couple of times.
    “Actually,” he replied, “I was looking for you. I’ve talked to a few of our elders, and they say that there is no way a dead dreamwalker could do the kinds of things you think Geoffrey ae’Magi has done. I stopped by your room first, but no one was there, so I came here instead.”
    “It wasn’t Geoffrey; it was Nevyn,” said Aralorn.
    “Nevyn?” asked Gerem, sounding hostile. “Nevyn would never hurt Father.”
    “Who are you?” asked Kisrah.
    “Kisrah, meet my uncle Halven—he’s a shapeshifter who’s been trying to help. Uncle Halven, this is Kisrah, the current ae’Magi.” Introductions done, she continued without taking a breath. “Nevyn has a problem,” she said, then stopped. There had to be a way to explain without sounding like a madwoman. Her weak sleep spell wasn’t going to keep him under much longer. She had to make them believe her before he awoke.
    “Nevyn is ill,” said Kisrah, kneeling beside Aralorn. He patted the sleeping man’s shoulder gently. “If I’d thought that he would have harmed anyone but himself, I never would have sent him here. He was half-mad when we took him from Santik. I’d hoped he’d settle down with me, but he was too damaged. I thought that this was the perfect place for him; he’s seemed happy since he came here.”
    “Part of him is,” said Aralorn. “But there is a part of him that is not.”
    “There is an unusual separation of his spirit,” observed her uncle.
    “I think that the part of him that dreamwalks has separated itself almost completely,” Aralorn said. “He was talking about himself as if he were two different