Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

guardsman glanced at the hawk riding her shoulders and blanched a bit, letting his gaze slide to the safety of her human face. “As you say, Lady. I’ll report to the captain, then return in two candlemarks.” So saying, he started off with suspiciously brisk steps.
    But she must have been wrong about how much her uncle frightened him because he stopped abruptly and turned back. “The Lyon gave me my first sword and taught me to use it.”
    “Me, too,” she said.
    “Luck and the Lady be with you,” he said, then executed an about-face and continued on his way.
    As soon as the guard was out of sight, Wolf trotted to the entrance to the alcove where the Lyon lay in state. He sniffed at it suspiciously.
    “What is it?” asked Aralorn.
    Wolf shifted abruptly to human form, wearing his usual mask to hide his face from her uncle. He ran his fingers carefully over the edge of the entrance.
    “Someone’s attempted the warding,” he said.
    “What?” asked Aralorn. She touched the stone where he had, but she could only feel the power of his wards. The human magic was beyond her ability to decipher for subtleties.
    “Someone started to unwork the wards I set this morning. He left off halfway, as if something interrupted him, or he decided not to go on with it.”
    “Maybe he couldn’t get through,” she suggested.
    He shook his head. “No, he knew what he was doing—he could have dispelled it.”
    “Nevyn?” she suggested.
    He shrugged, then touched the air just in front of the curtain, letting his hands rest on the surface of the warding. “I can’t tell, but it must have been him. Unless there are other mages who live in Lambshold. I wonder if he recognized my work.”
    “Could he?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Irrenna said she was calling on Kisrah for help—though I wouldn’t have thought she could get a message to him so soon,” Aralorn said. “Nevyn is the more likely candidate. As far as I know, there are no other trained mages on my father’s lands right now. I’ll ask around, though.” What if Nevyn figured out Wolf was here?
    “If the wards were not breached, what does it matter?” asked Halven.
    “Wolf is not very popular among the wizards right now,” said Aralorn. Though Geoffrey ae’Magi had disappeared without a trace in a keep filled with hungry Uriah, rumor had attributed his death to his son Cain—who was also her Wolf.
    “Oh Mistress of the Understatement,” murmured Wolf, “I salute you.”
    Her uncle clacked his beak in an irritated fashion and launched off her shoulder, taking human shape as he landed.
    “I know of a human mage that many of the mages are searching for,” he said.
    Aralorn raised her chin, and Halven laughed. “No need to look daggers at me, child. I can hold my tongue. What need have I to please a scruffy lot of bungling human mages?”
    She stared at him, but Wolf, either easier to appease or not as worried, released the warding with a quick gesture of his left hand, saying, “Past time we attended to our immediate business.” He threw back the curtain and exposed the Lyon’s dark chamber to the light from lamps in the mourning room.
    Aralorn’s father lay unchanged upon the bier. Wolf reached into a shadowed area and pulled out his staff from wherever it had been since he left it in the woods. As he took it up, the crystals that grew out of the top flared brightly before settling into a blue-white glow that chased the darkness from the room where the Lyon rested.
    Halven strode through the entrance and Aralorn followed him, leaving Wolf to close the curtains and hide their activities from prying eyes.
    Halven looked closely at the bier for a moment before turning to Aralorn. “I thought you said there was a creature guarding him. I see— by faith !”
    Aralorn twisted around to look toward Wolf also. Against the wall, where there should have been no shadows at all, there was a subtle dimness that oozed slowly down the stone. It was only a little darker than the room itself, almost as if it were her imagination painting monsters. She turned back to Halven and opened her mouth to speak, when her uncle’s rough grip pulled her aside and behind him.
    Wolf, too, had turned to see what caused Halven’s exclamation. The shadow caught his eye just as it touched the floor and abruptly shot forward. It rippled swiftly over the stones, flowing around Wolf on both sides, like a stream of water around a rock—though no part of the shadow touched him. It