Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

Uriah are?” asked Aralorn.
    “Human mages are very good at warping things unnaturally,” said Halven. “Any shapeshifter looking at a Uriah can see the true nature that human magic has perverted. Only a human mage could be so blind as to not understand his own work. Why didn’t you tell him that he’d made your task more difficult?”
    “I would rather the secret of their making die with my father,” Wolf said. “I do not expect that Kisrah would be anything but repelled—but he might tell others or write it down for someone to discover.”
    “Ah,” said Halven. “Sometimes it is a good thing that human mages are so blind, and some knowledge is best lost. But Kisrah’s ignorance has caused you trouble.” Halven sighed. “I had better help you control your magic, Nephew. So much of your magics require balance—of which Kisrah has some, you have little, Gerem has none, and Nevyn has less than that.”
    “He’s in worse shape than I am?” asked Wolf, sounding surprised, but Aralorn thought it was more because Halven named him nephew than her uncle’s assessment of Nevyn.
    Halven laughed. “Nevyn has been broken and badly mended. Your spirit is strong as an oak, wolf-wizard. It may be a bit battered, but as long as you don’t misdirect it, you’ll be fine.” He cocked his head at Aralorn. “There is something different since your marriage. You may be right.”
    “She’s right about what?” asked Wolf.
    “You keep out of this, Uncle,” snapped Aralorn. “Wolf, can we talk of this later?”
    She could have sworn that there was laughter in Wolf’s eyes, but it was gone almost before she saw it. She couldn’t think of anything they’d said that he would find funny.
    “If you’d like,” Wolf said.
    “I can’t do anything about the nature of the sacrifice,” said Halven. “I can’t do anything about Nevyn. But I think I can help you with your magic problem. Aralorn, haven’t you taught him to center?”
    “ I can’t center,” she said, exasperated. “Just how do you expect me to teach someone else? Besides, centering is more of an exercise in ...” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she was going to say.
    “Control.” Her uncle’s voice was smug. “We need someplace warm and private.”
    “We can work in my room,” suggested Aralorn. “That would allow us some privacy and warmth as well.”
    “I’ll meet you there,” said the hawk, taking flight.
    “Wolf,” said Aralorn, once they were alone.
    “Yes?”
    “You haven’t worked black magic since you left your father’s home, have you?”
    “No.”
    Aralorn tilted her face into the sun, though she felt no warmth on her skin. “I don’t know a lot about human magic, but I do know that good seldom comes from evil. I don’t want you to hurt yourself to save my father.”
    “Aralorn,” said Wolf, “you worry too much. I have worked such magic before.”
    “And chose not to do it again, until now.” She turned a rock over with the toe of her boot and kicked it into the snow.
    “This is not your doing, Lady. It is my father’s work.”
    “Would you work black magic if it were not my father?” she asked.
    “Would he be ensorcelled if he weren’t your father?” he returned. “We’d best not keep your uncle waiting. I’ll be all right, Aralorn.”
    Wolf is the only expert I have, thought Aralorn. If he says there will be no harm in it for him . . . He’d never tell her if there was.
    Frowning unhappily, she started back for the castle, with Wolf padding by her side.

    Aralorn lay on the bare floor of her room and reconsidered calling her room warm—without the rugs to cover it, the floor was icy. Halven was taking Wolf through some basic meditation exercises, things she’d learned the first summer she’d spent with him.
    In honor of the lesson, her uncle had taken on the shape of a venerable old man, with a rounded face and belly—someone to inspire confidence, she supposed.
    Wolf, to Aralorn’s surprise, had left the mask off. Halven had already seen the scars, of course—but Wolf used the mask as much for a shield as he did to cover his scars.
    “Now, stop that,” her uncle admonished Wolf, in tones Aralorn would bet tomorrow’s winnings against Falhart that no one had used on Wolf in a very long time, if ever. “I don’t want you to do anything to the wood—just feel it. See the growth patterns, the years where water was hard to come by and the years where it was abundant. Feel the