“Aurian?” Schiannath gasped. “But how—”
The stranger was scowling, “Who else?” he barked, “We can waste time with pleasantries later. Show us die way to the tower that your sister mentioned.” Turning on his heel, he sprang in one fluid motion to the back of the great black stallion that was Phalihas in equine form.
“What do you think of the new Herdlord, then?” Chiamh chuckled softly in Schiannath’s ear.
He turned to gape at the Windeye, “That is the new Herdlord? He defeated Phalihas? Light of the Goddess-how did it happen?”
Chiamh shrugged. “We live in strange and momentous times, my friend—and as well for you that we do! At least, by the grace of Parric, you and Iscalda are no longer exiled.”
“Are you two going to stand there talking all bloody year?” roared the new Herdlord. With a guilty start, Schiannath remembered Aurian, at the mercy of the wolves. Wasting no more time, he changed back into the shape of a great, dark gray horse. Waiting only for Iscalda to leap onto his back, he set off at a gallop, back toward the pass.
Aurian awoke. An obscure, bitter darkness clouded the edges of her mind like the dregs of a nightmare beyond recollection. She had no wish to remember. Her mind was numb, registering only the simple, immediate messages of her senses: the dank, mildewy smell of the tower room; the rough walls of gray stone stained black with soot above the bracket where a torch burned with a fitful, smoky flame. The dying embers in the hearth, like a scattering of rubies. Pain, discomfort, and an urgent need to relieve herself.
The Mage struggled across the chamber to the drafty drain in the corner, still carefully guarding the numbness in her mind. She mustn’t think—not yet. To think would send her over the precipice of madness . . .
Using the wall as a support, Aurian made her way to the hearth, where a bowl of water was keeping warm in the ashes, and cloths to cleanse herself lay nearby. Methodically, Aurian healed the damage to her body, concentrating hard upon the task. It was difficult. She was still very weak, and the effort left her drained and shaking. Only then did it suddenly come home to the Mage that her powers had returned. With a cry of triumph, she leapt up, ignoring her staggering feet, and launched a bolt of fire at the ceiling to explode in a vivid shower of sparks. Oh, the sheer, breathless, glorious relief! Laughing and crying for joy, she followed her starburst with a blue fireball, another in red, then a green, juggling the spheres of incandescent light as she had done when she was a child.
Only exhaustion limited her exuberant display. Aurian sank to her knees on the cooling hearth, belatedly wondering where everyone was. Concern overshadowed her triumph. Whether the battle with the guards had been won or lost, surely Nereni should have been here! And who had removed the Prince’s body, and washed her chamber clean of blood? As soon as she caught her breath, she would investigate . . .
From the nest of cloaks where she had been sleeping came a muted whine. Aurian froze, appalled; the hand that had so joyously loosed her magic clenched in a white-boned knot. Oh Gods! It had been no nightmare: she had known that from the start—but to face it now, so soon . . .
It came again—the fretful whimper of an animal in distress. The sound, too urgent to be ignored, stabbed like a knife into her heart. The Mage braced herself, walked slowly across to the makeshift bed, and looked down at her son. Her breath congealed in her throat.
He was tiny. Small, pathetic, and bedraggled; his eyes sealed shut like all newborn wolf cubs, his body covered in dark gray fuzz. He crawled weakly in a blind circle, whimpering, seeking the lost warmth of Aurian’s body. The Mage, responding automatically to his helplessness, reached out a hand toward the cub ... It hovered, trembling, just above his body. She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t. Anger scoured through her: rage and grief and gray despair. Was this what she had carried beneath her heart through long months of struggle and anguish? Was it for this that she had lost her powers, when she needed them? Was this blind, mewling scrap of fur her sole legacy of the love that she and Forral had shared? It was all too much for her. Retching, shaking, sick to her very soul, Aurian turned away ... And, for the first time since he had left the haven of her body, she felt the bright, tentative touch of the child-mind on her own. He was cold. Cold and lost and blind and hungry—and human. Human! Aurian had known wolves from her childhood, and these were not wolf thoughts. Not animal thoughts at all. His body might be that of a wolf cub, but his mind was the mind of her son. Her son!
“My baby!” Aurian’s voice broke on the words as she lifted the wolfling, cradling him to the warmth of her body. Warm tears of relief flooded her face. His joy, the joy of her son, flooded her mind as at last he found his mother. Gods, but he was cold! And no wonder! Aurian, appalled by her neglect and suddenly fiercely protective, was galvanized into action. Cradling her son close, she crossed to the dying fire. Feverishly she hurled logs into the fireplace with her free hand and ignited them with a quick-hurled fireball, feeling again the incandescent blaze of joy as her newly recovered power surged through her. Then she returned to her bed and sat down, awkwardly pulling one of the cloaks around her shoulders. How could she not have noticed before how cold the room had become? Hunger. Ravenous hunger pulsed from the thoughts of her child, and for a moment Aurian hesitated, at a loss. This business of motherhood was all new to her. But the child was hungry . . . Aurian shrugged, and put her son to her breast. Well, she thought, I expect we’ll learn together . . .
It was a struggle, but the instinct to feed was strong in the wolfling, and Aurian, with her Healing magic, could adapt herself a little. They managed eventually, helped by their unique mind-bond, and the deeper bond of love that lay between them. Aurian looked down at the cub as he fed. Little wolf, she thought, remembering an old childhood tale that Forral had told her; about a Mage-child who had lost his parents in the wildwood, and had been reared by wolves. He had gone on to become a mighty hero, and his name, in the Old Speech, had been Irachann—the Wolf. Aurian smiled wryly to herself at the way the tale had been reversed. Irachann, she decided. I’ll call him Wolf. The cub had fallen asleep in her arms. As the Mage sat, looking down at him, she cast her mind back over the confusing welter of events that had attended his birth. The wolf, she thought, remembering the great gray shape that had leapt, snarling, across her chamber. It was the wolf that saved me from Miathan, when it tore out Harihn’s throat. But surely, before the wolf had come to her aid, she had heard her child’s first cry—the thin, unmistakable wail of a human infant! And she remembered—oh, now she remembered Nereni’s voice crying “A boy!”
The Mage recalled the day of her capture, when Miathan, in Harihn’s body, had revealed that her child was cursed.
“When it is born,” he had said, “you will beg me to kill it.”
Aurian swore viciously as the meaning of those words became all too clear. Her child had been born human—before she’d seen the wolf. Forral’s son had taken the shape of the beast. So that was the nature of Miathan’s curse! There must be a way to change him back. But though Aurian tried and tried, probing the tiny cub with her Healer’s sense, the child remained in the shape of a wolf. I will change him back, though, Aurian thought. When Miathan cursed Wolf, he had the power of the Caldron to draw on. Once I regain the Staff of Earth . . . Her thoughts flew to Anvar and Shia. How could she have forgotten them? Aurian tried to reach out with her mind to her missing friends, but to her dismay she could not find an echo of response, no matter how hard she tried.
She was interrupted in her attempts at communication by the sound of a sudden commotion in the room downstairs. Not more fighting, surely? Carefully placing the cub back in its nest of blankets, Aurian ran to the door—and as she opened it, it suddenly struck her that she was free. Miraculously, unbelievably free! At last she could leave this hated chamber, and never have to look on it again!