Warned by the brief shadow she caused when she ran in front of the fire, Edom turned—sweeping aside her rush with his sword arm, but not before she raked his back with her formidable claws. Hissing, she faced him as she crouched between him and Wolf, still held captive on the ground.
Pale sword and paler cat feinted back and forth: she, just out of reach of the lethal blade; he, careful not to expose himself to the poisonous fangs of the icelynx.
Suddenly, Edom spoke softly as if not to antagonize the cat, though his tone carried anxious desperation. “It’s Aralorn. She’s a shapeshifter, don’t you see it? She’s here to destroy us, betray us. I came up to ask Wolf about something, and I found her here, with Wolf like that. You’ve all heard of the arcane practices of shapeshifters. Help me before she kills him. Quick now.”
Aralorn didn’t have to look to see what her nose had belatedly informed her. A half dozen armed people from camp had just shown up to rescue the wrong person. They were too far to do anything—yet. It wouldn’t take them long to reach her.
She couldn’t speak when in animal form without more preparation—which she was too busy to do—and so was without her most formidable weapon.
Edom continued, even as he tried to maneuver closer to Wolf. “I’ve heard that shapeshifters need to kill when the moon is full. I guess that Wolf, out here alone, seemed an easy victim. I found this sword near, it must be Wolf’s. She seems afraid of it.”
Aralorn knew that she had to do something before the time to act was gone entirely. If he succeeded, Wolf would be dead. Disregarding the sword, she leapt at his throat while Edom was still distracted by the sound of his own voice.
She missed as he threw himself flat on the ground. However, Edom managed to nick her with the sword as she passed him. Her rear leg became icily numb and folded underneath her, but worse was the strange sucking sensation that consumed her. The sword was alive, and it was hungry.
Edom quickly regained his feet. On three legs, fighting the pull of the sword, she didn’t have much of a chance. Aralorn watched as the sword descended.
Abruptly, it was jerked out of its intended path. Aralorn could feel the sword’s intense disappointment as Edom was suddenly consumed in flames. The smell of burning flesh offended her feline-sensitive nose almost as much as the light bothered her nocturnal eyes.
Apparently, someone—she found out later that it was Stanis—had finally thought to remove the ropes holding Wolf down. The spells that allowed the ropes to hold him unable to move or work magic didn’t keep someone from simply pulling them off.
Wolf did a more thorough job of burning Edom than was absolutely necessary, but then it must have been maddening to lie there and know what was going on without being able to do anything about it.
She yowled at him demandingly. With her leg numb and the odd dizziness that accompanied the wound, she was stuck where she was—too close to the flames. He also made her nervous, putting so much effort into burning a dead body. He needed a distraction. When the yowl didn’t do it, she rolled until she could bite him on the ankle, hard enough that he could feel it, but not hard enough to release the venom in the glands underneath her fangs.
Abruptly, she was gathered up and set gently down on his bedroll. Wolf grabbed his staff from wherever he put it when he wasn’t using it and balanced it on its feet so that he could examine her wound in more certain light. She noticed with interest that the rest of the camp was staying well away from them. Well, Wolf’s pyrotechnics had been pretty impressive.
Wolf traced a quick design over the wound with a finger; Aralorn decided that it was to break the sword’s hold rather than close the wound, since human magic-users were not the best healers. Nothing seemed to change. He frowned and traced it again, and this time she could feel the power that he used. Still nothing happened. She meowed at him nervously. He ignored her and chanted a few words.
Abruptly he stood and looked toward the crispy skeleton that was all that was left of Edom. Aralorn rolled to stand shakily on her three good legs to see what he was looking at. At first she didn’t see it, but a flicker of movement caught her eye. It was the sword. Edom, or the thing that was Edom, had kept its grip on the sword. Now it lay a good foot away from the body. Except for the flicker that caught her eye at first, she hadn’t seen it move again—but it was undeniably closer to her than it had been when she’d first seen it.
The coldness that numbed her leg seemed abruptly to be spreading. It could have been her imagination, spurred by the thought that the sword was coming for her. Aralorn lost her precarious balance and fell, missing exactly what Wolf did.
With a harsh, almost human cry of anguish that she heard only partly though her ears, the sword broke. Abruptly, the numbness ceased, and for a brief moment the pain made her wish it back; then it was only a small cut that bled a little.
The icelynx twitched its stubby tail and exploded to its feet with legendary speed. When she was sure all her legs were working, Aralorn arched purring against Wolf, who was still kneeling beside the blankets.
When she’d stood, she heard someone cry out, reminding her that there was an audience. Looking at all the fear and hostility in the surrounding faces, Aralorn decided that it might defuse matters if they weren’t being reminded that she was a shapeshifter. She transformed herself into her usual shape and dusted off the innkeeper’s son’s tunic that was looking the worse from her roll down the wet hillside. Surreptitiously, she kept a close eye on the others. She’d expected them to be worried about her, but they were all staring at Wolf.
He had furnished an excellent display of what happens when a wizard with his strength lost his temper. They all must have known that he was powerful, but knowing something and seeing it were different matters.
Most people also lacked the casual acceptance of gore that mercenaries had. It didn’t help that Wolf didn’t wear his mask to sleep in, and his horribly scarred visage had been clearly revealed in the flaring light. He wore his mask now, but the knowledge of what lay underneath it was with them all. What was really needed at that moment was someone to take control.
Aralorn looked around to see if she could find Myr, but he was conspicuous by his absence. There was always the possibility that he was still asleep, unaffected by the magic disturbance that had waked the rest of the camp; but, given what she knew about him, Aralorn thought that unlikely. The noise alone should have brought him out.
As the thought crossed her mind, Myr—his clothes covered with bits of brush and blood—took the same path down the side of the hill that she had. Plague it. She must have woken him up when she went to check on the horses. If he’d been following her around, there was a good chance that he thought that she’d been the one who murdered the guards. As she had not been trying to hide anything, her footprints would be much more conspicuous than Edom’s.
Myr ignored the commotion in favor of investigating the blackened corpse. Aralorn wondered how much he hoped to learn from the scorched, skeletal remains, and suspected he was using the time to think. When he stood up, he seemed slightly paler, though it could have been a trick of the light.
Composedly, he directed his question at Wolf. “Who was it?”
“Edom,” answered Wolf, his chilling voice even rougher than usual. If Wolf’s hand hadn’t been locked on her shoulder with a bruising grip, Aralorn would have thought him unaffected by the events of the night. It was obvious from the incredulous looks they directed at Wolf that most in the little gathering were disturbed by his calmness.
“Is he the victim or the attacker?” asked Myr, voicing the question that was on almost everyone’s mind.