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 people.”
“I’ve heard that green mages are great healers,” said Kisrah diffidently. “Is there anything that you can do to help him?”
He’d taken the right tone; Halven preened before the respect in the Archmage’s voice. “Since I can see the damage, I might be able to do something,” he said. Graciously, he half bowed to Aralorn. “I think you’re right. It’s the dreamwalking part of him that has split off from his spirit. What is broken can be mended together again—as long as the cause for the break is gone.”
“Santik is dead, and so is Geoffrey,” said Aralorn in answer.
She got to her feet and backed away so that Halven and Kisrah could have free access to Nevyn.
It was over, she thought. Nevyn had been certain that Wolf could free her father. But as his words came back to her, the relief she’d been feeling stopped.
“Human death,” she said.
The two mages were involved in their discussion over Nevyn, but Gerem said, “What?”
Halven had said Wolf hadn’t been in her room.
“Gods,” she said. And she’d been so grateful there were no more secrets between them while she was fighting the howlaa because after her probable demise, Wolf would know exactly how she had felt about him. She could see now how careful he’d been to clear up any misunderstanding that might lie between them, any regrets or doubts that she might have.
If Nevyn knew that it would take a human sacrifice, Wolf did as well.
“Aralorn?” Gerem touched her arm. “What is it?”
Wolf knew, and, like Nevyn, he’d chosen a sacrifice. If Nevyn had realized just who Wolf had picked, he wouldn’t have tried to kill Gerem.
“He told me three times,” she said softly. “He said he loved me, three times.”
“Aralorn?” asked Gerem again.
She didn’t bother to answer but bolted out the door and sprinted down the hall. She took the stairs in leaping strides, ignoring the danger of falling, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, which throbbed in time with her steps.
The great hall was dark, and there was no sign of light behind the alcove curtain, but Aralorn felt the richness of magic at work.
She threw back the curtains and stepped into the darkness, only then feeling the wrongness of the power. It slid across her skin like thick, filthy oil. A moment later, the full effect of the tainted magic hit her as strongly as any fear spell she’d ever felt, leaving her unable to take a step forward for the sheer terror of what lay ahead.
It didn’t feel like a fear spell, though, so she had no antidote for its effects. Perhaps it was a side effect of the magic Wolf was working. As she hesitated in the darkness, fighting the urge to turn tail and run, she could feel the surge of power, and the corruption of the magic grew stronger.
“Deathsgate and back, Wolf,” she said, managing to put one foot in front of the other once, then again, until she stood on the far side of the darkness. “I warned you.”
He stood behind her father, who was covered with markings. Wolf’s scarred face was almost as masklike as the silver one. He touched the side of the Lyon’s face with the first finger of each hand as his macabre voice chanted words in a language she’d never heard. His staff, balanced upright on the claws on its base, glowed radiantly from just behind his right shoulder. Lights and shadows fought for his face so it was unevenly illuminated.