The Shape-Changer's Wife (14 page)

“So what did you buy today?” she asked, when she was through with the greatest portion of her food.

He thought of the short gold chain, curled sleepily in its red velvet bag. “Oh, the usual items,” he said. “Rice and sugar and potatoes.”

She shook her head. “Prices are terrible,” she said. “Farmers lost crops in the drought, I know it, but they think they can charge the townspeople absolutely anything they want. We grow our own crops a few miles outside of town, and lucky for us! I don't think we could afford to keep our doors open if we had to buy at market prices.”

“I know very little about pricing vegetables,” Aubrey said.

“Oh, we used to run a stall in the market, back before my pa had the tavern,” Veryl said. “Mostly fruit and corn, but then we started growing wheat when Pa bought up old man Russet's farm. I didn't work in the fields—Pa hired boys to do that—but I sure worked at the market, I can tell you. Bright and early! Setting up the awning, laying out the fruit. Don't let anybody tell you it isn't hard work.”

Aubrey would not have believed that she could talk so much. That anyone could talk so much. All he had to do was murmur an assent now and then, or give a brief answer to a sudden, swift question, and she was off again, chattering away. He kept an expression of interest on his face, but he was wondering how long he would have to sit there listening to her. The exaggerated expressiveness of her face annoyed him, too—she laughed, grimaced, scowled and raised her eyebrows with nearly every sentence, as if she were enacting a pantomime to underscore the sense of her words. Aubrey felt his face muscles grow weary as he kept his smile in place.

“Not easy running around waiting on all the men of the village, either,” she was saying. “But at least it's indoors, so rain or shine doesn't matter a bit! At the market, we were there winter and summer, wet weather or cold. And let me tell you, there were some cold, wet days I stood in the stall selling apples.”

“Veryl!” The call came from the other side of the room—a man's voice, surely her father's. Veryl jumped up and scooped her plate and glass into her hands.

“Looks like lunch is over,” she said, grinning down at Aubrey. “But it was a fun one, wasn't it?”

“Very pleasant,” Aubrey acknowledged. “I'm glad you could join me.”

“Oh, I get an hour off now and then,” she said airily.

“Veryl!” Her father's voice sounded more impatient.

“Next time,” she said, and skipped back toward the kitchen, laughing as she went.

Aubrey quickly drained the last drops of ale from his tankard, laid his money on the table and extricated himself from the booth. As fast as he could manage it without appearing to run, he was back outside and once more on the forest road. He did not want to think about it, so he closed his mind to the implications of the afternoon, but he knew at least one thing for certain: He might return to town again and again; he might come for supplies or drop in for companionship; he might even spend another thirty minutes listening to the tavernkeeper's daughter telling him the story of her life. But there was nothing here that held any lasting appeal for him, nothing here he cared much about—nothing that could lure him from Glyrenden's cold gray fortress for more than an afternoon or make him forget its inhabitants even for an hour.

 

 

THAT NIGHT AT dinner, Aubrey gave the necklace to Lilith. Orion had already finished his portion and lumbered back to his corner to sleep. Arachne was cleaning around them, clucking and hissing at the mess they had made. Once, as Lilith reached out for her glass, Arachne's hand slammed down on the table beside it, causing Lilith to pause just a moment before she picked up her honeyed milk.

“A fly,” Lilith said in unconcern as Aubrey looked over, surprised. “Arachne hates them.”

Aubrey had thought of any number of ways to make this presentation to Lilith, but in the end, they all seemed foolish.
I bought you this lovely gift because you yourself are so lovely. . . I think of you, I dream of you, I want you to remember me
—
take this gift from my hands. . . .
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the red velvet bag.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her across the table. “I bought you something in town.”

Incurious, she took it from him and spilled the contents into her palm. The gold chain uncoiled and preened in her hand. “A necklace,” she said. “Why, thank you, Aubrey.”

“I did a service for a jeweler at the market,” Aubrey said. “He gave me the necklace in return.”

“Shall I wear it now?”

“Oh yes.”

She clasped it around her neck, having a moment of difficulty with the diamond-studded clasp. It lay glittering and incongruous across the dull gray cotton of her high-necked gown. “How does that look?” she asked.

“Very fine,” Aubrey said. It did not; it looked ridiculous and out of place. Yet still Aubrey felt an illicit pleasure in giving this woman a beautiful gift. “I hope you wear it as often as you like.”

She fingered the fine satin length of gold. “Glyrenden might wonder where I got it,” she said.

Aubrey laughed. “I'll tell him I was practicing my shape-changer's skills and that I made it for you from a length of string.”

“Will he believe you?”

“You mean, is that something I am capable of doing?”

“I suppose.”

“Certainly I can. He taught me how himself.”

“Then there is no reason he should not believe you.”

They did not talk about the necklace again that night, or ever, but Aubrey was pleased to see that Lilith wore it every day for a week. One morning, she appeared at the breakfast table without it, and that afternoon Glyrenden returned home. She did not wear it again for two more days, by which time her husband was gone once again.

AUBREY COULD NOT tell if he was glad or sorry when Glyrenden told them that he had only come home for a brief two-day visit. The distrust Glyrenden had inspired in him so early had become a settled and accepted thing, at least in his own mind, and yet he still had great admiration for the older wizard's powers—and an unquenchable desire to learn everything Glyrenden might be willing to teach him. Not only that, he was in love with the shape-changer's wife, which made it difficult for him when Glyrenden appeared at the breakfast table in the guise of a husband. Yet Aubrey, clinging still to rational thought, realized it was no bad thing for him to be reminded now and then that the woman had a husband—for she did have a husband—and when Glyrenden was gone, Aubrey was in danger of forgetting that fact.

So he was able to summon up real dismay when Glyrenden said he would be returning very shortly to the king's palace.

“So soon?” Aubrey questioned. “You are rarely here these days.”

“And will be gone again and yet again in the next month or two, for events move rapidly at court,” the mage replied. He was sorting through bags of crystals and looking up formulas in spellbooks; he seemed abstracted but not irritated by Aubrey's company.

“More shape-changing?” Aubrey asked.

Glyrenden looked over with a smile of excitement. “Not this trip,” he said. “This is one of those times when illusion stands me in better stead than alteration.”

“We have not practiced illusions since I first arrived,” Aubrey said.

Glyrenden laughed. “Have we not? Then you must let me show you a trick or two.”

The wizard strode to the doorway. “Orion! Arachne! Come here a moment. I have need of you.”

Aubrey's eyes widened, for generally Glyrenden invited no one into his study except his apprentice. He misliked the wizard's mood, so maliciously elated, and wondered what was really going on up at the royal court. Not for the first time, he found himself feeling a certain disapproval of the king and his methods.

Orion and Arachne entered, the man behind the woman, neither of them looking pleased to be called. Arachne cast furtive glances around the room, gauging its disorder and dust content; Orion dragged his feet reluctantly across the flagged floor and kept his eyes on Glyrenden's face.

“Don't be so apprehensive, nothing is going to happen to you,” Glyrenden told the big man in a chiding voice. “Just stand there, both of you—just like that. Fine. Try not to move if you can help it. An unattractive pair, aren't they?” the sorcerer continued, scarcely dropping his voice as he turned to address Aubrey. “Does it turn your stomach to take meat from her hands or share the table with him?”

Aubrey was so appalled at the casual cruelty, he scarcely knew how to answer. “No! I mean—they look fine to me,” he said lamely. “Not every man or woman is beautiful.”

“But magic could make them so,” Glyrenden said. “
I
could have made them so. I can make them beautiful now. Watch.”

The wizard had lifted his hands as he spoke; now, with a single liquid motion, he flicked his fingers in the air and dropped his hands. Both fascinated and repulsed, Aubrey kept his attention on the two servants. For a moment, their faces seemed to waver, or to take on a faint, luminescent glow; and then the haze evaporated and he could see them clearly again. Or perhaps not . . .

Orion's massive, hairy face had been remodeled, slimmed down; he still had wide cheeks and a large forehead, but he looked like any other brawny, full-bearded man of moderate intelligence. Arachne's small, angry countenance had smoothed out and warmed up. Her white hair had been pulled back and given an attractive golden sheen. Like Orion, she resembled any other peasant one might pass on the road—not lovely, certainly, but hardly extraordinary. Not at all strange.

“What have you done?” Aubrey asked, as much in fear as wonder.

“Oh, merely a little sleight of hand,” was the negligent reply. “A deception, not a transformation. You see?” Glyrenden spread his fingers again, and the illusion vanished. Back in their familiar shapes were the two homely creatures, still waiting patiently to do whatever their master bid them. Glyrenden smiled. “A momentary aberration only. You may go now,” he said, addressing his servants, and the man and woman left the room.

“Most impressive,” Aubrey said, because he must say something. “You are as good at that as you are at everything.”

Glyrenden laughed again, almost indulgently, it seemed. “Oh, I prefer out-and-out alchemy,” he said, “but there are many instances in which it is not appropriate. Then again, you would be surprised at how many people believe an illusion, even when the illusion is ripped away. They are as likely to believe that the false face is the true one and that the true one is the one that has been bewitched.”

“How is one ever to know the difference, then?” Aubrey asked, keeping his voice even.

Glyrenden spread his hands as if to signify that he did not know. “And does it matter?” he asked softly. “When disguise is preferable to the hard bare bones of reality?”

“It matters,” Aubrey said.

“You had best be prepared for some unpleasant surprises if you constantly seek the kernel of truth,” Glyrenden advised.

“But magic is founded on truth,” Aubrey said. “Without an understanding of what a thing really is, it cannot be either uncovered or changed.”

“But the heart of magic is illusion,” Glyrenden said. “And without the cooperation of gullible men, there would be no magic at all.”

 

 

GLYRENDEN WAS GONE by nightfall, but his disturbing words lingered, as did the memory of the masks he had created for the faces of his servants. At the breakfast table the next day, Aubrey found himself still brooding over Glyrenden's demonstration, and watching both Orion and Arachne with closer attention than he had given them for weeks. He was not sure why he was suddenly so intent, what he expected to read in their stubborn, familiar faces. They had not, after all, been permanently altered in Glyrenden's study. They were the same as they had always been—and yet—and yet—

Arachne came around the table one more time with her curious, sideways motion, her arms working so rapidly it almost seemed she had four arms, eight arms; certainly more than her allotted two. Her bleached skin was of the oddest texture, tougher than skin should be, with a faint sheen upon it that was not perspiration. Aubrey looked up at her face, trying to get a glimpse of her eyes, but she was turned away from him, and would not look in his direction. She whispered baleful words at him as she whisked past, the strange garbled sentences making no sense, as they never made any sense.

Orion, as usual, had finished his meal with an indecent haste, then rose to his feet with a slow, unbalanced motion as if the act dizzied him. He shook his head so violently, his whole body trembled; then he gave a great yawn that exposed his large, sharp teeth. No one spoke to him; Aubrey's troubled gaze aroused his anger and he stared back menacingly enough to cause the young man to look away. Orion waited a moment, as if expecting orders. When none came, he shook himself again, then lumbered over to his cot and stretched himself out on it full length. Within minutes, he was asleep.

Together they were a strange woman and a strange man, but as Aubrey stared down at his plate he felt an awful conviction steal over him, and he laid down his fork, no longer hungry. A strange man and a strange woman; but he had been studying the essence of things these past weeks, and he did not think either of them had come into the world human. They had not at the core of themselves the things that humans had; their bodies seemed to have grown all the necessary organs and their faces to have been carved with the right features, but these were not the bodies and the faces they had once owned. They had been changed; and Aubrey knew of only one man in this kingdom who practiced the art of shape-changing.