The Shape-Changer's Wife (19 page)

He saw her lips shape themselves to ask, Who? but then she remembered. “I would not wish you to go just because you love me,” she said.

He had no answer for that, but the cool reply strangely enough did not discourage him. He thought, if anything, she was faintly pleased by his declaration; but he knew better than to press his suit.

Instead, during the long walk home, he asked her the question he had wanted to ask for so long. He did not know how she would react to the inquiry, so he approached it obliquely, with another question.

“Will she be all right, do you think?” he said first.

“Will who be all right?” Lilith asked.

“Eve.”

Lilith shrugged. “She will not be happy. She will not be tame. I don't think she will die of him, but I can't be sure. It looks as though she will survive the day, at any rate.”

Aubrey looked away from her to study the overgrown path before them, which—with their constant traveling—had come to resemble a trail again. “She is a doe, of course,” he said calmly, “or a fawn, rather. Very young. And I have learned the truth about Arachne and Orion, or I think I have. But you are still a mystery. I have studied the shapes of all the animals in the kingdom and not one of them reminds me of you. What is it that you really are?”

For a moment she did not answer, and he thought she might not tell him—or, even more unlikely, did not know. Then she said, and her voice was dreamy, “In all this kingdom, there is only one place that I love and one place that I would consider beautiful. It is called the King's Grove, and in it is planted one of every kind of tree that grows. No man is allowed to hunt there, no gardener to prune, and when the wind comes through on a summer evening the singing of the mingled leaves is a chorus so sweet that even the birds pause to listen. The scent of cedar blends with the fragrance of the blossoms on the fruit trees, and the white of the birch is no more beautiful than the heavy auburn of the elm. When the leaves are silent, there is no sound at all, and the only word is the echo of the name for peace.”

And then he knew. He looked at her again and saw not the smooth brown hair and the coarse gray gown, but a long full shape, limber and graceful and arched against the sun.

“A willow,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied.

 

 

TWO DAYS LATER, early in the morning, Aubrey was awakened by an urgent knocking at his bedroom door. “Just a minute!” he called out, dragging himself from his bed and pulling on a threadbare robe. He could not recall a time during the months he had stayed in this house that someone had summoned him early from bed.

Lilith stood outside the door, already dressed in one of her gray gowns. “Come quickly,” she said. He had rarely seen her so stirred up; a wash of color accentuated the line of her cheekbones.

“What is it?” he demanded, following her down the steep steps.

“Eve,” she replied. “Hurry.”

They found the young girl in the last place Aubrey would have expected—Glyrenden's study. She lay on the floor, curled tightly in upon herself, moaning piteously. Her glossy hair was spread in tangled disarray over the stone floor; her nightdress was torn and twisted around her body. Arachne stood to one side of her, whispering under her breath. The room smelled unpleasantly of vomit—and something else even more malevolent.

Aubrey dropped instantly beside the girl. “What happened?” he asked.

“I don't know. Arachne found her a few minutes ago and came to get me.”

Aubrey touched the colorless face, then ran his fingers lightly down from the girl's throat to her abdomen. “Poison,” he said grimly. “One of Glyrenden's mixtures, no doubt.”

“Can you help her?” Lilith asked.

“I don't know. It depends on what she's taken.” He looked up at her. “Where's Glyrenden?”

She gestured. “Gone. In the middle of the night. I don't know where or for how long.”

Aubrey nodded and rose to his feet. “Heat some milk,” he directed Arachne. “And some water. We'll want to clean her up.”

Lilith left with Arachne. Aubrey prowled the magician's study, looking for clues. They were not hard to find. Eve had apparently crept down to the magician's room as soon as he left, and put together a mixture of whatever potions were easiest to hand. She had left the jars standing open on the table, some of their contents spilled nearby. Aubrey tasted and identified each one: rue, belladonna, curare, and a handful of ensorcelled herbs, given more potency by magic. Any one of these would have been enough to kill the girl, but she had mixed too well—they had reacted against each other and made her so ill she could not keep them in her body. Her eagerness to die had no doubt saved her life.

Nonetheless, some of the toxin was still seething through her blood; her continued pain made that obvious. Glyrenden was not the kind of man to accidentally drink his own poisons, nor to administer them and then regret, so he had not bothered to brew antidotes for any of the deadly potions on his shelves. Aubrey worked quickly, combining ingredients for the cures he knew, guessing at the ones he didn't.

Arachne entered behind him, carrying a kettle of hot milk. “Set it there,” Aubrey said. “And I'll need a clean glass, and a spoon—yes, thank you.”

Lilith had returned at Arachne's heels, bringing towels and a pail of water. She had a clean muslin nightgown thrown over one shoulder.

“Will she be ill again?” the wizard's wife asked practically. “I don't want to ruin another nightdress.”

“No, I don't think so,” Aubrey said. “I think the chemicals have already been absorbed too far into her system. Now we have to counteract them, not expel them.”

Lilith nodded and knelt at the girl's side. Aubrey, mixing the hot milk into his desperate concoction, spared a moment to watch Lilith work. As he might have expected, she was neither distressed nor repulsed by the sick and filthy girl; she took the brown head onto her lap and began wiping away the vomit and spittle. What surprised Aubrey was her gentleness, what he would even call tenderness if he did not know better. Eve cried out once sharply, when Lilith began to unbutton the collar of her nightgown.

“Ssh,” Lilith said, her voice almost a croon. “Ssh, now. You will be all right. You'll see. It is not as bad as you think.”

No, it's worse,
Aubrey thought, turning back to his stirring. He had never known Lilith to lie before, even to offer comfort. In fact, he had never known Lilith to offer comfort. He felt a small, irrational chill shiver at the base of his neck, and he shook his head to dispel it.

By the time Aubrey's potion was mixed, Lilith had cleaned and changed the girl, even combing out the knotted masses of her hair. Aubrey knelt down and handed Lilith the glass of doctored milk.

“I'll hold her up,” he said, taking Eve into his arms and raising her against his shoulder. “You help her drink.”

Eve resisted, but they managed to pour most of the drugged milk down her throat. She still had not opened her eyes, and she did not seem to be conscious, but she thrashed in Aubrey's arms and uttered intermittent cries of horror. But the potion had its quick effect. Shortly after she swallowed it, she calmed a little. Her body relaxed and she seemed to tumble down the precipice of sleep.

“Now what will happen?” Lilith asked.

“Now I don't know,” Aubrey said. “I am only guessing with all of this.”

“Can we move her somewhere more comfortable?”

“Yes.”

Aubrey rose with Eve in his arms and carried her back to the kitchen. It was the warmest room in the house, the place where they could all hover round and watch her. Orion had made up a bed for her on a cot by the stove, and Aubrey laid her there gently. She turned to her side and did not move again.

“Sick,” Orion said.

“Very sick,” Aubrey agreed. “But we hope she will get better.”

“We should have Arachne clean the study,” Lilith said. “Before he gets home.”

“We'd best do it ourselves,” Aubrey said. “I would not like to leave any signs of Eve's trespassing.”

So they got more buckets of water and a handful of rags and returned to the sour-smelling study. They had worked about half an hour in silence when Lilith spoke.

“What will happen to her?”

“She will be sick a day or two, and she will have to eat easy things, like soup and bread. And then she should be all right.”

Lilith looked over at Aubrey sorrowfully. She stood across the room from him, the very picture of a domestic servant—her dark hair piled on her head, her gray skirt hitched up, a wet rag wrapped around both hands. And yet she did not look humble or ridiculous to Aubrey.

“No,” she said. “What will happen to her, Aubrey? While she continues to live in this house?”

He felt that stone in his stomach grow heavier. “What will happen to any of you?” he asked in turn.

Lilith gestured and laid aside her cloth. “For the rest of us, it does not matter so much,” she said. “Arachne and Orion he does not trouble. They were not formed for his pleasure, merely for his amusement. He created them but he leaves them alone.”

“And for you? How can you say it does not matter?”

She shrugged. “It is not the same,” she said. “I have no instinctual terror at the touch of a man's hand. I was not born hating and distrusting men—I was brought into the world with no thought of them at all. But for her it is different. It is worse. And she is so much younger. And I have had time to grow used to him.”

“What are you saying?” he said. “What are you asking me to do?”

She shook her head. “There is nothing you can do,” she said. “I know that. Or you would.”

And his stomach lurched again. He carefully set down the tiny glass jar he had been wiping clean; it was too heavy for him to hold. “I would,” he said. “I would.”

She sighed and sat down where she had stood, appearing, for the first time since he had known her, weary, discouraged and sad. Human. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “we should have let her die.”

“She probably would not have died with the toxins she had taken. She just would have suffered longer before she recovered.”

“Then perhaps you should have given her the drugs she wanted instead of the drugs that would allow her to heal.”

He stepped around the damp places where he had mopped, and settled himself beside Lilith on the floor. “I have never killed a human being,” he said slowly. “I don't know if I could do it.”

“She has the shape of a woman, but she is not a woman. You would kill a deer for food.”

“For food,” he agreed. “But not—not—” He gestured, unable to complete the sentence.

“If you came across a doe wounded in the woods, and you could not save her, you would kill her,” Lilith said swiftly. “It is the same thing.”

“It may be the same thing,” he said, “but I cannot give her the potions that will let her die.” He was silent a moment, thinking.

“I came to magic,” he said at last, “with joy. I thought it was a splendid thing to take the well of power that I found within me and shape it to marvelous uses. I learned to call up wind and control fire, to draw flowers from barren soil and divert rain to the desert. I learned to exorcise madness from men's brains and to banish illness from their blood. I can create illusions, I can make a scrying crystal give me visions that are literal, that are true. And everything I learned made me happy—made others happy. And that is what I learned magic for.

“But magic, I have discovered, it like any skill. It is not inherently good in itself. And some of it—yes, some of it is inherently evil. There are wicked spells, savage spells, enchantments that are so black that even to know them withers the heart just a little, taints the soul. And yet to be a great magician, to be a sorcerer of any ability or renown, those spells must be learned as well. For if a magician does not know them, they can be used against him—and what is magic, after all, but a man's power to change the world while it is incapable of changing him?

“I came to magic with joy,” he repeated, “but even as it turns joyless in my hands, I cannot look away from it. I must know it all, its breadth and its depth and its darkness. I am hungry for it, even as it sickens me. I am addicted to it.”

“There is no hope for any of us, then,” Lilith said quietly, “if someone like you can be corrupted.”

He put out his hand and lifted her chin. Her eyes stared back at his unwaveringly. He had never seen her face so sad. “No,” he said gently, “let me finish. I must have knowledge, but I do not have to use it. Cyril taught me that a long time ago. There were spells that he knew, that he would not use, that he would not even teach. He was like a farmer who owned a cache of weapons and kept them buried in the ground. I am that kind of person as well. Glyrenden has taught me how to change my shape, but I have always come back as the man I was before.”

“Leave us now, then,” she whispered, “before he changes you as he has changed us all.”

“I have told you already,” he said, bending forward, “why I cannot leave.”

He kissed her lightly, a feather kiss, feeling the shape of her mouth long and distinct against his own. She neither responded nor pulled away. When he lifted his head, she was watching him, her face puzzled and her eyes questioning.

“I love you,” he added, in case she did not remember. “If you wanted to be a woman, I would try to make you love me in return.”

She came slowly to her feet, staring down at him. “But I do not want to be a woman,” she said.