The Shape-Changer's Wife (3 page)

Oddly enough, he slept well in the ancient, moldy bed, and woke up thinking he must have dreamt the whole. He was lying in bed, lazily trying to remember some of the events of the night before, when a chorus of thunder alerted him to the fact that it was storming outside. What little light filtered in past the barrier of the shutter was gray and dismal; and now that he listened for it, he could hear the shriek and whine of monsoon winds whistling about the fortress boundaries.

Trapped
, he thought, and got up from bed.

Lilith confirmed his suspicions when he joined her in the kitchen for a light breakfast. “We have storms like this every so often,” she said, partaking of nothing but some honey which she mixed in a glass of milk. “It's almost impossible to get the doors open against the pressure of the wind, and it's just as difficult to keep to the road if you manage to get outside. Not to mention that you're soaked through in less than a minute.”

“Then I had best stay indoors, hadn't I,” Aubrey said pleasantly.

She lifted those incredible emerald eyes to his. “Had you thought about leaving?” she asked. The question sounded innocent but the look in her eyes was wise, as if she were privy to every thought in his head and had been since he walked into her husband's house.

“Not seriously,” he answered, giving her a winning smile.

She was dressed in a gray gown identical to the one she had worn the night before, and which in fact might be the same one. Her thick brown hair was wound in the same braid, and her face still wore the incurious, placid look it had worn when she answered the door to him. Yet he found himself studying her as if he had not seen her before. There was something in the plain lines of her face and the startling beauty of her eyes that was mesmeric, almost spellbinding.

“Tell me,” he ventured, “what do you do here for entertainment when Glyrenden is gone and the weather keeps you all in the house?”

“There is very little to entertain me even when Glyrenden is not away from home,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Surely you do not sit all day and watch Arachne perpetually clean?”

The briefest hint of laughter crossed the full lines of her mouth. “Even that loses its appeal after a while,” she admitted.

“Then what do you do when it storms like this?” he persisted.

“Mostly I stare out the window at the world denied to me.”

“Do you play cards? Sew? Write letters? You must do something.”

She tilted her head to one side, ever so slightly intrigued. “I cannot,” she said.

“Cannot what?”

“I have no one to write to, I have never sewn, and I do not know how to play cards.”

His own smile became broader. “Are there cards in the house?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, then! I will teach you. We shall spend the day gaming.”

They sent Arachne, furious, on a hunt for a deck of playing cards and any other diversions she could find. She returned with three decks of standard cards and one tarot deck which Aubrey tossed impatiently aside. Additionally, she had found three pairs of dice, two of ivory and one of onyx set with small rubies; these Aubrey kept. The housekeeper had also unearthed a wooden board game but none of its pieces. It consisted of triangles and circles burned into inexplicable patterns on the wood, and Aubrey had no idea what game was played on its surface. This too he laid aside.

“All right, then,” he said, shuffling one deck and then laying the cards out in suits. “We begin with fifty-two separate cards—”

Lilith was a quick learner, he discovered, and by the end of the day he had taught her simple games like Drain the Well and more complex games like whist and picquet. She gave her entire concentration over to the intricacies of the game, fingering each card before she drew or discarded, as if the small colored squares could whisper advice or encouragement. She never lost by much and even defeated him once or twice before the day was over.

Arachne ignored them completely, moving around them as if they were not present in the room, and once or twice Aubrey was sure she passed her dust rag over his back and shoulders. Orion, however, came to watch them gloomily before the day was half through, and followed the motions of the spades and clubs, diamonds and hearts, with such palpable longing that Aubrey began to lose his taste for the game.

“We must let him play,” he said to Lilith after Orion had silently watched them for more than two hours.

“He is not very bright,” she said, which Aubrey thought was unkind with the man sitting so close. “I don't know that he can learn.”

“One of the simpler games, then. Drain the Well, don't you think?”

“I don't mind.”

So they taught him to neaten up his third of the deck before him and to turn over one card at a time, and they told him when his queen took the trick (which filled him with a ferocious elation) and when his two lost to the four (which made him slump back disconsolately in his chair). Aubrey, who was after all a master of sleight of hand, subtly rearranged the cards so that all the kings and aces magically appeared in Orion's hand, and the big man won the game at last. At first he could not understand it; then he was beside himself with delight and would not let Lilith take the cards back from him when she tried to explain that he had won the game, not the pieces.

“I told you he wouldn't understand,” she remarked.

“It doesn't matter,” Aubrey replied. “I'm tired of cards anyway.”

It was clear that no one else was going to propose another diversion, so Aubrey began to amuse himself with a few of his simpler but more dazzling magic tricks. He brought coins out of Orion's ear (and then let the poor simple beggar keep them); he caused Arachne's apron to lift over her head and temporarily blind her; he took a kitchen knife and pretended to cut off his own hand and reattach it to his knee. Even Arachne paused in her activities to watch this comic performance, and Aubrey thought he saw a real smile come to Lilith's face while she looked on.

They didn't like fire, though. Arachne turned away and returned to her sweeping when he brought blue flame from his fingertips. Orion ducked under the table, yelping, and even Lilith drew back and put her hands to her face in sudden dread. Immediately, Aubrey extinguished the blaze.

“I'm sorry,” he said to her a little blankly. “I didn't know you would be afraid of it.”

She uncovered her face but her cheeks were still ashen. “I have always feared fire,” she said.

“How do you stay warm, then?”

Again, that ghost smile, almost not there. “I am never cold, even in winter. It does not take a fire to keep me warm.”

“You are luckier than me. I am always shivering.”

“Best not stay here through the winter, then,” she said. “For this is a cold house.”

That was all that transpired during Aubrey's first full day in the shape-changer's house.

THE NEXT DAY, Aubrey woke to find fierce sunlight trying to beam its way past the barrier of the shutter at his window; the air held the rich, hot scent of a truly fine day. Once downstairs, he learned that Orion had already left for a day's hunting and might not be back till after dark.

“Is he a good hunter?” Aubrey asked.

Lilith drank her honeyed milk and watched Aubrey finish breakfast. “Very good. Even in bad winters when there is no game to be found, Orion can find meat. Some of the villagers even come to us when winters are hard, and offer to buy his deer and rabbits. But they must be very hungry before they come here for succor.”

It was the second time she had said something like that, and this time Aubrey followed up. “They don't like Glyrenden?”

“They don't like any of us.”

“Do you keep away from the village?”

She shrugged. “I have no reason to go there. Orion goes in once a week or so to buy milk and vegetables and things we cannot supply ourselves.”

Orion did not seem sharp-witted enough to be able to carry on simple mercenary transactions, and Aubrey said so. “But don't they cheat him?”

Lilith smiled. “Cheat one of Glyrenden's servants? They would not be so foolish. If anything, they are more than fair to him. He does not like to go to the village, though, so he does his best to find what we need in the forest.”

“If he does not like to go, then why—”

“Glyrenden makes him.”

That was all, simply stated, but it gave Aubrey a chill. Lilith did not seem to miss her husband when he was away.

“Have you plans for today?” Aubrey asked her. She shook her head. “Then walk with me. I find I am cranky and sore from yesterday's inactivity.”

“More likely from last night's sleep in an uncomfortable bed,” she said, rising. “Let me change my shoes.”

Five minutes later, they were hiking across one of the forest trails that was only slightly less overgrown than the woods around it. Aubrey in the lead, pushing aside branches and debris, set a spirited pace, seeking to shake off some odd shadow of discomfort that clung to him; Lilith kept up with him without complaint. They spoke very little for the first hour or so, until Aubrey slowed to admire a pretty, open view before them.

“Very nice,” Lilith agreed. She had rested a hand against one of the big oaks that ringed the clearing, and the brisk climb had brought a certain color to her face. She looked much more alive and vibrant to him than she had in the two days he had known her.

“Do you walk much in the forest here?” Aubrey wanted to know. “It does not seem like these paths are often used.”

“I prefer the trail toward the king's palace,” she said, “but I do not take it much. That is usually the road Glyrenden follows.”

And that was another odd thing to say. “What is there to see on the trail to the royal court?” Aubrey asked.

“Nothing much; except, if you walk long enough and far enough, you come to the King's Grove, and that is my favorite place in the whole realm.”

He turned to face her. She was not a beautiful woman, but the flat, clear angles of her face continually drew his attention; the depth of her green eyes troubled him. “And what is the King's Grove?”

She had changed her position to lean back against the wide trunk of the tree, and she held her shoulders against the wood in a pose that was almost sensuous. She had half-shut her eyes, and she did not look at Aubrey when she spoke. “The King's Grove is a stand of trees from all over the world, and nothing that grows in this kingdom or any of the three kingdoms farther west is not represented in this preserve. No one may chop down any of the trees in this grove, no one may carve his name in their bodies, no one may even gather firewood from the fallen branches, for this grove is sacred and belongs to the king and will be untouched for so long as there are laws which govern men. It is a beautiful place.”

“We must go there sometime,” Aubrey said, not entirely sure of what he was saying. “How far is it to walk?”

“Not too far, if you are willing to take a day or two to get there.”

“Then we will go sometime.”

And she opened her green eyes and looked straight at him, and he felt all his easy charm and all his light nonsense fall away from him. “Perhaps we will,” she said, and shut her eyes again.

Aubrey took a step backward and then a step away, feeling unaccountably shaken. Blindly, he turned his attention to the landscape before him, a few picturesque trees around a smoky gray lake, with ripe summer grass making a clearing around it. As he watched, two squirrels raced down one tree and across the clearing and up another tree; orioles made a black and flame-colored pattern against the sky. The pond rippled with the promise of fish, and the chirrup and drone of insects made a pleasant background noise.

“No wonder Orion is so successful hunting,” Aubrey remarked, just to be saying something. “The forest seems full of game.”

Lilith opened her eyes again, and this time they were ordinary eyes, except for their extraordinary color. “Here, it is,” she said. “You must walk some distance from our house to find much to kill.”

Aubrey considered, and could not remember seeing a single bird or chipmunk near the house in the time he had been at Glyrenden's. “That's true, isn't it,” he said slowly. “How odd.”

She shrugged. “The animals are afraid of Glyrenden,” she said. “They do not come close to the house nor anywhere he is. He cannot get near enough to them to hunt. That is why Orion brings in all our meat.”

Aubrey frowned. “I have heard of dogs and horses who keep back from certain men, but—that is ridiculous. You cannot have a whole forest full of wild creatures avoiding one man. That makes no sense.”

“Does it not?” Lilith said with a very faint amusement. “Perhaps there is another explanation, then. He is a wizard. Perhaps he has put up warding spells to keep them from the place.”

“Yes, that is more likely,” Aubrey said. And did not add,
If it is even true.

He thought she was going to say more, but then a strange thing happened. The air, which had been still and sun-warmed all morning, suddenly woke up to an alarmed frenzy; a breeze so cool that it seemed to carry dark colors on its back fled through the trees and went skiing across the surface of the lake. Overhead, the heavy summer leaves whispered of all the things they had learned during two short seasons. The squirrels and the orioles and the silver-backed fish had completely disappeared.

Lilith had pushed herself away from the oak, although she still kept one hand on its thick trunk. Her head was turned back in the direction from which they had come, and when she spoke, it was over her shoulder. “Glyrenden has returned,” she said.