she had a chance to do any more than open her eyes. She was propped up with brisk efficiency beside a tree and told to "stay there." Wolf then piled all of the blankets, clothes and utensils together and sent them on their way with a brisk wave of his staff.
"Where did you get my clothes?" Aralorn asked with idle curiosity from where she sat leaning against a tree.
"From Sianim, where you left them." With efficient motions he was cleaning the area they had occupied until only the remains of the fire would give indication that someone had camped there.
She raised an eyebrow at him, crossed her arms in front of her, and said in a deceptively mild tone, "You mean all the time that I was all but bursting out of the innkeeper's son's clothes, you could have gotten mine for me?"
He grunted without looking at her, but she could see a hint of a smile in his flawless profile.
"I asked you a question," she said in a dangerously soft tone.
"I was waiting for the tunic seams to finally give way ..." He paused to dodge the handful of grass she threw at him, and then shrugged. "I am sorry, Lady. It just never occurred to me."
Aralorn tried to look stern, but it turned into a laugh.
Wolf brushed the grass from his shoulders and went back to packing. Aralorn leaned back against her tree and watched him as he worked, trying to get used to the face he wore.
In an odd sort of way he looked more like his father than his father did. The ae'Magi's face was touched with innocence and compassion. Wolf's visage had neither. His was the face of a man who could do anything, and had.
"Can you ride?" he asked, calling her back from her thoughts.
She considered the state of her body. Everything functioned - sort of, anyway. Riding was certainly better than any alternative she could think of. She nodded. "If we don't go any faster than a walk. I don't think that I could sit a trot for very long."
He nodded and said three or four brisk words in a language she didn't know. He didn't bother with the theatrics in front of her. The air merely shimmered around him strangely. Not unpleasant - just difficult to look at, much nicer than when she changed shape. The black horse snorted at her and then shook itself as if it were wet.
She stood up stiffly, trying not to start coughing again. When she could, she walked shakily up to him, grateful to reach the support of his neck. Unfortunately, although Wolf's rendition of a horse wasn't as massive as Sheen, he was as tall, and in her weakened condition she couldn't climb her way up. After her third attempt, he knelt in the dust so that she could slip on his back.
They were following an old trail that had fallen into disuse; the only tracks on it were from the local wildlife. The woods around them were too dense to allow easy travel, but Wolf appeared to know them: when the trail disappeared into a lush meadow, he picked it up again on the other side without having to take a step to the left or right. His gaits, she found, were much smoother than Sheen's, but the motion still hurt her ribs.
To distract herself she thought up a question almost at random. "Where did you find a healer so near the ae'Magi's castle? I don't remember everything, but I do remember getting hit on the head and having something done to my eyes that was ... unpleasant." The dust of the road set her coughing. When she could talk again she said, "You got rooked if you paid very much; any healer worth his fee would have taken care of the ribs and cough too."
Wolf twitched his ears and said in an odd tone, even for him, "He didn't have enough time to do much. Even if there had been the time, I wouldn't have trusted him to do more than what was absolutely necessary - he ... didn't have the training."
Something felt wrong about his answer. Aralorn had an inkling that she should be paying more attention to the way he phrased his explanation, but she was in too much misery between her ribs and her cough to do much more than feel sorry for herself.
Wolf kept to a walk, trying to make the ride as smooth as possible for her. He