rest quietly. I just didn't want to take chances."
Aralorn spoke almost to herself. "Talor was one of them. I heard Talor's signal - he was always a little off pitch. I thought that he was caught by the Uriah and needed help." Her hands gripped the quilt with white knuckles although her voice was calm. "I guess that was more or less the case, but there was no way that I could help him."
Scenes she had suppressed whipped violently through her mind like a madman's dream. They were without sound, because a violent blow to her head had set up a buzzing clamor that eclipsed any other sound. There were more faces that she knew, viewed from the thing that had been Talor's back. Twisted and rotted almost beyond recognition she saw the faces of friends, comrades-in-arms.
A sharp sting on her cheek brought her back, shaking and gasping. Wolf sat on the couch beside her, and she buried her head against his shoulder and shuddered dry-eyed, grateful for the firm arms wrapped around her back.
"The worst of it was, he knew me," she whispered. "It was still Talor, but he was one of them. He talked to me, but he looked at me like a farmer looks at dinner after a hard day's work. I didn't even know that Uriah could talk." Then, with difficulty, because she didn't have much practice, she cried.
Myr took Wolf's cloak and covered her back where the quilt left her exposed. He touched her hair a little awkwardly and said quietly to Wolf, "She won't appreciate my presence when she recovers. I'll tell the others that she's well. Stanis has been blaming himself for her capture - he won't eat. It will be a weight off his back to find out that she's been rescued and is here unhurt."
Wolf nodded and watched him go. He rocked Aralorn gently and whispered soft reassurances. He was concentrating on her, so that the voice took him by surprise.
"Tell her to stop that."
Wolf brought his head up, alarmed at the strange voice. It was heavily accented and firmly masculine if a bit fussy. It also didn't seem to come from anywhere, or rather there was no one where the voice came from.
"Tell her to stop that, I said. She's driven Lys away, and I simply won't abide that. I have allowed her here because Lys likes her - but now she's made Lys go away by thinking of all of those bad things. Tell her to stop it, or I will have to ask her to leave no matter what Lys says." The voice lost a little of its firmness and became sulky.
The sound of someone else in the room distracted Aralorn, and she pushed herself up away from Wolf's chest, wiping her nose and eyes alike with the sleeve of the tunic she snagged from the cave floor. She too looked at the conspicuously empty space at the end of the sofa near her feet. Magical invisibility consisted of blending into shadows and turning eyes away rather than absolute invisibility; when someone actively looked, the invisible person could be seen. There was nothing at the end of the sofa.
"Can you see him?" she asked Wolf, thinking that it might be another side effect of the beggar's-blessing. She never had liked drugs.
When he shook his head, she directed her questioning to the man who wasn't there. "Who are you?"
"That's better," said the voice, and there was the distinct pop of air that accompanies teleportation.
"He's gone," Wolf confirmed.
"What do you think?" asked Aralorn, settling back onto Wolf, her voice husky from crying. "Was that our friend who gives us a hand with the books?"
"If I were a hazarder, I would lay you odds for yes." Wolf's voice was somewhat distracted, as he was feeling slightly uncomfortable with Aralorn lying relaxed and naked in his arms. It hadn't bothered him before, when she'd been upset.
He started to shift her off him with the end goal of getting as much distance on his side as possible. Before he could do more than move his hand to her shoulders, she turned her face into his neck, terminating his resolve with the simple gesture of affection. He'd found himself craving her affection more and more lately. Although, he thought with a touch of self-derision, in this case "affection" might not be the proper expression.
Self-absorbed, he only caught the tail end of Aralorn's question. "Say that again?" he asked.
With her face tucked safely out of