The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn Read Free Book Online Page A

merchants in the immediate vicinity, and not a few of the customers as well. “She’s a witch, she is! A changeling! Dogs don’t go near her, nor horses, nor cats, nor even the rats of the village. Children run from her, and all good men look away when she walks by. She touches a thing and it’s spoiled for decent people—”
    â€œThat’s enough!” Aubrey thundered so violently that the fruit-seller fell silent in awe. There was such fury in his body, such a torrent of wickedness, that it was all he could do not to speak the incantations that he knew could be used to punish her. “Not another word, do you hear me? Or I swear I will make you sorry you ever stepped foot inside this village, let alone insulted a lady who—”
    â€œLady!” the fruit-seller repeated, regaining her voice. “If such a one as that is a lady, then I’m—”
    â€œAubrey.” It was Lilith’s voice, cool and indifferent as dew; she had come to stand by him but did not look at the ranting shrew. “Leave it. Let us go now.”
    But unfortunately, her interruption had drawn the fruit-seller’s attention again. She whipped her two hands before her and crossed the forefingers devoutly; and this ward against the dark forces she held between her heart and Lilith’s gaze. “Evil!” she cried. “Evil! Stay back from me, evil one! Or come to you blood and destruction and hate—”
    Without waiting for the woman to finish her curse, Aubrey lifted his arms in a blind, unreasoning gesture. But Lilith’s hand, urgent on his elbow, stopped him again. He looked down and saw her as through a great distance, rage blurring even her clear-cut face, and thought on some calm, inner plane of his mind, How odd. I would kill for this woman . And then sanity was restored, and the world collapsed quickly to its normal proportions.
    â€œLeave it,” Lilith was saying again. “We have what we came for. Let us go now.”
    He kept his eyes on her face and allowed her to turn him so he would not be tempted to look again in the direction of the woman he had very nearly spelled from existence; and he allowed Lilith to pull him by the arm from the marketplace and out of the village and back to the path that led to Glyrenden’s house. And never once did he look back, or down at his feet, or forward to the path that lay before them, because all that time his eyes were fixed on her profile, since she kept her face turned from him. And neither of them spoke for that long walk back, and never once did Lilith drop her hand from his arm.

    GLYRENDEN WAS GONE for two more days. During that time Aubrey attended diligently to his studies, back in the room where he and Glyrenden practiced magic, where Lilith and Orion and Arachne never came. He did not want to act as though something extraordinary had happened, so he made appearances at mealtimes and was quite jolly. It was a waste of effort, he knew. Orion gulped his food down and ran from the table; Arachne scuttled around them, bringing in and removing platters, and neither of them cared if he spoke or was silent. Lilith responded with her usual carelessness when he addressed her, and obligingly kept quiet when he did not. He was not even sure if she sensed in him the tension her presence roused. But nothing had happened, really, and Glyrenden would be back in a day or two.
    Glyrenden returned in the middle of the seventh night, and Aubrey knew he was back when he opened his eyes in the morning. He could not have said why he was so certain, but he was; the air was heavier or the light passed through a different filter when Glyrenden was nearby. The first few days of the wizard’s absence, Aubrey had missed him, and waited impatiently for his return. But now he found himself filled with a curious reluctance to go downstairs and join the mage at breakfast or in the teaching room.
    He went downstairs late, but husband and