The Shape-Changer's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

walked off, hid again under the fall of blond hair at the nape of his neck. “How do you know that?” he asked.
    â€œI know,” she said. “Come. We must be going back to the house.”
    They spoke not at all for the long walk back—longer, it seemed, than the walk out, for Lilith set no very hasty pace and she was in the lead this time. She seemed to have no fear of what her husband would say when he found she had been touring the countryside with an itinerant apprentice wizard. Aubrey’s own steps slowed; he was suddenly a little reluctant to meet the greatest shape-changer in the memory of living mages.
    But when they arrived back at the house more than an hour later, Glyrenden greeted his wife with tenderness, and Aubrey with a sort of hearty cheer. He was a tall, thin and restless man in whom all the colors seemed to be intensified. He wore a brilliant red tunic over jewel-blue trousers and walked into a room with an actual force. His fine hair was such a sooty black that Aubrey expected it to leave smudges across his cheek and forehead, but his face, instead, was a clean, marble-white. His eyes were a black so pure they reflected points of light from the doors and windows around him, and his long, narrow mouth was as red as a girl’s.
    He saw them enter the room and strode over to take Lilith in his arms. “My dear,” he said, and kissed her with a fine and loving gusto. She stood within the circle of his embrace, unmoved, neither leaning into nor away from his caress, and accepted the three kisses he carefully planted on her mouth. Aubrey, who normally would have averted his eyes from such a scene, could not look away; but the sight of the unequal kisses bothered him.
    Glyrenden lifted his head and looked over at Aubrey and laughed, and not until then did he release Lilith. “Forgive me,” he said, and charged over to Aubrey with his hand extended.
    â€œThe servants told me you arrived two days ago. I am sorry I was not here, but I trust they made you comfortable?”
    As comfortable as can be expected here, Aubrey thought, and took Glyrenden’s hand. It was unexpectedly cold, as though the wizard had just returned from a long winter ride; but no one should have taken a chill in this fine weather. “Very comfortable, sir,” he said. “But I hated to impose if you were not expecting me just yet—”
    Glyrenden released Aubrey’s hand to wave his own dismissively in the air. “Nonsense. I expected you whenever you arrived. But I am gone often, you know. It will be no simple, daily lessons you will be getting from me, for my routine varies by the week.”
    â€œI will be happy to adapt myself,” Aubrey said, smiling. “I am eager to learn whatever you can teach me.”
    For an instant, the wizard looked skeptical, as if he doubted that Aubrey would be able to learn much, and then his own smile returned. Aubrey smiled back. He had seen the skeptical look, but even Cyril had greeted him with such an expression, when he first showed up on the old man’s doorstep. Aubrey knew his attractive looks and open face fooled people into thinking he had no wit nor strength of purpose. But he did, and Glyrenden had as much to learn about Aubrey as Aubrey did about Glyrenden.
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    AT FIRST, IT was not like learning magic at all. Glyrenden piled up a stack of books and bade Aubrey read them, then taught the younger wizard a few small spells and told him to practice them, and Aubrey was heartily bored. The books were dry scientific journals on a range of topics: geography, mineral formations, ornithology, human anatomy, meteorology and chemistry. The magic exercises were simple ones of concentration and illusion, involving will more than talent. Some of them Aubrey knew already, and some he did not, but none of them taxed his considerable abilities, and he began to chafe at the slow unfolding of knowledge.
    But Glyrenden, though he