The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn Page A

as if he had been a grain of sand that layered itself lovingly into this cocoon of white, he understood the essence of the wooden box, the string of pearls; and as he understood them, he changed them.
    â€œâ€”But you’ll never know, will you?” Glyrenden said. “Because you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
    Aubrey looked up at him and grinned. He realized he was sweating across his forehead and his chest, but he felt charged with energy. “Look,” he said, “I’ve done it.”
    Glyrenden picked up the jewel case, now a delicate structure of etched glass, and peered in at the choker of emeralds inside. “So you did,” he said. There was a note in his voice Aubrey had never heard there before, and it startled him out of his smiling, so nasty and unpleasant was it. Glyrenden opened the box and pulled out the necklet of emeralds, big and heavy and ripe and cold, and Aubrey knew that this was what had displeased him.
    â€œI’ll change them back,” he offered quickly. “I had just thought—to show you, you know—that I could do two things at once.”
    â€œI know exactly what you were trying to show me,” Glyrenden said, and his eyes were still on the necklace. When he lifted his gaze, Aubrey recoiled in sudden alarm, so fierce and furious was that gaze; but even as Aubrey stepped back, the wizard smiled. “Most impressive again,” he said, in his customary, mellow voice.
    Aubrey was not sure what to make of this. “I’ll change them back,” he said again, nervously.
    â€œNonsense, why should you? They are quite lovely—much lovelier than the pearls, and I have no sentimental distaste for them. We shall give them to Lilith. Won’t that be nice? Thus we will wipe out forever the memory of that other lover. Much better all around, don’t you agree?”
    But Aubrey, who had entered the room this morning vowing to trust the wizard completely, was not deceived. Glyrenden was enraged with him for the double transformation; he did not want Aubrey to have mastered that particular trick, or at least not yet. And that seemed strange to Aubrey, who had always found Cyril delighted when he forged ahead in his studies, learning by some fantastic leap of understanding the difficult tasks when he had only been taught the easy ones. Glyrenden perhaps did not want him to learn shape-changing at all. But in that case, why had he agreed to take Aubrey on to begin with?
    Over dinner that night, Glyrenden presented Lilith with the necklace of emeralds. “This is something Aubrey made for you,” he told his wife, fastening it about her throat with a certain lingering care. “Is it not exquisite?”
    She had bent her head forward and held her unbound hair out of his way so he could secure the clasp at the base of her neck. When she spoke, her voice was muffled from her head being held in this odd position. “Why did he make a gift for me?” she asked.
    â€œBecause you are very beautiful,” Glyrenden said. He leaned forward and kissed the exposed column of her neck just under the hairline. She did not move. He kissed her again, bringing one of his hands forward to cup around her throat, over the jewels, and hold her steady against the pressure of his mouth. His eyes were closed; his fingers tensed against her white flesh and then relaxed, tensed and relaxed, while he continued kissing her. She sat as though he had changed her into marble. Not a single strand of hair fell from the impromptu knot she was holding together with her hand; she did not shiver or draw away or respond. She seemed not to be even breathing.
    Aubrey watched though he did not want to watch, and he felt a small stone form in his stomach and make a deadweight. The scene did not last more than three minutes but it seemed to go on for hours, the man drunk on the flavor of the woman’s skin, the woman as still as a statue in his grip.