strong in love and faith. Perhaps those legends would have
been proven that night. Perhaps. We did never learn that,
for another guest came to the wedding – uninvited,
unwelcome, and the first we knew of his coming was
when he stood in our midst, dark and cold as death.
“A mage, that uninvited guest, black-robed and with a
heart like hoar-frost – and you must remember that this is
no tale of rival suitors, one come in the very nick of time
to rapt away the maiden he loves. This is a tale of two
young men, one so poisonously jealous of the other that he
must – for hate – spoil whatever his rival in power had.
“The name of the Spoiler? I will not speak it. Let it
never be remembered. This is how dwarves reward
murderers, and I know no other way as good.
“He laid hands on the girl, that dark mage, in a way no
man should touch another’s wife; magicked her from sight
before any one of us could move to prevent. Aye, but he
didn’t take her far, in hatred and arrogance took her only
within the cottage. In the very instant we knew her gone,
we heard her voice raised in terror and rage. Close as she
was, the evil mage’s wizard ways kept us from coming to
her aid until it was too late. The spell lifted. Thorne found
her quickly in the bridal chamber. And he saw the mage
defile her . . . and worse.
“Mariel lay cold and still on the ground, like a fragile
pretty doll flung aside and broken, Thorne’s dear love
stricken for spite by the Spoiler.
“Seeing her dead, Thorne Shape-shifter showed the
Spoiler how he’d earned his name.
“You have seen the wolf, and so you know what the
Spoiler saw in the moments before his death. But you have
never heard such screaming as I heard that night: never
heard such piteous pleading, nor heard anyone wail for
mercy as the Spoiler did, him torn by the fangs of the great
gray wolf.
“Tam Potter and I could have tried to stop Thorne, but
we did not. We stood by, watched the wolf at his ravening
work. We should have granted mercy.”
*****
Despite the hot, high fire, Una sat shivering, her hand
a small fist in Roulant’s.
“Tam died wishing we’d granted that mercy,” Guarinn
said softly. “And I sit here now wishing no less, for the
Spoiler died with a curse on his lips. It was a hard one, as
the curses of dying mages tend to be, and it marked us all
with the fate of hunter and hunted.”
Stiff and cold from sitting, Una got to her feet; she did
not answer when Roulant called to her. She needed a place
to be private with what she’d learned. The night was crisp
and bright, as lovely as it must have been this time thirty
years ago. As she walked, Una discovered the shape of the
ruin, saw that it was very like the little stone house near
the bend of the brook in Dimmin. It lacked only one room
to be exactly the same. In the Dimmin house, Thorne kept
only a stark sleeping loft under the eaves.
Una stood for a long time before the dark mouth of
the little cave of fire-blacked beam and broken stone that
had sheltered her tonight; all that was left of a fouled
bridal chamber.
She returned to stand by the fire. “Tell me,” she said.
“Thorne must surrender his very self one night each
year and hope that Roulant or I will end the curse by
killing the wolf. This,” Guarinn said, “is an inherited
obligation.”
Una stood quietly, her eyes on the fire, the flames and
the embers. “If you kill the wolf, what will happen to
Thorne?”
It was Roulant – silent till then – who answered.
“The curse will be over. He’ll begin to age, grow old
again, like the rest of us. Thorne hasn’t got any elven
blood, Una, though everyone thinks so. It’s the curse that’s
held him in time.”
“Guarinn,” she said softly. “Why haven’t you killed the