The Changeling

by Jennifer Lyndon

  “Because that’s what was required of me,” she replied. Her attention shifted from me to what appeared to be a rough deer run. “This must be it,” she said, turning Twyneth off the main trail. Of course I followed.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “There was once a little cottage deep in these woods. It housed the royal Noge Gamekeeper, but it had been empty at least ten years before we discovered it,” she explained. “I imagine the forest reclaimed it long ago,” she added. “There was a little lake of deep, clear, water not far from it. We swam there often.”

  We rode on in silence, M’Tek concentrating on the trail, and occasionally dismounting to move fallen limbs aside, or to cut through dense vegetation, with a knife, when it blocked our path. Soon, we reached the cottage. She dropped down from Twyneth to examine the structure.

  “This must have been rebuilt at some point,” she observed. “See, the stone here,” she indicated a jagged line across the outside of the cottage. The stone below was lighter. The roof had caved in long ago, and the door hung open on its hinges. The cloth from the windows was in tatters. M’Tek walked around to the door and stepped inside. After a moment I dismounted and followed her. I was unsure of whether Sabea would stay if I left her, so I led the filly with me as far as she was willing. Sabea climbed the steps readily, but balked at the narrow front door, and so I waited there until M’Tek walked around inside the tiny cabin, appearing again at the doorway.

  “This place means something to you,” I observed.

  “Not at all,” she replied sharply, sounding almost irritated by my assumption. “I’m only surprised to find it still standing,” she countered. I was about to argue with her, to press for some explanation, when she strode past me with long strides, returning to Twyneth. “Let’s move on. The lake is close by.”

  I climbed back up on Sabea and followed M’Tek deeper into the woods. As we rode, and she remained silent, I became slightly cross. I sensed she was hiding something. Glimpsing light reflecting from the water, I pushed Sabea into a gallop to pass M’Tek. Sabea easily jumped the few obstacles in our path, and we pulled up at the water’s edge. I faced M’Tek as she approached at a collected canter.

  “Shall we test the water?” I asked, dropping down to Sabea’s side. “Do I need to tie her?” I asked M’Tek. The Fae Queen only stared at me.

  “Wait,” was her reply. I stepped away from Sabea and began undressing. I started with my boots, kicking them aside. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked sharply.

  “Taking my clothes off,” I replied. “I don’t want to get them wet.”

  “It’s too cold for swimming at this time of year,” she said in almost a whisper. “You’ll catch your death.”

  “Should we add cold to the list of things that can still kill me?” I asked sharply, as I pulled my tunic loose around my waist. M’Tek dropped from Twyneth and was quickly in front of me. She caught my hands as I was lifting my tunic.

  “Stop this, Lore,” she said quietly. “Please.”

  “Why? Don’t I look enough like Sarane for you? Am I not her perfect twin?” I said with false cheer. M’Tek held my hands tightly. “Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for, to have her back again? Don’t you want to be reunited with the sister you lost? I’ll swim with you.” I glared at her. “All I ask is that you say her name, just once,” I taunted. “Call me Sarane. I’ll even answer to her name if you like.” M’Tek released my hands and turned away from me.

  “She was not a sister to me,” M’Tek said in a tone of controlled fury.

  “Look at me, M’Tek,” I snapped. She turned to face me, her expression fixed, her jaw set. “You told me you only see me, but then you bring me to this place you shared with her,” I continued. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Tell me, please, why are you so haunted by her?” I asked. “Did you love her so much?”

  “You have no notion of how difficult it is for me to be back here,” she said quietly. “Their ghosts assail me at every turn.”

  “Of course I don’t understand, M’Tek,” I said more gently. “I only know what you tell me. Please, explain it to me so I can understand. Why is this place important? What did you come here to find?”

  “All right,” she said under her breath. “She brought me here,” M’Tek started. “The first time was when I was twelve.”

  “You already said you swam here,” I prodded.

  “But I was too young to understand at first,” M’Tek replied.

  “Understand what?”

  “I was intended for Svenar. From the beginning, I was his,” she explained. “We had an attachment ceremony when I was four,” she added. “It was a forgone conclusion that we would join, that I would belong to him.”

  “Did you meet him here, too?” M’Tek closed her eyes and shook her head as if to rid herself of some unpleasant image.

  “It was inevitable,” she continued. “When I look back, I can’t find any way around it. I didn’t choose what happened. I simply survived it.”

  “What was inevitable?” I asked.

  “She claimed me from the start. I was hers. When I first arrived in the palace I couldn’t speak Noge. Everyone looked strange to me, with their sunlight hair and strange water colored eyes. There are no blue-eyed Fae,” M’Tek explained. “I fought them when they tried to touch me, to clean me, or feed me. I would bite, and scratch at their weird soft eyes, and hide. I was a wild creature for months, a year maybe. But she took an interest in me. She was patient, coming into my rooms to play with her dolls, tempting me out from my hiding places with exotic candies, and little cakes.” She stopped talking as her gaze swept the rocks near the pool of water. My heart broke for the little girl she had been, terrified of everyone around her. “She tamed me,” M’Tek finally said.

  “Sarane tamed you?” I asked, surprised by her choice of words. M’Tek nodded.

  “Yes. She made a pet of me. I idolized her as a result,” she continued. “I learned to speak her language, and to love her parents, because she loved them. I became manageable.”

  “She was kind to you,” I suggested. M’Tek stared hard at me and shook her head once as if in warning.

  “I was to join with Svenar when I was fifteen,” she said quietly, finally continuing her tale. “I accepted the situation as inevitable. She could not. She was furious, challenging the idea that he could have any claim to me.

  “She forced me to see what Svenar was, how he tortured animals, and abused the girls working in the palace. She showed me, leading me through the tunnels in the palace walls to spy upon him. She took me to the stables after he killed those kittens, verifying his cruelty to me by showing me his mark on the arrow shaft. Every day that passed, as the time of my joining to Svenar drew closer, she became more adamant in her resolve to prevent it. I was hers, she told me,” M’Tek said softly. “She’d claimed me when I was that wild little creature. She would not let him take me from her.”

  “She wanted to protect you,” I suggested. M’Tek raised an eyebrow at that.

  “It was never that simple, Lore,” she argued. “Nothing was ever so clean with her.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was summer, about six months before I was to be joined to Svenar. She and I came out here every day to be alone together. We bathed in the lake, splashed around and then lay on the rocks in the warm sun to dry. This was our refuge. For the first time since I’d arrived at the palace, I felt peace. And then in an instant, that peace was destroyed,” she whispered. She pointed over to the flat rocks high above the pool. “It happened up there.” I gazed up where she was pointing.

  “Tell me. What happened there?” I asked.

  “She invited Svenar to come with us that day, to swim. I was furious with her for ruining everything. This place was mine too, I thought, my hideaway to be away from duty, and more importantly, away from Svenar. I didn’t exactly hate him. That word’s too strong. Repu
lsion, or contempt, was closer to what I felt for him. Every time I was near him I imagined the girls he molested, and those dead kittens I’d seen bleeding with his arrows still impaling them. I didn’t want to breathe the same air he…”

  “What happened on the rocks?” I asked, interrupting.

  “We had been swimming, the three of us. I climbed up there to get away from them both. She was playing her usual role, the adoring little sister, teasing Svenar about wanting to kiss me. At first I thought she was only being childish. As she goaded him, he became more aggressive with me. I think she was trying to force me to show my contempt for him. She wanted Svenar to grasp the full depth of my disgust.

  “Anyway, I was alone up there for a while. Finally, I had begun to relax, to enjoy the feel of the sun on my skin, but then he climbed up. I tried to ignore him at first, but he started touching me, trying to untie my bathing dress at the throat. I’m not certain he meant anything more than to tease me at that point. Still, I tried to get up, to get away from him, to dive back into the water. That’s when he became rough. He grasped my shoulders, forcing me down on the rocks. He was strong. Everything after that was a blur. I was fighting him. I may have screamed, or cried out. The next I knew there was blood dripping down his face. In the following moment he collapsed on top of me.

  “She helped lift him off me. I was confused at first, staring at the blood on the front of my bathing clothes, and wiping it from my face and neck. I saw the rock she’d hit him with, the sticky red edge with a few pale golden hairs still stuck in the blood. She’d hit him hard enough to leave a dent in the side of his head.” M’Tek forced a tight smile. “He was still breathing, though, and mumbling something. She started struggling with his limp weight, trying to drag him by one arm to the edge of the rocks. She shouted at me, demanding my help. After a moment, I reached for his other arm, and we managed to shift him over the edge. He fell into the water.”

  M’Tek stared out at the water, her tale finished. I wanted to touch her, to wrap my arms around her. Her expression was so terrible, as if she could still see his body floating in that water. After what seemed infinity, but was probably only a couple of minutes, she turned to face me again. Her expression was unguarded, her face smooth, making her appear a young girl. I felt protective of her, wanting to shield her from whatever she was feeling. I knew my response would determine the course of our relationship, whether she trusted me. Instead of speaking, I took a step toward her and clasped her hand. She stared down at our two hands for a moment as if confused, and then raised her gaze to mine.

  “You do understand, Lore? I killed him. With that one act, I set in motion more than two hundred years of war, and brought down the Noge nation,” she said calmly. “He was still alive. I could have stopped her. He might have lived. Instead, I helped push him over into the water. He drowned.” I nodded, but made no comment. “Would you have killed him?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know what I would have done, M’Tek,” I said calmly.

  “If you had been here, in her place, would you have hit him with that rock?” she asked.

  “I could never have been in her place,” I assured her. “I’m nothing like Sarane.” M’Tek nodded.

  “No,” she agreed.

  -CH 5-

  We worked obsessively on the treaty over the following weeks, meeting with my council for hours a day, debating every line, whether significant or not, long past the point of coherence. M’Tek and I worked long into the night, often with Pet’s help. We were determined to write something that would be acceptable to the Vilken people without completely forsaking the interests of the Fae. M’Tek was far more generous than I could have hoped. The Fae territory extending into the Borderlands was slashed back to the edge of her established border in places. The only area she refused any compromise was in regard to the Eastern Noge Territory. She would not contemplate even the slightest shift of the established border to give way to Vilkerland.

  We endured a particularly heated debate with my council, one in which we were very close to an agreement, if she would just give a few hectares of the Eastern Noge Territory at the southwestern corner. The treaty would be signed if she agreed. She politely, yet firmly, declined.

  “Why are you so inflexible about that worthless Noge territory?” I asked while walking with her after the meeting. I admit I was quite exasperated with her in that moment. “We’re talking about a section of land so small you could ride through it in a matter of minutes.”

  “Those are my people,” was her reply. “I owe them my protection.”

  “They’re not Fae,” I pointed out. “You couldn’t care less about the Borderlings, but for those five or six Noge families, you won’t budge. It’s irrational.”

  “The Borderlings are nothing like the Noge. Borderlings raid Fae farms, and merchant caravans. They attack travelers, and basically live a life without law. The cost of military occupation of that land far outweighs its value as a territory. And on a personal level, I have no desire to offer Borderlings protection. Most of them belong in my dungeons.

  “In contrast, for the Noge, I’d go to war,” she said firmly. When she smiled at me I felt fear of her for the first time. “It won’t come to that, though, Lore. Your councilmen will give in to you. They want that disputed land along the Fae border. They can taste the power they’ll gain through distributing it for favors and bribes.” M’Tek grinned, her expression softening. “Or, you will, quite wisely, decide to sign our treaty without your council’s approval. After all, you’re the Vilken Queen. You don’t need their approval. And you realize, from a purely objective standpoint, it’s the right decision. Vilkerland needs this alliance with Faeland. You can’t afford to make an enemy of me,” she explained.

  “Did you just threaten me?” I asked, the hair rising on the back of my neck. M’Tek laughed.

  “I wouldn’t dream of threatening you, Lore,” she replied. “But I won’t budge on the Noge issue. Your greedy little councilmen won’t gain an inch of Noge territory while I breathe.”

  I nodded, not certain exactly what had occurred between us, but aware the dynamics of our relationship had shifted. The foundation under our feet suddenly felt tenuous. Without another word, I walked away from her in the direction of my apartments. When I remembered she was probably headed in that direction too, I turned instead toward the garden door. I called Faira to me, as I crossed the garden, and with only my hound for company, turned in to the maze. I needed to think.

  I took a different route toward that garden hidden within, switching back as I walked, delaying my arrival. When I reached the center, M’Tek was already sitting on the edge of the fountain, apparently waiting for me.

  “I came here for solitude,” I said sharply. M’Tek gripped the lip of the fountain’s edge with both hands along the sides of her thighs, rooting herself, and continued to watch me. “I’d like you to leave me in peace,” I added.

  “I was not threatening you, Lore,” M’Tek said gently. “You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

  “You said I can’t afford to make an enemy of you,” I pointed out. “That was a threat. How can those words be heard in any other way?” M’Tek stood, and took a few steps toward me.

  “It’s true. You don’t want me as your enemy. I wasn’t intending to threaten you, though. I was simply explaining that I would fight anyone who endangered my people,” she said keeping her voice gentle. She was making an effort to seem nonthreatening, but her words were anything but. “The people of the Eastern Noge Territory split from the rest of Nogeland and came to me. They asked for my protection when the Demon Prince rode on Nogeland,” she said pressing a hand to her chest. “I swore an oath to them, promising to defend them from those Vilken usurpers.”

  “I’m the progeny of those Vilken usurpers,” I snapped. M’Tek smiled and shook her head.

  “Of course you’re not, Lore. I wouldn’t be here treating with you if I didn’t already know who you are. Unfortunately, you’ve allow
ed your council far too much power. They believe they rule this land, not you. They view you as a ceremonial figurehead,” she pointed out. “When the Noge still ruled Nogeland, and Vilkerland was only an agricultural territory, the Noge were enlightened rulers, accepting of other cultures and races. They were blind to the threat posed by your Vilkerlings. It was their downfall,” she said softly. “I’m not blind.”

  “Would you have me disband my council?” I snapped, shocked at the implication. I was just getting my government on steady ground. Disbanding my council would lead to chaos. It was not something I was willing to consider, even for her.

  “No. Not just yet,” M’Tek replied as if I expected an answer. “There will come a time when you’ll have no choice in the matter, because your goals simply do not match theirs.”

  “How do you know what my goals are?” I asked, feeling defensive.

  “Once you understand, your goals will be the same as mine,” she explained. “I want a strong, unified Nogeland, thriving under her rightful Noge Queen,” she said evenly.

  “And who is she?” I asked, surprised at her words.

  “You are, of course,” she said quietly.

  “How many times do I have to say this? I’m Vilken,” was my reply. M’Tek laughed as if she were truly amused by my response.

  “You don’t really believe that anymore, do you?” she asked gently, still smiling.

  “I’m the descendant of Sarane, but I’m also the descendant of those you call Vilken usurpers,” I pointed out. “I know people sometimes call me the Noge Queen because of my light hair and eyes, but my blood is Vilken.

  “Lore, sweet girl, I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. You must feel, in your heart, what you really are,” she replied. “If Sarane’s child had been born alive, I would not have called the Vilkerlings, who ruled after her, usurpers,” she said. I stood straighter. That was the first time M’Tek had actually spoken her name. “The infant was malformed, his head overlarge, and with limbs missing. He was born dead. I saw him with my own eyes. I was here with her for that birth. I struggled to save her. When my efforts failed, I held her hand as she died. I swear to you, the Demon Prince was not her son,” M’Tek said sharply. “And you are not his descendant.” M’Tek’s gaze was fixed on me.