The Changeling

by Jennifer Lyndon

  “I’ve been reading everything I could lay my hands on,” I explained. “I could probably work as a healer now,” I added.

  “I’ve never heard a healer use such words,” M’Tek countered. That’s when I realized I had earned her interest. She was willing to hope, if I gave her enough information. “Will the family allow you to keep this foul smelling tome?” M’Tek asked, trying not to seem eager, and sounding arrogant instead.

  “I’ve agreed to buy every bottle of sparkling berrywine they produce for the next fifteen years, assuming a peak harvest each year,” I said. “And I’ve insisted on paying in advance,” I added. “They gave me the book as a gift. In fact, they offered me their entire library. I told them I’d take this book with me now, and collect the remaining books later, once I’ve built a place to house them. They seemed very happy with our agreement.”

  “I imagine they were happy to be rid of the stench,” M’Tek said, her gaze returning to the pages of the book as she struggled to decipher the language.

  “I need to make a few more visits, over the next couple of weeks, just to keep from upsetting my subjects who’ve issued invitations, but if I could, I’d end this tour now,” I said, controlling the excitement in my voice. “I think I have what we’ve been searching for. Now I only need time to interpret it.”

  M’Tek appeared strangely intrigued, her pale eyes fixed on the page before her, repulsion over the smell forgotten. I lifted the book from her lap and closed it carefully. “We’ll study it more later,” I promised before carrying the book over to the corner and wrapping it up again in an attempt to contain the foul odor.

  Once I returned to my position beside her, M’Tek sank a little deeper into the sofa, relaxing for the first time since her arrival. I leaned closer to her and turned, facing her as I eased a leg across her lap to straddle her, and began unfastening the ties at her throat.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked sharply, remembering she was still angry with me.

  “Undressing you,” I replied. “I want you.”

  “You think I’ll have sex with you after what you put me through?” she asked, her protest unconvincing, probably even to her own ears. “We still haven’t discussed how you lied to me, and how you undermined my authority with my most trusted guard.”

  “Shiroane is now the head of my guard, M’Tek. As such, she owes her loyalty to me, not you,” I pointed out as I continued my progress with M’Tek’s shirt. “You were undermining my authority by ordering her to hold me prisoner in my own palace.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she protested halfheartedly, her fingers working to open the buttons at the back of my dress. “What about the lies?” she asked. “How can I trust you again after you lied to me so easily?”

  “I never lied to you,” I replied. “You asked me to run if I’m attacked again. I promised I would do as you asked.” M’Tek shook her head.

  “You knew I didn’t want you to travel without me,” she said pointedly, as she began lifting my skirt along my thigh.

  “You’re right. I knew. I’ll admit that,” I said before pressing my lips to her throat. “I never agreed, though. And I certainly never lied about it,” I whispered against her skin.

  “Deus! You’re the most infuriating woman I’ve ever known,” she said as the fingers of her right hand wound through my hair. Finally she lifted my chin with her left hand, and gently pressed her lips to mine. That’s when I knew I was forgiven. Shiroane would not get off so easily.

  -CH 13-

  I completed my tour of the Western Noge Territory with M’Tek traveling at my side. It took her a week to stop glowering at Shiroane, and another one to speak to my loyal guard in a civil tone. I considered that great progress. For her part, Shiroane did her best to keep out of M’Tek’s way, communicating mostly with me, as was appropriate, I thought, since she was captain of my guard, and not M’Tek’s.

  I thought my work on M’Tek’s cure would be completed soon after our return to Vilkerdam, but that odiferous book proved more difficult to interpret than I’d first anticipated. I wrote to my distant relations in the Western Noge Territory requesting the use of books I remembered from their libraries. Boxes of books began arriving by courier daily. During that period of optimistic toil, I spent hours each day in the library, chasing down the meanings of archaic words. Usually, I was only able to approximate what they might mean, which made unlocking the key to M’Tek’s illness seem nearly impossible.

  It wasn’t long after our return that I started noticing signs that M’Tek’s illness was progressing. She developed laugh lines around her eyes, and the skin loosened slightly along her jaw. I doubled my efforts in the library, but still didn’t make headway. Finally, M’Tek came to me and asked that I spend less time in my obsessive attempt to control fate, and more time with her before she died. She added that she was growing tired of running Vilkerland for me, that managing Faeland from a distance was work enough.

  I could easily grasp her point of view. If she was dying, and I couldn’t stop it, which I was unwilling to concede, I needed to spend as much time with her as possible. As a result, I began hiding books about our apartment, and sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to work on the sly.

  During the day we took long, meandering, rides through the woods, and out beyond the village. We swam together in the little lake where Svenar had met his untimely end over two hundred years earlier, and made love every time we found a moment of privacy.

  As the disease began to take hold of her, she had less energy, and so we rode less, staying in bed longer hours of the day. I found more time to work on finding her cure, as M’Tek needed additional sleep, but the answer was simply not graspable. Finally, I had to admit we were running out of time.

  Seven weeks before the Fae season was to begin, M’Tek told me she had important news she wanted to share with me. She had a dinner prepared for us and brought out to the ruins of the cottage near the lake. Candles were placed throughout the area, and little lantern lights hung from the tree branches overhead.

  She was striking in the moonlight, her hair glowing slightly, reflecting the light, her eyes illuminated like the stars. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her until she was breathless.

  “I have something to discuss with you,” she whispered when my lips began moving along her jaw. “I had the announcements drawn up without your approval,” she said, her breath tickling my skin.

  “Announcements for what?” I asked, more concerned with kissing her neck than what she was telling me.

  “For our joining ceremony,” she said calmly. I leaned back from her to catch her captivating smile. She placed her hands along the sides of my face and drew me closer, kissing me eagerly. “I was going to surprise you,” she confessed. “Don’t worry, my love. I realized I was being selfish.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, growing more confused than enlightened by her explanation.

  “This disease has its claws in me now. It’s sinking into my bones, and weakening every part of my body,” she said. “Within the next few weeks you may not want me still, my love, at least not the way you do now.”

  “I will always want you,” I assured her. “As long as I breathe, I will want you.”

  “But not in the way you want me now, Lore. Don’t worry. Of all people, I understand. I’ve watched those around me wither and die for over two hundred years. I’ve watched beautiful women, who could stop me in my tracks when young, become withered and helpless creatures. I won’t expect the same love and desire to shine in your eyes when I’m diminished to a frail old woman,” she said gently.

  “M’Tek, you don’t understand at all,” I argued, shocked she could believe my love for her so shallow.

  “Please, don’t argue with me. Allow me to give my concerns voice,” she pleaded, sounding more vulnerable than I liked. I nodded my consent. “All right. I started questioning why the joining ceremony meant something to me. I was willing to almost trick you in
to going through with it,” she continued.

  “But M’Tek you’ve no need to trick me. I want to join with you,” I said quickly. “I want it even more now than when I first agreed.”

  “That’s sweet of you to say, but I would rather you were honest with me,” she replied, squeezing my hand gently. Obviously she didn’t believe me. “Truly, it doesn’t matter. I realized it makes no difference whether we have the ceremony. Faeland will be yours either way.” I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat, trying to find the right words to reassure her. I loved her more every day. I didn’t see her illness when I looked at her. “When I realized my motives were selfish, I started peeling away the layers to get at what was driving me. It comes down to this, the simple need to express what you’ve meant to me, Lore. No ceremony could ever accomplish such a feat,” she explained.

  “But I know how you feel about me, M’Tek. You show me, every time you touch me, or look at me. I feel how much you love me,” I said, not wanting to hear what she was really trying to tell me.

  “I’m dying,” she said firmly. “I feel it in every fiber of my being. It won’t be long. We didn’t get the five years I hoped for, but we’ve had two remarkable ones, the happiest of my life, and…”

  “We’re not giving up, M’Tek,” I said, interrupting her. “I’m close to solving this. I can feel it.”

  “Just listen to me for a few minutes,” she said. “This isn’t easy for me, but I’m trying to tell you something important.” I nodded, uneasy about where she was headed. “I doubt I’ll live another two months,” she pointed out. “At first, I wanted to be at home when the time comes, at Cliffside more precisely, lying in our bed together, with your lovely young arms around me. Every day, as I see myself fading, and wrinkling, I question that,” she said. “I know death well enough to realize it is undignified. You no longer hold your bowels at the end, and…”

  “M’Tek, please stop,” I whispered. “You’re not going to die.” She looked away from me, to the lake, unable to go through with it for a moment, gathering her courage.

  “I’m going to leave you with your illusions, Lore. Instead of some empty ceremony, the way I will prove my love for you is by sparing you all of this. You’ll remember me as I was, not as this withering old woman,” she said, her tone commanding. “Remember me strong, and happy. You have made me so incredibly happy,” she added. “I never knew I could feel this way. I’ve lived an entire lifetime of happiness in these two years with you.”

  “You’re not leaving me,” I said, stunned. “Do you seriously believe I would let you go?” I asked. “You’re here, in my palace, under my sovereignty. I have enough guards to hold you here.” M’Tek shook her head.

  “Lore, my love,” she said evenly. “Let’s not waste the little time we have left in a battle of wills. Neither of us will win.”

  My eyes started burning as I waited for something to come to me, something I could say to make her see my side. I wanted every moment I could have with her. I didn’t care if she was sick, or weak, or her skin was changing, or if her bowels failed. I loved her.

  “Fine. I won’t fight you, on one condition,” I said, forcing my voice to sound almost normal, though my throat hurt when I spoke. “You have to promise me you’ll let me try before you go. Whatever I come up with, however foolish you think it sounds, let me try before you leave me.”

  “Of course I’ll let you try,” she said gently. “But you need to accept the fact that there’s likely nothing you can do.”

  M’Tek offered an indulgent smile. She had lost faith in my efforts months ago, when I’d come up with nothing after our return from the Western Noge Territory. She only listened to me when I discussed it because she thought it was my way of coping with what was happening to her.

  I put on a brave face for the rest of the evening, allowing her to delight me with stories of a time long before I was born; of battles she’d won against all reason. She was trying to give me a feel for the Fae people, what they had been and how much they had changed in the past two and a half centuries. She wanted me to have the perspective she had, to be the ruler she had been. That was too much to ask. I was only a changeling raised by Vilkerlings. I could never live up to the legacy of the formidable Queen M’Tek.

  Over the following weeks I grew more desperate in my search, narrowing my studies, drawing the closest estimation of what I thought that book was telling me. I had little to lose at that point, since M’Tek might leave me any day. Every time she said she was tired, or I noticed another wrinkle forming, I was afraid we had reached the day she would decide to abandon me. I lived in constant fear, as I obsessed over trying to find the key.

  About a month later M’Tek had begun to slow down to the point that walking with her was difficult, not because I minded the leisure pace, but because I could see the anxiety on her face when she realized I was slowing my steps to accommodate her. I knew it was only a matter of days before I woke to find her gone.

  I had thrown together the words from that bewildering book, about how viruses could be used as weapons against the Fae. There were particular words to be spoken in a specific order, which were supposed to reset what was referred to as the technology in her blood. That was the best I could do with the strange wording. It made absolutely no sense, but it was all I had. I combined this with an old healing ritual, and thought maybe it might do something. I was desperate at that point, clinging to the irrational and incomprehensible. It was all I had.

  I convinced M’Tek to return with me to the clearing by the lake, suspecting this was her last night before she would leave me. If she waited much longer it would be difficult for her to ride. Lanterns were strung through the trees, and I had our dinner brought out there on the rocks so we could eat under the stars. We rode Sabea and Twyneth out rather than walking, because M’Tek was too weak by that point to cover such a distance on foot.

  “I want to do our joining ceremony out here, under the night sky,” I told her when we arrived. She smiled at me, but her expression was sad.

  “I would release you if I could, Lore,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how. Once the thing was done, and the words spoken, there was no undoing it.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t want you to release me,” I replied. “How can you even think such a thing? I want to be joined with you.”

  I led her to the blankets spread upon the ground, and helped her to sit. She would hardly allow me to touch her by that point, but for some reason that night, when I tried to kiss her, she didn’t resist me.

  “All right,” I started. “I think we should have a very simple ceremony, in the old way,” I added, smiling. “How about, I bind myself to you, taking you as my Queen and partner, equal ruler of Vilkerland and the Western Noge Territory?” I suggested. M’Tek laughed with more passion than she had shown of late.

  “No. Please. I’ve never wanted Vilkerland,” she said, teasing me. “I can’t imagine a worse gift you could give me.” I nodded. “I won’t end my life a Vilken Queen.”

  “Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes at yet another jab at Vilkerland. “I Loredana, Queen of Vilkerland, bind myself to you in love, Queen M’Tek of Faeland. I share with you equally the Western Noge Territory, but not Vilkerland.”

  “And, I take you, Loredana, my love, as my Queen. Everything that has been mine is now yours as well,” she said solemnly. “I will love you to my last breath, and if I find that Deus exists, my adoration will continue beyond this life for all eternity.” M’Tek smiled, happy with her choice of words, I think.

  “Now we bind it,” I said.

  “Do you have the ribbons?” she asked, apparently delighted with the notion. I nodded, and removed the colored ribbons of both Noge and Fae traditions from the pocket of my cloak.

  “I have to say some words I learned from an old book,” I explained, as I began tying the ribbons around her offered wrist.

  Once I had the ribbons fixed, I began on my
own. The knot would bind us together once I joined our two hands and tightened the last ribbon. I started saying the words once my own ribbons were in place. I then reached into my boot and produced a knife. I quickly sliced an M into the center of my hand before she could stop me.

  “What have you done?” she asked, startled by the blood pooling in my palm. “You’ve harmed yourself.”

  “It’s a Vilken ritual,” I said quietly. “It makes our joining binding in Vilkerland. I’ve cut an M,” I said, hoping she would take the hint.

  She watched me a moment, as if deciding whether or not to humor me. Reluctantly, she picked up the knife. “At least I still have the power to heal you,” she said quietly. I saw her make two lines which met at a corner, an L. M’Tek looked troubled as she eyed my blood dripping down my wrist, but then I took her hand, our blood mixing. As we bound the ribbons together I whispered the strange words again. I felt it start. Something was happening to my blood. I smiled at M’Tek.

  “I think it’s working, M’Tek,” I exclaimed in my excitement. “Can you feel it?” I asked.

  “Deus! Lore, what do you feel?” she asked, her expression one of alarm. “What’s happening?”

  “I feel your blood pumping into my hand,” I said. “Look, the color is even changing,” I said, pointing out the darkening of the back of my hand.

  “What did you do?” she asked, clearly panicking. “Can you undo it? Quick. Call it back.”

  “But I used the words from the book,” I said, grinning.

  “It’s not working the way you wanted it to, my love,” she said. “I feel the last of my strength draining away.”

  I held her gaze, watching as the color faded from her cheeks, leaving her almost grey. She appeared weaker rather than stronger. As I watched, she crumpled down onto the blanket, her hand limp against mine.

  “M’Tek!” I called, but she didn’t respond.

  My heart pounding, my senses heightening as I looked around me in the dim clearing, I saw the light in the shadows that a moment earlier had been only darkness. I struggled with our binding ribbons, trying to untwist them, but the knots were already set. Only a sharp sword would cut them before the morning. I tried to squeeze my other hand between ours, but the connection was too tight. I could think of nothing else, and so I called out.