Badgerblood: Awakening

by S. C. Monson

  With a fierce, drawn-out cry, he strained harder against the locked blades. Without warning, Martt let up the pressure and stepped aside. Kor stumbled forward, feet tangling in the curtains. The heavy drapes tore free of their delicate holdings and Kor’s sword clattered to the marble as he fell. He scrambled for it, but Martt kicked him back. Kor clutched his stomach and curled on his side, groaning.

  The commander planted a boot on his shoulder and shoved him on his back. Then he dropped one knee to Kor’s chest, and pressed the flat of his steel against his neck, cutting off his air. Kor gasped and flung his arm back for his weapon.

  “Don’t reach for the sword,” Hysoph shouted. “The gift is in your blood. Shift!”

  As the man spoke, Kor’s fingers found the sharp end of the blade. He curled them around it, ignoring the edge cutting into them, and swung the pommel at Martt. The commander blocked it with his arm and knocked the sword from Kor's grasp.

  The pressure on Kor’s throat increased. He clawed at the flat of Martt’s blade, fighting for breath. The stabbing sensation in his skin rippled through him with the struggle, stronger than before. The familiar throbbing hammered his bones and body. The dark lines expanded to completely block his vision. Kor squeezed his eyes shut against them, but they remained.

  “Stop resisting, boy; embrace the pull. The discomfort is part of your strength—use it,” Hysoph said, raising his voice. “Remember your blood and shift.”

  The words stirred a memory in Kor—the nightmare. Something inside him clicked and he finally understood. The fur-sprouting prickle, the restless stirring in his bones, the fighting nightmares, had all been preparation. They were the pull. They were the beginning of the shift. Without realizing it, he had practiced embracing the shift on the Isle whenever he’d forced himself to feel the pain and accept it.

  Now he opened himself to the clawing in his skin and the throbbing in his bones, accepting them, embracing them.

  The throbbing turned electric. It sang through every fiber of his being. With it, Kor felt a flicker of strength that seemed to protect him against injury and harden him against Martt’s attack. In that instant, breathing seemed to come more easily despite the blade pressing against his throat. Kor threw Martt off and rolled to his knees. Hysoph gave a triumphant shout and leapt from the dais.

  Kor tried to rise and toppled on his side as furry slivers of wood seemed to push out through his pores. His limbs grew heavy with the prickling sensation. Fire seemed to rip through his veins. Bones crushed in on themselves. Skin scrunched together as his body shrank and took on a different form. The change was terrifying, yet invigorating at the same time—but the transformation was agony. More than once, Kor nearly passed out.

  When the fuzzy lines in his vision finally began to fade, his surroundings shuddered back into visibility. His nightmare materialized, mingling with the scene around him. Martt picked up Hysoph’s sword and stepped away. His figure was soon replaced by the dying woman, holding out the bloodstained pendant. For the first time Kor could remember, her features were clearly visible. She reached toward him. He drew back, tangling himself in curtains, but the woman’s oval face still hovered before him. Kor saw his own eyes reflected there—vibrant pools of blue with flecks of green and gold starbursts bordering each pupil. But her eyes were wider and rounded to an almond shape, not as deep set and rectangular as his own. Sable hair framed her high cheekbones. Her cool olive skin was pale against the dark locks. Bloodless lips trembled as she spoke and her words echoed in his mind. New words. Words he hadn’t been able to remember before.

  “You are royalty, Kayor—through your father’s line, through me. But your destiny lies in more than a crown. Your father’s gift flows in your veins. You are Badgerblood. Never forget.” Her eyes glazed with pain. “Remember your blood, remember me,” she said faintly, and finally faded from view.

  The curtain was yanked from Kor. He rolled free of the velvet folds and lay panting on his front, shaking. The vibrant colors around him melted into blacks and whites and grays, all with a faint blue tint. His side blazed where Martt had cut him, as though the injury was stitching itself back together. The cuts in his fingers from grabbing Hysoph’s blade stung like a thousand bees, and other minor injuries sparked with discomfort. His muscles spasmed. Through blurred vision, he saw two furry black paws with digging claws stretching out before him—badger paws. His paws. Frightened, he scrambled back.

  A garbled voice carried down to him. He cast about for the source and saw Hysoph bending over him. Peter stood beside the monarch. And Martt Veen, Kor’s long-time enemy, stood apart from them. Kor growled at the commander and leapt for him, but Hysoph held him back. Martt dropped the end of the curtain he was holding and readied his sword. Kor’s steady growl dwindled in aggressiveness under Hysoph’s soothing influence and he noticed Martt’s cloudy countenance. It clung to the commander like a pulsing gray halo. Kor sensed great suffering in the man that seemed to emanate from one arm. Pity softened his anger.

  Hysoph was speaking again. Kor stopped growling to listen. At first, he struggled to understand. Then, almost instinctively, he concentrated on sounds and intonation in the garbled voice. The meaning behind the words became clear in a raw, unrefined way.

  “Calm, Kayor, calm. Hear—timing bad.” Hysoph’s words tickled Kor’s intellect. “No breathe in on shift: pain.”

  Kor realized Hysoph was talking about timing his breath properly and grumbled a retort. In the end it had been difficult to breathe at all, let alone shift. The sound came out as a growl.

  Hysoph glared disapprovingly. He seemed to understand the message behind Kor’s badger sound. Peter seemed to understand it, too, and chuckled.

  Again, Hysoph spoke. “Breathe out, shift back,” he ordered, releasing Kor.

  Shift back. At the thought, Kor curled in a ball, the agony of his recent shift still harrowed him.

  Hysoph’s expression softened and he stroked Kor’s fur. “Father Kollvin, proud, Kayor. Mother Eliese, proud. Hysoph, proud,” he said, emphasizing his own name. “Shift back. Breathe out.” At this, the monarch threw back his shoulders and held his head level as he breathed in deeply, then out, in demonstration.

  Kor’s heart raced in his chest and he curled up tighter. He’d faced fear and discomfort before, but this was different. Shifting was wild and unpredictable, strange yet familiar. Something, he was beginning to realize, that had lain restlessly dormant in him since before he could remember. Now it was fully awake and reviving memories, confirming the nightmare woman and her death were not just a dream. It reminded him there were still gaping holes in his memories, and the gaps terrified him.

  Hysoph spoke in soothing tones as he slipped the shifter’s pendant over Kor’s head. “Kayor remember blood. Embrace gift. Shift back.”

  Immediately Kor felt a surge of strength from his pendant—or maybe the pendant was magnifying the strength already within him. With an effort, he forced himself up on all fours and drew a few experimental breaths. Spreading his paws in a wide solid stance to keep his chest open, he drew on the tingle from his pendant and reached for the throbbing in his bones, coaxing it out. It grew stronger and the fur-sprouting feeling pulsed through him more quickly. Kor embraced it all, accepting it as part of him.

  For an instant, his discomfort nearly vanished. In that moment, there was a slight twinge in his muscles. Then the cramp ceased and the shift back began. Kor breathed out and the pain returned two-fold.

  Too late. I breathed too late, he realized. In the hour of coaching before the shift, Hysoph had told him to breathe at the muscle twinge. Kor let out a series of agonized, piercing yelps and sank to the floor. The cool marble tempered his burning hide.

  The badger in him seemed reluctant to go. It fought for dominance, but Kor’s pendant grounded him, pushed him on to manform. More colors returned to his sight. His bones slowly expanded to their regular size and his skin stretched to match it. The pads on his paws pulled away from each other as th
ough separating from dry, crusted porridge. They lengthened and grew into fingers and toes. Fur chafed his pores like sandpaper nails as it shrank into his skin.

  A tickly sensation rippled through him, once, then twice, then three times. With each ripple, the pain eased a little more. Kor felt a strong pull and desire to stop shifting. For a moment, he humored it. The growing, stretching, and chafing ceased. The pain eased further. He glanced down at himself. The shifting had paused. His clothes and pendant were visible now. He was curled on his side, a man again. No, not quite man, he thought. Half beast.

  An urgent voice called down to him…Hysoph. The words were much easier to understand now, but they were lost in Kor’s fascination and the pull as an image seemed to reflect back out of the darkness before him. It was himself, he realized. His own body. He stood and stared. His arms were thicker, more packed with muscles, and covered with stiff black hair. His legs felt the same, though he couldn’t see through his pants. The tanned olive skin on his wide hands was tough and leathery and he felt a crushing strength in the long, thick fingers.

  He touched his face and the image reflected the action. The chin and cheekbones were wider than normal. Bristly sideburns trailed down each cheek. He ran a finger over his eyebrows. Long wisps of hair arched over his deep-set eyes then flipped up at the ends, blending with his shag of head hair.

  A wild, untamed power pulsed in his veins. He closed his eyes to reach for it and sensed his image-self reaching back—his werebeast self, caught between shifts. Slowly, Kor opened his eyes again and stepped closer to the image, curious. The sideburn stubble on his leathery werebeast cheeks was peppered coal-black and white. The tangle of head hair was a gleaming ebony. As he twisted slightly, he could see short, bristling black fur covering the back of his neck and shoulders. An uneven, spattering stripe of snow-white hair marked the center of his black head hair. Stiff, curling white hairs sprouted from his chest, visible between the loose neckstrings of his werebeast self’s shirt. The same badgerhead spiral pendant hung on sinew around the beast reflection’s neck. Kor stretched out his hand toward it.

  Instead of reaching back, the werebeast reflection hunched its shoulders, bearing short pointed teeth in a snarl, and leapt. Terrified, Kor withdrew, falling, then scrambling back in an effort to get away. He seized on the tingle from his pendant, still pulsing faintly in the background. A searing agony rushed to the forefront and shocked him back into shifting. The werebeast self vanished, mid-leap.

  When it was all over, Kor lay panting on the ground, clutching his pendant, fully man again. He was soaked with sweat and shaking. Rather, someone was shaking him. A hand slapped his cheek. He groaned and cracked open one eye. Hysoph knelt beside him. As the rush of blood in Kor’s ears subsided, he heard the king more clearly.

  “—You hear me, boy? The in-between is not for beginners.” Hysoph was furious, but there was a strong note of concern in the fury. “It takes time and practice to control the werebeast. You were supposed to push past that and focus on the end shift. Didn’t you hear a word I said in the hour before you shifted?”

  A sourness rose threateningly up the back of Kor’s throat. “I heard. You just didn’t make sense.” He sat up, swaying slightly, and hunched forward, groaning again. If this was shifting, he wasn’t sure he wanted it.

  “Well,” Hysoph said, sounding more mellow, “you didn’t pass out on the shift back. That’s a start, at least.”

  “I wish I had,” Kor said, muttering.

  Hysoph pulled a handful of what looked like moldy corn kernels from a pouch on his belt. Kor’s stomach twisted in disgust and he looked away.

  “Tahoats,” Hysoph explained, holding the kernels out farther. “A shifter’s bread and butter. They’ll quell the nausea and replenish your strength.”

  Kor clenched his jaw, trying to keep back bile. The bloated, hairy kernels looked far from appetizing—gray-orange with pale lime-blue splotches.

  Hysoph took his hand and forced them into it. “Eat,” he said firmly.

  Afraid resisting anymore would further agitate his stomach, Kor resigned himself to his fate and shut his eyes. He tested a tahoat on his tongue, preparing to spit it out as soon as his body objected. Instead, his taste buds prickled eagerly. A nutty, baked corn flavor trickled down his throat. The nausea eased. He chewed and swallowed, then popped the rest in his mouth. They had a pleasant, salty crunch. Before long the nausea was completely gone and Kor felt stronger. He brushed his hands on his pants and noticed the scars. He stared. They were already scabbing over. He touched his side where Martt had cut him and winced. Tender, definitely still tender—but the wound wasn’t bleeding as much and he could see a scar forming through the tear in his shirt.

  “Healing,” Hysoph said, holding out a thin, weathered hand to pull Kor to his feet. “One of the gifts of a shifter.” His grip was surprisingly strong.

  “One?” Kor asked, curious.

  “There are others,” Hysoph replied, straightening the half cloak on his shoulder. His sword was sheathed at his side again.

  After a moment’s contemplation, Kor said carefully, “Right after I embraced the pull, I felt a spark of strength—breathing came easier despite the blade at my neck. My muscles felt…harder.”

  “Another gift,” Hysoph said. “Our badger blood can harden, protect, and strengthen us against injury. When you opened yourself to your power, the badger blood strengthened your muscles. So, despite the blade cutting off your airway, you were able to draw breath. With practice, you will better understand how to access this.”

  Kor nodded and glanced at Martt. “While in badgerform I also seemed to sense something in the commander…” He hesitated. “Pain.”

  Martt tensed visibly.

  “Weakness,” Hysoph explained. “The badgerskin often reveals our enemy’s weak spots. Then we must discover what they mean and how to exploit them.”

  “I didn’t sense anything in you or Peter,” Kor said.

  As the conversation moved on, Martt seemed to relax.

  “We were not fighting you at the time and you did not view us as your enemy. Now, you’ll have more questions, naturally, but for the moment—”

  “Why?” Kor demanded, cutting him off. The question had been bothering him since he first learned of Leon’s betrayal, but he’d been too preoccupied with shifting to ask it. He held Hysoph’s gaze as he clarified. “Why would Leon murder my father?”

  Hysoph eyed him steadily. “I was hoping that question would come later.” He studied Kor a little longer, then turned away.

  For a moment, Kor thought he wasn’t going to answer, then the monarch spoke.

  “Your father was a stubborn man, Kayor—determined, independent, even flippant at times. He rubbed certain people the wrong way. From birth he was arranged to marry a princess of Tilldor.” He paused and glanced back at Kor. “The kingdom with the seaport capital, south of Perabon…”

  “I know it,” Kor said. “Queen Rhoswen rules there with her daughter—a Princess Allinor, if I’m not mistaken.” Find the girl. Charm will bring victory. It had been a while since the dream-injunction had nudged his thoughts. Len’s face flashed in his mind, and he started.

  Hysoph was nodding. He didn’t seem to notice Kor’s reaction. Peter, however, eyed him curiously.

  “As soon as he was old enough to understand it, your father resisted the arrangement,” Hysoph continued. “I believed that was just youthful obstinacy and hoped he would grow out of it. He didn’t. He fell in love with Lady Eliese of Perabon, despite the fact that she, too, was already engaged—to a duke.”

  “Leon,” Kor said, guessing.

  “Yes. Leon challenged your father in duels and contests to keep your mother’s hand, though I suspect his eye was more on her crown.” Hysoph paused, pensive.

  Kor prompted him to continue. “And?”

  “He lost. Kollvin won your mother’s heart and declared his intention to marry.”

  “Then Leon exacted revenge,” Kor fin
ished, clenching his fists.

  Hysoph walked to the edge of the dais and sat down heavily. “Perhaps if I hadn’t grown so angry… My kingdom at his back might have offered some protection and discouraged Leon.” He sighed. “But, in my anger, I delivered an ultimatum to your father: Honor the arranged marriage, which would further strengthen our alliance and trade with Salkar, or wed Eliese and forfeit the Nalkaran throne—the Badgerblood throne.” His shoulders slumped. “I never thought he would forfeit.” He leaned forward, resting his forehead in his hand. “I never saw him alive again after he left.”

  There was a long silence, then Hysoph sighed wearily again and looked up. His lean face was drawn with sorrow and regret. He didn’t meet Kor’s gaze as he went on.

  “Eliese had you soon after your father died. Eventually, she remarried Leon and Merrick was born. A few years after that, Eliese died, and not long after, you fell down a ravine in Perabon and were carried away in the forest river, presumed dead. But you’re alive and here now.” Hysoph finally met his gaze. His tone grew stronger, more determined. “A Badgerblood with your father’s spirit and your father’s gift. I can teach you how to steward your shifting the way he did—you can take back what was rightfully his and reclaim the Perabon throne, or forget the past and live out your days in Nalkara.”

  For a time, Kor said nothing. Yesterday, his future had seemed simple. He’d planned to return to the Timberland, this time in Nalkara, and build a new hut with Peter and Spart; they could slip back into their old lives and pretend nothing had ever disrupted it. Now, the way forward was fraught with overwhelming responsibility, unpredictable shifting powers, and change, and the past was haunted by a murderous betrayal.

  Kor gritted his teeth as he made his decision. “Leon will answer for his treachery,” he said in a quiet voice. “My father’s death will be avenged.”

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