Doublesight

by Terry Persun

  Oronice laughed. “No. You are not even half way. But you've done nicely.”

  “What, what…”

  “I was reborn as a crow image first. This is what makes contact difficult.”

  “Why can I hear you?”

  “I'm not sure yet.” She shifted before him. “Oh, that's why,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. It's something I must sense.” A young, and very beautiful, Oronice sat before him near the dead body of her older self. Her hand lay across his arm where a clawed foot had been a moment before. “You,” she said accusingly, “could not imagine seeing me.”

  “Until I heard you,” he said.

  “Yes. Now listen to me closely.”

  34

  THE CHAMBER WALL STOOD a stark charcoal color against the yellow sunbeam that pitched through the one outside opening. King Belford the Warrior paced along the stone floor, scuffing his boots against the twisting grain in the hard river-stone surface.

  “Calm down,” Draklan said, making a smooth motion with his hand. “We'll find them. The double-beast will make sure of it.”

  “And what then? Kill them? Begin another war?” King Belford said.

  “Your worry sickens me. Where is the fearless warrior who held off Flandean armies, who entered Sclan and left only ruins?” Draklan spit a glob of slime onto the floor in front of the chair in which he sat. The spit stretched and slid like a living thing across the stone.

  King Belford stepped over it and continued to pace. “Why does it matter? Perhaps the warrior has seen enough death. Perhaps I believe there is no point to it. The doublesight threaten no one. They play inside their beast images like children. What harm?”

  “What harm?” Draklan jumped to his feet. “You fool. It is not what they do now, but what they could do. You've seen the sisters.”

  King Belford's face wrinkled into disgust. “I have,” he said lowering his head.

  “They are the new doublesight being born. They have hate in their veins. They are the future of this world unless someone stops them.” Draklan turned and stared at the wall. He spoke, not to the king, but to himself or someone deep inside him. “Only humans can stop them. Only pure bloods can put an end to this insanity, this hunger.” He twisted on his heels, swung around with knees bent and head cocked, urging King Belford to agree with him. “Do you see?”

  The king stopped pacing for a moment. His breathing became shallow. “What of you, then?” He waited but knew the answer and knew that Draklan would not say it. And what would happen to them all? Who or what might be left after such a war? “What is happening to The Great Land? What have the Gods allowed?”

  “Fool.” Draklan rushed past King Belford and stopped before the opening that looked out over the Weilk grasslands to the east. A line of wagons and carts appeared interspersed along the road leading toward the ocean. “The Gods,” Draklan said, “have abandoned us all.”

  “It can't be true.”

  “Ah, but if not, what is this?” Draklan opened the way for his own shift to begin. He shook his head violently as a beak appeared and ruffled feathers pushed from his head and neck. He could feel each, like a pin-prick, form and grow from him. Draklan let a loud squeal out of his throat. He felt sick, about to vomit when the feathery growths turned to fur and his body took on a dense weight, a muscled thickness unlike any bird. He felt the pressure of legs, feet, and claws before another feeling of sickness came over him. Wings grew from his back, larger than any wings should grow. They pushed out and stretched above and behind him. Another weaker squawk escaped his beak as his tail slipped into form like a snake crawling from his body. Draklan felt every change as it occurred. His mind thickened even as the memory of his human image remained conscious.

  Draklan let his claws protrude with a sharp scrape across the stone. He turned to face King Belford.

  Transfixed in a frightened stare, the king stepped backwards and stumbled, catching himself before he fell.

  Fury and sadness shot through Draklan's mind and heart. It was that look given him each time he shifted that caused his self-loathing. That fear in his father's eyes he knew all too well. His father's look of horror shaped Draklan's view of the world even before the sisters were born. He knew the wide-eyed stare. He knew how it felt to see such a shift, the fear and hatred behind the eyes. He had felt those emotions the first time he saw the sisters shift. He hated that he was seen that way as well, even though he felt the same hatred toward his cousins.

  Draklan lifted a front paw and lashed out with his claws toward his father's chest. He never actually struck King Belford, yet each time he swung out the man reached for his sword as though Draklan were his opponent and not his son. Draklan's eagle eyes pin-pointed every movement and registered it, stuffing it into memory. He could anticipate his father's next motion just through noticing slight tensions in the man's body.

  The gryphon turned around and walked away, letting his tail brush against King Belford's legs. This time his father did not move away. Draklan's continual taunting had become commonplace. He stood back from the window and glared past the procession and across the grasslands toward the horizon. He had never been to the Weilk-Alshore Ocean. Since birth, he had been sheltered until he could control his shifting. Only then could Draklan go on hunting trips with his father. Short trips. For the hunger for change grew quickly inside him, whichever image he held. As a human he longed to become beast, and as beast he longed for his human image. He felt that hunger now. The hunger to be normal, only one image not two, only one set of emotions. It was that hunger that drew against his sanity every day.

  Heat from the morning sun caused the distance to ripple and shift, reminding Draklan of his double life. The moment between one image and the next was indescribably fluid, not land or air. The colors washed together, yet the focused accuracy tightened and contrasted into perfection. He could see farther, but discern no color. He could pick out a rabbit in the brush, but control his hunger for its flesh. The only hunger he could not control grew from his heart. Often that hunger first wished for his death, then to become human once more and never to change back into his gryphon image.

  Draklan let his wings lower. He curled his head so that he could see his own lion's feet. Shifting back into human form took less time but left him exhausted. He sat on the floor of the chamber and drew in a great breath. He began to cry.

  King Belford stood behind him and placed a hand on his son's shoulder.

  Draklan turned into his father's legs and hugged them. It took immense energy to maintain the gryphon image. Not physical energy, but daunting amounts of emotional energy. And his first thought as a human, just before his shift completed, was of his mother's death. An angry child lashing out. The sound of his mother's broken neck, the slash of claws across her face. How she fell into his arms just as his human image became whole. Draklan cried for his mother's life, the tears doing double duty as they begged for death even though he knew his father would not do it.

  “Come along, my son,” King Belford said. He lifted Draklan from under his arms. Together they walked over to a long bench against the far wall and sat, the father's arms around the son's shoulders.

  Draklan felt his energy returning. But anger kept him in check. The hunger to shift stayed hidden. “What has happened to us all?”

  “Just as the doublesight are a reminder of our sins, The Great Land also reminds us by going through its own changes. War changes the face of all of us. It makes us evil, builds hatred where hatreds never blossomed before. We fear, my son. That is what humans cannot escape from. We fear whatever we cannot do, whatever we cannot see, and whatever lives differently.” King Belford pulled his son closer. “I am tired of fear, yet I feel it rise inside me every day. What am I doing by allowing the sisters to live the way they must live? How long can I be partial to their feedings without losing my own sanity? I grow tired of allowing the killing to go on. I can only imagine what my brother must go through.”
<
br />   “I only wish for it all to stop,” Draklan said. He straightened and shrugged to loosen his father's grip. “As long as the doublesight are alive there will be the potential for horrible beasts like the sisters. The gargoyles of the past are returning. The demons of history will destroy everything unless we stop it. I know that I am a doublesight, but I also know that what I say is true. We do not deserve to live if we are the downfall of The Great Land.”

  “Only some doublesight are dangerous.”

  Draklan leaped from the bench and walked to the center of the chamber before he turned toward King Belford. “I killed my own mother,” he said pounding his fist into his chest. “That is dangerous enough.”

  “You were a child.”

  “Had I killed you in that same moment, your generals would have slain me on the spot. Had they seen me, even now…”

  “Three generals have seen you. My brother, one of them.” His father stood, planting his feet firmly and lifting his chin with bold abandon.

  Draklan glared. “Yes, the father of the sisters. What would he say? That you and he are ruining your lives for the sake of throwbacks?” He spit the words as though they were vile creatures. “The other two are afraid of what I or the sisters might do if they said one word. Talk about fear.” Draklan motioned toward the window behind him. “If your subjects had any idea what I was, what mother was, would they stay outside these walls?”

  “They might.”

  “Out of fear, as you say. Out of fear and nothing more,” Draklan said.

  “Every human longs for what it feels like to shift.”

  Draklan shook his head. “They wouldn't want to know the pain. The doublesight spend their time battling their own longings, their own hunger. They are tormented, constantly at war with themselves.”

  “Not your mother.”

  “Silence!” Draklan's strength grew into anger. “Enough talk. Send out your men to find the doublesight before they know what I am, before they know who I am.”

  King Belford reached for his son as he walked past, but Draklan stepped backwards. Already the longing to shift into his gryphon image grew. What he did not say and could not say to his father was that his gryphon image had increasingly felt hunger for meat, even as he held back that hunger. He was becoming like the sisters, who craved blood and meat, something his mother had told him the doublesight did not do. He shook his head as he watched his father leave. It was market day. Better that the sisters be fed doublesight rather than picking off thieves or drunkards. No one would mind that a few doublesight disappeared into the castle chambers never to return.

  35

  UNEASY FEELINGS SETTLED INTO ZIMP. The market grew rapidly in size but not in sound. Vendors looked suspiciously at each other while they set up their wares. Lankor crowded Zimp's space, obviously unsure of what attention a brother would pay to a sister. Then there were the voices she heard continually. Since she woke up that morning, Zimp heard the telltale whisperings of Zora, but also heard other sounds, louder, more directed.

  As might be expected, crows flew over and around many of the carts looking for scraps of food, shiny objects to pick up. A cart owner dropped a coin and chased the crow that retrieved it. A few steps and the bird lifted easily into the air. Zimp felt jealous and had to look into Lankor's eyes for a moment, blankly but probingly, to hold back from shifting.

  “What is it?” Lankor said, not understanding the look she gave him.

  “You're too close,” she said. “A brother might protect his sister, but he wouldn't stand that close to do so.”

  With a huff, Lankor straightened his back and placed his hand on his hip. He had left his staff with his horse in the stable, but held his pack under his arm.

  Zimp noticed him fidget with his hands as though he didn't know what to do with them. She reached up and patted his shoulder. “A sister can get close to her brother, though.” She saw confusion cross his face and felt a glib satisfaction.

  Brok and Raik walked on opposite sides of Therin who pulled ahead of them against the taut leash line. Out the corner of her eye Zimp noticed that Raik held the leash. Brok must have done that to keep Raik in tow. A good idea.

  The five of them walked for another few minutes, changed course down a side alley, and stopped in front of a small inn called The Hangover.

  Zimp saw that above the sign ran a balcony jutting outward from the wall of the building. Enough space cantilevered above them for several people to sleep in the open air. She suspected that the space might rent cheaply after the rooms were full. Great logs ran diagonally from the balcony to meet the ground near the inn's walls. While inspecting the place, she heard a loud fluttering of wings close to her ears. Behind that sound one of her travel mates said something she didn't hear. She shook her head and took a deep breath.

  “Well?” Brok said.

  She turned with ease to look him in the eye. “I didn't hear you.”

  “Should Raik and I return to the stable with Therin? Do you think any inn would have a thylacine in one of the rooms?”

  “Wait here and we'll see,” she said. “Lankor, you get us a room.”

  She followed Lankor inside. The space opened to a dozen tables and long benches. Fifteen people, including a few Castle Weilk guards, sat in small groups talking and smoking pipes or sniffing smoldering pots of herbs. The thick air smelled of men and ale. Pine log beams stretched from one side to the other along the ceiling. Two staircases, one at each end of a long bar on the far wall, led to the rooms above.

  Zimp held to Lankor's shirt in the back as he plowed through the room and weaved between tables. She heard moans and chuckles as she passed some of the patrons. One said, “Oh, yes,” as she passed. She wanted to glare at him, but kept her eyes pointed toward Lankor's strong back. At the bar, Zimp came up close beside the big man.

  “We'd like a room,” Lankor said.

  The innkeeper stood near a pail of gray water, dipping dirty mugs and plates in for a moment then removing them and setting them onto a shelf just below the bar. Many of the wet utensils still looked dirty as he lifted them out of the pail. He wore a torn shirt and pants that were long for him and frayed at the bottoms. A reddish scar crossed his face and appeared to run partway down his neck and into his open shirt. He had a round and hairy chest and belly, strong forearms, and a look of madness in his eyes. “You and the wife?” he said.

  “My sister,” Lankor said.

  Laughter came from a table a short distance away. The innkeeper looked over at the men and turned back with a wide smile that glorified his green teeth. “Don't allow that kinda sex in here.”

  The men behind Zimp and Lankor howled.

  Zimp reached over and squeezed Lankor's arm hoping to help maintain his calm. It worked.

  Lankor turned to look at the men and let a great smile puncture his face. “No kind of sex will be happening with my little sister, I guarantee you.”

  The laughter subsided and several of the men turned back to their drinks.

  A tinge of pride swept over Zimp unexpectedly.

  “So it is, then,” the innkeeper said. “I'm Budrill.” He held out his hand.

  Lankor took it and said, “Lankor. My sister, Zimp.”

  “Odd names.” Budrill closed his eyes and cocked his head upward, thinking. “I'm good at names and would say that you aren't from the same part of The Great Land. Hmm. Zimp is definitely a southern name. Lissland?”

  Neither Zimp nor Lankor made a move to answer him.

  “My, my.” He smacked his thick lips. “…was in the war, ya know? Ya wouldn't know it by lookin’ at me.” He slapped his round stomach. “Lankor is a Sclan name, sir, sure as I'm standin’ here.”

  Zimp waited for Lankor to respond and when he didn't she started to speak only to be interrupted by his booming voice. “The war is what left us alone to care for each other,” Lankor said. “It's what brought our parents together and what took them away.” He held Budrill's stare.

  “Sorry, my frie
nd. A-many good families were torn apart.” He slapped his palm onto the bar. “The two of you, then?”

  “We are five,” Lankor said. “Two others and our pet wait outside.”

  “What kinda pet? We don't allow nothin’ dangerous…”

  “It'll stay with us and never leave the room, even when we come down for dinner.” Lankor reached around and pulled Zimp close to him. “A safe room.”

  Budrill blinked. “Our rooms bed three at best, and only if one sleeps on the floor.”

  “You don't want our money?” Lankor didn't give up.

  “A room and a balcony for five might be as much as thirty clips of gold.” He tapped his fingers. “You didn't say what kinda pet.”

  Lankor nodded. “A thylacine. We travel with two of the most talented trainers in The Great Land.”

  “They from Brendern Forest?”

  “The master trainer,” Lankor said.

  Budrill shifted back and forth and was about to say no. His lips tightened as he glanced around the room. “I could fill those rooms quickly today.”

  Lankor leaned closer. “Forty clips then.”

  The man nodded. He walked to the end of the bar and retrieved a bluntly carved key and handed it to Lankor. He motioned to the stairs at the right of the bar. “Front of the inn, room with a seven scratched into the wood. The inn ain't responsible for nothin’ stolen.”

  “I don't think we have to worry about that,” Lankor said.

  Budrill smacked his lips again. “Any trouble with your beast and I'll throw ‘im over the side myself.”

  “You won't even know he's there.” Lankor's voice softened and grew sincere. “Thank you.”

  Budrill cocked his head curiously, then wandered back to the end of the bar and his pail of water. He began to dunk mugs again.

  Zimp turned and led the way back outside, the sun blinding her vision for a moment. Squinting, she studied the alley, which led north and south several hundred yards. South dumped into the main road through the stronghold leading toward the castle proper. The northern portion split east and west. Most buildings lining the alley were two-story structures that stood thin and tall, unlike the inn, which was the longest building in the line.