Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter

by Jean Johnson

  "Well, at least our clothes aren't that far off from what the Corredai wear," Narquen muttered to Kenyen. "We might be able to blend in a little."

  Kenyen snorted, muttering back, "You should've seen the shapeless rags my sister-in-law wore, back when she abandoned her old life among the Mornai."

  "Enough chatter, you two. We'll take three weeks to look around and ask questions," Ashallan told the two men. "Bellar's brother is our best lead, but your pursuits may prove fruitful. If there is more than one inn, then we'll meet at either the northernmost or westernmost inn, in that order. And if we don't hear from you within four weeks, we'll come looking for you. Hopefully we can find what we need in Teshal. When we do, we'll send messengers to you—to the northernmost or westernmost inn of each valley, Nespah or Mespak. And don't take any big chances. Neither of you have all that many shapes."

  "As you wish, Princess," Kenyen agreed, dipping his head respectfully. At least, outwardly. Inwardly, he griped again. Seven shapes is a respectable number of shapes for a Shifterai male—the average is five, after all, and mine are as pure as any Shifter Council has judged. What I can do, I do well, thank you. Moving to the rock wall, he shifted himself taller and stronger, hoisting the first of the rocks from the top of the pile forming the makeshift barrier between them and the body of the man in the back. I love my brother, I really do... but there are times when I am tired of being compared to him.

  Manolo joined him, and the others formed a chain toward the cavern entrance, passing the rocks one after another to get them out of their way. Knowing his brother and sister-in-law would want details of whatever they found, Kenyen set himself to remember everything about this cave, and everything about the body they were unveiling.

  Atava's existence was one of the few pleasant end results of the atrocities her mother had suffered at the hands of the so-called Family Mongrel. But Atava herself wasn't interested in vengeance against the men who may have fathered her so much as she just wanted justice. Like her, Kenyen and the other shifters wanted such things stopped and needed to know if they were still happening.

  He and Manolo were here to represent her interests in this hunt. Kenyen didn't know exactly when the man in the back of this cave had died, but he was willing to bet that it happened after his sister-in-law was born. Those bones didn't look two decades old, and there had been no indication in her mother's ramblings that the shapeshifters calling themselves Family Mongrel had harbored a male prisoner.

  For the first two months, their search had seemed fruitless. The only signs they had found were smaller versions like those in the front half of this place, years-old evidence that a group of people had once lived sporadically in the cave-riddled hills of northern Correda, which lay along the southern edge of the Plains.

  But now we have a lead. Where it leads to, I have no idea, he admitted. All I can do is hunt down these curs and see that Family Mongrel, if it still exists, is scattered beyond both moons... and maybe avenge the death of this Tunric fellow, whoever he was.

  I do know I'll have to be extra careful in going about it. Someone murdered this fellow back here, either deliberately or through cruel neglect, but I cannot take the chance it was through neglect. They might not hesitate to kill again, particularly if this Tunric fellow held a position of wealth or importance. His impersonator wouldn't want to give that up.

  * * *

  Two

  The water was cool and sweet, partially shaded by the aspens and pines growing along the riverbed. The side-trail leading down from the main road to this grassy bank had been steep but worth the detour. Eyeing the rippling liquid, Kenyen debated stopping for lunch as well as water. The way his brown mare tugged on the reins a little, pointing her nose from the stream to the tufts of grass off to their right, made up his mind. Pulling a lead rope from one of his saddlebags, he clipped it to her halter, then unbuckled her bridle, freeing her teeth so she could eat.

  Tying the other end of the rope around a nearby tree so that the mare could reach both grass and stream, Kenyen removed the tack while she grazed. He gave her a cursory brushing, then turned saddle upside down to air-dry while the two of them rested. Once his horse's needs were tended, Kenyen pulled bread and cheese from one of his saddlebags.

  Tunric Tel Vem, or Tel Wem, was long dead. There was some urgency to find out if his murderers had been caught, yes, but not enough to prod him into racing his mount past her endurance. That meant Kenyen had time to enjoy the shade of the forest and the flow of the small river on this trip. The landscape around him looked nothing like the slowly undulating hills and rills of the Plains, with chest-high grass, low bushes, and broad horizons. No, the mountains surrounding him were high, the foothills close, the steep valleys cluttered, and the profusion of foliage almost exotic.

  Dipping his wooden travel mug into the river, he nibbled on the food and debated taking the time to go on a hunt, stretching his provisions. He had coins with him and had passed more than one place where food could be bought each day, but hunting was fun. Relaxing, in an exciting, tense way. Plus there were always new kinds of tasty game to be found and flushed out. Hm... maybe I should go hunting closer to dusk, when it's easier to creep up on my prey? Of course, letting the gutted game bleed out while I travel might work; that usually improves the flavor a little.

  Just as he bit into the herbed bread he had bought two villages ago, Kenyen heard water splashing. Not the trickling and rippling of the river but actual splashing. Rocking forward from his hip to one knee, he peered through the bushes lining the edge of the broad stream. The noise increased, until a tired man riding an equally tired pony came trotting and stumbling and splashing into view.

  The slight limping of the pony concerned Kenyen; a good horseman wouldn't ride his mount until it foundered. Nor would he force it into a fast walk through a mountain riverbed which was more rock than mud along its bottom. Not unless something truly important, maybe even dangerous, pressed the young man.

  "Hey." Rising from the bank, he caught the young man's attention, raising his voice a bit more. "... Hey!"

  Brown curls bounced as the youth jerked up his head, eyes wide and searching the bank. The moment he spotted Kenyen, he flinched, then frowned. Craning his neck, he looked all around, then cautiously guided his short mare closer. When he stopped her, she hung her head and snorted at the water. Without the splashing of the mare to get in their way, normal conversation was now possible. "Ah, yes? You wanted...? Wait, are you Shifterai?"

  Kenyen lifted a hand self-consciously to the pectoral draped around his shoulders and neck. It bore seven rows of animal-carved beads, one each for the pure shapes he could form. His plan had been to hide it in his saddlebags when he got closer to the valley of Nespah. "Yes, I am."

  The relief on the young man's face puzzled Kenyen. "Thank the Gods—wait, where are you from?"

  Kenyen rolled his eyes at the pony rider. Either the other young man was exceptionally scatterbrained or there was something far more pressing on his mind. "The Shifting Plains, obviously? Kenyen Sin Siin, of Clan Cat, Family Tiger," Kenyen told him. "Your mount looks like she has bruised hocks, or maybe a stone in one of her frogs. Why don't you bring her ashore and rest for a few minutes? I'd be happy to take a look at her hooves for you."

  Again, the other man peered all around them. "Is there anyone with you?"

  "No. I split from my companions two days ago—this is the right way to get to the Nespah region, isn't it?" Kenyen asked.

  "Yes." Twisting in the saddle, he pointed upstream. "I just came from there. It's a day's ride uphill, maybe a little more. If you follow the river, it's the right-hand fork. You'll see where the road crosses it on a covered bridge—are you really from the Plains?"

  "As sure as I can shift shape," Kenyen told him.

  The young man frowned for a moment in thought, then glanced behind him once more, as if expecting pursuit of some kind. Looking back at Kenyen, he nodded and lifted his chin. "Prove it. Something big, not tiny. And
no hiding your head."

  That was an odd request. Lifting his brows, Kenyen lifted his hands as well. Pulling the collar of wooden beads over his head, he set it on the ground, then unfastened the buttons stitched down the side of his chamak tunic. Toeing out of his riding boots, he pulled on the drawstrings of his gathered trousers and let them drop, revealing a modesty pelt of brown fur from hips to thighs. Without hesitation, he curled down and twisted his flesh, molding it into the orange, brown, and cream figure of a stripe-cat, his Family's namesake.

  His mare ignored him, accustomed to the ways of the Shifterai, where forty-nine out of every fifty men and one out of every fifty women born and bred on the Plains could take on at least two animal shapes and usually up to five, or even more. When the old Aian Empire had shattered not quite two hundred years ago, magic at the heart of the continent had shattered as well, affecting most strongly those who had survived the cataclysm that had wiped out the old capital city at the heart of what was now called the Shifting Plains. All of their livestock were used to shapeshifters.

  The man's mountain-bred pony, however, was not accustomed to his kind. She nickered and reared, or tried to. The young man wrestled the short mare back down to all fours, then nudged her over to the bank. Since it was away from the stripe-cat, the pony nervously complied. Tying her reins to a tree limb, he dismounted and came back. Kenyen, raised to be polite, sat on his haunches and waited patiently. He quirked one fuzzy brow as the youth gingerly touched him, but sat still as a thumb scrubbed over his flattened forehead.

  "Shift back!" the stranger commanded. Kenyen complied, still seated on the ground. The other man nodded, then swallowed. "And again—to a different form. Nothing small!"

  Since he only had three large forms, and only one was larger than his tiger-shape, Kenyen stood and shifted onto all fours, taking on the form of a brown-coated stallion. He whuffed as the other young man rubbed again at his forehead, and blinked when the Corredai youth sighed.

  "... Thank Cora. You aren't one of them."

  Taking that as a sign the odd examination was over, Kenyen shifted back, loins once again clad in fur for decency's sake. "One of who? And what's your name?"

  Breathing deep, the youth squared his shoulders. "I'm Traver Ys Ten. I'm from the Nespah holdings. And for the last... I don't know how many years, at least twelve... we've been plagued by shapeshifters. Only they're not shifting into animals. They're—"

  "—Shifting into other men," Kenyen finished for him. Receiving a startled gaze, he shook his head and folded his arms across his naked chest. "I don't know whether the Gods are laughing or just smiling today. I'm actually here in the mountains for the same reason. Tell me, Traver Ys Ten of the Nespah region, do you know of a man named Tunric Tel Vem, or maybe Tunric Tel Wem?"

  Traver blinked, visibly startled. "Yes, Tunric Tel Vem! That's like one of the meanest of them! Sure, he acts nice in public, but... How do you know who he is? I mean, isn't? Or both?"

  "I don't," Kenyen admitted. "I just know my companions and I found a body in a cave that looked like it had been kept there as a prisoner, and the prisoner had scratched his name into the rocks in a way that made us think someone wanted to imitate him. Have you ever heard this Tunric mention a 'Family Mongrel' or something along those lines?"

  Traver bit his lip for a moment, then shook his head hesitantly. "I'm not sure... maybe, but... Wait, who are your companions, and why did you split from them?"

  "Well, we're actually trying to track down criminals banished from the Plains, some of them from over twenty years ago. As for why we're looking for them..." Kenyen reached for his trousers, pulling them on as he explained the tale of his sister-in-law's mother. By the time he finished, the Corredai was giving him a sympathetic, grim nod, half understanding, half agreement. Kenyen finished the tale with, "... And so when we found the body of Tunric in a cave, but weren't sure if he came from Nespah or Mespak, we split up.

  "If you do have shapeshifters impersonating people here in the mountains, then we need to know about it," Kenyen told Traver. "It's not because they're criminals, though their new crimes are enough to condemn them again. It's because they've banded together to coordinate their crimes. This has to be stopped, and my people are willing to take on the responsibility of stopping them. As soon as I've looked at your mare's hooves and she's had a few bites of grass, we can go join the others at the town of Teshal. Ashallan will want to hear this."

  "Ashallan?" Traver asked, the corner of his mouth quirking up wryly. "You really are from the Plains. Tunric and the others like him won't even refer to Her Majesty with the honorific Ai, let alone give any female the A of a princess. They really don't like women. Tunric's wife divorced him a decade ago, claiming he abused her, and he didn't seem to care. He used to be a kinder, gentler man, but in the last dozen years... Polite in public, but only if it's truly public. The rest of the time he's arrogant at the very least, and unpleasant whenever he thinks he can get away with it."

  "That would fit with what we know about this Family Mongrel," Kenyen agreed, thinking of the things he had read in the book. Coaxing the now-calmer pony farther up on the bank, he checked each of her hooves in turn. "Easy, girl... just let me check... Ah, good. No stones are lodged in the soft tissues of her hooves, but she's bruised around the ankles and the frogs of her hooves are tender from the rocks in the stream. If you'd pushed her much more, she would have foundered or broken a leg."

  "I didn't have a choice. I couldn't be sure if one of the others in the trading party was a shifter or not—I don't know all their identities," Traver added as Kenyen looked up sharply. "I just know there are a lot of them, and that they're impersonating more men than just a handful in my own town. I would've gone to a Magister, but there aren't any large enough towns in the direction we were going. And I would've waited, except one of the men, I'm pretty sure he was a shifter, and he was giving me looks I just did not like. They made the hairs on my neck crawl, so I left early. Just took off, to get away as fast as I could."

  Kenyen narrowed his eyes. "How do you know so much about these... these man-shifters?"

  Traver shrugged, looking at the cheese and bread abandoned on the ground. "It was about six years back, when I was still a kid. I'd just gotten a new bow for my birthing-day gift and was dared to go deer hunting at night with it—I have good night sight, you see," he explained in an aside. "But then I got a bit lost and saw firelight. I snuck up on them, since I didn't know who was out there, and saw a clearing with a small bonfire and several men around it. Their faces... their faces kept melting."

  Kenyen, unfastening the pony's bridle so she could eat as well, looked up at that. "Melting?"

  "One minute it would be Tunric and his boy Tarquin, the next they were each somebody else, and they didn't look related anymore. Then they'd go back. The others, too. And they had hand mirrors, and they were looking into them. Now that I'm older, I realize they were practicing or something. And joking and laughing, and saying things about who they thought would make a good 'replacement candidate' next. I didn't know the names at the time, but later I learned some of them were men like Tunric, merchants and landowners. Powerful men in their communities."

  "That doesn't sound good, but it does sound like something Family Mongrel would do," Kenyen muttered grimly. Grunting, he pulled the saddle from the pony's back. It was damp with sweat, not river water, and would need airing so the beast didn't gain any sores.

  He wished his brother was here; Akodan was better at thinking strategically, at figuring out how to outflank an enemy. All I can think of is the horror of not knowing who all the man-shifters might be and how many of their victims died in caves like the original Tunric did. I have no clue how to find all of the shapeshifted curs from Family Mongrel, nor how to stop them. I know something will come to me, but at the moment...

  "I didn't know what to think, or what to do about what I saw," Traver muttered, his voice barely audible over the stream. "They scared me. They shoved each othe
r, talked coarsely... and there was this woman. I hadn't seen her before. She was dirty, and barely dressed in rags, and she scuttled about like a... like a timid mouse, and they hit her if she didn't move fast enough. And... other things." He shrugged, hugging his arms to his chest. "I told a friend of mine, and sh... well, they said they believed me, because of some things that were happening that they'd seen, too. But it was late, I was young, I didn't dare get close at the time, and I couldn't find anything out after that. Nor could my friend.

  "Everyone seemed so normal. But... little things kept adding up over the years. Until I was hunting through the hills again and found another bonfire. I didn't dare get close enough to see much, but I saw enough to know they're still out there, and one of them is definitely the man calling himself Tunric Tel Vem."

  Kenyen didn't miss the way the other young man kept looking at his food. "You want something to eat?"

  Traver nodded. Scooping the bread and cheese off the ground, Kenyen dusted them off, then broke each in two and gave the younger man the cleaner halves. Taking a bite himself, he chewed and thought. Both his mare and the shorter pony cropped at the grass growing along the banks, feeding while they rested. Finally, Kenyen swallowed and asked, "... Why did you want me to shift shape twice? What was that about?"

  "They have these marks on their forehead. Bluesteel scars," Traver told him. "They have a way of covering it up when they're pretending to be a human, but it shows up when they've shifted into an animal shape."

  Kenyen eyed him, then snapped a twig off the nearest aspen tree and drew a swirling, line-crossed mark in the dirt at the edge of the riverbank. "A mark like this?"