Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

by Jack L. Chalker

  I looked around for some sign of Zala or, perhaps, Tully Kokul, but neither were anywhere to be seen. I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that I was very much alone in that square, the only whole and conscious human being and not marked by the spell as a friend or ally. I began to think better of the idea and edged back along the wall toward the door once more, whereupon a couple of creatures, one tentacled and snakelike, the other a gray thing like a crude stone carving noticed me and pointed. I froze, and some of the others turned in my direction. There seemed little I could do—they had the guns—so I just stood up straight, walked away from the wall, and put my hands up.

  “Wait! Don’t shoot!” I called to them. “I’m not a bad guy. I’m Zala’s husband! You know—Zala. One of your people!”

  A creature that looked something like a walking tree turned to the tentacled, snakelike thing and said something I couldn’t catch. The tentacled creature said something back. I saw some shrugs and indecision from several of the more humanoid ones around as they stopped for a moment from their task of identifying those with horns and carrying them off.

  The frog-man came up to them and said, clearly, “He’s the T.A.—the government man here. Get rid of him!”

  One of the winged creatures nodded, pulled its pistol, and aimed it at me.

  “Hey! Wait a minute!” I yelled, but then something hit me real hard and I lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Changeling

  I came to, slightly, but felt dizzy, weak, and my head hurt as it never had before. I know I groaned, but I was only semi-conscious and still not really thinking. I was aware, though, that I was on a stretcher or litter of some land and that I was being carried someplace very fast. I managed to open my eyes and was shocked to see that it was dark. How long had I been out?

  I heard a sharp command and the stretcher bearers slowed, then stopped and put me down. There was very little light and I was in no condition to see straight, but I couldn’t help thinking that the front bearer was a giant caricature of a big bird of some kind. Caricature. That was a good word for most of the changelings I had seen. The image of the white, feathered head with its huge eyes and wide, flat orange beak finally penetrated by still-foggy brain enough for me to realize the obvious—they hadn’t killed me but had, for some reason, taken me with them! The game was back on track—if my head ever reassembled itself.

  The bird-thing poured something into a cup from a gourd around its waist “Drink this,” it rasped in a guttural, nonhuman voice. “Go on—it’ll make you feel better.”

  I managed to grab the cup and bring it, with the help of a humanlike white hand, to my lips. It burned a bit, but tasted much like a fruit brandy. My mouth was dry and parched and I badly needed something. I spilled a little, but only a little, then dropped back down on the stretcher.

  “He’ll be all right,” the bird-man said to a companion I hadn’t yet seen. “That’ll keep him until we get to the Old Woman.”

  “That’s all I want,” replied the other, a woman’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar but wasn’t one I could easily place.

  “Zala?” I managed weakly, voice cracking.

  “Forget her,” the voice responded, and then we were up and off again.

  My head didn’t really clear very much for the remainder of the journey, although the pain subsided into nothingness. I was semiconscious, but not really able to move or say much of anything, and the whole world seemed to have a fuzzy, dreamlike quality. I had enough wits to realize that I’d been given a drug containing a light sedative, but whether to lessen my pain or to keep me from recovering—or both—I couldn’t be sure. Nor, in fact, did I much care.

  Time had little meaning for me, but it was still quite dark when we slowed and approached what appeared to be a cave from which a dull fireglow shone into the blackness. Thunder sounded in the distance, and told us all that the inevitable Charonese rains would soon be upon us once more. But the cave was the destination, and they managed to carry me into it before the heavens opened.

  The cave itself had a small mouth but opened into a single large chamber, although exactly how large I couldn’t tell. A fire burning in the center of the chamber was the source of light. Its smoke was rising straight up, indicating some kind of air vent. If it was hot outside, it was really broiling inside, and if I had been in anything other than a drugged condition I would have gotten out of there. As it was, I could only lie there, sweating profusely, visions of being roasted on a spit dancing through my fevered brain. There was someone else in the cave—a very old woman, it appeared, dressed all in black cloth that virtually bid her entire body, which appeared to be extremely large. She doddered up to us using a crooked stick as a cane and gestured for them to put me down where I was, which they did. Bird-man turned to the one in back of me, “All right, we’re even now, Darva. I hope this is really What you want.”

  Darva! I’d almost forgotten about her. I hadn’t really seen or talked to her after that first time, although I’d looked for her when I was out at Thunderkor. Even in my drugged state, it made me feel a little better to know that I had yet another friend among the others, one who had probably saved my life.

  She moved around to where I could see her, near the old woman. Darva towered over the woman in black, who had pretty good bulk herself, although she was almost certainly human.

  “I bring you my heart, Grandmother,” she greeted the old woman.

  The woman stood back and looked at her with ancient, dark eyes. “It is good that you are well,” the old one responded in a voice cracked with age and experience. “I feared the loss of many lives.”

  “There were twelve of us killed,” Darva told her. “That is less than we thought And almost two hundred of them.”

  The old woman nodded. “That is well But they will bring down a terror now beyond knowing or understanding. All are even now scattering to the winds and will not regroup for many weeks in special places far away. And what of you? What will you do?”

  Darva sighed. “You know Isil is dead and his masters flown.”

  “I know,” the old woman replied, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “You are a changeling forever, and no old changeling may ever return to Bourget.”

  “I know,” Darva told her. “But what I did, I did for revenge, not out of some loyalty pledged to ones I don’t even know.”

  “You will not join the others, then, at the appointed time?”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t decided as yet, Grandmother.” The old woman looked over at me. “He is the one of whom you spoke?”

  Darva nodded. “He was kind to me when no one else would be. He is not like the others. I ask you now for a last favor, Grandmother.”

  Still fogged and semi-comatose, I could only follow the conversation, not analyze it or join in.

  “Does he consent?” the old woman asked.

  Darva turned and pointed to me. “See how they have hurt him? They were about to shoot him when I stopped them. Without me he would be twelve hours dead. Does that not give me the right?”

  “Under our sacred law, it does,” the old one agreed, “but he may not be the kind of person you think if your will is imposed.”

  “What choice will he have?” She paused. “Besides—if not he, then who? It is my reason to live.”

  The old woman gave a sympathetic smile. “Then that is more than reason enough.” She waddled over to me and examined me clinically, like a doctor before an operation. “That’s a nasty crack on the head. Skull fracture, some concussion.”

  Darva came over and looked down at me. She was still exotically beautiful, even the light green skin and dark green of lips and hair served to make her even more alluring. For the first time though, I noticed the nonhuman touches of the now-dead creature artist who had remade her: small pointed ears that twitched this way and that through the dark green hair, and hands that were far rougher and more beastlike than I remembered. That sharp, curved horn, perhaps fifty centimeters long
, was actually a curved bone, layer upon layer presenting a sense of concentric rings leading to its sharp point. “You will be able to repair him?” she asked, worriedly.

  The old woman nodded. “Oh, yes, yes. Although the blow’s a serious one that would have killed many men. He has a very, very strong will to live. Good wa, strong wa, already rushing within him to repair the damage. We will help the wa.”

  “When?”

  “Why not now? He is quiet. He has been given osisi, I perceive. That is good. He is heavily sedated, but conscious. It helps, his being awake.” She turned back to Darva. “A spell of the mind will be hard. He is protected by the town sorc from such meddling. I could give you potions, though …”

  She shook her head. “No. That will be all right I wouldn’t want it to be like that anyway.”

  “That is good. I will have enough problems reworking parts of his body functions, reflexes, balance centers, that sort of thing, without having to worry about the conscious mind as well.” She sighed. “Well, let’s get it done.”

  Again, I can say little about how much time passed, or exactly what was done. I know that the old woman chanted and meditated over me for a long while, and occasionally seemed to knead various parts of my head and body. I also seemed to have a bad fever, with all sorts of strange, surrealist visions passing in and out of my mind. I would come down with chills, then hot flashes, and even oddly erotic sensations ran through my whole body. They had remarked on how bad off I was, and so I didn’t fight any of it. Finally, I just lapsed into an incredibly deep sleep where no odd creatures, feelings, wizards and witches penetrated.

  I awoke still feeling groggy, although with no pain. It was some moments before I perceived a wrongness, somehow, about myself. I looked around the cave, but aside from a now tiny fire and a sliver of light coming in through the opening indicating it was day outside I saw nobody and nothing unusual. I fought to clear the cobwebs from my brain, and, at last, I realized a couple of things right away. First of all, I was standing up. That was really odd, since there was no way I could imagine myself rising in the dark—unless it was part of the witch’s healing spells or whatever. Second, I no longer felt the least bit hot. In fact, I felt a little chilly, which was ridiculous in a cave with the fire still going.

  I was suddenly very wide awake and with a very bad feeling about all this. I raised my hand to rub the last bits of sleep from my eyes and saw what I feared.

  The hand was green, rough; and taloned.

  “No!” I shouted, my voice echoing slightly around the cave walls. “Damn it!” I took a step forward, and immediately knew the whole story. I turned and looked down and back at myself. I had big, taloned lizard’s feet and thickly muscled lizard’s legs, not to mention a bright green tail that was almost as long as my body without the legs. Frantically I looked around the cave, then saw over in one corner something that would do for my purposes—a large piece of shiny metal. I went over to it, picked it up, and looked at myself in the fire’s reflection.

  Horn and all, I reflected glumly. The face and torso retained some of my former appearance, but it was an odd hybrid, a combination of the features of Park Lacoch and Darva.

  I heard someone enter behind me. I put down the shiny metal and turned. It was Darva. She stopped and looked at me, a mixture of pleasure and apprehension on her face. “Darva, why?” I asked her.

  She looked a little apologetic. “I saved your life,” she reminded me. “I would think you would do the same for me.”

  “I—I would,” I told her honestly, “but how is changing me into a near double of you going to do that?”

  She sighed and looked a little sad. “The only thing I lived for was revenge, and I’ve had that, although not the way I hoped. Now, with all this, I’m completely alone and like this forever, unless I’m changed into something even worse. The only one of my kind, Park—and never able to go home again, to see my family, to be among the few I treasure.” There was a note of pleading in her voice. “Don’t you see? If I had to go on alone, I’d kill myself. And there you were, and Jobrun knocked you out, then drew his pistol to shoot you. I saw it, and knew, somehow, it was destiny and that the gods had put you and me there like that for a reason.”

  I shook my head sadly. The truth was, I had to admit even to myself, that what she was saying was totally understandable and even reasonable. How could I even argue with her logic, no matter how I felt? Face facts, I said to myself. You’d be dead without her, so you owe her. And this way, you are still in the game, still playing. If the changelings were the heart of Koril’s movement, then it was with the changelings I belonged. If there was any doubt about that I should have just stayed out of that square and helped Tully pick up the pieces as a loyal T.A. Besides, there were a lot worse things I could have been turned into—I ought to know. I had seen them in the square.

  I went over to her, almost knocking over some stuff with my tail, took her hand in mine, and smiled. “I do understand,” I told her, “and I do forgive you.”

  She looked instantly happy beyond measure.

  “But you might have gotten more than you bargained for,” I warned.

  She didn’t seem to hear the comment, but two big tears welled up in her green eyes. “I’m glad we’re not going to have a fight.”

  I sighed. “No, no fight I admit this is going to take some getting used to in more ways than one, but I think I can live with it.”

  “Let’s go outside,” she suggested. “We’re sort of coldblooded.”

  Well, that explained the slight chill, I thought I followed her out It was the usual hot day, with heavy humidity and ” great clumps of white fog covering almost everything. The heat and humidity seemed to fade slowly away, though, and I began feeling very comfortable for the first time since arriving on Charon. Suddenly I was conscious of a great hunger. “What do we eat?” I asked her.

  She smiled. “Almost anything living,” she replied, and I had visions of tearing small lizards limb from limb. She caught my thought and laughed. “Oh, no. Plants, fruits, leaves, that sort of thing. Animals, too, but I prefer mine cooked the old way.”

  “Fair enough. Anything nearby?”

  “There’s a grove of fruit trees—cuaga melons—just down the hill here. Follow me.”

  She started off and I followed. “You say it’s a grove. Any chance of our being seen? Tm pretty sure changelings aren’t too popular right now.”

  “No, it’s on the edge of Bindahar’s holdings,” she replied. “They won’t be out this way for a couple of days, and by then we’ll be long gone.”

  The melons were big, fat black and orange striped things, but they were very filling, although I had to get used to eating the rind as well. Either my taste sense had changed drastically—which was likely—or the humans who ate only the pulp missed something good.

  We ate long and heavily. My old self—my original self—might have managed a whole melon, pulp only. The old Park Lacoch maybe a quarter of that. I ate seventeen, rinds and all, and still wasn’t totally full.

  “You eat a lot,” Darva told me, “and whenever we can. We never get fat, though—just stronger, it seems.”

  “That’s a fair trade,” I admitted, feeling much better now. Once we’d eaten, it was time to talk of other things. Eating made me a little lazy and lethargic, and it was time to relax.

  “Look—tell me a lot of things.”

  “Anything,” she responded, obviously meaning it. “You don’t know how very long it’s been since I’ve had anybody to talk to, just friend to friend.”

  I nodded. “Okay. First of all, the immediate stuff. Who was the old woman who cast the spell?” Frankly, I wanted to know for more than one reason. She was the one who, at some future time, might also take it off.

  “That was my great-grandmother—my real one,” she told me. “She’s had that power since I don’t know when. Maybe since she was little. She studied with a Company sorc when she was very young, when there weren’t the lands of pr
ejudice and tight unions they have now. But she never got the full bit. She had nine kids instead.”

  “I can see where that would slow you down,” I admitted, “though she seemed powerful enough. But—why make me into your twin sister? Was that because her powers were limited?”

  She hesitated a moment. “Well, that’s not exactly true,” she responded. “It’s true that she had me for a model, and it’s kind of tricky, making a changeling. Do it wrong and your brain’s not right for the rest of you and you get crippled in the body or head. There’s lots like that. So she used the same spell that bastard Isil used on me as her guide. That meant you look almost like me. But she had bunhars as models also. I was so excited I didn’t even really think about it, but she did. You’re still a male, Park—looks aside.”

  That was interesting. It was also ironically funny, and I had to chuckle. “What’s so funny?”

  “Well, you know I wasn’t born on Charon. I was sent here. Sent here by the law.”

  She nodded. “I know. It was the talk of Thunderkor.” “Well, I got into—trouble. I killed somebody, for no reason you—or even I, now—would think was right or sane. And the reason, when they found it, was that I was a hermaphrodite, a freak.”

  Her mouth formed a little circle. “Oh … So that’s why you looked a little, well, funny.”

  I nodded. “But they got me straightened out and happily male,” I continued. “And now—look! I’m a male who looks like your sister!”