Changer (Athanor)

by Jane Lindskold

  “Welts?” Arthur envisions the lovely woman being beaten by her captors and frowns. “Was she tortured?”

  “If you do not count being stranded in fresh water, surrounded by poisonous beasts and insects, and hunted by homicidal maniacs as being tortured, no, she was not tortured. She obtained the welts towing Vera, who could not swim with impunity in the Amazon, to safety.”

  “What courage!”

  “Yes. Now, what do you want?”

  Arthur draws in a deep breath and chews on his mustache with his bottom teeth. “Now that you have Amphitrite back, you will be releasing Lovern. I’d like to make arrangements for his return. If you’d tell me when I can expect him in Florida…”

  Duppy Jonah cuts him off. “I have not released Lovern, nor do I have any immediate plans to do so.”

  “But!”

  “He gave himself as guarantor of Amphitrite’s safety. As I have made amply clear, I do not think she was kept safe. That she is alive at all is no thanks to him.”

  On his side of the conversation, Arthur refrains from stating that Lovern could do very little to help Amphitrite while kept hostage himself. Instead, he lets Duppy Jonah rant.

  “I am considering keeping Lovern hostage for a time, long enough to give him ample opportunity to meditate upon his incautious behavior—perhaps a decade for every day that Amphitrite was lost, perhaps a century.”

  Arthur quickly ticks off days on his fingers. Five days or six, depending on how one counts, and he suspects that Duppy Jonah will be liberal in his counting. Far too long, even if Duppy Jonah settles for decades rather than centuries.

  Keeping his tone level but commanding, Arthur says, “Lovern is important to me and to my administration. I would prefer that you found another way to make your displeasure known to him.”

  Duppy Jonah bellows like a bull seal.

  “You prefer? I reign in my kingdom, Arthur. These past centuries, I have worked with you, but I will not subject my justice to your whims. Lovern gave his oath willingly in order to retrieve the toy he had hidden within my ocean…”

  Ah, that old crime still rankles, Arthur thinks despondently.

  “…Now he must live with the consequences of his actions. For too long has he lorded his connection with you over his betters, even when he would have been wiser to have not.”

  Arthur swallows a sigh. “I quite understand. I shall not trouble you further on this issue. If you reconsider…”

  “Then I choose.” Duppy Jonah’s tone leaves no doubt that he considers the interview over.

  “As you say, Your Majesty. Do tell Amphitrite how delighted I am that she is safe. Her captors will be duly punished.”

  Duppy Jonah guffaws. “That has been taken out of your hands, Arthur. Isidro Robelo and Oswaldo Barjak are already dead. Cleonice Damita has fled. I wish you the pleasure of finding her. Perhaps I would trade her head for Lovern’s freedom. Then again, perhaps I would not. Good day!”

  “Good day.”

  With a limp hand, Arthur hangs up the phone.

  “I gathered some of that,” Eddie says. “Duppy Jonah will not release Lovern?”

  “No. Isidro and Oswaldo are slain. I assume by Anson or the Changer. Had Amphitrite or Vera managed it, I believe Duppy Jonah would have boasted.”

  “Cleonice?”

  “Fled into the rain forest.”

  Eddie rubs a hand over his five-o’clock shadow. “Well, they would almost certainly have been executed in any case. This saves us some trouble.”

  “But raises all sorts of other problems. I can’t have my subjects believing that I would send assassins out against those who would question my decisions.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “The events could be so distorted. I had better speak with Jonathan Wong and get his counsel on this matter. Is he here?”

  “He has gone to see if he can trace the ladder. It’s a slim hope, but he was growing restless.”

  “It is difficult to imagine Confucius becoming restless,” Arthur comments. “I thought he would contemplate universal truths or something.”

  Eddie smiles. “You confuse the legend with the man. It’s easy to do, isn’t it?”

  Arthur, who often wishes he possessed all the virtues his legends attribute to him, nods. “Too easy and too easy for the legend to fail.”

  “Maybe you can reach Jon on the car phone,” Eddie suggests, seeing that the King is also growing restless. “At the very least, perhaps he can advise us on how best to tell the Changer that we have failed to keep his daughter from harm.”

  In a rented house in Bernalillo, a few miles north of Albuquerque, a strange household is gathered. Elsewhere it might draw comments, but Bernalillo hosts many illegal immigrants. Neighbors have learned to mind their own business.

  Moreover, the house is set on several acres of land and is bordered on all sides by pasturage. Except for the few people who have rights to use the dirt road, there is no one likely to comment on the young coyote crying in the adobe-walled yard. No one at all is in a position to see the grotesque Head suspended by its own grey hair over a coffee table in the living room.

  “Nice place,” Louhi says, setting her luggage on the kitchen’s brick floor. “A bit far from the airport, but I can see why you wouldn’t want to be in the heart of the city.”

  “Not with the bitch whining,” Sven agrees. “I thought about knocking her out, but I don’t know what her tolerances might be.”

  “Don’t do it,” Louhi says. “I want to take a blood sample. Perhaps she has enough of the Changer’s traits to serve us.”

  “Right.” Sven’s grin is sly. “Besides, you can have a nice chat—sister to sister.”

  Louhi raises one slim, pale hand. “Would you like to be a pig? Or perhaps the fish you name yourself?”

  “You forget yourself,” he says sternly. “I, too, am a shapeshifter.”

  “Want to test me? I might find it amusing to discover how long a fish would take to gasp its gills to dryness in this air.”

  They stand for a long minute, its seconds marked by the miserable sobs of the coyote pup. Neither will step back.

  A gruff voice, rasping and hoarse, breaks the impasse. “Ill it becomes the fiery one to forget, when fire meets ice one melts, one is quenched. Destruction and damnation ensue.”

  Deliberately, Sven turns away from Louhi, forcing his mouth to quirk in something like a wry grin. He walks down the short brick staircase into the living room.

  “You’re quite right, of course,” Sven says, his cheerfulness brittle. “We would be fools to spat so close to victory.”

  “Wiser to wait, brighter to bide,” the Head agrees, “until the race is won.”

  “Yes,” Louhi says, and her agreement is hissed. “Sven and I can play the old wizard’s game another time.”

  Sven holds a straw to the Head’s parched lips, ignoring the other slobbering over his hand. When the Head has finished, Sven carries the glass up to the kitchen to refill it.

  “This house,” he says to Louhi, as if their quarrel had never occurred, “has three bedrooms. Two on the ground floor and a rather grand master suite on the upper floor. I will give you first choice.”

  “I’ll take the master bedroom,” Louhi says promptly, “and thank you for your courtesy.”

  “Not at all,” Sven sweeps a bow. “May I carry your bags?”

  “Thank you. I’ll take the small one. It’s warded.”

  “A good precaution.”

  As they cross the living room, Louhi glances out the floor-to-ceiling windows to where Shahrazad, chained to two different cottonwood trees, voices her misery.

  “No rope spun of the sound a cat makes when it walks, the breath of fish, the spittle of birds, the hairs of a woman’s beard, and all the rest, is needed to hold her,” Louhi says scornfully. “Has she stopped crying at all?”

  “Hardly,” Sven says. “She is persistent.”

  “When do we call the Changer?”

  “I
have an informant at the airport who will call as soon as their plane touches down. I want him to learn that Arthur has failed to protect the pup. Then I will call.”

  “Very good.”

  When Louhi comes down, she is dressed in sturdy denim trousers and a heavy cotton work shirt over a white tee shirt. With her hair swept back in a ponytail, she might be a horse-crazy young woman but for the coolness of her gaze.

  She stops alongside the Head.

  “How are you?”

  “Butterfly wings beat against ribs I lack. I long for length.”

  “Soon,” Louhi assures him. She opens a jar of ointment she has brought. “This will preserve your skin against the dryness.”

  “Your fingers feel sweeter than a mist in the highland.”

  She arches an eyebrow at the monstrosity. “Did you study your maker’s pick up lines?”

  The Head coughs and refrains from further comment.

  When Louhi walks out into the yard, Shahrazad stops whining. Her tail, already held low, tucks tightly between her legs. She backs as far as the limits of her dual chains will permit.

  “You know that tears won’t work with me, don’t you?” Louhi comments in a menacing purr. “I don’t have an ounce of pity in my soul—at least not for such as you.”

  Shahrazad strains back, her paws making furrows in the gravel mulch. Her ears fold against her skull; her lips peel back from small white fangs.

  “Bite me and you’ll regret it,” Louhi says, “even if you are blood of my father’s blood.”

  Darting out one hand, she grabs Shahrazad firmly by the scruff of the neck. Fixing the panicked animal’s yellow eyes with her own pale blue, Louhi mutters a few words. Instantly, Shahrazad stops crying, seems even to stop breathing. A careful observer would see that she does breathe, but slowly.

  Keeping the pup mesmerized, Louhi draws a syringe of dark blood. When it is safely sealed in a test tube, the witch pauses, puzzled. Holding one hand just barely away from the coyote puppy’s fur, she makes a stroking motion. After studying the palm of her hand, she lifts each of the pup’s feet and studies the pads.

  “Oh, my!” she mutters softly. “There’s more to you than meets the eye. Does the Changer know what he has begot? Is that why he watches you so carefully, little sister?”

  Anger flushes her pale cheeks and she surges to her feet, breaking the spell that has kept the pup mesmerized. Then she stalks away, furious that she must let her rival live.

  As Louhi departs, Shahrazad trembles so that she can no longer whimper. Her weeping has become the silent cry of one who knows that no one is listening.

  Arthur, to his credit, does not delay telling the Changer the bad news. That afternoon, as soon as the returning three have entered the hacienda, Arthur requests that the Changer come to his office. Eddie and Jonathan Wong take the others off to tell them what they must know and recommend that they stay clear.

  Once in his office, Arthur forsakes the security of his fortresslike desk to stand before the Changer like a boy before a schoolmaster.

  “I regret to tell you, sir, that Shahrazad has been taken.”

  The controlled fury of the ancient’s reaction chills Arthur’s blood far more than any outburst could. Yellow eyes with nothing human in them look out of a face that, despite its sculpting, also seems other than human.

  “My daughter is taken?”

  “Yes.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know. He left tracks, but none of those here with the exception of Eddie have the skill to learn much from them, and Eddie cannot move freely enough to track. We did not wish to call in the police…”

  “No.”

  “And Duppy Jonah will not release Lovern to me. I did not wish to consult another sorcerer without your permission.”

  “No.”

  “We have left them untouched. Perhaps you…”

  “Yes.”

  The Changer turns without any courtesy and departs. Watching him stride forth, Arthur knows that he is seeing something other than human which has taken human form and is finding that form inconvenient. The revelation makes his skin crawl.

  The Changer has always taken care to conceal that essential otherness, becoming a perfect mimic of whatever shape he wears. It is a measure of the ancient’s anger that what he shapes now is fury that happens to have a human outline.

  Coming into the courtyard, the Changer inspects the footprints with his human head held low. Arthur wonders that he does not shape something better equipped for such sensing, then the Changer raises his head.

  Framed within the straight black hair is a coyote’s face, long muzzled, yellow-eyed. The sharp-toothed jaws move and a voice that is part canine whine, part deep-chested rumble comes forth.

  “I know this scent. It is Loki.”

  Arthur nods. He would not be the King if he could not make the gesture casual and controlled, yet it takes an effort.

  The Changer touches the sandy earth where it is marked by his daughter’s struggles, a soft pat that offers comfort to the absent one. Then he rises and lopes up the courtyard’s wooden staircase, dipping his head as if tracing scent.

  “Another was here—Circe, I believe. Here, where they mounted the wall to the roof, she set something down.” The coyote whine shrills into a laugh as the Changer trots smoothly down to the French doors to Lovern’s suite. “I believe your sorcerer will find some of his belongings are missing.”

  Eschewing the staircase, the Changer swings over the railing, human arms becoming raven wings that tear through the light cotton of his sport shirt. He flutters to the ground, shifting wings into arms again so smoothly that Arthur could believe he imagined the initial transition if the torn fabric did not bear witness.

  “You have searched for her, Arthur?”

  “We have.”

  “And have not found her, despite.”

  “No.”

  The Changer tosses back his hair, and when it settles his features are human again, but Arthur knows he will never lose the feeling that they are merely a mask.

  “You must tell me what you have learned. Then…”

  Eddie opens the courtyard door. “Arthur! There is a phone call for the Changer from Sven Trout.”

  “Get a tracer on it,” Arthur says, even as the Changer pushes past Eddie and seizes the kitchen receiver.

  “Speak, Loki.”

  “Changer!” Sven is using his perky, door-to-door salesman voice. “Good talking with you!”

  The Changer waits, patient as death—and as silent. If Sven is disappointed, his tone doesn’t give anything away.

  “I’ve got something you want.”

  Silence.

  “You’ll only get her back—intact and alive—if you give us what we want.”

  “You and Circe.”

  “We thought you’d figure us out. Yes. Me and Circe.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Deliver yourself to us. Circe needs you to make a blood-and-organ donation for a project she’s working on.”

  “I will not die, even for a daughter.”

  Sven laughs, cheery as if they are discussing floor wax or boxed chocolate creams. “Of course not! She wants an eye and about a quart of blood. Surely you can survive that.”

  “I can.”

  “Then you’ll do as we wish?”

  “Will I be released after?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you expect me not to take revenge?”

  “Circe has made a charm that will instantly kill Shahrazad if she chooses. We consider that our insurance.”

  “Ah.”

  The Changer doesn’t need to be told that Circe hopes to make some similar charm against him. Blood and body parts are particularly efficacious for such things.

  “And if I refuse?” the Changer asks.

  “If you did, we would have no further use for Shahrazad.”

  “Except as insurance that I will not attack. I will not forget this affront.”
>
  “Louhi is quite the mistress of magic,” Sven says, cheer untouched. “She has some interesting plans for a child who is of our kin and who might, judging from the Harmony Dance, have inherited certain affinities from her father.”

  “Ah.”

  “So, will you take our invitation?”

  “Shahrazad must be released on my arrival along with any and all charms made to affect her.”

  “That is possible.”

  “And you and Louhi both must swear over a truthstone that this has been done.”

  “You don’t trust us?”

  “I am not a fool.”

  “I can agree to that.”

  “And I plan to take measures to assure that I am released alive once you have obtained your pint of blood and eye.”

  “Quart.”

  “Yes, quart.”

  “We had expected that you would.”

  The Changer considers. He could let Shahrazad be slain or corrupted, but that would be unwise—almost as unwise as letting these two continue to live, something he suspects he will be forced to do.

  Were it not for what had happened at the Harmony Dance…

  No. He decides to be honest, at least with himself. Shahrazad has claimed his affections, his love. She looks like her mother, whom he also loved. To refuse to sacrifice himself for her would darken every sunrise, distort every birdsong.

  “Tell me, Sven. Were you the one who had my family slain?”

  “You have sworn a terrible vengeance on that one.” Sven chuckles. “I would be an idiot to admit to anything.”

  “Still, I had to ask.”

  The Changer steels himself. For the first time, he is aware that Eddie and Arthur stand one to either side of him, that Vera, Jonathan, and Anson listen from the edge of the kitchen. He knows from this that the call was either untraceable or the information so gained useless. No matter.

  “What is your answer, Changer?”

  “I will come to you. How many may come with me to bring Shahrazad away?”

  “Two. And if they act against our agreement, then we shall consider your safety forfeit.”

  “I understand. Tell me where to come.”