Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris)

by A. C. Smyth

  Craie stayed icy calm during the preparations. In some ways that was worse than his temper. Craie’s cold determination left Sylas more chilled than the water: chilled to his soul. Pretend all was well. Pretend his son would not prefer to lie in the arms of his bride-to-be’s brother. Pretend the marriage was all both families had ever desired.

  And now Sylas found himself facing Fienne across the circle, his earring glowing in the early sunshine. The Lady’s energy flooded into him in joyous waves and the kye hovered on the edge of his consciousness. Their maddening chatter was a muted whisper, but it was the first time he had heard them without the pipe. Maybe he had caught the tail-end of a call from a lesson at the Aerie. The call carried a long way—much farther than the sound itself. Or perhaps he was learning to hear them for himself, his abilities increasing with time.

  Fienne smiled shyly. They had been friends from childhood – if forced to marry a girl, he would have chosen her—but the nerves churned his stomach. Did she care that he loved Pietrig, or given her condition did she only think of snaring a husband, no matter what it took?

  Sylas scanned the crowd. Pietrig was there; of course he was. He stood with his family, watching Fienne intently. Everything—every look, every gesture—took on a new significance after the revelation of the night before. For a moment Pietrig looked straight at Sylas, but sight of him made Sylas so heartsick that he had to look away. His mother stood with Aithne and Kael, clustered beside Pietrig’s family. Catching his mother’s gaze and holding it, he tried desperately to know what she was thinking, as she so often read his own thoughts. Why, when he needed to speak to her so badly, did she seem so far away?

  Zynoa shook her head slowly and turned to look north. The Aerie mountaintop was barely visible in the morning light, but it was there, surrounded by swirling mists, beautiful and mystical. He belonged there. He would miss his mother, and she him, but his future lay at the Aerie. Zynoa smiled, nodded, and spread her hands, rippling her fingers to mimic the beating wings of a bird.

  “Fly away,” she seemed to say. “Fly away.” Then she raised the linandra necklace to her lips and kissed the beads. Her blessing to him. She wanted him to follow his dream. His throat clenched. To leave her, Pietrig, all he had ever known, for good—it terrified him. When he first went to the Aerie, he believed everything would remain as he had left it—that he could return and be the old Sylas. Each visit home had shown him more clearly how wrong that belief had been. Namopaia was not enough for him anymore. He was changing, and the people he loved were staying the same; that was the tragedy.

  Skarai took Fienne’s hand and led her across the circle. Craie took Sylas’s elbow and made to steer him to meet them in the centre, but Sylas shook his arm away.

  “I’ll not do it,” he muttered. “I won’t marry her. I don’t belong here.”

  Craie leaned forward and hissed in his ear. “You bloody well will. You may have had a year at the Aerie but I’ve had a lifetime here, grubbing around at the bottom of the heap. You’ll not take away my chance to rise higher. You’ll marry the girl and she’ll bear children if I have to father them myself.”

  Fienne stood opposite him now, her lips tight and narrow. From the corner of his eye he could see Pietrig, standing beside his mother and siblings. Sylas could not see the expression on his friend’s face, but imagined it was much like his own: horror. Revulsion. Dread.

  Sylas’s heart thumped like a drum. He steadied himself and opened his thoughts to the kye he could hear just beyond his reach. Let me change, he implored the Lady. Let me change and fly away from all this. But he had marked too recently to respond to a call, even if one so distant could have reached him. He had no choice but to see this through.

  Skarai whispered in Fienne’s ear and she smiled anxiously and held out her hand to Sylas. He could not move. Frozen to the spot, with his blood chilling in his veins, he stared at her, stricken.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  His father jerked his arm and pain shot through shoulder muscles strained from wrestling.

  “Take it. Take her hand, damn you.”

  “I can’t. Fienne, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  He had seen both men and women overcome with nerves at betrothals before. One or other often hesitated before the joining of the hands. But the villagers stirred restlessly as he stood frozen, the blood rushing in his ears.

  “Please, Elder Skarai. Don’t do this to her. Take her back to your wife. Say it we made a mistake. Say she refused me. Say she loves another. Please don’t do this.”

  Fienne’s lips trembled. “But I would not refuse you. You are the gentlest man in the village. I would have you as my husband before any of them. When my father asked me I agreed straight away.”

  His throat clenched; this would hurt her. Sylas looked across at his mother. She stood perfectly still, her face drawn and sad, but over her shoulder he could see the Aerie’s peak emerging from the mists, and it was beautiful. He strained his ears for any hint of the pipe, but it did not come.

  “I cannot marry you, Fienne. I will not.” He raised his voice. “I will not take her, do you hear me? I will go back to the Aerie. I cannot marry. Not Fienne. Not anyone. I mean to be a changer.”

  “You’ll do as we say, young Sylas!” Skarai said, pulling Fienne’s hand out in front of her and motioning Craie to do the same. Sylas had never seen a couple’s hands forcibly joined, but that was what they intended. Thoughts flashed through his head. Would it be binding, if forced upon him? It would be the elder to whom he would take any grievance, in the normal run of events, yet the elder appeared as intent on forcing the match as Craie. Of course, Sylas thought absently, he is ridding himself of a barren daughter. And he can blame her childlessness on my preference for men, and none of the shame will attach to his family.

  “No,” she said, her voice choking in her throat. “If he does not want me, I would not have you force him.”

  “He will do as he is told, girl, as will you,” Skarai said. “Do you want your brother in the desert when Sylas could take his place? Your brother, who is meant to lead the village after me?”

  Craie’s hands were clamped around Sylas’s wrist, trying to force his hand out to Fienne’s. All Sylas could think was that this could not be right. How could they enforce a betrothal enacted in these circumstances? Couldn’t the onlookers see that it was nothing but a sham?

  He raised his voice. “They try to trick my father. The girl is barren. She has had no flows. She should never have had the bead. I will not marry her.”

  Silence fell. Craie’s hands fell to his sides and his mouth hung open. Skarai’s eyes bulged with fury, his face reddening and his hands clenching in front of him as if aching to pummel Sylas into the dust.

  Fienne stared at him, her wide eyes tear-filled.

  “Who—Who told you?” she said with a gasp. “They said it was a secret—that no one beyond family knew of it. How could you do this to me, Sylas? In front of everyone. Omena’s wings, but I thought you cared for me a little.” And she fled across the circle towards her parents’ house, evading her mother’s attempts to stop her. Her sobs filled the air as she ran.

  Craie watched her go. When he turned back to his son, there was murder in his eyes.

  Chapter 9

  “It is kind of you to see me, Master Donmar.”

  “I think we can dispense with the formalities, Jesely,” said the leader of the changer council. He poured some tea and pushed a cup towards Jesely. “Try this. It’s a herb Ayriene brought back from her last journey. She hopes it will establish in the gardens, and has spared some to make me this delicious tea. She says it has calming properties. I think she’s trying to tell me something.”

  The pair chuckled and settled back in their chairs with the familiarity of long acquaintance. Jesely of course had grown up at the Aerie, whereas D
onmar had come from one of the desert villages, but despite the eight-year difference in their ages the pair had become good friends. When Jesely began the change, Donmar was well on his way to the mastery, and when Jesely joined the council, Donmar was strongly tipped as the next leader. These two, and later Cowin, strengthened the Chesammos representation on the council. Donmar had been instrumental in increasing the Aerie’s food production to compensate for the reduction in tribute from the holdings.

  Donmar blew across the surface of his tea and Jesely inhaled the steam from his own cup. It had a pleasant fragrance; he could well believe it had calming effects. With luck, it would settle the nervous churning in the pit of his stomach.

  “So?” Donmar prompted. “I doubt you came here to sample Ayriene’s tea.”

  Jesely took a cautious sip before replying. “I need to talk about something that happened a long time ago. Something I should have asked about then, but I was a young man and not as good as expressing myself as I might have been.”

  Donmar raised an eyebrow. “Sounds ominous.”

  Jesely set his cup aside. “I need to know what happened to Shamella.” He studied his friend, watching for any response. None came.

  “Shamella? Now that was a long time ago. I’m not sure how much more I can tell you. I told you what I knew at the time.”

  A face danced in Jesely’s memory. A young Chesammos girl, a year or so younger than him. Girls tended to come to their change later than boys, so Jesely was an apprentice and controlled changer by the time she came to the Aerie, but she caught his eye straight away. Fewer girls than boys became changers, so female changers were always in demand with the young men. Shamella captivated them all, but she won Jesely’s heart.

  “I need to know how she died.”

  This time he saw an instant of alarm before Donmar schooled his features back to their usual neutrality. “She died on a visit home. You know that.”

  “But what killed her? It’s important.”

  Donmar sipped at his tea, fingers wrapped around the cup as if to warm them, although the day was mild. Jesely wondered if Donmar, like himself, was reliving Shamella’s last days. Donmar had just become a master when Shamella came to the Aerie. She had no talent, but a lively disposition and a caring nature. When Donmar asked the council if he might take his first apprentice, and they agreed, he approached Shamella, who accepted his offer without hesitation. But on a visit home not long after, she had died. To the best of his knowledge, no niche had been dedicated to her on the island—almost without precedent—and her name went unmentioned, so that quickly it was as if she had never existed.

  “Jesely, I—” Donmar waved a dismissive hand as if to say the matter was over and done, but Jesely interrupted him.

  “I have a student. He hears many kye, as Shamella did. I need to know if that killed her—if there is anything I can do to protect him.”

  That got Donmar’s attention. The man paused, cup halfway to his lips, then set it on the table. His hand shook as it did so, Jesely noted. So much for calming effects.

  “Who is it?”

  So the multiple kye was significant. “Tell me what happened.”

  Donmar shook his head, composure returning. “She went home. She died of an illness that had taken several others from her village. Nothing more than that.”

  But Jesely was an empath, and while Donmar had been talking, he had been carefully extending tendrils of aiea-dera to read the man’s reactions. Donmar lied; of that he had no doubt. So what had really happened to Shamella? And how did this affect Sylas? Then the fist of Jesely’s heart gave one powerful punch against his ribs. Sylas had gone home a day or two before. It could be nothing. The timing of his visit to his village, when he had admitted to Jesely that he heard many kye in his head, might be coincidence, but that was as it had happened with Shamella. If anything happened to Sylas on his visit home, Jesely would feel responsible for the rest of his life. He had to be sure Sylas was safe.

  As soon as it became clear that he would as likely get information from the Aerie’s stone walls as from Donmar, Jesely left to find Sylas. He had a sudden pressing need to bring him back where he belonged.

  Sylas’s father hadn’t made good on his threat to remove every strip of skin, but it felt like he hadn’t failed by much. Craie had laid into Sylas with the blade grass switch, leaving his back bloodied and striped, his face and chest bruised where his father had used his fists when the switch finally shredded. Sylas hadn’t tried to resist. He had shamed Fienne; he deserved it.

  When Sylas left the village no one called or lifted a hand in farewell. Those out in the open had averted their gazes and hurried into their houses. What he had done was unforgivable, whatever the rights and wrongs of the arrangement, and although some might have some sympathy for him, he was outcast. He left without a word, although it would have pained him to speak. He suspected his nose was broken; one or two of his teeth felt loose. At least his father hadn’t written a curse tablet against him. He still might, but Craie couldn’t write well enough to inscribe his curse, and Sylas doubted he could raise the money to have someone else write it for him.

  After the beatings, when Kael managed to persuade Craie that Sylas would die if he took much more punishment, Craie ripped the earring from Sylas’s lobe and threw it in the dirt. “You said she did not deserve her bead,” Craie shouted. “Said she was no true woman and should not wear it. Well, you are no true man. You are weak—have always been weak. You are not fit to wear the bead. I only wish I had never given it to you in the first place.”

  The pain of the wire being torn from his ear was nothing to what he had already suffered. But walking alone from the village with his shirt hanging in shreds on his back and blood running down his neck from the wreck of his earlobe—that was the worst pain of his life.

  His mother pressed a water skin into his hands before he left. Craie glared coldly, but not even he would see a man go out into the desert with no water. Stumbling and shambling, his back throbbing as if he were freshly flogged with each step, Sylas knew it would be a long, agonising walk. Even fully fit, he had expected the walk back to take him several days.

  He did not know how long he walked across the miles of ash and dust, but the sun passed its zenith before he slumped to the ground. Flies buzzed around him, drawn by sweat and blood. Sylas fumbled with the stopper of the water skin, hands shaking with shock and exhaustion. He allowed himself two mouthfuls only, holding the second and swilling it around his mouth. It was warm—little relief for the pain in jaw and face—but it moistened his parched tongue. He shook the skin; less than half left and the ash still stretched out before him. His water would run out before he reached the scrublands. Unless he could find plenty of swanflowers, he would be in big trouble.

  Sylas tried to get to his feet. In the distance he could see the tall spiny outline of a clump of swanflower plants. At least their bitter pulp would supplement his water supply. It was also a simple treatment for cuts and stings. When one smeared the pulp over a wound, the water evaporated to leave a clear film which helped to keep flies off and dirt out. It might be too little, too late, but he would do anything to get a little relief from the pain.

  He suspected once he reached their shade that he would go no farther. Even with the additional water and the meagre nourishment the pulp would offer, he was utterly spent. In the sky above him, carrion birds circled: crows and ravens and magpies, sensing death approaching. He glared up at them.

  “Not yet, brothers. You shall not have me yet.” But without help, he knew he would die. He ate as much of the pulp as he could keep down, then smeared more over his back, face, neck, and earlobe.

  Forlornly, he stared at the mountain peak of the Aerie so far in the distance. When he did not return would they think he had decided to stay in Namopaia? He squinted up at the birds. If he had learned to
control his changing, he could be up there now, although his poor physical condition meant that he would probably fly himself to death before reaching the Aerie. A bird—a hawk of some sort, he thought—made a wide arc as it circled. Bolder than the others.

  Seeing if its meal was ready.

  “Shoo! Go away!” Waving his arms split and cracked the congealing pulp, tearing his wounds open anew. He sobbed, fire burning the length of his back. The last things he saw was a hooked beak, designed to tear flesh, before he slid into blessed blackness.

  Ayriene slumped against the infirmary wall. One of the healers brought her some bread and cheese and fruit juice, and she ate and drank automatically without tasting. Throughout the night there had been a constant stream of people to Sylas’s bedside: changing dressings; giving him spoonfuls of water; checking for signs of fever. Streams of morning sunlight now poured through the room’s high windows. She had watched over him all night, only now considering him truly out of danger. The food helped, but what she wanted most in the world was a bed.

  How Jesely had found the boy, the Creator only knew. He had flown out, spotted him under a swanflower, and trickled the last drops of water from the semi-conscious lad’s water skin between his lips before flying for Ayriene. The two of them had flown back and commandeered a wagon from the nearest village to carry him back to the Aerie.

  “How is he?” Casian spoke from the door. He had been there nearly as long as Ayriene had—banished from the room itself to keep him out of the healers’ way.