Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris)

by A. C. Smyth

  “I still don’t understand why you spend so much time with him and neglect your own apprentice so shamefully. I mean, I know that we need to encourage Chesammos to stay—they are the source of our communication with the Lady, after all.” He honoured Jesely by using the Chesammos term for Mount Eurna. “But is this one lad worth all the work you are putting into him? Everyone notices how much he has your favour. It is not just me asking questions, Jesely. Many others wonder what is so special about Sylas that you spend so much of your time and effort on his behalf.”

  Jesely closed his eyes. It was so hard to explain, but the boy had something about him. Something that flitted on the edge of Jesely’s mind like a thought half-forgotten.

  “He says he hears many kye,” Jesely said at last, reluctant to break a confidence. “I have not heard of anyone who claimed that since Shamella.”

  “Shamella,” said Gwysias. “That explains it, at least a little. But she is dead, Jesely. I know you and she were close, but you must not let what happened to her cloud your judgement.”

  “If this lad has the same ability—or handicap—as she, I want to understand it, if I can. Try to save him from the same fate that befell her, if indeed it was the kye that caused her death.”

  Jesely had hoped he might marry Shamella someday. His family had stayed purebred through three generations of changers and he had hoped to continue the tradition. Her loss so young had been a tragedy, and for all Donmar’s evasion, Jesely was sure he knew more than he was telling. If this was something that afflicted Chesammos changers, even only once in a generation, the Aerie should understand it.

  “Please, Gwysias, if you know anything about Shamella’s death, tell me. I worry for Sylas.”

  Gwysias shook his head, but to Jesely’s empath senses it seemed he had softened somewhat. An air of sympathy surrounded him. “I know no more than you. I have never been on the council, so if anything was discussed in meetings about her then I never heard it. But I will help the boy, if I can, for her sake and yours. If he deserves a switching he will get one, mind, or I do an injustice to all the other novices who have received a stripe or two from me over the years.”

  Jesely pulled the parchment from his belt. He was sure he knew the answer, but he asked the question anyway.

  “Before you go, do you know who drew this?”

  Gwysias scowled, wagging his finger in mock rebuke. “You sweet-talk me into treating your pet better and then you go and remind me of one of his recent misdemeanours. It is Sylas’s work, as you might tell from the daubings beside it. And, yes, I did punish him for it. Why do you ask?”

  “Because it might give him the future he needs,” said Jesely. He had the oddest impulse to hug Master Gwysias, but imagined the landslide of books and brushes that would result and limited himself to a quick grasp of the forearm instead. Yes, this unlikely talent of Sylas’s might be his salvation.

  “I’ve hardly seen you in the last week,” said Miralee, throwing herself into a comfortable chair in her mother’s bedchamber. She pulled a cushion from behind her back, landed two sound punches on its feathered middle and replaced it, leaning back with a sigh. “That’s better.”

  “I’ve been busy. And you’ve not been about much yourself, I gather.” Ayriene had slept soundly the previous night, going to bed before sundown and not waking until the Aerie had been about its business for a good two hours.

  “I heard. A novice, wasn’t it?” Until a few days before Miralee had been a novice herself, but Mistress Yinaede had ended several years without an apprentice to take her on.

  “Sylas. Chesammos lad. You know him?”

  “To nod to. Garyth knows him, I think.”

  Ayriene lay sprawled on her bed, her hair loose about her shoulders, damp from her bath. Never had hot water felt better. She had fallen into bed dirty and aching, but the bath had worked miracles. She hoped the food that should be on its way from the kitchen would complete the transformation.

  “How are your lessons going?”

  “Better now.”

  Ayriene caught the implication that all had at some point not been well, and raised an eyebrow. “Now?”

  “Probably me overreacting.” Miralee tossed her hair back over her shoulder in a dismissive gesture.

  “But?”

  “But… well, Casian started coming to Mistress Yinaede’s classes a while ago.”

  That was strange. “He’s not a seer, is he?”

  Miralee pulled a face. “He’s a talent, but no one knows quite what his talent is. Mistress Yinaede didn’t want him there. She suggested he pay you a visit to see if he was a healer. At least that would keep him away from me for a while. He could sit too close to you and see how you reacted.”

  She forced herself to sound calm. “Has Casian shown an interest in you?”

  An expression of horror crossed her face. “Mother! An interest?”

  “You know what I mean. He’s an attractive man, and he’s not averse to using his attraction. He’s involved with Sylas, but he also doesn’t seem to place too much importance on faithfulness, from what I’m hearing.”

  “Sylas is welcome to him. He makes my skin crawl. I told Mistress Yinaede I didn’t like him near me and she moved our lessons to the library. He must know what we’ve done, and why, but he’s never asked. Too proud, I expect. You know what the Irenthi are like.”

  Casian was the only Irenthi Miralee knew, but Ayriene let it slide. “At least Yinaede took it seriously.”

  A knock sounded at the door. Miralee answered it, taking a tray of food from an Irmos servant and setting it on the bed.

  Ayriene patted the covers. “There’s plenty for two. Sit here and help me with it.”

  Miralee perched next to her and smeared butter thickly on a piece of still-warm bread. “Yes, she was good about it. I don’t think she likes Casian much either. Anyway, there’s a part of the library where the seeings are recorded—seeings and parts of seeings. Yinaede showed me how and where to record mine—the one I told you about, with the man who looked like Casian, and the Chesammos.”

  “I remember. That can’t have taken you long, though. Garyth says you’ve been shut in there for hours at a time.”

  “There’s more to it than simply recording. It’s part of the seers’ job to try to piece them together—link them up and make sense of them. It’s fascinating.”

  “So did you link anything with your seeing?”

  Miralee beamed. “Yes! That made me feel so much better. Just knowing that other seers recorded the same event I did makes me more confident that it wasn’t just a weird dream. And that it’s important, you know? All the other seeings about it were old—twenty, thirty years ago, some of them—but they fitted. Same Irenthi with the linandra crown. Same Chesammos man and girl.”

  “Girl?” Ayriene hadn’t heard that part.

  “Yes. She was there in mine, but I didn’t see her well. She was more of a feeling, if you know what I mean. I thought she might be Chesammos or dark Irmos, and the other seeings describe her as Chesammos. The fragments we found thought the king might be Deygan—they were seen before he became king—but Yinaede says they can’t be since I’ve had the same seeing. People only see things forwards in time, she says, never backwards. Makes sense, I suppose. What use would it be to see things that have already happened?” She hesitated, making a face like someone eating sour fruit. “I still think he looked a lot like Casian, but I don’t like the thought of that roach becoming king.”

  “Deygan is healthy, and he has three sons. One of them will follow him. Jaevan, Creator willing. He will make a fine king. Did the other fragments shed no light?”

  “A little. One of them said they had heard the Chesammos man say ‘You cannot hold your throne without me’ and ‘Without me you will fall. You need me.’ That’s odd,
don’t you think? How could a Chesammos help an Irenthi hold the throne? I wonder if I’ll ever know what it was about. I expect a lot of seers never know why they saw what they did.” She seemed a little morose at the thought. “They said the Chesammos was clean-shaven too, so I think he must be a changer, don’t you?”

  If the Irenthi were Casian, Ayriene reasoned, then that could make Sylas the Chesammos. But how would he be in a position to help a king, and how would Casian have come to be king in the first place? She shook her head. Miralee was right. Chances were neither of them would ever know the circumstances of the conversation. She made a mental note to talk to Jesely about it, and settled back as Miralee reminisced about Adwen. For the first time in ages, Ayriene’s thoughts were with a teenage boy who was not her lost son.

  “What news?” The man’s voice was gruff, hoarse from being caught in a vent during an eruption in his youth. He had escaped with his life—he had been young and strong then—but his voice had never recovered and it still hurt him to eat or drink. Only sheer determination to bring down the Irenthi made him carry on, made him keep fighting when every day was a struggle to overcome pain.

  “Namopaia are with us,” said another, younger man, his skin showing the effects of being one of a dig team. “We sent Neffan to wrestle at a wedding there and he made contact with their rebels.”

  “Any fighters among them?”

  The second man snorted. “You know Namopaia. It’s a wonder they have committed at all, although I get the impression most of the village are unaware or pretending it’s not happening.”

  “So we aren’t likely to get anyone willing to take direct action from there.” Hoarse-voiced man coughed, doubling over at the pain it caused him. “Damn me, but it’s bad again. The Lady grant I live to see our efforts rewarded.”

  “Maisaiea-yelai,” the other echoed, bringing his fingertips together in the sign of the mountain.

  “What other news?”

  “Sennak and Diprit have gone to the city. They heard news of a sympathetic linandra singer who will cut the stones and trade them for us—for a price. If he proves reliable, they will bring back whatever weapons the stones have bought.”

  A grunt of satisfaction. “Good. Anything else?”

  “We have been talking, Sennak and Diprit and I. What about the feast day of Deygan’s ascension? If we could attack the procession, maybe kill Deygan or one of his sons, then even if we died in the attempt they couldn’t cover it up. The Irenthi would have to take notice. And it’s a few months off yet—gives us time to gather arms, make plans.”

  Silence settled while hoarse-voiced man digested this thought. “Would that lose us followers? There is much love for Deygan and his family among the Irmos. He has provided well for them. You need only look at how many of our young people marry outside our race. They believe they are better off having Irmos children.”

  “But it would show we mean business,” the younger man said, his eyes shining with zeal. “What does it matter if we have weapons if we don’t intend to use them? A guardsman here, a minor lordling there—it will all come to nothing unless we can show Chandris that we are not to be ignored.”

  He had always thought himself an opponent of the Irenthi, this gravel-voiced veteran of the mines, but the thought of killing children sickened him. Yet with their boys up for selection for the pits once they had their earring, and the earring being given earlier and earlier in an attempt to bolster their numbers, what were many of the lads sent to the pits but children themselves? They died the slow death of the linandra digger. At least Deygan’s boys would die quickly, maisaiea-yelai.

  He nodded slowly.

  “See to it,” he said.

  Chapter 11

  With the changer council convening, Jesely was concerned to see Master Olendis waiting outside the chamber. A changer could attend part of a meeting in order to contribute, but would then leave so the council could speak freely on the other topics on the agenda. Jesely could only conclude that while he had been concerned with Sylas’s recovery, Olendis had raised the subject of the problem novice with Donmar, who had promised to bring it before the council.

  The main item on the agenda was the planned visit to the Aerie by King Deygan and Prince Jaevan. Most kings, and high holders before them, had kept to the business of ruling Irenthi holdings, and left the Aerie to itself. Deygan, by contrast, tried to restrict the Aerie’s power, reducing the changers’ perceived importance in the eyes of the holders. With the tributes reduced, the Aerie relied on what the changers could grow on the mountaintop or catch in the lake, or what they produced on the few farms the Aerie owned outright. With that, and the money brought in by masters tutoring the children of nobility (both from Chandris and overseas), they managed to feed and clothe themselves and send any extra to the desert Chesammos. If Deygan meant to exert more control over the Aerie’s operations, that could mean increased hardship for the desert dwellers. With rumours reaching the Aerie of skirmishes between Chesammos malcontents and Lord Garvan’s men, Deygan was unlikely to look with favour on their continued shipments of food and clothing into the desert.

  They spent much of the afternoon considering Deygan’s likely strategies. Despite the seriousness of the debate, Jesely found his attention wandering to the master sitting outside. His presence had to be bad news for Sylas. If he failed to change for a time, the trauma of recent events could be blamed, but Olendis’s patience grew thin. Nausea rose in Jesely’s stomach. He had the feeling Sylas was running short of time.

  When he was called in, Master Olendis recounted the events of three days before Sylas’s trip home, when he had once again tried and failed to transform.

  “I have given him ample opportunity. The boys who joined around the same time all learned in the usual timespan. Only Sylas has failed to transform even once,” the elderly master concluded, licking his lips nervously and looking around the table.

  “Are we certain the boy is even a changer?” That was Fennoc the herbalist, a fair Irmos.

  “He had the physical symptoms,” said Jesely, “and from his description of the aiea and the kye, I believe he has the ability.”

  “He could have heard the others talk about these things,” Olendis observed sourly. “Maybe the boy has been hoodwinking us all this time.”

  “I don’t believe he would have endured the beating he did in order to come back, if he was faking,” observed Ayriene dryly.

  “Is there any precedent for a late change among Chesammos? We know girls often change later than boys. Do Chesammos boys change later than other boys? Learn control more slowly?” Fennoc again.

  “Girls change later, but then learn at the same sort of speed. Maybe faster. This applies across the races. We would expect girls to have control within a year of their change.” Olendis had taught several female novices; he knew what he was talking about. “As for Chesammos, we have some here. Shall we ask them?”

  “I changed at thirteen,” said Donmar. “I had controlled the change and been apprenticed by fourteen. Cowin here was exceptional; in fairness, we can’t compare Sylas with him. He changed first at nine, but I’ve never heard of another child of any race changing that early.”

  “Master Jesely?” Olendis turned to him. “When did you change?”

  Jesely squirmed in his seat. It felt like a betrayal when he said, “Much like everyone else. Thirteen, fourteen, and it took me three or four months. Sylas was a little late even showing signs of the change. But I was raised here. I grew up hearing talk about changing.” It sounded a poor excuse even to him, and he thought he caught a hint of pity in the faces around him. Many of the council members knew he had been mentoring Sylas.

  “So what do you recommend, Olendis?” asked Donmar.

  “It is not for me to decide the fate of a novice, but if you were to ask me if he would ever learn to change, I would hav
e to say it looks unlikely. Not only that, but the boy doesn’t even have the wits to come up with a convincing excuse. If he could not hear the kye at all I might believe him, but this story of hearing many kye voices. Utter nonsense.”

  Jesely had shifted his gaze to Donmar’s face when Olendis spoke of the kye, and he saw it where others did not: a twitch of the cheek and an involuntary glance, first at Jesely and then at Cowin. Cowin’s hands were clenched into fists. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

  “What do we know about the boy? What is his background?” Cowin’s voice was strained.

  Master Donmar raised a hand from the table. “This isn’t the place for that line of questioning. Unless you have some particular insight, I fail to see what his background will reveal. What we need to decide now is what to do with him.”

  Cowin subsided, but Jesely could tell the answer left him dissatisfied. Cowin definitely had more interest than Jesely could account for.

  “Sylas has faced extreme opposition from his father,” said Jesely, “and he lost his brother only a few months ago. Could he have raised some sort of mental barrier to changing?”

  “That sounds like your line of work, Ayriene.” Donmar deferred to the only healer at the table.

  Jesely gripped the edge of the table. He was not sure it would do Sylas any good to have the council think him mentally unstable in some way, but it might make Donmar defer the suggestion Jesely knew he worked towards.

  “Ailments of the mind are difficult,” she said slowly. “There is little we can do with herbs except administer calming draughts. I cannot use my talent on such sicknesses. Without a physical injury to treat I am a mere herbalist, like any common healer. There is nothing my kye can help me repair. Even if it were true that he resisted the change, there would be little I could do.”