Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris)

by A. C. Smyth

  “So,” Ayriene said, gently breaking his train of thought. “Begin. Which of these do you need?”

  That at least was easy. “These, Mistress.” Sylas selected a bulbous root, about the size of his clenched fist and the colour of a new bruise, and a bunch of leaves, long and slender, with fine downy hairs on the surface and red veins thick on the underside as if bulging with blood. He squeezed one of the leaves and the juice stained his fingers. “Blood elder leaves for the infusion for me and the root of the plant for Jaevan’s decoction.”

  “Good. Now show me how you prepare each.”

  Tearing the leaves roughly to release the juice—no knife to taint it with its metal—he placed the leaves in a bowl and poured boiling water over until all the leaves were covered. He stirred vigorously, the sap staining the water a dark pink. “That’s all I can do for now, Mistress. I’ll put it in a jar and shake it every day for a week. Then the liquid will be blood red when he held up to the light. It’s strained through fine linen, then heated again to boil off most of the water.” Now that he had shown himself responsive to the call, Ayriene did not dare leave him unprotected until he learned to resist.

  “Side-effects of the blood elder leaf when used for marking.”

  Ayriene had warned him before he started what he could expect. A lot of the side-effects began only after many years, and he would not be marking that long, maisaiea-yelai. When Ayriene came back she could work on his control. Then he could resist the call, change at will, and finally stop marking.

  “After many years, pain like the eating away of your joints. Also itching and crawling of the skin so severe that a man may scrape his own skin off with his fingernails trying to escape it. In the shorter term—” He flushed furiously. “In the shorter term, it can cause impotence. Mistress, it does wear off, doesn’t it?” He would not mark long enough to experience the other side-effects, but it would be a cruel joke to be with Casian at last, but unmanned by the blood elder leaf.

  “No one has used it so long that it has not,” was her carefully worded reply. One man might respond differently than another. A woman might use a salve that a hundred others had used without problem and come up in weals. A healer worked on likelihoods, not certainties. “Once we can work on your control, with luck you’ll only need to mark for a few weeks—three or four months at most. Now the decoction.”

  This differed from the infusion only in a few details, but he was to administer this potion to Jaevan. The responsibility frightened him, however much Ayriene told him it was safe and however many times he had prepared such potions for the people they had treated across the island. A man might be adversely affected by a decoction that a hundred others had drunk without problem. She had just said as much.

  “I peel the skin off, so, and chop it.” He cut the root into pieces the size of his first thumb joint. No avoiding the metal knife for this; the root was too woody and tough to be torn apart with fingers. He took a scant handful of the pieces and tossed them into an enamelled pan. When Ayriene had shown him she had taken a full handful, but her hands were smaller. Covering the pieces with water, he put the lid on the pan and set it to heat. “It will take two hours,” he said, “and then I leave the pan with the lid on until it is cold. It will have changed colour from red to bluish-purple.”

  “So you have been listening,” she said approvingly. “And how much must Jaevan drink?”

  “A goblet each evening before he retires. This will keep three days, no more, and then I must make a new batch. But you will be back by then, won’t you?”

  “I hope so. You may add honey to it, or mix it with wine if he prefers. It has a bitter taste and he may wish to disguise it. Wine hides the colour too—some people find purple off-putting. Now you must show me that you can mark yourself and then I must go. The message said ‘with all haste,’ and although I had to make sure you could care for yourself and Jaevan I cannot delay further.”

  The marking hurt, though not unbearably, and he pricked the skin neatly enough for even Ayriene’s approval. The marks on his chest now covered a patch a little smaller than his palm, and they would never leave him—a permanent reminder of how slow he was to learn. But he was learning. He would be a healer, and then the Aerie could never cast him out again.

  “Lord Casian.”

  A servant’s voice hailed him along the corridor. Casian gave a vexed acknowledgement. When would the staff here learn that he was a man of importance, not to be hailed like a fishwife across a market? “Lord Casian, you have a visitor. We weren’t sure where you were, my lord, but we showed him to your apartments.”

  “My apartments?” An unknown visitor had been left unattended with his possessions? He mentally scanned his antechamber, wondering if he had left anything unattended he would prefer other eyes not to see.

  “Yes, sir. He arrived by unconventional means, if you understand me, sir. I thought you would want him shown to your chambers.”

  A changer? A visitor from the Aerie? Not Jesely, surely? They had parted on bad enough terms that he thought never to speak to his old master again.

  “You did well. I’ll go there directly.”

  “I had food and wine delivered, my lord. And clothing.”

  Casian half smiled. Of course. His mysterious visitor would have arrived without a stitch. He wondered how scandalised the castle was at a naked man being shown to his rooms. Not the naked man he would want in his rooms, sadly. He was shut up elsewhere in the castle.

  Having mentally reviewed a list of who might pay him a visit at Banunis, he was unsurprised to find Gwysias in his room, enjoying a hearty meal. He greeted Casian with a wave of his knife, cutting a chunk of a fine-smelling goat cheese and popping it into his mouth.

  “Good day, Gwysias. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  “I have information for you. Although if I had known what fine fare I would be offered, I might have paid you a visit sooner.”

  Casian took a chair opposite Gwysias and poured himself some wine. He sniffed speculatively at it. The wine was strong and dark, and he topped up the cup with water. It was early yet.

  “Information?”

  Gwysias swallowed, washed the food down with a goodly gulp of wine, and nodded. “Your father had something to do with destroying Cellondora, I assume?”

  “My father and the king combined to eradicate a dangerous nest of rebels and revolutionaries,” Casian said, schooling his face to stillness.

  “And did you hear that some escaped? Flew to safety?”

  The emphasis on the word left Casian in no doubt what he meant. “There were changers among them?”

  Gwysias raised an eyebrow. “Of course. It would be hard to go to any town or village and not find changers, I imagine. I also suspect more perished there, either caught by surprise by the raid or trying to protect friends and loved ones.” He pointed his knife at Casian. “But some flew. About a dozen, I believe. And would you like to guess where they flew to?”

  “The Aerie,” Casian breathed. “Does the king know this?”

  “The soldiers presumably saw them escape, and if they saw them, Deygan will know.” He gave Casian a shrewd look. “I wondered if maybe he would have told you—if my information would be of no value to you—but I see he has not. I wonder, though, if he knows where they are.”

  Casian clenched one hand into a fist. Damn it all. He didn’t like Gwysias being better informed than he was.

  “If I have brought you valuable news, my lord, may I make a request of you?”

  Casian noted the form of address. In the Aerie, Gwysias had been Casian’s superior; outside, Casian outranked the Irmos changer by a large margin. “Ask.”

  Gwysias twisted a ring on his finger. “With Chesammos claiming sanctuary the Aerie may no longer be safe. I request to serve you here, in Banunis.”
<
br />   “What use have I for a scribe or a librarian, Gwysias? I have no staff—not even a manservant. I have no need of one with your skills.” The man’s face fell. He was genuinely worried. “What makes you think the Aerie is not safe?”

  “The girl, Miralee, she had a seeing. I saw it entered in the records.”

  “A seeing? What about?”

  “An attack on the Aerie, by an army of the king. Death. Destruction.”

  Casian all but held his breath. Deygan would lead an army against the Aerie? Gwysias watched him, hope in his eyes.

  “And that was entered into the public record?”

  Gwysias shook his head. “No. Miralee and Yinaede came to the library, and asked for entry to the secure area where only seeings likely to cause unrest are held. I read it after they left. They had made other entries lately, but in the open area. That’s why I looked specifically at what they wrote that last time—to see why they thought it worthy of concealment when their others were not.”

  “What else did they enter?”

  Gwysias gazed steadily at Casian. “My lord, I have helped you. I have always been your friend.”

  “Very well,” Casian said, “I will give you sanctuary if you need it, for a time. Now tell me what else they entered, before I change my mind.”

  “The girl had a seeing of an Irenthi king and a Chesammos who appeared to be some sort of advisor.”

  “Yes, yes,” Casian waved his hand dismissively. “I know about that one. What else?”

  “They studied the archives and linked that to other earlier seeings of the same king and Chesammos. There was a young girl there, too.”

  This was more like it. “And?”

  “The Chesammos said something along the lines of ‘I can keep you on your throne’ and ‘Without me you will fall.’ I don’t remember the exact words. My memory isn’t what it was. But that was the gist.”

  Casian considered. How could Sylas be that key to his position? “You are sure they were linked?”

  “The evidence strongly points to the seeings being linked, yes. I believe Miralee and these earlier seers saw the same event.”

  So whatever else, Sylas must be there when Casian took the throne, and would play some part in him keeping it. And a girl—but she was of no consequence yet. That would be explained when it happened. Sylas had a sister, he vaguely recalled. Maybe his sister would be involved too.

  “Very well, friend Gwysias, I will help you. If the king marches on the Aerie and I am there, fly to me in the king’s army.” He downed the rest of his wine. “I must tell the king what you have told me, and you must return to the Aerie before you are missed. Remember, if you are attacked, fly to me. I will keep you safe.”

  “They are at the Aerie?” Deygan’s voice was steady, but Casian could detect a hint of anger in his tone.

  “So my informant tells me, Sire.”

  “And he is reliable?”

  Casian took a moment, as if giving the question careful consideration. “He has been in the past. He has grudges against Master Donmar, but I cannot imagine him inventing a story such as this. Not when so many people in the Aerie would know the truth or falsehood of it.”

  “And you came straight to me? You told no one else of this?”

  “Of course, Sire,” Casian made his voice soothing, let his aiea-dera extend toward the king. He had certainly not told anyone else. Information gave him power; he was not about to share that with anyone else. Strictly speaking he had not brought the information straight to Deygan, but had sat a while, wondering how best to use it—what the implications might be if he did.

  “What do you intend for the Aerie, Sire?” It would serve him well if the Aerie became less powerful. If they had any inkling of what he intended they would surely try to stop him. Those bloody women and their seeings. And decades of seeings in the library, too.

  “I will see it destroyed.” Deygan’s words brought Casian’s head up as if jerked on a rope. Destroyed? Casian’s heart hammered. The Aerie had always been there; it was hard to imagine the island without it. And yet, if the institution Sylas so much wanted to be a part of no longer existed, Casian might find him easier to convince. He had his healer training, certainly, but with the changers in disrepute, a changer-trained healer might find himself less in demand.

  And yet…

  “Might it not be better to allow the Aerie to survive, but with its powers reduced? With a council made up of changers beholden to you for their existence, any decisions they made would be a sham, their power illusory.”

  “You see yourself at the head of the changer council?” Deygan quirked an eyebrow at him. The king had spotted his ambition, yet he encouraged it, in his own subtle ways, where Garvan had always discouraged him. Casian would find more fertile soil here with the like-minded Deygan than he had in Lucranne.

  “No indeed, Sire. I see myself at your side. Yet there are men in the Aerie who have been passed over because Donmar did not see their true merit.” Gwysias would make an admirable head of council. He would owe Casian his position, and he would be easily compelled by Casian’s aiea.

  “Donmar.” Deygan’s face twisted in disgust. “Scheming Chesammos. He served me well enough in the invasion, but he has been deliberately obstructive since. As if he could make up for what he did then by opposing me now. Pah! I’d like a reason to take him down a notch, and that’s certain.”

  “Send them a message, Sire. An ultimatum. They hand over the Cellondorans or you will send troops to seize them, and you will not be responsible for any damage or loss of life that might result.”

  “You think they would listen?”

  Casian spread his arms in an eloquent gesture. “It is worth a try. If they hand the traitors over, that suggests they are willing to listen to your authority. If not, at least you know you cannot trust them.”

  “See to it. Have the message brought for my seal. It can go with Ayriene. In the meantime, tell the captains to ready their men. I want the ballistas prepared and their crews rehearsed. Put the armies on war footing. Say nothing of this to Ayriene, or she will take word to the council of our preparations. The Aerie will regret playing politics with me.”

  Chapter 25

  Ayriene left Banunis as a falcon. Sylas envied the ease with which she transformed—the grace with which her bird form took to the air. He would be happy with his lower form, if only he could do at will what she seemed to take for granted.

  Casian was in charge now. Deygan’s rules required Sylas to be always in Casian’s sight or be arrested again. The king’s suspicions were undiminished, and Sylas’s chances of becoming royal healer grew less by the day. Deygan had damned him by association, and he knew how close he had come to feeling a noose around his neck.

  “So we have plenty of time to ourselves, with no masters here,” Casian observed, watching Sylas with lazy green eyes. “Can you think of any way we could amuse ourselves?”

  Casian’s lascivious look made Sylas shiver with unease and desire. He felt the stirring that told him that the blood elder’s side effects had not yet taken hold. The Irenthi sat beside him, close enough that their thighs touched and Sylas could feel the heat of Casian’s body. He eased his neck inside his collar.

  “Are you too hot?” Casian untied the laces that held Sylas’s collar closed. He slid a finger down Sylas’s neck, lingering over the pulse point as if to feel Sylas’s heart hammering faster. “You need to relax.”

  Casian stroked Sylas’s cheek with his fingertips, dragging them up into Sylas’s hair. Despite his worries about his future, it was all Sylas could do not to turn into the caress. He had dreamed of this—guilty, restless dreams. Pietrig’s face turning into Casian’s; his father’s face turning into Ayriene’s as she beat him bloody; Jesely, wearing his mother’s linandra necklace, begging Ayriene to stop the be
ating. He swallowed hard.

  “You are shaving,” Casian said, stroking the roughness of Sylas’s cheek, where the mirror told him a dark shadow now showed. “I wondered if you would bother while you were travelling. Jesely follows the Aerie custom of keeping clean-shaven, but Cowin wears a beard from time to time. He says it is because it is easier when he is on the road, but I think some of it is wanting to feel like a Chesammos, even among changers. I think I should grow a beard. What do you think? Would it suit me?”