Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris)

by A. C. Smyth

  “You could care for Jaevan as well as I. You are a better scholar. If there is something to be found in the books, you would find it before I did. You read better and faster. And you are a talent, Mistress—the only healer talent we have.”

  Her heart twisted as she recalled Adwen’s face. Her other children: Miralee dead in Deygan’s assault; Garyth dead or exiled. Her husband. What did she have to live for?

  “Sylas, grant me this.” Her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “I could not save my son, however great a healer I was. My husband and two of my children are dead. Maybe my other son is dead too. At least let me save you. Let me atone for Adwen and Miralee by saving you for whatever fate has in store.”

  He sat for what seemed an eternity, head bowed, while Deygan huffed and pulled at his moustache and muttered darkly about there being no decision to be made. Deygan would have killed in an instant and without a second thought, Ayriene knew. But Sylas was no Deygan. This would leave a scar on his soul that would take a long time to heal. Maybe it never would.

  At last, Sylas looked up. His tears ran like rain. He embraced her and she felt the dampness of his cheek against hers—knew that her face was wet with her own tears. She could feel him trembling, close to breaking down altogether.

  “Please, Sylas. You must.” And do it quickly, she thought, before we both lose our nerve.

  “Mistress, I cannot. I…”

  “Just do it, Sylas. For all our sakes.”

  He drew away from her and knelt as if in prayer. It seemed to Ayriene to last forever, but when he finally opened his eyes he seemed to have come to a decision. His face was calmer—more peaceful. He made the sign of the Lady and raised his fingertips to his lips.

  “May the Lady forgive me. I am ready.”

  Deygan held the hilt of the sword towards him, but Sylas waved it away.

  “The Chesammos never use swords, Sire, but I have used a knife on occasion.”

  Deygan sheathed the sword, and pulled the matching dagger from his belt. Sylas grasped it and felt its weight. The stone in the pommel was linandra, a match to the gem on the sword. A magnificent stone, and many times the size of the one Ayriene had bought for Sylas in Adamantara. She wondered if he still kept the bead or if he had sold it long since. She hoped if he had it, that he would keep it as a keepsake of her.

  Sylas turned the dagger in his hands and for one moment of blind, sickening panic, she thought he meant to turn it on himself.

  “Don’t make me do this,” he whispered hoarsely, raising pleading eyes to hers.

  “You must. Stay safe.”

  Again he wavered, hands trembling, and she feared he would falter. She tried to hold his eyes, to send confidence and forgiveness through her gaze. She wished she had been an empath, not a healer, that she might open her thoughts to him—show him this had to be.

  Tears ran down his cheeks as he plunged the dagger into her breast, but his eyes were distant. Vacant. After the initial searing pain like a hot poker through her flesh, she could see nothing clearly. His figure swam before her eyes. She felt her kye screaming and remorse flooded her. This would send her kye into the darkness beyond the Outlands and into the true death. But it had to be.

  I’m coming, Adwen. Wait for me, Miralee. I’ll be with you soon, Kerwen, my love.

  Blackness took her. Blackness and the cold of the Outlands.

  Sylas sat, head bowed. He would not kill her. She had no right to ask it of him. Her death would not save him; it would condemn him. Chesammos did not kill. Healers did not kill. Changers did not kill. The penalty for one changer killing another was not death, but having one’s arm crushed or hand cut off. That saved the kye from passing into the dark, but removed the changer’s ability to fly—the harshest punishment imaginable. He should cut his hand off now, before it had the chance to kill his own mistress.

  Stay strong, changer.

  The kye were breaking through. This shouldn’t be possible; he had marked with blood elder. His mind raced. The blood elder stopped him being called, but did it stop the kye? The linandra on Deygan’s sword was so close. Sylas concentrated, sent his thoughts questing out for the kye, and the pommel stone glowed faintly. He formed words in his mind.

  I cannot. I have no strength left.

  He wanted to lie down on the tiles. Feel the coldness of them beneath his cheek. Let Deygan kill him if he would. He had no strength left to fight.

  You are stronger than you know. You will be stronger yet. Jaevan needs your strength.

  When he looked at her she was crying. He reached out for her and embraced her as he would his mother. He could feel trembling. Him or Ayriene?

  “Please, Sylas. You must.” Her voice implored him, tugged at his very being. How could she ask this of him? It wasn’t fair. Not even Craie had ever asked as much of him.

  “Mistress…” There was so much he wanted to say to her. How grateful he was. How much he would miss her. How he would never forget her. But it all came down to that one word.

  He could not, could not, could not.

  “Just do it, Sylas. For all our sakes.”

  He closed his eyes again and reached out to the linandra, and through it to his kye.

  Can I fly? If I fly, Ayriene might fly with me.

  Do you see windows, changer? To where would we fly?

  It was right. Deygan would call the guards and they would be killed in bird form instead of human. The guards who had brought him both carried the weighted nets, and they would be waiting close by. He and his mistress would die naked in a net with blades through their flesh, like fish pulled from the lake.

  I can’t kill her.

  He felt understanding through the link. Sympathy. He could feel tears running in tracks down his cheeks.

  I will bring you to the Outlands. You will see nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing.

  The coward’s way out, but he could see no other. If he delayed, the kye could leave him. He might lose the contact.

  “May the Lady forgive me. I am ready.”

  He made the sign of the Lady and kissed his fingertips, to seal the pledge. He refused the sword, but took the dagger, resting his finger on the linandra stone. With the stone in his hands, he could cross to the Outlands, return when it was all over. Like a sleepwalker, he wouldn’t see a thing.

  “Don’t make me do this.” He knew what her response would be, but he had to make one last try.

  “You must. Stay safe.”

  He rubbed his thumb over the linandra and felt a blast of cold the like of which he had never experienced before. He knew from classes at the Aerie that seers at least partly entered the Outlands when they had their seeings, but he had never heard of an ordinary changer making the crossing. Seers always came back. All he could do was hope.

  There were places in the world, they said, where it was so cold that your breath froze like clouds in front of you; where rain fell in white flakes like ash from the Lady; where as far as a man could see was white and cold like the vastness of the ash desert. He had not believed such cold possible, but now he knew it was true. He had no body there, but if he had, his extremities would have been numb. As if in a dream he felt his arm rise and fall, heard a woman gasp and someone speaking to him. A man’s voice—deeper—Deygan, calling him back.

  He would stay in the cold. He would lie there until he froze. He would die with his mistress, and not be shamed.

  You must return, changer. There are things for you to do. Omena’s blood must save.

  He stared at his hand. The dagger lay there, across his palm, and the stone still glowed. Red stained the blade, seeped onto his fingers. He suppressed a sob. There was a form on the ground, but he hardly dared look.

  “I was not sure you would do it, boy,” Deygan said, taking the dagger from Syl
as’s hand and beginning to clean it with a casual efficiency. Sylas was barely aware the dagger had gone. He stared at Ayriene lying there before him and realised the kye had told the truth. See nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing. Ah, Lady have mercy, he had done it. With the linandra gone from his hand, and his mind numb with shock and grief, the kye fled as if ashamed at its part in the proceedings.

  He slumped to the floor, arms folded over his head, wanting to cry like a child for its mother, yet too stunned even for that.

  “At least I know you will hold faith with my son,” Deygan was saying. “I will have you both taken to the lodge tonight. No visitors, as I said, except Casian. You two are friends, I believe, and it may be that interaction with one of his own kind may help my son recover.” The look on his face said he did not expect a recovery, but would not yet let himself give up hope. “In that event, we will reconsider your future.”

  He could see Casian. He could study. He could hope that the changers would return, although this story of Yinaede’s was clearly nonsense. Some other changer might save them, not Sylas. Cowin, maybe. Yes, Cowin, that was it. Yinaede had seen Cowin in her vision. No one had been raised to the mastery faster than Cowin; he was the obvious candidate for the changers’ saviour.

  Sylas raised himself to one knee before Deygan, and his hand left bloody prints on the tiles. Restoring Jaevan was more important than anything. More important than the changers, than Ayriene, than his own life. If he did not solve the mystery of Jaevan’s indisposition he would die trying. He would redeem himself.

  “I swear I will do no harm to you or yours, Sire. I will not try to escape so long as you live. I will devote myself to study to restore the prince to health. I swear it by the Lady.” He made the sign and kissed his fingertips. It was the most binding oath he knew.

  Deygan looked down his nose at Sylas.

  “Do you know, I think you believe it. Well then, I shall make a pledge to you, Sylas Crowchanger. No one will hear what happened here from my lips. As far as the world is concerned, Ayriene died by my hand, and I allowed you to live to serve my son. As far as your family and friends are concerned, you died at the Aerie. There were few survivors to know the truth of it, and even they could probably not say for sure who was there and who was not.”

  Deygan called for guards and the same two reappeared, their eyes flicking briefly to Ayriene’s corpse, then sliding away. Their masks of disinterest never faltered.

  “Call Lord Casian. I have a job for him. And take this away and dispose of it.” His hand waved at Ayriene’s body. “Is there anything of hers you wish to keep, young Chesammos?”

  Ayriene had a pipe, but Sylas could not use it and would not dream of trying. That was for masters only. But there was one thing.

  “Her pack, Sire. The healer’s pack with her herbs and potions. And the herbal from her room.” If he was to study healing, he would start with Ayriene’s treasured book. Deygan had promised him the books from the library. Somewhere in one of those must lie the answer, and if it was there, Sylas would find it. He swore on his life. He swore on Ayriene’s life.

  “It shall be done. Casian will make the arrangements for you and Jaevan to go to your retreat. You will be made comfortable, as befits a prince of Chandris and his companion.”

  It was only when he got back to his room that the full horror of what he had done struck him.

  If he was to be shut away for the rest of his life it was no more than he deserved. He would be fed and sheltered, given clothing and books to study, where his crime demanded he should be hanged or locked in the darkest dungeon of Banunis Castle. He lay on the bed, turned to the wall and pictured Ayriene’s face. His best hope of redemption lay in curing Jaevan, but Ayriene would haunt his dreams for as long as he lived.

  Epilogue

  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER

  Casian watched the little entourage move away from his mother’s house, setting out across the desert for the old garrison and lighthouse on the southernmost tip of Chandris. Known ironically as The Hermitage, it was as remote a spot as could be found on the island, and was to be the new home of Sylas and the still-silent Prince Jaevan.

  It had taken all Casian’s influence to persuade King Deygan to hide Jaevan and Sylas at Boreana’s house on the edge of the desert instead of the hunting lodge as Deygan had planned. The plan served a dual purpose: it hid them from sight, which was Deygan’s intention, and gave Casian easy access to Sylas, which was Casian’s. But the king was nervous of entrusting such important detainees to House Lucranne. Not prisoners. Never that. The king was adamant that his son was not a prisoner, merely absent from court for the good of his health while the healer cured him. He fooled no one.

  The affair had not flourished as Casian had expected, given Ayriene’s absence and Casian’s easy access to his lover. Sylas was withdrawn, depressed, and rarely open to the suggestion that the two of them spend time alone. With anyone else, Casian would have given up after the second rebuff, and found another, more willing partner. He rarely had to make much effort to find a bedmate, after all, and there had been others already. But Sylas’s lack of interest maddened him. When Casian came to the throne Sylas was meant to be there, damn it. The knowledge that he needed Sylas itched in his mind. He would have him. He just needed to be patient—let Sylas get over Ayriene’s death.

  But however secure Casian’s mother thought her household, rumours leaked out. The king’s son was a drooling idiot, people said on the streets of Banunis. The next king of Chandris was a simpleton who could not wipe his own arse. Untrue, as it happened, but the stories got wilder and more elaborate. Deygan was being punished, they said, for his destruction of the Aerie, but by what or whom was never made clear. Deygan attended state events alone. That way it could be put about that the king was so wary of the threat to his sons that neither prince would be seen in public until the rebellion was squashed.

  In reality, the rebellion had all but died. Cellondora had been the driving force, and with the levelling of that village, the others had gone back to their old ways. Swords had been thrown into wells or buried out in the desert.

  But Deygan was left with a dilemma: Jaevan could not be passed over, according to the law that his ancestor had gone out of his way to institute. Only if Jaevan gave his assent could he be bypassed in the succession, and that he was incapable of doing.

  So Jaevan died.

  Not really, of course. It was a sham, from start to finish. Jaevan was said to have died of a fever, and Marklin was installed as crown prince. They held a big funeral, invited foreign dignitaries—everything the observant nobles of Chandris and beyond might expect. Even Marklin had to play a part in the charade, by his father’s side at the funeral. Deygan made use of his son’s pale, pinched face to convince the watchers that Marklin’s beloved older brother had indeed died. No one, they said, would put a boy through that if it were not true.

  Sylas kept marking. Casian told him repeatedly that he need not fear a call, since all the changers bar the two of them—and Jaevan, if he could be counted—had left the island. That was untrue, as it happened. There were three, since Casian had set Gwysias to live in the remains of the Aerie, his arm broken in three places to stop him flying, and with orders to warn Casian if any changers should return in search of survivors. Despite the mutilation, Gwysias seemed almost pathetically grateful to Casian for rescuing him. A small compulsion had helped instill that gratitude, but it would not have worked had the feeling not already been there in some measure.

  So Sylas kept marking, terrified that a call would take him away from Jaevan. The effects of the marking took their toll, as Ayriene had warned, and that left Casian more frustrated than ever. When Casian tried to stop the supplies of blood elder reaching him, Sylas took it straight to the king, who instructed that Sylas should have whatever books and supplies he needed to continue his studies. In time, Sylas
could not have responded to Casian’s advances, even had he wanted to.

  Casian could hardly bear to think of it—his golden youth, locked away with a mindless boy in a lighthouse at the far end of the desert. Still, he thought wryly, at least he would know where Sylas was when he needed him. Sylas would be kept safe until Casian was ready to make his move. And blood elder was reversible, when that happened.

  And Casian—well, he had his women, and his men—but Sylas held his heart. And his mind, for Sylas would make him king.

  The remnant of the changers departed the island shortly after the destruction—what was left of them. A rag-tag band of masters and apprentices and novices with hardly a smallcoin to their names, once the passages to the mainland were paid. Jesely stayed, found himself a Chesammos village in the desert where they asked no questions. With the money he had managed to take from the Aerie, he bought himself a rickety wagon and an aging cheen with which to earn his living.