To Carry the Horn

by Karen Myers

  “For someone to be fooled by a glamour, they must be within a certain range, and so casters tend to keep the lines of sight restricted to reduce the risk of someone far-off seeing something wrong.

  George said, “This all implies it’s a mental power rather than a physical one. Smell residues are physical. A distant view would be the same as a closeup one, if there were a physical change.”

  “That’s right.” She drew him over to stand next to her desk. “Let’s make a practical start now. Picture someone of your own gender whom you know very well. The more vividly you can bring him to mind, the better.”

  George thought of his grandfather, his erect posture, the white hair, the wrinkles on his face, his frame on which the muscles were getting thinner. He drew himself more upright to help with the impersonation, but the rest he shaped with his mind. As he concentrated, he could feel a soft sort of film settle upon him, and his eyes were caught by edges to his view, as if they peered through a domino mask. When he tried to look at those edges directly, they fled to the side of his vision, always just barely glimpsed.

  He looked down at his hands and saw the veins raised and exposed, the padding of fat under the skin thinner and worn. The surface of the skin was softly wrinkled in all directions, like crepe, and the joints of the fingers were swollen.

  Ceridwen handed him a small mirror and he raised it to his face. It looked wrong, and he realized he rarely saw a mirror-image of his grandfather’s face, just the normal view. He used the mirror to look down and saw that he was much thinner in frame, and that his coat had changed to match.

  “Now walk about a bit, remembering to ‘be’ this person, not yourself.”

  He took a few steps, mindful of stiffened knees and slower stride. He felt his posture change to match.

  “Now remove it,” she said.

  He pictured his hands, cupped sideways and facing inward, raising to his face, joining, and running down the front as if he were pulling them through a join in a stage curtain, then tugging them out to the side at chest level to ‘take off’ the glamour wrapped around him, opening his hands wide at the end to dismiss it. The ghostly shapes at the edge of his vision vanished and, when he glanced at his hands, they looked normal.

  “Well done, for a beginning. You moved awkwardly and it was a bit thin and wavering, but not bad,” Ceridwen said.

  “Can you cast on the look of an object as a glamour?”

  “Yes, an object’s not uncommon, for concealment. But remember, an object doesn’t move.”

  “What about something of a different size, a child, for example?”

  “That’s much harder. Height and weight don’t really change, just the appearance of them. You could be a woman, but you’d be very tall for one—if you made yourself seem shorter, you wouldn’t be able to provide the correct stride and reach. So the more different you are from your natural form, the easier it would be to be revealed by accidental touch or by inconsistencies of movement.

  “Practically speaking, you want to have similar garments in your glamour to what you’re actually wearing, and choose a similar height, and similar weight. There are some who cross genders in glamoury, but I think you’re too large to try that. You’ll also want to avoid letting people touch you. Sometimes you can spot a caster just by that automatic careful isolation in crowds, even when not glamoured.

  “One more practical exercise before we stop for today. You notice that it took time for you to assume that glamour of an old man?”

  “Yes, I built it up from steps as I recalled them.”

  “That lack of speed can be deadly in an emergency. You must always have a standard form, not your own, that you can call up quickly, without thought. There are experts who have several such forms available at need, but we’ll begin with just one for you.”

  “How do I build that up?”

  “Most students start by taking their current form as a special case, and trying to find the untouched version of it as if it hadn’t lived their particular life. Then they add a different life history to that base version to build up their variant form. So the first step is to construct a sort of proto-glamour. Project who you really are, at bottom, without the accidental incidents of your life.”

  He understood what she meant, but not quite how to go about it. He stood, centering his body carefully on both feet and resting his arms at his side. He stared off into space, trying to distance himself from his normal body image, and called forth whatever would come.

  He felt himself grow taller, but his head became much heavier and the weight pulled it forward from his shoulders and down, then up again in a new posture as he compensated by tilting forward and lifting, his neck oddly curved. His lips pursed and he felt the front of his face extend narrowly, and his vision expanded to include much more of the room on either side. Unlike the previous glamour of his grandfather, this time his vision was unimpeded.

  He could smell the smoke of the fire, the burning oil in the lamps, the leather covers and quietly decaying books on the shelves, the ink on the desk, the mice in the walls, the shock of the woman standing before him as her skin chilled. He tilted his head to check the smells, and the unexpected weight of his head made him brace his neck muscles and his whole body to support it. He flared his nostrils and more of the scents in the room rushed in to overwhelm him.

  A falling ember in the fireplace startled him in the silence of the room, and he felt his ear twitch to focus on it, not a simple vestigial movement along the top of the jaw, but a live swiveling sensation, of just the one ear.

  He regarded Ceridwen. The color had faded from her face, and from the room around her. She stood stock still, her hand raised to her mouth and her eyes wide. He held up a hand and it seemed ordinary to him, except that the color was muted.

  Ceridwen groped for the mirror and gave it to him, her hand trembling slightly. As if compelled, he raised it slowly to his face.

  Rising above his human shoulders the head of a great antlered deer stared back at him.

  CHAPTER 25

  George recoiled from the mirror in his hand, then brought it back into view. The antlers were enormous and nearly scraped the tall ceiling in the room, even at their natural slant. He noted, somewhere behind the shock, that they were shaped as red deer, the great deer of the west that the Celts and Scythians were so fond of portraying.

  He shifted the mirror to his left hand and raised his right to touch the antlers. They were cool and smooth to the touch, and longer than he could reach, stretching back above and behind him with many tines. He brought his hand down to the top of his head and felt the strange ridges where they joined his head. Some distant part of him wondered if they shed every year and grew back in velvet.

  He ran his hand further down his head and stroked the short, coarse fur on his forehead and cheeks. If he didn’t look at it, he could imagine it as a well-trimmed beard, but when he watched his hand on his face, the disconnect between what he felt and any human face made him shudder. Worst was the narrow muzzle with its alien nose and mouth. The face was expressionless, showing neither smiles nor frowns.

  He rather liked the ears and his ability to move them about. He held one and twisted it, testing its pliability.

  He reached out and grabbed Ceridwen’s hand, and she jumped but didn’t resist. He laid it flat along his furry cheek under his own hand, and then leaned down so she could reach and laid it on an antler and released it.

  She drew back and recovered her poise. “Can you speak?”

  He opened his mouth, but casual speech seemed impossible, just a disconcerting series of bleats and grunts. He moved his head side to side, slowly, trying to keep his top-heavy weight under control.

  “This can be touched. It’s not therefore a glamour,” she said.

  He raised his hands palm up and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You could be touched before, so that wasn’t a glamour, either.”

  Another shrug.

  “This is wholly out of my
knowledge. By the form, this is clearly part of your father’s heritage or, perhaps, of he who summoned you, if they’re not indeed the same.”

  He wanted to know how to change back, most urgently. He mimed lifting his head off and stamped a foot.

  “Yes, you’re right. The first thing is to restore you to your customary form. Can you reverse the process?”

  Could he? He tried to stand straight and still again, with his arms at his side. His stance was wider than normal and his chest and neck still bowed forward to support the unaccustomed weight. He visualized the form he had seen in fragments in the small mirror, trying to make a complete picture, and pulled it back inside himself, stopping part way as he felt his human face return. He knew from the weight that the antlers must still be there.

  Pleased by his partial success, he winked at the shaken Ceridwen, and then pulled again and the weight relented, letting his posture change to fully straighten up again.

  He reached up to confirm that his face was back and the antlers gone, then staggered over weak-kneed and collapsed in the nearest armchair.

  Ceridwen took a bottle and glass from behind her desk and poured him a stiff drink. He reached up with both hands and she wrapped his fingers around it. He sniffed—brandy, with apples. But oh how dull a smell. His view of the room had regained full color as his human vision returned, but the scents had dimmed to almost nothing, and he stopped trying actively to pick them up. What must it be like to be a hound, he thought. He took a good swig from the glass and sat in silence listening to the fire, letting the liquor warm his blood.

  After a moment, he finished the brandy and cleared his throat. “Well, that was… interesting,” he ventured. “Not the sort of default form you had in mind, I take it?”

  “Hardly.”

  She stood over him, then backed off a bit and tilted her head sideways to contemplate him. “Did you know, when you paused in the change back and winked at me—you horrible man, and me worried you might be stuck—your face wasn’t your own?”

  “Oh?”

  “It was thinner, rougher, hairier, the chin was pointed, and the brows lower, with a peak.”

  He felt the tremors in his hands relaxing as the brandy had its effect. He was exhausted, either from reaction or from the change itself.

  “Well,” she said, “I think we’ll leave further trials for another day.”

  She pointed her finger at him. “You’re not to seek out Hadyn today. You are to go home and sit for a while.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He wasn’t inclined to disagree with her about the stupidity of pursuing dangerous physical activity just now. He put his glass down and rose, a bit unsteadily.

  “It’s been an intriguing lesson, today,” he said. Some devil made him give her another wink as he turned to leave.

  The brisk air outside hit George in the face like a dive into a pool. It refreshed him for a moment, but he was overtaken by an irresistible yawn. Ceridwen was right. I should stop by the house, maybe take a quick nap.

  He let himself in to the quiet house. Dinner was sometime off and Alun didn’t seem to be around. He pulled off his boots and left them near the back door, then climbed the stairs in his stocking feet.

  He opened the wardrobe and discovered all the new clothing, neatly hung. He added his current coat and vest.

  The room was quiet, even in mid-afternoon, and the bed looked soft. Draped across the foot of it was the new dressing gown, in a deep shade of dark red, warm and welcoming. A yawn and then another seized him and he thought, I’ll just lie down for a few moments.

  Gwyn sat behind his desk and listened to Ceridwen’s description of George’s transformation.

  “Not a glamour? You’re sure?”

  “I felt the fur on his face, the antlers in my hand, not that my hand could go all the way around the base of them.”

  “We know his regular form’s no glamour either. Either that, or Mostyn’s the most unperceptive tailor alive.”

  Ceridwen choked. “This is no joke, Gwyn. This was Cernunnos, in the flesh.”

  He patted the air to slow her down. “But you said George remained himself throughout the transformation.”

  She calmed down. “Yes. You could see he was shocked, but he recovered enough to explore the form with a mirror, and he remembered our conversation about touch not being something that could be glamoured, which is why he had me feel his face and antlers. And then there was that awful wink as he pulled partway back to an antlered human head. I can’t see Cernunnos winking at me, can you?”

  Gwyn agreed. “So really there were three forms unglamoured, yes? Cernunnos, the Horned Man, and George.”

  She reluctantly confirmed this.

  Well, well, well. How very unexpected, he thought. And here I was worried that Cernunnos had some subtle plan. Looks instead like he’s planning to take a starring role. What does he want? What will happen to my kinsman if he gets it?

  Ceridwen asked, “Did anything like this ever happen to Iolo?”

  “No, not that I ever knew. I don’t think he would have tried to hide it.”

  “I’ve never seen him, but you have. What did Cernunnos look like?” she asked.

  “A great red deer’s head on the body of a man. Strange and terrible.” Ceridwen was nodding in recognition before he finished.

  Gwyn said slowly, “You know, when all’s said and done, Annwn is really Cernunnos’s kingdom. He just lets others rule it, until they prove unworthy, as Arawn did. My father may have invested me,” he nodded to Angharad’s painting of it on the wall, “but it wasn’t really his to give, only Arawn’s to lose, and Arawn owed fealty to my father. It’s ridiculous to think that my father has the genuine disposition of Cernunnos’s realm at his disposal, but it’s been so long since he’s been seen that people forget the truth.”

  “What do you think his appearance now means?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. But he did know, or suspect. He would never be rid of his dishonor from that ancient fight. Iolo, too, and now Iolo was dead. Perhaps I’ve finally been found unworthy myself, and Cernunnos was preparing a successor. Was that George’s role?

  And what if it were true? He no longer believed that George had any ill intent and he wouldn’t harm his kinsman deliberately, just to keep him from being a pawn for Cernunnos. There was no honorable way back from that sort of action.

  The rattle of pans somewhere downstairs roused George eventually. He found a coverlet had been thrown over him and the door closed. His watch told him two hours had passed, and the daylight was starting to fade.

  Guess that was more of a shock than I realized, he thought, lying lazy and comfortable, disinclined to stir. I don’t imagine Iolo manifested in quite this way, judging by Ceridwen’s stupefaction.

  So, why am I not more frightened by it? Because it still feels like “me” somehow, he answered himself. My body recognizes the form, and I’m still in charge. It’s not like a possession, with me watching, more like an unanticipated physical skill, as if someone threw a ball at me for the first time and I just reached up and caught it, not knowing I could. Strange.

  But what kind of monster am I, then? Was I always this way, and didn’t know until I came here, or has this world done it to me?

  A horrifying thought struck him. Are there more forms inside me like this? How could I find out? What if I stand there all receptive like that and something less highly evolved shows up? The world’s first six-foot lobster, say.

  Going along with this uncritically doesn’t sound like such a good idea after all. Can I get stuck? Can I become something that can’t think well enough to return? Or someone that doesn’t want to return?

  This is getting me nowhere, he decided. Just don’t lose control. After all, it took deliberate effort on my part to create this manifestation. Don’t do it again.

  He heard more noise outside his room, and rose, cracking open his door to peek into the hallway. He found Alun, wrestling with chairs from the storeroom. He
had half a dozen out in the hallway, smaller and higher then the usual sort. Despite the unusual size they looked to match the chairs in the dining room, where George hadn’t yet eaten a meal.

  He stepped out in his slippers and picked up two of the chairs. “Where do you want them?”

  “There’s no need for that, sir,” Alun said. At George’s look, he said, reluctantly, “Down in the dining room, then.”

  One after the other they brought four of the chairs down into a swirl of activity. The dining room was well lighted and airy. George saw that someone had opened windows in the front parlor, and in the kitchen behind, so that a fresh breeze swept through. The fire had been laid but not yet lit, and everything was clean and gleaming.

  The table was arranged to seat twelve, with six larger chairs remaining in place and the smaller chairs they carried finding a place among them, one at the head of the table. Alun returned upstairs for the last pair while George stood in the kitchen doorway to survey the activity.

  A large pot bubbled quietly at the back of the stove, the source of a most delicious smell. One of the kennel-men was just peering into the oven after checking on the contents of the pot. The counter held several loaves of crusty bread. George noticed three footstools placed in strategic locations, one in front of the kitchen table where the other kennel-man was using it to reach a pile of greens, chopping them up with a large knife suited to his smaller hands.

  George ducked out of the doorway without attracting their notice and helped Alun place the last two chairs. “I see Huon and Tanguy are hard at work in there.”

  “Must make a change from cooking for the hounds,” Alun said. “At least, I always hope so before taking a bite of the result.”