Changer (Athanor) (10 page)

“Maybe that explains it.  Anything else?”

Bill shrugs.  “Not much.  Pendragon Productions seems devoted to rather ineffectively crusading for various causes.  It doesn’t fund-raise, and it doesn’t spend much money.  Tso and Zagano both live on the grounds of Pendragon’s estate.”

“Idle rich?”  Chris tugs at his short mustache with his lower teeth.  “Do you have a listing of Pendragon’s pet causes?”

“Yeah.  I extracted them from that nightmare of a webpage.  Most are quite noble: social causes, environmental activism, government corruption, that sort of thing.”

“Do they do their own investigation?”

“Not that I can tell—mostly they link up others’ work.”

“Weird.  I’ll see if I can get an interview with Pendragon.”

“Is it worth the hassle?” Bill asks.  “Mr. Pendragon seems like just another New Mexico crank to me.”

Chris grins.  “The
Journal
likes stories about idealistic local characters.  In any case, I want to find out if Arthur Pendragon is quite as noble as he seems.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“Then maybe I’ll have a story for the front page!”

Sitting coyote-form in the courtyard of Arthur’s adobe hacienda, the Changer scratches behind one ear and reflects on the events of the past several days.  He and his daughter have been asked to stay at Arthur’s place, ostensibly so that his paperwork can be done properly.  He suspects deliberate delays, but that does not bother him overmuch.  

His time has been well spent learning new dialects of Spanish and English, as well as current events so that he will not betray himself in casual conversation.  His daughter, too, is thriving.  A visit from a veterinarian has ensured that she will be protected against a host of potential ills.

Moreover, his hosts have heard his warning; they are not foolish enough to believe that he will not carry it out.  Nor could they be absolutely certain that they could stop him.

Shapeshifters are notoriously difficult to kill—the true ones, at least.  Not that he is invulnerable.  Far from it, but over the centuries, he has memorized routines to enable emergency shapeshifts.  For example, should someone shoot him at this moment, he would shift into a small, darting finch.  Much of the damage would be healed in the change and a finch is much harder to hit than a coyote… or a man.

Such a change would arouse questions, of course, but the Changer can live with that.  Caution is his chosen first armor.  The defenses are secondary—or even tertiary.

Whining joyfully, his daughter comes out from under the lilac bush where she has dug her shallow earth.  In the past several days, she has learned to recognize him by scent, rather than merely by shape, and consequently has become bolder.  She still prefers him as a coyote, though.

Coming up to him, she drops a length of braided rawhide at his feet.  Vera purchased it for her at a pet store and, although momentarily annoyed that his daughter might be being treated as a pet, the Changer has permitted the pup to play with it.  Her satisfaction with Vera’s choice is evident in the rawhide’s increasingly chewed appearance.

Giving in to the pup’s desire to play, the Changer grabs one end in his teeth and provides resistance as she tugs at the other.  Her throaty, puppy growls vanish as footsteps come toward the courtyard.  The pup retreats under the lilac bush.

Even before the Changer turns, he knows Vera by her scent.

“Why don’t you turn into a puppy sometime?” she asks, seating herself on the edge of the patio table and tossing a chunk of cheese into the lilac bush.  “She needs something her own size to wrestle with.”

Not deigning to reply, the Changer gives the woman an ironic gaze.  What does this virgin know about raising pups?  He does not tell her how to perform her duties in Arthur’s business.  Why does she try to tell him his as a parent?

“I thought you might like to know,” she adds after a pause, “that Lovern has just arrived at the airport.”

The Changer wonders who Lovern is.  The human-formed tend to shift names as he shifts shapes.  Recalling a couple of these tags and their scents is enough for him.  He scratches again, then retrieves the untouched piece of cheese from the lilac bush.

Dropping it at Vera’s feet, he shifts human in one surge.  Politely recalling that nudity has a tendency to unsettle the woman, he reaches for one of the robes that, since his arrival, have been hung in odd corners around the hacienda.

“Please,” he says, belting the dark blue terry cloth with a matching sash, “do not encourage my daughter to eat any food she comes across.  A common way to kill coyotes is with poisoned baits.  If you teach her to accept food other than what she hunts or what I give to her, you may be responsible for her death.”

At first, Vera is indignant.  Then her expression softens.

“I didn’t think,” she admits.  “And I apologize.  I won’t do it again and I’ll make certain that the others know as well.”

“Thank you.”  The Changer shapes a smile.  “Remind me which one Lovern is.”

Vera looks momentarily startled.  “Mimir.  Merlin.”

“That one.”  The Changer whistles coaxingly to his daughter.  She comes out and he tosses her one end of the rawhide string.  “Gilgamesh has summoned him?”

“
Arthur
has,” Vera says, her slight emphasis on the name reminding him that etiquette demands that each be called by their given name of the moment.  As the etiquette is based in protecting identities and the Changer accepts its wisdom.

“Arthur,” he repeats.  “Has it anything to do with me?”

“Yes,” Vera says calmly.  “Arthur believes Lovern could aid you.  Also, your vendetta has interesting implications.”

“I do not need that sorcerer’s help to deal with Lil.”

Vera does not comment for a long moment, watching instead the Changer’s game of tug-of-war with the pup.

“Perhaps not, but Arthur gives full value for your dues.”

“Were you sent to prepare me to accept the wizard?”

“No,” Vera says sharply.  “I came of my own accord.  Arthur is the first among equals here, not my master.”

“First among equals.”  The Changer’s soft laugh is almost a growl.  “The old Round Table dream once more.  Perhaps it will work better this time.  I doubt it, but it’s a nice idea.”

Vera says nothing, whether because she agrees or because she is affronted, the Changer does not know.  Tersely, she excuses herself and departs.

Watching her almost masculine gait (no soft roundness to
those
hips) the Changer reflects on what he recalls of Mimir aka Merlin aka Lovern.  There are many such memories, but all are colored by one from the earlier years.

Mimir was not among the ancient or, if he was, his early centuries had been spent in places isolated from the small, loose-knit athanor community in the Mediterranean basin.  Being fond of a certain aura of mystery, Mimir had never confirmed which was true.  The Changer cared little.  His instinctive feeling for Mimir had always been that the man was a liar—or if not a liar, what later years would call a showman.

This impression had persisted until the day that he first had learned what Mimir was willing to do to increase the knowledge at his disposal.  It had been during a battle that would afterward drift into legend as Ragnarokk, a battle so terrible that no human could believe that it had happened, but in order to remain sane must believe that it was yet to come.

The Changer had been winging over the battlefield, a black raven with a wingspan of over eight feet.  Around him, like ebon leaves stirred by the power of his wings, natural ravens soared, their deep voices quorking derisive comments on the bloody chaos spread as a banquet beneath them.

The sides were well-matched.  Those who would be remembered in legend as the Aesir and Vanir included those then called Odin, Tyr, Heimdall, and Freya.  Others have been forgotten, as that battle was their last.

Arthur was there as well, but he was not called Arthur then.  He who had been Gilgamesh, Akhenaton, Rama, was known at this time as Frey, the golden prince of the Vanir.

Merlin was also among the forces of the Aesir, but he was not yet associated with Arthur.  That would come later, after the debacle of Ragnarokk.  At this time he was called Mimir.

Later, legend would name Mimir one of the Jotun, the enemies of the Aesir, just as Arthurian legend would give Merlin an incubus as a father.  There has always been that about Mimir/Merlin, for all his wisdom, that is dangerous and untrustworthy.

The opponents of the Aesir were not the evil creatures that legend later counted them.  They, too, were athanor, but they held a different philosophy than the Aesir/Vanir alliance.  

Whereas the Aesir, following the council of Mimir and Odin, were largely content to deal with growing humanity as something like equals, interacting as councilors and guardians, remaining behind the scenes if they meddled at all, the Jotun could see no reason for this stealth.

Advised by the trickster Loki, they gloried in their difference from the human race.  Where Odin and Mimir emphasized the similarities between many athanor and humans, the Jotun noted the differences.

The battle that had spread out beneath the Changer’s wings had been a living icon of this difference in philosophy.  The Aesir fought mostly in human form, wielding weapons such as a human might wield.  The Jotun shifted into fantastic, inhuman forms.  There was Fenris Wolf and Midgard Serpent; there were giants of fire and of ice—and all of them had been athanor.

The Changer had striven alongside the Aesir, for his tendency toward caution led him to feel that the Jotun’s desire for open domination of humanity would eventually lead to trouble.  Compared to the relative infertility of his kin, humans, even with their single births and high infant mortality, whelped young in litters.  Anyone who has ever observed a plague of mice or rats knows that those who breed quickly overwhelm in the end.

Still, he had not interfered in personal combat.  From above the battlefield he had watched as Thor and the Midgard Serpent had torn into each other.  The latter was his sea-born brother.  He had been pleased to see Jormungandr win this contest.  Thor was a braggart and a drunkard.

And as he had dipped wing in congratulations to his brother, he had noted an odd figure standing in the shade of a great elm near the fringes of the battlefield.  It wore a silver-grey robe with highlights of leaf green and runes of power embroidered into the fabric.  The hood was raised, bulking strangely around the shape within.  The cowl hung so low about the face that even his raven eyes had difficulty making out the face it sheltered.

Yet raven eyes, especially the raven eyes of the Changer, can be more keen than those of a normal raven or, indeed, those of any man.  They penetrated the darkness of that cowl and saw that within not one but two heads sprouted from the scrawny shoulders of the figure within the robe.  

The heads were not identical.  Both were grey-haired with the grey that denotes wisdom, even among their unaging kind.  The skin of one head was smoother than that of the other, bore fewer lines, fewer traces of weathering, fewer signs of grief or joy.

At a beckoning gesture from the robed one, the Changer had soared away.  He was one of the ancient and not to be summoned like a pet or a servant, even when the summoner was Mimir, who even then was called one of the great sorcerers of their kind.  

Returning to the battlefield, he shifted into an even larger version of his raven-self and plucked Loki from the field just when that one’s aid might have meant the death of Frey.  From a great height, he dropped the trickster on a heap of rocks and believed him dead.  Later, he would regret not having checked more thoroughly.

In the end, two heads or not, the counsel of Mimir was insufficient to protect Odin from his own death on the battlefield of Ragnarokk.

In recent years, Odin had taken to wearing his hair long and straight, cloaking one side of his face.  Some said that he had lost an eye to an assassin and sought to conceal the damage.  Others whispered darker things.  Cunningly approaching from that blinded side, the Fenris Wolf swallowed the Aesir warlord whole.

After Ragnarokk had muddled to its bloody end, the Changer had swept from the skies, leaving his fellow ravens to feed with the wolves on the bodies of the slain.  As an ancient, he took part in the conference to reset the balance of power.