Changer (Athanor) (29 page)

Besides, he suspects the Changer would ignore any chiding.

When the Changer returns, Lovern’s spells are ready.  Side by side, as if they were a pair of more usual bathers, they walk down the white-sand beach.  Little licks of water splash about their ankles and knees, the lapping tongues of warm, salty cats.

“Ride the horses of Lir!” the Changer says, running forward and diving into the surf.  A dolphin emerges, bobbing and leaping, whistling joyously.

“A pretty image,” Lovern says.

He has waded waist-deep now, but his robe does not become wet; rather it moves freely within the water like a bit of seaweed or mermaid’s hair.  Atop the staff he clasps firmly in one hand, a cut-crystal sphere glows with lambent, orange light.

In a few more steps he is fully submerged and walking along the sandy bottom.  A few curious fish dart up to his light and then away again.  Crustaceans scuttle across the bottom waving their claws, whether in threat or greeting is difficult to say.

“They will tell their master,” the wizard says to the dolphin who swims at his side.

The dolphin’s whistle suggests their master knows already.

“It is difficult to be sure, isn’t it?” Lovern says.  “What are the limits of the Sea King?”

If the dolphin knows, his answering whistle gives away no secrets.  Instead it queries how far must they travel to find where Lovern has secreted Mimir’s Head.

“I can shorten the distance magically,” Lovern says, “but, as I mentioned before, I fear I cannot remove the Head without Duppy Jonah’s knowledge.  I would prefer an interview with him before undertaking the task.  It seems more mannerly.”

The dolphin laughs and rises to the surface for air.

Their journey takes on a curiously timeless feeling, one familiar to the Changer from his sea-born existence.  Beneath the sea, sound is muted, as is light.  Fire is unknown.  Even volcanos bubble, steam, and struggle rather than engulf.  Air in all her manifestations but one is unknown.  Zephyr, breeze, gale, tornado: All are mostly known for their effects upon the surface.

Breath within the lungs of dolphin, whale, seal, wizard, breath alone carries air into the realms where water is emperor.

Traveling beneath the water one easily forgets the world above, quickly recalls how the seas hold dominion over most of the globe and that, even where there is land, the stubbornest divisions are those caused by rivers and lakes.

So as the wizard and the shapeshifter walk slowly beneath the sea, the sun sinks beneath the waters and the stars come to flirt with the whitecaps.  The moon wheels above, and the oceans feel her pull as does no other entity on the Earth.

This connection to space beyond the globe makes the creatures of the sea philosophical and contemplative.  They
know
, in a fashion that land-born creatures can only intellectualize, that there is a universe beyond the gravity well.

Near noon the following day, the dolphin submerges after one of his trips to the surface, hurrying to rejoin the wizard.

During their travels they have reached deep ocean.  Lovern no longer strolls through the sand at the bottom, but walks in a middle distance, his feet striding upon nothing of substance.  If the long hours of maintaining his magics have wearied him, he does not show any sign.  His bearded features remain serene, and the orange light atop his staff glows as strongly.

“When I rose to breathe this last time,” the dolphin whistles, “I was met by Mother Carey’s chickens.  They say that their mistress would have words with us.”

“Above?” Lovern asks.

“There is a place that has been prepared,” the dolphin answers, and his whistles express mirth independent of the perpetual grin of his long jaw.

Lovern glances up and sees the dark shadow of something floating on the water.

“A boat?”

“Something like that,” the dolphin agrees.  “Mother Carey is Duppy Jonah’s queen.  You should not keep her waiting if you expect to avoid his wrath.”

“I know…”  Lovern bites off the rest of his sentence and begins to walk upward, as a man ashore might walk up a steep hill.  “I had thought that Duppy Jonah himself might meet us.”

The dolphin only grins and swims to the surface.

When Lovern arrives, he understands immediately why the Changer was amused.  Floating on the waves, bobbing gently with every caprice of wind, is the wreck of an old tall ship—a Spanish galleon, he thinks.

The ship’s masts are broken, their sails gone.  The hull is pierced by several gaping holes.  What remains intact is carpeted with barnacles, oysters, and other, less solid, clinging things.  The deck is awash with seaweed and slime.  All the metal fittings are green with corrosion or white with shellfish.  Only the wheel stands as it must have once, wood smooth and solid, brass brilliant, glinting in the midday sun.

All along the broken side rails and on the stubs of the mast storm petrels and seagulls squawk.  There are many varieties: white, grey, piebald in black or tan.  They laugh shrilly as the wizard floats out of the sea and lands on the deck.  Nor are the birds more impressed when the dolphin becomes a naked man clad only in clinging black hair who climbs agilely aboard.

“Mother Carey’s chickens,” Lovern says, observing the seabirds with less than pleasure.  “Where is their mistress?”

“Here,” says a voice as soft and breathy as the sound of the sea caught in a shell.

They turn as one to find a mermaid seated upon the deck near the wheel.  Her hair is seaweed green, her skin pearlescent fair, shimmering with many soft pastel hues.  The scales of her fish tail glitter like emeralds but the fins are sea-foam white, as are her round breasts with their coral nipples.

She is younger than many of their kind, born after humanity had taken to sailing over the waves in masted ships.  Some say that she was shaped by human myths, others that she is the source of them.  It hardly matters.  Call her Amphitrite, the Sea Witch, Meerfrau, or the pedestrian Mother Carey, none contests that she is the Queen of the Sea.

Nor is she Queen merely by virtue of her partnership with Duppy Jonah.  Her claim is hers by right and none, least of all the sea lord who loves her, question it.

“Don’t you like my chickens?” Mother Carey asks Lovern, in tones of thinly veiled malice.

“I find them noisy and dirty,” the wizard says bluntly.

“I find them graceful and daring,” the Sea Queen answers, “and far more helpful servants to me than yours are to you, I warrant.  Who is the dark man in your shadow, standing like a liege man behind his lord?”

The Changer is too old to be enraged so easily, but he also does not suffer impudence.  He smiles, and the yellow in his eyes hardens to amber.  “Greetings, sister.  Surely you are not so reduced in your abilities to not know the Changer when he enters your realm?”

Mother Carey giggles, her mood shifting as quickly as that of the sea.  “I simply wondered at the company you keep, dear brother.  This skulking wizard…”

“Is not skulking today,” the Changer interrupts.  “He has come here openly and sought audience with you.”

“And I have granted it,” she says, producing an ivory comb from somewhere about her person and combing out her green hair.  “What do you wish, Lovern?”

Like Arthur, Lovern has had his difficulties with women—Nimue being only the most notorious of his failed relationships.  He neither trusts them, nor, within his darkest soul, believes them to be fully his peers, a misapprehension that has cost him repeatedly in the past and, the Changer muses, seems about to cost him again.

“I had come to treat with Duppy Jonah,” he begins, “but I believe you can speak for him.”

Mother Carey frowns, not pleased with Lovern’s dismissive approach.  “I wonder that you have lived to your great age, wizard.  Speak quickly and mind what you say.”

The waters about the ruined ship have begun to grow rough, though the wind has not risen.  The Changer contemplates the wizard and decides that the time to intervene has not yet come.

“I…” Lovern swallows and starts again.  “I simply meant to acknowledge your supremacy, Mother Carey.  I have come to beg safe passage through the seas for me and a thing of my making.”

“A thing you stored beneath these waters when I was but a child?” she asks teasingly.  “A thing that you never asked my lord for permission to store within his realm?  A thing whose power has been masked and protected by the ocean’s depth without any thanks from you?”

Lovern looks as if he wishes to challenge, to qualify her statements, but he merely swallows again and nods.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mother Carey’s expression softens, and the Changer judges that this is the time to intervene.

“Lovern acknowledges his rudeness, sister…”

His words are broken off when the ocean to the starboard of the wrecked galleon erupts in a waterspout.  The battered hulk tosses in the waves, but miraculously does not break.

When all on deck are thoroughly soaked and the seabirds are a shrieking white cloud above, the water peels back, shaping the petals of a lily.  From the heart of that lily, the head of a serpent rises and regards them.  

It is twice the size of the wrecked ship and bearded as a dragon, but far more sinuous.  The Changer recognizes it as the shape his brother wore when he battled beside Loki at Ragnarokk.

“He may have acknowledged his rudeness,” the serpent hisses, his breath a wind cutting sharp, “but he has not apologized: not to her for his manner, not to me for his abuse.  Who does this youngling think he is?”

The air stills, not calm, but torpid, holding the faint ringing brassiness that heralds an approaching storm.

“He knows what he is,” the Changer replies, speaking honestly for one he does not completely trust, “a wizard of power, a man of influence, an athanor who—although young as you and I count the years—has still lived millennia.”

The great sea serpent’s whiskers quiver in what might be fury, might be swallowed laughter: “And why are you with him?”

“He knew he had wronged you,” the Changer answers bluntly,  “and he hoped that my presence would soften your wrath.”

“As it has,” Duppy Jonah admits.  “It is good to have my sea-born brother come home.”

“For a visit,” the Changer says.  “I have a whelp I am responsible for in this life.  Her mother is slain, her sisters and brothers as well.  The same enemy—or so we believe—has sought my life, Lovern’s, and that of Arthur’s man, Edward.”

“Enkidu?”

“The same.”

“I have enjoyed speaking with that boy,” Duppy Jonah says.  “He has wrestled with me as heroes of legend were said to have wrestled with Proteus.  That takes courage.”

“It does,” the Changer agrees.

“And he has the good sense to find my wife beautiful.”

“That is only the truth.”

From her place beside the wrecked ship’s wheel the Sea Queen reaches to stroke the sea serpent’s neck, her hand smaller than even the comparatively delicate scales on the monster’s throat.

“And an enemy has sought this brave man’s life?”

“He owes his life to luck.”

“And the same enemy sought your life?”

“So I believe.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“I do not, and the trail has run cold time and again.”

“And this one”—for the first time during the audience the serpent’s gaze turns toward Lovern—“believes that his black art may serve to reveal the assassin?”

“He does,” the Changer answers.  He feels Lovern stiffen at the charge of black magic.

“Why can he not visit his tool as he has for these long years?  I have sensed his ghost-shape coming through my realms.”

“He fears for his life.”

Lovern’s teeth snap as he bites back a protest.

“Many fears,” Duppy Jonah muses.  “He fears the assassin; he fears my wrath, and he fears not to confront either fear.”

Amphitrite nods.  “It seems to me that Lovern is wise, my love.  Fear is the law of the sea.  Even those who love the ocean—the sailors, the fishers, the sea creatures—fear the temper of the waves.  We cannot fault the wizard for fearing.”

“No.”

The vast serpent considers Lovern in silence, then says, “We will not grant your boon for naught, wizard.  Consider what your tool is worth.  Meantime, we shall consider what we will charge for the passage you request and”—Duppy Jonah begins to sink beneath the waves—“there is the issue of back rent.”

He disappears, leaving a series of concentric ripples to mark the place of his going.  The mermaid waits a moment longer.

“Our palace in the deeps is open to you now.  The way will be found easily by the Changer.”

Then she dives over the side.  At the moment of her departing, the galleon begins to sink, heralded by the indignant cries of the seabirds.

Still man-form, the Changer turns to Lovern.

“Do you go on?”

“What choice do I have?” the wizard says bitterly.

“Going back, continuing your astral ventures, making a lifelong enemy of my brother.”

“I do not concern myself with the last.”

“You bluster,” the Changer says.  “He is more powerful than Arthur.  Only his tie to the oceans has made him less active in athanor business.  If he so chose, he could undo Arthur’s Accord in a moment.”

“Why…”

“We do not have time to discuss further,” the Changer says.  The water tugs at his chest hair with playful fingers.  “I wish to know if you plan to treat fairly with my brother.”

“I suppose that I must.”

“Wise of you.  Cast your spells then, and I will guide you.”

Dolphin, again, and man cloaked in power, they enter the waters. The wrecked ship shudders as it surrenders to the waters’ embrace.  Its timbers crack, the hull breaks, and it is scattered onto the sand far beneath the touch of the sun.

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