Changer (Athanor) (59 page)

The man who is not her father takes an involuntary step back and glances toward the upper reaches of the courtyard’s balcony.  A woman with pale hair, clad in something loose that flaps in the gusting summer wind, stands outside one of the doorways.

“Louhi, I don’t think the pup’s fooled.”

“Deal with her,” the woman replies.  “Didn’t you once claim the Fenris Wolf as get?”

“Yeah,” he says.  Then he mutters softly, “Frigid twit.”

He hunkers down and takes a delicious-smelling chunk of raw liver from a plastic bag.  This he tosses in front of Shahrazad.

Impulses war within the coyote pup.  Her growing body clamors that this is food and that neither the dark, furry man nor the golden one have fed her for many hours.  Her wary mind holds memories of the Big One growling at her when she stole carrion.  She flattens her ears, recalling his punishing bites.

Her tail creeps between her legs and she piddles, wetting both belly and tail.  Now that she has decided to be afraid rather than confused, her mind is free to sort this man’s scent from all the scents in her memory.  With remarkable speed she places it as the scent of the man who had slept in the room beside her father and hers during the Time of Crowds.

The Big Male had not liked that one, had been guarded when he came near and had not let him touch Shahrazad.  Fear deepens and becomes defensive ferocity.  When the man tosses another piece of meat near her, Shahrazad is not even tempted, but takes the opportunity to spring forth and slash at his hand.

Her aim is good and she slices open a deep furrow.  The man curses and strikes out.  Too late she sees that his arm has grown burly and that muscles bulge from it.  His blow catches her solidly, and Sven hisses at her from a mouth suddenly misshapen.

“You’ve made me ruin my suit, bitch.”

From where she lies on her side, Shahrazad has no idea that the bulky monstrosity that Sven has shifted into is what a younger age of the world would have called a troll.  All she knows is that it stinks of death and rot.  His mouth has more teeth than her father’s.  Some are curved like a snake’s fangs and others twist like trees growing from windswept crevices.

If she was afraid before, she is terrified now.  Her coyote programming tells her to submit and hope that the foul thing will not hurt her further.  Something slightly wiser, but less strong warns her that some creatures do not honor surrender.

She drops and rolls, tail flat against her belly, throat fur exposed.  Craven and defeated, she trembles and hopes the thing will not kill her.

There is a terrible moment when the troll looms over her, slavering with rage, the blood from its wounded hand steaming on the patio stones.  Its claws curve, and a hand raises to strike.  Then the woman’s voice says sharply, “Kill her and I will turn you into garden statuary.  Have you forgotten the power of the sun on troll-kind?  It would be little enough trouble to sweep away the foliage that shades you.”

The Sven-troll stops.  There is a blur of motion and Sven stands over the pup, again slim and fiery-haired, clad in a ripped suit too large for him.

“I wouldn’t have killed her.”

“You’d better not.  At least not yet.”  Louhi gestures imperiously.  “Put her in the carrier and get up here.  Who knows how long it will be until Arthur remembers his charge.”

“Long enough,” Sven answers, stuffing Shahrazad in a dog carrier too small for comfort.  “He’s a workaholic.”

“Come!”

Shahrazad feels herself carried up the stairs and lifted onto the roof.  The woman does not help Sven, for she, too, is encumbered with a box.  When they reach the rooftop, they cross to a wing unused except when guests stay on the estate.  From there, they climb down a ladder, cross the grounds, and hasten to a side road where a van waits.

Shahrazad is put in the back and the luggage door is slammed shut.  Once alone, she begins to howl mournfully but fearfully, sobbing out her sorrow and knowing that there is no one near enough to care.

Anson A. Kridd watches as the Changer thumps a gaudy yellow-and-orange curved beak against a cypress branch and spreads his wings, flaunting his new toucan shape before taking flight.

The most recent shapeshift has not completely healed the grazes from Isidro’s gun, but, as neither has done significant damage to muscle, the wounds will not impede him much.  For now, they present a certain soreness and a marring of his plumage.  

Anson believes that Cleonice will attempt to take a hostage—or to kill both women in revenge for the deaths of her allies.  There is still the chance that she will seek more immediate vengeance on himself or the Changer.

When the Changer flies ahead, Anson will need to watch out for himself, but the wiry African ancient is an old hand at avoiding ambush.  His various monkey and insect forms have more agility than either the jaguar or the human.  Waving farewell to the Changer, he paddles the rubber boat down the center of the river, knowing that he will make better speed than a raft.

Still, he is not hopeful.  Even without a crazed athanor tracking them, the rain forest offers dangers and to spare—poisonous snakes and insects, anacondas, piranhas, jaguars…  To survive with so little, the two
must
stay on the water.

Trying to believe that the Changer will find more than a few broken and rotting remnants of what had been two fine women, Anson A. Kridd paddles strongly, keeping where the current will carry him most swiftly.

Above the winding path of the river, the Changer travels on toucan wings.  Before relinquishing the jaguar form, he had dined on a sloth.  The meat had been rank, but his strength is renewed.  As a toucan he can replenish himself on the plentiful fruit and nuts without ever coming within striking range of predators.  All he needs to do is keep a weather eye out for the hawks and eagles which might find the rapidly traveling toucan tempting prey.

His first several miles offer no sign of the fugitives, and he considers shifting shape into a water bird so that he will be better equipped to scan the shoreline.  He dismisses this option.  Speed first.  Meticulous search later.  What he seeks is fairly large and, unlike an airplane, he can fly below the tree line.  Until evening comes, he will fly ahead.  Then he will return to Anson and report.

As he flies, he sees occasional signs that make him hope: a deadfall that has been chopped at by a machete, a low branch overgrown with vines that appear to have been pruned, a few crude arrows caught in a snag of driftwood.

These might not be sign of those he seeks, but he permits himself to believe that they are.  Unfortunately, the omnipresent river washes away scent, so even when he drops and shifts into an anomalous coyote to seek confirmation he cannot be certain that his quarry made the marks.  He can only store the information away against despair and fly on.

Yet, even as alertly as he is watching, he nearly misses the raft.  The equatorial sun is at its height and, despite the myriad discouragements offered by ants, snakes, beetles, and the like, Vera and Amphitrite are rafting close to the shore in order to benefit from the shade it offers.  The Changer swallows an urge to break into song and comes around for another look.

They—or, as the Changer sees when he swoops lower—she.  Only Vera stands on the deck of the raft, poling along in a fashion that makes quite clear that she has been about this labor for hours and expects to be about it for hours to come.

The impulse to song vanishes as swiftly as it had arisen.  If Amphitrite is lost or dead, Duppy Jonah’s wrath will be limitless.  In the days of old, his temper gave rise to floods that still crop up in the myths of dozens of cultures.  His hurricanes and tsunami make men fear and distrust the vast stretches of water.  That Amphitrite’s birth coincided with the development of seamanship more ambitious than a tentative paddle around the shoreline was no coincidence.  Happiness had tempered the Sea God and his tempests alike.

Disconsolate, the Changer lands on a tree limb some distance in front of the raft, intending to shift into a macaw and hail Vera from there.  His respect for her warlike spirit has only been intensified by the determination she is demonstrating in her solitary voyage to the sea.

Then the Changer sees something that puzzles him.  A rope made of thick vines braided together by skilled fingers is tied firmly to the front of the raft.  From his initial vantage, he had thought it was a painter for mooring the raft at night.  Now he can see that it drops under the surface at an angle far too sharp to be caused merely by the pull of the current.

It is almost as if something is pulling the raft.

He hops and flaps to another limb so that he can continue to study the situation before revealing himself.

Does Vera have the magic or skill to have trained a river porpoise to pull her vessel?  Could she have chanced upon one of the athanor water dwellers?  Or could…?

His unformed, hopeful supposition is confirmed as a head crowned with seaweed green hair emerges from beneath the waters.  Pearlescent skin untroubled by the sun, shoulders bare but for a harness of vines that has cut ruddy lines in their purity, Amphitrite rises from beneath the river waters.

“Time for a break, Vera,” she calls.  “I’m not used to this kind of work, and I haven’t had any luck convincing the river dwellers to do my bidding.”

“At least,” Vera says, setting down her bamboo pole and wiping her forehead with a grubby arm, “the piranhas have decided that you are not edible.”

“At least that,” Amphitrite agrees.

Squawking, the Changer swoops down onto the raft.  Forgetting decorum and his customary restraint, he shifts into human form.  Vera’s greeting is not at all what he had expected, but what, in a less emotionally charged moment, he should have known it would be.

She drops her bamboo pole and, with a single practiced movement, brings into play a spear that she has anchored point down in the deck of the raft.  The Changer looks down to where the blackened but undeniably sharp point rests on the hollow of his breastbone.

“And, hello to you, too, Vera,” he says in admiration.

She doesn’t let the point of the spear drop—a smart thing, given that many athanor are shapeshifters—but the expression on her grimy face becomes a smile.

“Changer?”

“In the flesh,” he answers.

“Prove it.”

He shifts into coyote form, then into raven, toucan, macaw, jaguar, raccoon, and back into human, the entire process a blur of color and motion devoid of the gestures a mage would need to trigger the spells and with variety enough to identify himself.

“If I did larger shapes,” he says, “I might upset the raft.”

Vera lowers the spear but keeps it near to hand.  “Did Arthur send you after us?”

“I volunteered, more or less.  Duppy Jonah is causing a great deal of harm.  Locating Amphitrite seemed a wise thing, else the world would be destroyed by water.”

The Sea Queen has slipped the vine harness from her shoulders and swum close to the raft.

“Hello, brother,” she says, her expression both rueful and wistful.  “How is my husband?”

“Furious,” the Changer answers honestly.  “He has taken Lovern as a hostage.  I am not certain that even when you are returned, he will release his prisoner.”

“I wish I could phone him.”

“No such luck.”  The Changer gestures over his naked form.  “I had to travel light.”

“You’ve been wounded,” Vera comments, looking candidly at the fresh pink scars against his naked skin.

“By Isidro Robelo,” he answers, “the late.  He is dead, as is Oswaldo Barjak.”

“You killed them both?” Vera asks.

“No.  The Spider accounted for Oswaldo.  Anson is trailing me in a rubber boat.  His shapes do not include any that fly.”

“And Cleonice?”

“We don’t know for certain,” the Changer says honestly, “but our best guess is that she is tracking you by land with the intent of taking one or both of you hostage.”

“Let her try.”  Amphitrite’s voice is low and full of frustrated anger.  “I have had enough of being a pawn.”

The Changer nods.  “Anyone with wisdom would have known that Lovern would make a better hostage.  He has a less refined sense of self-preservation and a firm belief in his own importance.”