Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) (30 page)

And Jesely crouched on the ground, his hands clasped over his ears, trying to shut out the screeching of everyone’s thoughts, hardly able to comprehend what he was feeling.

Sylas could not have said how he knew something was amiss. While the king was away from the castle, he was confined to his tiny, windowless room, and he spent his time lying on his pallet, enveloped in misery. Running what had happened through his mind over and over and over again. Obsessively worrying whether he might have done something wrong. Deciding it was impossible. Going back to the beginning and rerunning the whole sorry affair.

He pounded on the door.

“Step back,” the guard on the other side ordered before opening the door, sword in hand. “What’s all the noise?” At his belt the guard carried a net of fine mesh edged with metal beads, designed to be thrown over Sylas if he showed any sign of trying to transform. Deygan had ensured that Sylas mark with the blood elder before he left. He was taking every possible precaution to ensure Sylas did not fly away from justice.

“I need to walk.”

The guard checked the room, his gaze scanning each corner. It was sparsely furnished with nowhere to hide anything or anybody from the guard’s eyes.

“You’re meant to go in the morning. You didn’t.” His tone was accusing.

“I am allowed one walk each day. The king said so. I didn’t want to go out this morning, but I do now.”

The guard scowled. Sylas could almost see the thoughts trickling through his head. If the prisoner escaped on his watch…

“It’s not like I can climb down without you noticing. And I’m not about to jump off the ramparts.” Although that would be—what had Neffan said?—a death of his choosing, not the king’s.

“Move then.” The sword point pricked his shoulder. “And don’t try anything stupid.”

Up on the wall walk he could see it—a glow on the horizon like a beacon fire, but larger. He checked the direction of the sun, dropping away to the west behind the main tower of Banunis Castle. It was sinking; the sky in that direction would soon take on the reds and oranges of a Chandris sunset. But these flames were to the north-east—the direction in which the Aerie lay. The flames moved on the horizon as if they lived and breathed.

“What’s happening over there?”

The guard spat off the wall. “The changers, ain’t it? The king took soldiers out there. Said he would demolish their halls for supporting the Chesammos rebellion. About time too, you ask me. They’ve been getting too proud, them changers. Think they’re too important, can do what they want.”

The Chesammos rebellion was an excuse, Sylas was sure: a reason the lords and commoners alike would swallow, that would free Deygan from having to admit his son was a changer and was in his rooms, unable to speak. Had Sylas brought this fate down on all of them?

He stared, horrified yet fascinated, watching his dreams burn to dust. He would never be a changer. Not now. If some survived—even if they all did—their influence would be gone. The Aerie would be gone. The people would not regard them with such superstitious awe once they were reduced to poverty and with no place of their own. The wind blew about him, coming off the mountains and chilling his face. He thought he could smell woodsmoke, and his face was cold from the breeze chilling the tears that streaked his cheeks.

Were they flying? The changers that could escape—were they flying, or were they trying to save their home? Instinctively, he reached for his kye, but even if he could change now, he would have nowhere to go.

Despite the blood elder, he felt the kye stirring—not just his bird form, but many others, all clamouring for release. It built up, throbbing inside him. Their energy grew in his chest until he felt he must let it go or be consumed. But it died away, the suppressive effect of the blood elder juice flowing in his veins. In the distance he heard a call—a strident master’s call, not a muted training pipe—but the blood elder restrained him. He could not become a bird and fly away from his guard and Banunis. And he would not. He would not leave Ayriene to her fate, and he would not abandon Jaevan—not while any hope remained of restoring him to health.

He had responsibilities.

As the red flower blossomed on the horizon, he knew he would stay. The clear note of the changer pipe rang out once more and he wondered how many novices flew towards its call and their hope of safety.

His own kye fell silent. He did not hear it again.

Chapter 30

B
odies littered the ground. Old and young alike lay there, pierced with arrows, crushed by masonry, dead or dying. It broke Jesely’s heart to leave them, but he could not stay. As people rushed past, trying desperately to find friends and family, navigating the rubble-filled streets and falling masonry, he could not help but scan their faces.

There was the novice who had called him to council earlier, her face grimy and tear-streaked. She had not responded to Deckhan’s call and would have to take her chances down the mountain path.

There was Benno, the child to whom Sylas had taken such a liking, blood pouring from a head wound. The boy crumpled to his knees, then fell face-down in the ash. Jesely wanted to go to him, but he could not. Donmar had set him to see that as many as possible escaped the carnage. He had to try to save the majority, not tend one child who might already be past saving. A young man, of an age with Sylas, stooped, flung the boy over his shoulder and took off at a run. Guilt flooded him like a red wave. The youngster had acted, but the crowd’s churning emotions had left Jesely almost paralysed.

Elyta stood holding a sobbing Irmos girl of seven or eight years old in her arms. She handed the child to Cowin, exchanged a few words and a snatched kiss, and her husband rushed towards the north gate. Elyta stared bleakly after him, her hand resting on her still-unswollen stomach. Jesely’s gut twisted. So many trying to save the weak and the helpless, and all he could do was shout the occasional order and try to block out the mayhem. It felt as though he heard every scream, lived every thought of panic or hope or despair.

He pulled himself together, finding it harder each time to find himself in the ruin of his mind.

“You must fly, Elyta. For your own sake and that of the baby you carry.”

She stared at him, her fair skin smudged with dirt, blonde hair ragged over her face where it had come loose from its braid.

“How did you know?”

“There are some who say empathy is nothing to do with the kye, just reading signals that people cannot help but give out. Whatever the truth of it, you have been giving signals that a man with one eye could read, if he were watching.”

Tears streamed down her face and she looked the way her husband had gone, but the crowds had swallowed him. “I thought my child would grow up here, Jesely. Learn our ways from the day of its birth. Be greater than either Cowin or myself. What future will it have now?”

“Our ways?”

“The child is a talent. I can feel it already. Talent knows talent, they say.”

“But… you are scarcely showing yet.”

“Then how great a talent must it be if I can feel it already?”

He took her arm, pulled her into shelter as more arrows flew overhead. The ballistas were silent for the moment, and Jesely hoped Deygan had decided they had taken enough punishment.

“Then you must fly, Elyta. Get to Adamantara and find Deckhan. He called the novices and some of them answered. Some had never changed before—fear gave them wings. I do not know how many will arrive—I saw some killed almost as they cleared the wall walk—but some will. You must help him get them to Maldahur. He will need you. He cannot handle all the young ones by himself.”

“I will wait for Cowin. He promised to come straight back.”

Maybe he was hoping to hand the child over to someone else to take to safety. Maybe he knew who the child’s parents were. The Lady grant that she find safety.

Dimly, in the distance, he heard a changer call. Deckhan did his job well. Jesely had told him to call and keep calling and he was doing just that. He wondered how many novices had managed to reach safety. Vaguely it occurred to him that in his efforts to call as many from the Aerie as he could, Deckhan might have called young boys and girls not yet known to them—not far enough along in their change to have attracted notice but able to be called by a pipe, if the call was strong enough. Deckhan would have to take them, too. No time to see them safely back to their families and no one left to train them if he did.

What a mess. What a bloody mess.

The sounds of crying came to him over the shrieks and crashes. In the courtyard, in the pose taken by most changers before the transformation, crouched a young boy. He raised a tear-streaked face.

“M- Master Jesely,” the boy stammered, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and straightening, flushing to be found sitting and sobbing.

Jesely wracked his memory for the boy’s name. He knew most of the novices. With his empathic talent and his easy way with people, he was the obvious choice to help settle the youngsters into their new lives, but for the life of him he could not remember this boy’s name and it troubled him more than was reasonable. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“Come now, lad. Let’s get you away from here.”

“Why could they do it and I couldn’t, Master Jesely? I could hear the call but I couldn’t hear the kye. The noise and the screaming. I—” He wiped his face with filthy hands, leaving smears of dust and ash on his damp skin.

“Not a good time to have to learn, son,” Jesely reassured him. “Run for the north gate, now. Find Master Hollin. He will show you the way to go.”

He gave the lad a nudge and he trotted in the direction Jesely had pushed him. Then a thump sounded from beyond the walls, and a rush of wind fluttered Jesely’s hair. A rock hurtled through the air.

“Meneas!” The name and the warning came too late. The rock smashed one of the few remaining intact walls and the boy disappeared under an avalanche of ash brick. Sobbing, Jesely tried to pull the bricks from him, but it was an impossible task. As fast as he pulled one away, two more fell to take its place. There was little chance the boy had survived, but Jesely dug with his bare hands, desperately trying to shift enough bricks to at least see him, feel for himself whether there was any life left in the young body. The rational part of him knew it was hopeless—that he should not be expending energy and endangering himself for one novice. But still he dug.

Choking smoke threatened to overwhelm him. Another burning projectile had landed in a woodpile stacked up against the smokehouse wall. Woodsmoke stung his eyes and threatened to clog his lungs. He coughed, eyes streaming with tears that were not all from the smoke.

Hands pulled him away from the collapsed wall, pressed a skin of water into his grasp. Yinaede looked at him with concern in her eyes.

“Why are you still here? I thought I told you to go. Sylas will need you.”

“These people need me.”

She cupped his cheek in her hand. “Go.”

“But—”

“Sylas will need you. I saw it. You must survive to help Sylas in what is to come.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. What had she seen, exactly? Why was it so crucial to her that he left? No time to ask, not with the Aerie tumbling about them.

“Please.”

He nodded, dropping into a half-crouch, then standing again. “Elyta! She is here somewhere. She is pregnant and—”

She laid her hand on his lips. “Elyta and Cowin flew a few moments ago. They used the smoke to cover their departure and as far as I know they got away safely.”

“Ayriene?”

“Donmar asked for Ayriene to attend him, but I told her to leave as soon as they were done. Now will you go, you stubborn fool?”

An almighty bang and the crash of splintering wood sounded over the other noise. Then another—bang. A battering ram on the main gates—gates that were never meant for defence against an army. Gates that would never hold.

He crouched near the pile of rubble that would be Meneas’s grave.

“But you—” He knew from the look on her face that she did not expect to survive.

Soldiers poured into the Aerie through the breach in the gates, and as he circled, he saw Yinaede brought down by a soldier’s sword. She crumpled, blood spreading from a wound in her chest. If she had not stopped to speak to him, maybe she could have reached safety. Or perhaps she had seen her own death and embraced it. Jesely struck out for Adamantara, arrows whistling harmlessly past him. If a hawk could have cried, he would have been crying.

Donmar hardly looked up as Ayriene approached. He seemed stunned—his eyes unfocussed, distanced—and blood stained his tunic in several places. She reached by instinct for her side, but her healer pack was not there. She had left it in Banunis for safe-keeping, her falcon unable to carry the heavy satchel such a long way.

“It’s not just the Cellondorans and whatever has happened with Jaevan, you know,” he said with no preamble. “I don’t want you blaming yourself. Don’t let the boy blame himself, either. This was set in motion when I went to Respar to tell him what I knew of stormweavers, and of my suspicions that Shamella was one.”

“Stormweaver? That’s how she let loose the firebolt on the Lorandans?”

“Stormweavers can draw energy from the volcano—far more than a normal changer can. If the mountain is becoming unbalanced—there are too few changers, or they aren’t drawing enough aiea—a stormweaver emerges who can drain the energy away to keep the mountain safe. Another example of the mountain and the changers working together. Stormweavers have always been Chesammos, and nearly always women. They aren’t talents, although Shamella somehow ended up an empath afterwards. Deygan wouldn’t let his sword or his coronet be used as focus but we found her a linandra necklace from somewhere. Instead of releasing the energy safely through her, Deygan had her let it build up and up and then direct it at the invading army. I hope she has found some peace in her life. I know I haven’t.” He covered his face with his hands.

Ayriene had only seen the flames from a distance, but could imagine what it must have been like—men consumed by fire. She hoped for Shamella’s sake that the empath talent had come to her afterwards. That she had not felt those people die.

“It could have destroyed her,” she said.

“It nearly did,” he agreed. “Not just her body, although you saw the damage to her hands—but the knowledge that she had killed all those people. I wish the healing talent worked on minds too; then you might have been able to save her some of the distress. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this, Ayriene.”

And of course Shamella could not return. Probably mentally shattered, with a newly-acquired talent that would have been too hard to explain, Respar and Donmar had found her a new life. And such a husband that would have completely broken a weaker spirit than Shamella’s.

“And now Deygan has her son.”

Donmar’s head jerked up. “Sylas? I thought he might be, when he heard the kye. But if I had gone probing it would have raised all those old awkward questions. How did you work it out?”

“Cowin,” she said. “He had one part of the story and I had another. I still don’t know if we know it all.”

“If we survive this, I will tell you everything; I promise.” He flinched as another volley of arrows flew overhead. “For now, you must go to Sylas. He carries the blood of Omena Stormweaver, and that is almost as rare as a healer talent. You must see him safe, Ayriene. I want you to go to him. If Deygan learns who he is, he will try to turn the boy into a weapon against us.”

“And you?”

He gave a sad smile. “I led us into this. I will stay to the end. If Deygan spares me, I will do what I can to make amends.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw two birds take to the wing—two swallows, one flying as if to protect the other from the arrows. Ayriene covered her mouth with her hands. “Garyth and Miralee. Creator, my children!”

Donmar transformed and took to the air, Ayriene a heartbeat behind him. A hawk and a falcon, flying hard and fast towards the swallows, trying to shield them until they got high enough to be out of arrows’ reach. Another volley followed them, the shafts hissing through the air close enough to ruffle wing feathers. But four birds together made a tempting target. A thud told Ayriene that one had reached its target, and Donmar dropped, an arrow through his throat, losing his bird form and falling to the ground. Another heart-stopping, gut-wrenching sound and Miralee fell away. Both Ayriene and Garyth made to follow, but the arrows were too dense. As she watched, a soundless scream ripping through her head, she saw Miralee change. Her daughter’s still, naked form lay on the slabs of the Aerie courtyard, not far from where Donmar had fallen.

Ayriene yearned to go to her—to hold her tight even if her healing talent would do no good. But she must think of the living. That sight—that blood-covered body—would haunt her always, but she had to get to Sylas. Every second she delayed gave an archer the chance to nock an arrow and take sight at the falcon hovering above.

Garyth circled higher, too far up for the bowmen’s arrows to reach him.
Go
, she signalled, using the shake of the wings changers used to communicate simple messages in flight.
Go.
He turned and flew for Adamantara, following Deckhan’s call. These youngsters were the Aerie’s future, she thought, climbing until she herself was safe from arrow shot. Maybe he would follow her onto the council. A council in exile, likely, but the changers’ only hope if they were to survive.