Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) (32 page)

Sylas stroked the silver-white hair, and rocked the boy in his arms. Omena’s wings, he was a child, for all he was a prince. Just turned thirteen, and not a man by Irenthi laws for another three years, the boy had lost a brother and now he feared losing a friend as well.

“Quiet now, Jaevan. All will be well. I will take care of you.”

The prince’s sobs quietened, until he was calmer, if red-faced and puffy-eyed.

“He will leave us now,” Deygan said, and Jaevan drew breath to howl once more. “No! You have made your point. If you will calm yourself for him and only for him then I must rethink. But there is a price to be paid, and someone must pay it.”

“Go,” Sylas said gently. “I will come to you later. If His Majesty allows.” He glanced quickly at Deygan, who scowled, but nodded.

“You may see him later, but first I need you here, and him elsewhere.” He gestured to the attendant. “Take Prince Jaevan and see that he is bathed and given clean clothes. He needs to freshen up after this…incident. None of you will speak of this. If I hear a word of gossip about the castle, I will have your tongues cut out and then I’ll hang you. Do I make myself clear?”

The guards bowed themselves from the room, and the attendant ushered Jaevan out also. He took one final look over his shoulder at Sylas before leaving, and Sylas gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. When the guards and Jaevan had gone, Sylas went back to his place beside Ayriene, wincing as he returned to bruised knees. Had he overstepped himself? And what did Deygan mean, he would have payment?

Deygan loomed over the two kneeling changers. “It seems my son has saved you, Chesammos. I grant you your life on three conditions.” He held up one finger. “First, you will attend my son. You will be housed in a secluded hunting lodge of mine with your own small staff. You will make no attempt to leave and will communicate with no one outside the staff.”

He paused, and Sylas nodded his agreement. “Of course, Sire. May I let my mother know where I am?”

“No. As far as she is concerned you died in the destruction of the Aerie. If it becomes possible later to release you, then you will tell her you escaped and hid until you deemed it safe to make yourself known.”

“Sire.” Sylas’s stomach did a slow roll. He would cause his mother more pain, where all he had ever wanted was to make her proud and give her the life she deserved. But he had no choice.

“Second,” Deygan continued, holding up two fingers, “you will continue your studies. If there is a cure for my son anywhere in your changer knowledge, you will find it. All the books regarding changers and all the healing books in the castle library will be made available to you.”

So even if he was a prisoner he could continue studying to be a healer someday. That sweetened the pill a little.

“But Mistress Ayriene would be better placed to make such a study, Sire. Will she be staying at the hunting lodge too? May she continue to instruct me?”

Deygan sniffed and scratched his forehead, which was creased into thoughtful wrinkles once more.

“You didn’t understand, did you, boy? I have spared your life, but I will have recompense for my son. If it is not you then it will be Mistress Ayriene.”

Mistress Ayriene! No!

When he turned to look in horror at her, she was already watching him. She had known. She had realised this would be the price of saving him. But he was not worth it.

“And to prove your good faith to me, young man, it will be you who strikes the blow.”

Chapter 32

I
t took Ayriene a few moments to realise what Deygan had said. A few moments before the fear gripped her heart and would not let go. Not fear for her own life—that had been forfeit when she returned to Banunis—but for Sylas. She had been so opposed to taking him on, but over the months she had come to think of him almost as another son.

Miralee had warned her that Sylas would cause her death. And there was Yinaede’s seeing: ‘He will save us.’ Although a tiny part of her had doubted, she had been sure Sylas would walk away from this, whatever Deygan threatened. But to get the lad to do it—she couldn’t believe Deygan would be so cruel. This was a test—one Sylas must not be allowed to fail. Whatever Deygan had promised his son, the king would not stand for failure. If either of them were to leave this room alive, Sylas must do as the king demanded.

“No!” Sylas found his voice at last. “No, you can’t make me do that. I won’t do it. Mistress Ayriene, I would never harm you.”

“You must, Sylas.” The calmness in her voice surprised and pleased her. “Miralee saw this happen.”

His face contorted, grief and disbelief warring on his features.

“Miralee saw me? Your daughter? But I’m not important enough to have a seeing about. Why didn’t you tell me? And why would you come back, if you knew this would happen?”

Because even the lowest can change history. Because a seeing does not consider rank or skin colour. Because Sylas was so much more than he gave himself credit for. In a strange way it gave Ayriene comfort. If Miralee had been right about this, then maybe Yinaede was right too. If Ayriene’s death would lead to the changers surviving, it would be worth the sacrifice.

“Because sometimes knowing your future is harder than not knowing it. And because sometimes the meaning of a seeing only becomes clear when it happens. Yinaede saw you too. She said you would save us. We need you to live.”

“But, Mistress,” he swallowed hard, his hands clutching at his shirt. “I am a healer, or will be one some day, maisaiea-yelai. Did you not make me swear to do no harm? How can I harm you, of all people?”

“You can, because you must. If not for me, then for Jaevan. He will need you.”

She found herself fascinated by his hands, twisting and turning, leaving creases in the sweat-stained linen. The boy had the strong, capable hands of a Chesammos labourer, yet they could mop a fevered brow or make up a poultice as well as hers. Whatever Deygan made him do in this room, he could still do good in the world.

“If Jaevan is to be cared for by someone, after all that has happened to him, would you prefer it to be you or Casian? Who would have his best interests most at heart?”

He flushed, his golden-brown skin reddening, and he dropped his eyes from hers. Her heart sank. He still loved Casian, after everything. With his feelings so conflicted, who could tell what he might do. All she could do was trust. He was an honest man, this Chesammos. He would make the right choices, when it came to it, or the changers were doomed.

“You could care for Jaevan as well as I. You are a better scholar. If there is something to be found in the books, you would find it before I did. You read better and faster. And you are a talent, Mistress—the only healer talent we have.”

Her heart twisted as she recalled Adwen’s face. Her other children: Miralee dead in Deygan’s assault; Garyth dead or exiled. Her husband. What did she have to live for?

“Sylas, grant me this.” Her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “I could not save my son, however great a healer I was. My husband and two of my children are dead. Maybe my other son is dead too. At least let me save you. Let me atone for Adwen and Miralee by saving you for whatever fate has in store.”

He sat for what seemed an eternity, head bowed, while Deygan huffed and pulled at his moustache and muttered darkly about there being no decision to be made. Deygan would have killed in an instant and without a second thought, Ayriene knew. But Sylas was no Deygan. This would leave a scar on his soul that would take a long time to heal. Maybe it never would.

At last, Sylas looked up. His tears ran like rain. He embraced her and she felt the dampness of his cheek against hers—knew that her face was wet with her own tears. She could feel him trembling, close to breaking down altogether.

“Please, Sylas. You must.” And do it quickly, she thought, before we both lose our nerve.

“Mistress, I cannot. I…”

“Just do it, Sylas. For all our sakes.”

He drew away from her and knelt as if in prayer. It seemed to Ayriene to last forever, but when he finally opened his eyes he seemed to have come to a decision. His face was calmer—more peaceful. He made the sign of the Lady and raised his fingertips to his lips.

“May the Lady forgive me. I am ready.”

Deygan held the hilt of the sword towards him, but Sylas waved it away.

“The Chesammos never use swords, Sire, but I have used a knife on occasion.”

Deygan sheathed the sword, and pulled the matching dagger from his belt. Sylas grasped it and felt its weight. The stone in the pommel was linandra, a match to the gem on the sword. A magnificent stone, and many times the size of the one Ayriene had bought for Sylas in Adamantara. She wondered if he still kept the bead or if he had sold it long since. She hoped if he had it, that he would keep it as a keepsake of her.

Sylas turned the dagger in his hands and for one moment of blind, sickening panic, she thought he meant to turn it on himself.

“Don’t make me do this,” he whispered hoarsely, raising pleading eyes to hers.

“You must. Stay safe.”

Again he wavered, hands trembling, and she feared he would falter. She tried to hold his eyes, to send confidence and forgiveness through her gaze. She wished she had been an empath, not a healer, that she might open her thoughts to him—show him this had to be.

Tears ran down his cheeks as he plunged the dagger into her breast, but his eyes were distant. Vacant. After the initial searing pain like a hot poker through her flesh, she could see nothing clearly. His figure swam before her eyes. She felt her kye screaming and remorse flooded her. This would send her kye into the darkness beyond the Outlands and into the true death. But it had to be.

I’m coming, Adwen. Wait for me, Miralee. I’ll be with you soon, Kerwen, my love.

Blackness took her. Blackness and the cold of the Outlands.

Sylas sat, head bowed. He would not kill her. She had no right to ask it of him. Her death would not save him; it would condemn him. Chesammos did not kill. Healers did not kill. Changers did not kill. The penalty for one changer killing another was not death, but having one’s arm crushed or hand cut off. That saved the kye from passing into the dark, but removed the changer’s ability to fly—the harshest punishment imaginable. He should cut his hand off now, before it had the chance to kill his own mistress.

Stay strong, changer.

The kye were breaking through. This shouldn’t be possible; he had marked with blood elder. His mind raced. The blood elder stopped him being called, but did it stop the kye? The linandra on Deygan’s sword was so close. Sylas concentrated, sent his thoughts questing out for the kye, and the pommel stone glowed faintly. He formed words in his mind.

I cannot. I have no strength left.

He wanted to lie down on the tiles. Feel the coldness of them beneath his cheek. Let Deygan kill him if he would. He had no strength left to fight.

You are stronger than you know. You will be stronger yet. Jaevan needs your strength.

When he looked at her she was crying. He reached out for her and embraced her as he would his mother. He could feel trembling. Him or Ayriene?

“Please, Sylas. You must.” Her voice implored him, tugged at his very being. How could she ask this of him? It wasn’t fair. Not even Craie had ever asked as much of him.

“Mistress…” There was so much he wanted to say to her. How grateful he was. How much he would miss her. How he would never forget her. But it all came down to that one word.

He could not, could not, could not.

“Just do it, Sylas. For all our sakes.”

He closed his eyes again and reached out to the linandra, and through it to his kye.

Can I fly? If I fly, Ayriene might fly with me.

Do you see windows, changer? To where would we fly?

It was right. Deygan would call the guards and they would be killed in bird form instead of human. The guards who had brought him both carried the weighted nets, and they would be waiting close by. He and his mistress would die naked in a net with blades through their flesh, like fish pulled from the lake.

I can’t kill her.

He felt understanding through the link. Sympathy. He could feel tears running in tracks down his cheeks.

I will bring you to the Outlands. You will see nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing.

The coward’s way out, but he could see no other. If he delayed, the kye could leave him. He might lose the contact.

“May the Lady forgive me. I am ready.”

He made the sign of the Lady and kissed his fingertips, to seal the pledge. He refused the sword, but took the dagger, resting his finger on the linandra stone. With the stone in his hands, he could cross to the Outlands, return when it was all over. Like a sleepwalker, he wouldn’t see a thing.

“Don’t make me do this.” He knew what her response would be, but he had to make one last try.

“You must. Stay safe.”

He rubbed his thumb over the linandra and felt a blast of cold the like of which he had never experienced before. He knew from classes at the Aerie that seers at least partly entered the Outlands when they had their seeings, but he had never heard of an ordinary changer making the crossing. Seers always came back. All he could do was hope.

There were places in the world, they said, where it was so cold that your breath froze like clouds in front of you; where rain fell in white flakes like ash from the Lady; where as far as a man could see was white and cold like the vastness of the ash desert. He had not believed such cold possible, but now he knew it was true. He had no body there, but if he had, his extremities would have been numb. As if in a dream he felt his arm rise and fall, heard a woman gasp and someone speaking to him. A man’s voice—deeper—Deygan, calling him back.

He would stay in the cold. He would lie there until he froze. He would die with his mistress, and not be shamed.

You must return, changer. There are things for you to do. Omena’s blood must save.

He stared at his hand. The dagger lay there, across his palm, and the stone still glowed. Red stained the blade, seeped onto his fingers. He suppressed a sob. There was a form on the ground, but he hardly dared look.

“I was not sure you would do it, boy,” Deygan said, taking the dagger from Sylas’s hand and beginning to clean it with a casual efficiency. Sylas was barely aware the dagger had gone. He stared at Ayriene lying there before him and realised the kye had told the truth. See nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing. Ah, Lady have mercy, he had done it. With the linandra gone from his hand, and his mind numb with shock and grief, the kye fled as if ashamed at its part in the proceedings.

He slumped to the floor, arms folded over his head, wanting to cry like a child for its mother, yet too stunned even for that.

“At least I know you will hold faith with my son,” Deygan was saying. “I will have you both taken to the lodge tonight. No visitors, as I said, except Casian. You two are friends, I believe, and it may be that interaction with one of his own kind may help my son recover.” The look on his face said he did not expect a recovery, but would not yet let himself give up hope. “In that event, we will reconsider your future.”

He could see Casian. He could study. He could hope that the changers would return, although this story of Yinaede’s was clearly nonsense. Some other changer might save them, not Sylas. Cowin, maybe. Yes, Cowin, that was it. Yinaede had seen Cowin in her vision. No one had been raised to the mastery faster than Cowin; he was the obvious candidate for the changers’ saviour.

Sylas raised himself to one knee before Deygan, and his hand left bloody prints on the tiles. Restoring Jaevan was more important than anything. More important than the changers, than Ayriene, than his own life. If he did not solve the mystery of Jaevan’s indisposition he would die trying. He would redeem himself.

“I swear I will do no harm to you or yours, Sire. I will not try to escape so long as you live. I will devote myself to study to restore the prince to health. I swear it by the Lady.” He made the sign and kissed his fingertips. It was the most binding oath he knew.

Deygan looked down his nose at Sylas.

“Do you know, I think you believe it. Well then, I shall make a pledge to you, Sylas Crowchanger. No one will hear what happened here from my lips. As far as the world is concerned, Ayriene died by my hand, and I allowed you to live to serve my son. As far as your family and friends are concerned, you died at the Aerie. There were few survivors to know the truth of it, and even they could probably not say for sure who was there and who was not.”