Changeling (Illustrated) (8 page)

And another voice also carried above the cries of his attackers. Beyond the pain, behind the blood, he recognized Nora’s near-hysterical shout: “You’ll kill him! Stop it! Stop it!”

Someone kicked him again, but it was the last blow that he felt.

A frightened scream arose nearby, soon to be echoed by many others, as a dark form dropped from the sky and plunged into the midst of his assailants. Its wings were like twin scythes and its metal beak rose and fell among them.

Mark drew a deep breath and staggered to his feet, his body a network of pain, his left hand still covering that half of his face, blood trickling between the fingers, running down the arm, filming the bracelet toward which his right hand now moved.

A number of men lay still upon the ground, and the dark bird stalked those who stood . . . 

His fingers danced across the metal band.

The bird-thing halted, drew back, hopped, beat with its wings, rose into the air, circled . . . 

“You have decided your own fates,” Mark cried hoarsely.

The bird descended, seized hold of him by the shoulders, bore him aloft. His left hand was now entirely red and seemed firmly fixed to his face.

“I give those of you who still stand your lives—for now—that memory of this night shall remain among you, that witnesses be available,” he called down to them. “I shall return, and all shall be done as I said it earlier in town—but you will be subjects, not partners in the enterprise. I curse you for this night’s work!”

The bird picked up speed, gained altitude.

“ . . . Save for you, Nora,” he shouted finally. “I will be back for you—never fear!”

He vanished into the sky above. The wounded moaned and the fires crackled. Countercurses followed him across the night. His blood was a small rain over fields he had once worked.

IX
.

After knocking and waiting—several times—she had just about given up on his being at home. She had also tried the door and found it to be secured.

She was tired. It had been a long walk up to the place, after an absolutely horrible night. She leaned against the door frame, eyes sparkling, but she simply did not feel like crying. She drew back her foot and kicked the door as hard as she could.

“Open up, damn you!” she cried, and she heard a click and the door swung inward.

Mor stood there, wearing a faded blue robe, blinking at the light.

“I thought I heard someone scratching,” he said. “You seem familiar, but I don’t—”

“Nora. Nora Vail,” she told him, “from the east village. I’m sorry I—”

Mor brightened.

“I remember. But I thought you were just a little girl . . . Of course! Excuse me. It flies.” He stepped back. “Come in. I was just making some tea. Don’t mind the litter.”

She followed him through one curiously furnished room and into another. There, he cleared a chair for her and turned his attention to a boiling pot.

“It’s terrible . . . ” she began.

“It will wait until tea is ready,” he said sternly. “I do not like terrible things on an empty stomach.”

Nodding, she seated herself. She watched the old sorcerer, as he put out bread and preserves, as he brewed the tea. There was a trembling in his hands. His face, always deeply lined, was now unnaturally pallid. He had been correct, though, in that he had not seen her for years—she had been but a small girl when he had last stopped by for dinner, on his way to or from someplace. She recalled a surprisingly long conversation . . . 

“There,” he said, setting a plate and a cup on the table beside her. “Refresh yourself.”

“Thank you.”

Partway through the meal, she began talking. The story poured out in disjointed fashion, but Mor did not interrupt her. When she looked at him, she realized that some color had returned to his cheeks and the hand that held his cup seemed steadier.

“Yes, it is serious,” he agreed when she had finished. “You were right to come to me. In fact—”

He rose and slowly crossed the chamber to stand before a small, dark mirror set within an iron frame.

“—I had best look into it immediately,” he finished, and he passed his fingertips near the glass and muttered softly.

His back was to her and his right shoulder partly blocked her view of the glass, but she saw images dance within the exposed portions, and something like a section of a strange skyline appeared in the upper right quadrant, a vaguely disturbing silhouette circling above it. The entire prospect seemed to rush forward then, and she could not tell what it was that Mor was now regarding. Changes in lighting seemed to indicate several more scene shiftings after that, but she could not distinguish the details of subsequent images.

Finally, Mor moved his hands once again, across the face of it. All action fled, and darkness filled the glass like poured ink.

Mor turned away and moved back to his seat. He raised his teacup, sipped, made a face and dashed its tepid contents into the fire. He rose and prepared fresh tea.

“Yes,” he repeated when he had returned and served them. “It is very serious. Something will have to be done about him . . . ”

“What?” she asked.

He sighed.

“I do not know.”

“But could not you, who banished the demons of Det—”

“Once,” he said, “I could have stopped this changeling easily. Now, though . . . Now the power is no longer in me as it was in the old days. It is—too late for me. Yet, I am responsible in this.”

“You? How? What do you mean?”

“Mark is not of this world. I brought him here as a babe, after the last great battle. He was the means whereby I exiled Pol Detson, the last Lord of Rondoval, also then a child. It is a strange feeling—knowing that the man we got in exchange is now a far greater menace than anything we had feared. I am responsible. I must do something. But what, I cannot say.”

“Is there someone you could ask for help?”

He touched her hand.

“I must be alone now—to think,” he said. “Return to your home, I am sorry, but I cannot ask you to remain.”

She began to rise.

“There must be
something
you can do.”

He smiled faintly.

“Possibly. But first I must investigate.”

“He said that he would come back for me,” she persisted. “I do not want him to. I am afraid of him.”

“I will see what can be done.”

He rose and accompanied her to the door. On the threshold, she turned impulsively and seized his hand in both of hers.

“Please,” she said.

He reached out with his other hand and stroked her hair. He drew her to him for a moment, then pushed her away.

“Go now,” he said, and she did.

He watched until she was out of sight amid the greenery of the trail. His eyes moved for a moment to a patch of flowers, a butterfly darting among them. Then he closed and barred the door and moved to his inner chamber, where he mixed himself powerful medicines.

He took a quarter of the dosage he had prepared, then returned to the room where he had sat with Nora.

Standing before the iron-framed mirror once again, he repeated some of his earlier gestures above its surface, as well as several additional ones. His voice was firmer as he intoned the words of power.

Some of the darkness fled the mirror, to reveal a dim room where people sat at small tables, drinking. A young man with a white streak through his hair sat upon a high stool on a platform at the room’s corner, playing upon a musical instrument. Mor studied him for a long while, reached some decision, then spoke another word.

The scene shifted to the club’s exterior, and Mor regarded the face of the building with almost equal intensity.

He spoke another word, and the building dwindled, retreating down the street as Mor watched through narrowed eyes.

He gestured and spoke once again, and the glass grew dark.

Turning away, he moved to the inner chamber, where he decanted the balance of the medicine into a small vial and fetched his dusty staff from the corner where he had placed it the previous summer.

Moving to a cleared space, he turned around three times and raised the staff before him. He smiled grimly then as its tip began to glow.

Slowly, he began pacing, turning his head from side to side, as if seeking a gossamer strand adrift in the air . . . 

X
.

Dan turned up his collar as he left the club, glancing down the street as he moved into the night. Cars passed, but there were no other pedestrians in sight. Guitar case at his side, he began walking in the direction of Betty’s apartment.

Fumes rose through a grating beside the curb, spreading a mildly noxious odor across his way. He hurried by. From somewhere across town came the sound of a siren.

It was a peculiar feeling that had come over him earlier in the evening—as if he had, for a brief while, been the subject of an intense scrutiny. Though he had quickly surveyed all of the club’s patrons, none of them presented such a heavy attitude of attention. Thinking back, he had recalled other occasions when he had felt so observed. There seemed no correlation with anything but a warm sensation over his birthmark—which was what had recalled the entire matter to him: he was suddenly feeling it again.

He halted, looking up and down the street, studying passing cars. Nothing. Yet . . . 

It was stronger now than it had been back at the club. Much stronger. It was as though an invisible observer stood right beside him . . . 

He began walking again, quickening his pace as he neared the center of the block, moving away from the corner light. He began to perspire, fighting down a powerful urge to break into a run.

To his right, within a doorway—a movement!

His muscles tensed as the figure came forward. He saw that it bore a big stick . . . 

“Pardon me,” came a gentle voice, “but I’m not well. May I walk a distance with you?”

He saw that it was an old man in a strange garment.

“Why . . . Yes. What’s the matter?”

The man shook his head.

“Just the weight of years. Many of them.”

He fell into step beside Dan, who shifted his guitar case to his left hand.

“I mean, do you need a doctor?”

“No.”

They moved toward the next intersection. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw a tired, lined face.

“Rather late to be taking a walk,” he commented. “Me, I’m just getting off work.”

“I know.”

“You do? You know me?”

Something like a thread seemed to drift by, golden in color, and catch onto the end of the old man’s stick. The stick twitched slightly and the thread grew taut and began to thicken, to shine.

“Yes. You are called Daniel Chain—”

The world seemed to have split about them, into wavering halves—right and left of the widening beam of light the string had become. Dan turned to stare.

“—but it is not your name,” the man said.

The beam widened and extended itself downward as well as forward. It seemed they trod a golden sidewalk now, and the street and the buildings and the night became two-dimensional panoramas at either hand, wavering, folding, fading.

“What is happening?” he asked.

“—and that is not your world,” the man finished.

“I do not understand.”

“Of course not. And I lack the time to give you a full explanation. I am sorry for this. But I brought you this way years ago and exchanged you for the baby who would have become the real Daniel Chain. You would have lived out your life in that place we just departed, and he in the other, to which you now must go. There, he is called Mark Marakson, and he has become very dangerous.”

“Are you trying to tell me that that is my real name?” Dan asked.

“No. You are Pol Detson.”

They stood upon a wide, golden roadway, a band of stars above them, a haze of realities at either side. Tiny rushes of sparks fled along the road’s surface and a thin, green line seemed traced upon it.

“I fail to follow you. Completely.”