The Shapechangers (12 page)

Sickened, she leaped to her feet and fled the shelter.

“Alix!”

She ran on, ignoring Finn’s human cry.

“Alix!”

An agonized glance over her shoulder showed him coming after her, bloodied knife in one hand. She blurted out a garbled denial and ran on, breaking her way with outstretched hands.

A horse drove through the brush before her, pawing hooves flailing at her head as its rider jerked it to a halt. Alix ducked down and threw up a beseeching hand, expecting a blow from one of the hooves. She saw an enraged face hanging over her as the guardsman drew his broadsword.

“Shapechanger witch!”

“No!” she shrieked. “
No!
”

“You’ll not live to bear more of the demons!” he cried, lowering the blade in a hideous slash.

Alix threw herself flat onto the ground and heard an eerie whistle as the blade flew past her head. Then she scrambled up and instinctively dashed directly at the horse.

The wolf-shape hurtled past her, leaping, and took the man from the horse in one sweeping lunge. Alix heard the guardsman cry out. The horse screamed and reared, striking out.

The guardsman’s broadsword fell at her feet as she stumbled away from the terrified horse. The man, now on foot, lifted his knife to slash at the wolf leaping toward his throat. The point slid sideways and tore open one furred shoulder, driving the wolf back.

The soldier bent for his sword, caught it up and advanced on the snarling animal. “Demon!” he hissed. “Know what it is to
die
in that shape!”

Alix threw herself forward and grabbed at his arm, thwarting his blow. The mail bit into her hands and face as she hung onto the arm. One jerk knocked her to the ground so hard she lay there, half-stunned.

Gloating, the man turned back to the wolf. But the animal was
gone. In its place stood a Cheysuli warrior whose knife found a new sheath in the guardsman’s throat. His blood splattered Alix as the body fell next to her.

Finn stood over her, clasping his left shoulder. His jerkin was heavy with blood from the wound in his ribs. Amazed, Alix saw a grin on his battered face.

“So,
meijha
, you feel enough for me to risk your own life.”

Burgeoning panic and the sickening smell of blood drove her to her feet. Alix stood before him unsteadily, trembling with rage and reaction. She wiped a hand across her face and felt the dampness of the man’s blood.

“I wish death on no one, shapechanger. Not even you.”

Another horse crashed through the trees, leaping mailed bodies as they lay scattered on the forest floor. Alix swung around in panic and saw Carillon on his chestnut warhorse. He wore his Cheysuli sword but had not unsheathed it.

“Alix!” He jerked the horse to a halt, staring down at the man Finn had slain. The Cheysuli warrior, weaponless, glared wrathfully at the prince.

“Do you slay me now, lordling?” he demanded, lowering his hand from the wound in his shoulder.

Carillon ignored him and reached out to Alix. “Quickly, Climb up behind me.”

She moved forward, stunned by the suddenness of her rescue, but Finn’s bloody hand on her arm stopped her.

“
Meijha…
”

She wrenched her arm free. “I go with Carillon,” she said firmly. “As I told you once before.”

“Alix, waste no time,” Carillon urged.

“
Meijha
, stay with your clan,” Finn said.

Alix grasped Carillon’s hand and pulled herself onto the horse’s broad hindquarters. Her arms settled around the prince’s hips, resting on his swordbelt. She sent Finn a significant look of triumph.

“I do not stay. I go home…with Carillon.”

Finn scowled blackly up at them. Carillon, smiling oddly, tapped his sword hilt. “Another time, shapechanger.” He spun the chestnut and sent him leaping back the way he had come.

Alix, clinging to him, saw with horror the carnage as they passed. Liveried guardsmen lay scattered through the forest, some displaying the marks of beasts. She shuddered and pressed herself against Carillon’s back, sickened by the results of the forest battle.

Carillon’s horse broke into a clearing and galloped across a
lush meadow. The edge of the forest fell behind them, and with it the grim toll of dead.

“I said I would come,” Carillon said above the sound of pounding hooves.

“So many are slain…” she said.

“The Mujhar’s vengeance.”

Alix swallowed and put a hand to her tangled, blood-matted hair. “I saw only slain
guardsmen
, Carillon. There were no Cheysuli.”

She felt him stiffen and expected a curt reply, but the prince said nothing. The golden hilt of his sword pressed against her left arm as she hung on, and she stared at its huge ruby and the golden Homanan lion crest in wonder.

Hale’s sword
…she whispered within her mind.
My father?

A hawk broke free of the trees and flew to catch them. It circled over them, drifted a moment, then drove closer. The warhorse, shying as the bird neared his head, plunged sideways.

Alix saw the hawk as it streaked by them, circling to return. It was the smaller one she had conversed with in the forest, and she nearly fell from the plunging horse as her grip loosened in shock. Carillon, cursing, tried to rein the stallion into control.

The hawk drove close again, wings snapping against the horse’s head. Alix felt the smooth hindquarters bunch and slide from beneath her, though she grabbed at Carillon’s leather doublet. She cried out and tumbled awkwardly to the ground.

Carillon called her name but the frightened horse would not allow him to approach. The prince wrestled with the reins, muttering dire threats under his breath, but Alix saw no good come of his words. She sat up dazedly and fingered the lump on the back of her head.

Stay with me
, the bird said.
Stay.

“Let me go!” she cried, getting unsteadily to her feet.

Stay.

“No!”

I ask, small one. I am not Finn, who takes.
The bird hesitated.
I ask.

Realization flooded her. “Duncan!”

Stay with me.

“Duncan…let me go with him. It is what I want.”

It does not serve the prophecy.

“It is not
my
prophecy!” she cried, lifting a fist into the air. “It is not mine!”

And the tahlmorra?

Alix was conscious Carillon had calmed the warhorse somewhat.
The prince jumped off the chestnut and dragged him behind, crossing to her with long steps.

“Alix!”

She stared at the hawk drifting idly in the sky. “It is not my prophecy,” she said, more quietly. “Nor is it my
tahlmorra
.”
But it is mine…

Alix turned to Carillon, shoving tangled loose hair out of her face. “I go with you. If you can keep your horse in check, I will stay aboard.”

She saw questions in his eyes but he did not ask them. Eloquently, silently, he gestured toward the hawk.

Alix stared up at it, aware of a sensation of regret. “If you would stop me, shapechanger, you must do as your brother. And to do that earns you my enmity.”

The bird paused in mid flight.
That
, it said after a moment,
is not entirely what I seek.

“Then let me go.”

The hawk said nothing more. It circled a last time, then soared higher into the sky and flew away.

Carillon touched her shoulder. “Alix?”

Strangely defeated and somehow bereft, she turned to him. She spread her hands. “You may take me to Homana-Mujhar, my lord, and to my grandsire.”

His hand tightened on her shoulder. “I have warned you what he may feel when he sees you.”

She smiled grimly through her dirt and blood stains. “I will take that chance.”

Carillon caught her waist and swung her up on the quieted horse. He put her in the saddle and she clutched at it, surprised. He mounted behind her and took up the reins, setting his arms around her waist.

“I think the Mujhar may find his granddaughter is no simple crofter’s child.”

Alix smiled wearily as the stallion moved on. “He raised a willful daughter. Let him see how that spirit serves Lindir’s child.”

Carillon took Alix first to the croft so she could see Torrin and show him she was well. As they rode down the hills into the valley Alix had known all her life, she felt a strange sense of homecoming mixed with loneliness. Her relief at seeing the lush valley again was tinged with sadness and regret, for she realized her few days with the Cheysuli had altered her perceptions forever.

“It seems odd,” Carillon said quietly as he guided the chestnut toward the stone crofter’s cottage built along the treeline.

“Odd?”

“Torrin lived among the halls of Homana-Mujhar, privy to much of Shaine’s confidences. Yet he gave it up to work the land like a tenant-crofter owing yearly rents to his lord.”

Alix, slumped wearily in the saddle, nodded. “My father—” She broke off, then continued in a subtly altered tone. “
Torrin
has ever been a man of deepness and dark silences. I begin to see why, I think.”

“If the story is true, he has carried a burden on his soul for many years.”

Alix straightened as the whitewashed door of the croft squeaked open. Torrin came out and stood staring as Carillon took the horse in to him.

“By the gods…” Torrin said hoarsely, “I thought you taken by beasts, Alix.”

She, seeing him through different eyes, marked the seams of age in his worn face and the thinning of his graying hair cropped close against his head. His hands, once so powerful, had callused and gnarled with crofter’s work over the years, so different from an arms-master’s craft. Even his broad shoulders had shrunk, falling in as if the weight of the realm rested on them.

What manner of man was he before he took me from the Mujhar?
she wondered.
What has this burden done to him?

Alix slid free of the horse as Carillon halted him, standing straight and tall before the man she had called father all her life. Then she put out her hand, palm up, and spread her fingers.

“Know you what this is?” she asked softly.

Torrin stared transfixed at her hand. Color leached from his
weather-burned face until he resembled little more than a dead man with glistening eyes.

“Alix…” he said gently. “Alix, I could not tell you. I feared to lose you to them.”

“But I have come back,” she said. “I have been with them, and I have come back.”

He aged before her eyes. “I could not tell you.”

Carillon stepped off his horse and walked slowly forward, skin stretched taut across the bones of his face. “Then it is true, this shapechanger tale. Lindir went willingly, forsaking the betrothal because of Shaine’s liege man.”

Torrin sighed and ran a gnarled hand through his hair. “It was a long time ago. I have put much of it away. But I see you must know it, now.” He smiled a little. “My lord prince, when last I saw you, you were but a year old. It is hard to believe that squalling infant has become a man.”

Alix stepped up to Torrin and took one of his hands in hers. She felt the weariness and resignation in his body.

“I will go to my grandsire,” she said softly. “But first I will hear the truth of my begetting.”

Torrin led them inside and gestured for Carillon to seat himself at a rectangular slab table of scarred wood. Alix paced the room like a fretful dog, seeking security in the familiarity she had ever known.

Finally, knowing it eluded her, she stopped before the fireplace and faced Torrin. “Tell me. I would know it all.”

He nodded, pouring a cup of thin wine for Carillon and another for himself. Then he sat down on a stool and stared fixedly at the beaten dirt floor.

“Lindir refused Ellic of Solinde from the very first. She would not be marriage bait, she said, to be given to Ellic like a tame puppy. Shaine was furious and ordered her to do his bidding. When she remained defiant, he said he would place her under guard and sent her to Lestra, Bellam’s city. Lindir was ever a determined woman, but she also recognized the strength in her father. He would have done it.”

“So she fled,” Alix said softly.

“Aye.” Torrin blew out a heavy breath. “Hale did not steal her. That was a tale the Mujhar put out, to justify the affront to his pride. Later, when Ellinda died and Lorsilla bore no living children, he decided it was a curse laid against his House by the Cheysuli. What Lindir did made him half-mad, I thought. She had kept her secret well. None knew of her feelings for Hale.”

“He had a woman at the Keep,” Alix said. “Yet he left her for Lindir.”

Torrin looked at her steadily. “You will understand such things one day, Alix, when you have met the man you will have. Lindir was the sort all men loved, but she would have no one, until Hale,” He shrugged. “She was eighteen, and more beautiful than anything I have ever seen. Had she been born a boy—with all her pride and strength—she would have made Shaine the finest heir a king could want.”

“But she
refused
Ellic.”

Torrin snorted. “I did not say she was acquiescent. Lindir had a way about her that ensorcelled all men, even her father, until he would wed her to the Solindish heir. Then she showed her own measure of the Mujhar’s strength and stubbornness.”

Carillon sipped his wine, then set the cup down. “My uncle never speaks of it. What I have heard has come from others.”

“Aye,” Torrin agreed. “The Mujhar was a proud man. Lindir defeated him. Few men of so much pride will speak of such things.”

“What happened?” Alix asked, hugging herself before the fire.

“The night of the betrothal, when all the lords of Solinde and Homana gathered in the Great Hall, Lindir walked out of Homana-Mujhar in the guise of a serving woman. Hale went as a red fox, and no one knew either of them as they left the city. He was not seen again.”

“What of Lindir?” Carillon asked.

Torrin sighed. “She disappeared. Shaine sent troops after them, of course, swearing Hale had stolen her for himself. But neither was ever found, and within a year the Lady Ellinda was dead of a wasting disease. Shaine’s second wife, the Lady Lorsilla, was made barren when she lost the boy who would have been prince. But I have told you that. Shaine began his purge the morning after the boy was born dead, and it has continued since.”