Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter Page 5

  Both men blinked, staring at him.

  Kenyen shrugged. "That's when they caught me and cast me out. I should've gagged her first, or maybe killed her, though I liked the way she struggled."

  Cullerog wrinkled his nose. "Well, don't do that here. Not on a whim—not without orders. We've worked hard to blend in. And what we're looking for in the Nespah Valley is too important to draw any further undue attention to ourselves."

  Lifting his chin at the cabin, Kenyen said, "Zellan said I could eat him when you're done with this one. I can wait until then."

  "—I didn't say that!" Zellan interjected firmly.

  Kenyen ignored his protest. He kept his gaze on the older shifter. "Of course, if I'm going to be the one imitating him, I'm not exactly going to eat him right away, now am I? Besides, it's like honey. It's a special treat, the kind you don't eat every day—if I did, I'd wind up fatter than an outkingdom pig."

  Cullerog snorted. "We'll see. For now, he's my 'special guest'... as are you. You'll stay here tonight, though we won't chain you up in the cellar. Zellan, go fetch three of the valley elders from your area. Tell them to be here by midnight, and don't show yourself to anyone else. As for you, 'Catson,' go stable those mounts, then come inside. You'll eat mutton tonight, not man."

  "Whatever you say." Leading his mare and the pony toward the barn, Kenyen wondered when, or even if, he'd get a chance to talk privately with Traver. Improvisation would only carry them so far in this unexpected, increasingly convoluted charade.

  * * *

  Three

  Solyn was fairly confident her family was alone when they sat down to dinner. Her sister, Luelyn, fidgeted, eager to have the basket of biscuits passed her way, though her gaze was more on the dish of butter and the jar of honey waiting to be applied to them. Their mother, Reina, carefully poured out the steeped tea, a blend of freshly picked leaves for the aroma and partially fermented ones for the base. Her husband, Ysander, accepted the first cup. Sipping carefully at it, he nodded. Not that he was a tea planter by trade, being the local blacksmith, but it was his place as head of the household to approve of the first cup.

  Solyn's older brother, Ysenk, lived in his own home with his wife and newborn son. Their cottage was placed a little higher up the slopes of the sprawling plantation, though not too far from the rest of the homes sheltering Reina's extended family. Rather than trying to divide up the family lands into smaller and smaller plots, some wise Corredai soul of ages before had formed a cooperative holding.

  It had proven both profitable and popular. The hills and valleys of the Correda Mountains had been dotted with such holdings from a time long before the collapse of the old Aian Empire. It was that sense of community and communal property that had allowed them to survive despite the abrupt loss of their central government. Sometimes the Corredai pushed back the edges of the local forests to plant and tend more tea; other times they simply added more cropland to the local, terraced slopes, and shared the produce and the profits with all.

  Despite the way the locals shared the land and its produce, most families still preferred to live in their own homes whenever possible, however large or small. As the resident Healer, Reina had inherited one of the largest houses in the holding. With her husband also being the valley blacksmith, they could have afforded to furnish it with fancy things, but it hosted the same sort of furniture as any other home, neatly carved, cushion-lined, and clean.

  Tonight's dinner was a sauce-and-bread combination made from dove meat, a few vegetables, and the biscuits. It was simple fare, the sort most families ate at this time of year. Solyn poked at her food with her fork and wondered what exotic lowlands food Traver would get to eat. She also worried whether he would be safe, sneaking away from the others. He had no way to tell a shapeshifter from a real man.

  "Oh, Solyn, some good news," her father stated, pausing before his first bite. "Your cousin Zanbar, from down in the Tequah Valley, found another magery book. Samdan, the tinker, dropped it off at my shop when he brought me the metal scraps he had traded for on his route uphill. I forgot to bring it home, though. We can go find it after supper."

  Poking at her food, she nodded. "Another book would be nice, especially if it's one I don't have. What I really need..."

  Reina reached over and touched her older daughter's forearm. "What you really need are lessons. You don't have to stay. No one has tried to find... it... for the last six months. At least, not that I could tell."

  "It's a false lull before the storm," Solyn stated, shaking her head. "I know they're after it. I know they won't give up. And if there's any little thing I can do to stop them from hurting more people in their quest to find it..."

  "We'll go get you the book," her father promised. "I could also ask Samdan to take word back down the mountain that you need an actual mage-tutor—we can pay in delicate mountain tea, if nothing else," he joked. He gave her a lopsided smile. "Or I could put up some barstock as payment. Not that I'm happy about how much Tunric has been charging his neighbors for what his miners have been digging out of the mountains, but you need actual lessons, not just book learning."

  Luelyn snuck a bit of butter onto her plate, then stealthily reached for the honey pot. Reina deftly scooted it out of the way, pushing the bowl of meat and vegetables into her youngest child's reaching hands.

  "No sweets until you've had your meats. You know the rule," she admonished the young girl.

  "Yes, Mum," Luelyn mumbled. She halfheartedly buttered her split biscuits anyway. Solyn reached over and spooned a bit of the sauce over the biscuits for her.

  "Good girl. Thank you for helping bring in the herbs the other day and digging up all those roots today," Reina praised her child. She gave Solyn a pointed look. "We need to make more cheese in the coming week. Greenvein cheese."

  Luelyn wrinkled her nose. "I don't like it. It tastes funny."

  Ysander smirked at his wife. "It's an acquired family taste. Did you want to bring some of the ripened stuff by the forge tomorrow, dear?"

  "Not tomorrow. The older rounds aren't quite ripe enough, yet. Solyn, you will help me, yes?" Reina asked her daughter.

  Solyn nodded. Greenvein cheese was very important to her family. Only a few others in the Nespah region liked it, but then most of the families in the valley tolerated Reina's experiments in food. She was the second-best Healer for three valleys around, ranked right behind Uncle Veston—not that he was actually related to anyone; that was just what everyone called the elderly man. There were other cheeses her mother had created and produced, too, more popular ones, but greenvein was special. Too special, in a way.

  "Eat your sauce, Luelyn," Reina ordered her youngest. "Then you can have a biscuit with butter and honey. Both of you."

  Sighing, Solyn dug into her own food. She had to firmly set aside her nerves over Traver's mission and think of more pleasant things in order to be able to swallow her food, but managed after a moment. It was important to set her sister a good example, after all, and doubly important to make sure the subtext behind her mother's words passed unnoticed.

  If it hadn't been for Traver gasping out the name, Kenyen would not have known that the aging leader of the three summoned elders was the one who had been selected to imitate the now long-dead Tunric Tel Vem. The body in the cave had been too desiccated and insect-nibbled to know.

  "Tunric" looked somewhat handsome for his age; his brow was fairly smooth but his jowls were starting to sag. Broad shoulders and muscular arms couldn't hide the curve of a paunch around his belly, but that didn't give Kenyen a clue, either. Most shifters who continued to travel, trade, and fight in the warbands kept themselves lean and fit, but some of the men who retired to tend the herds and help the Family in its spring through fall migrations did develop a little bit of a saddle-gut after a while, so that wasn't a hint as to his true identity, either.

  For his own part, Kenyen held himself carefully still, face impassive but muscles ready to move in any direction if needed. He had
kept most of his answers short during the interrogation by Tunric and two other middle-aged men. Yes, Nollan had sent him uphill. No, he didn't know much about what was going on. Yes, he knew the trick with the forehead flap.

  Yes, he could shift a full seven shapes and hold himself in his best shapes for hours on end, as well as hold himself in partial versions of those shapes hour after hour. Yes, he had killed and eaten a man several turnings of Brother Moon ago, then bitten chunks out of a girl until her screams had summoned other shifters to come rescue her. No, he didn't know exactly what Tunric and the rest were looking for, though he did know they were taking over prominent villagers' identities and living lives of relative leisure, and wanted in on that aspect of things.

  At least, a life leisurely enough to allow someone like Tunric to develop a saddle-gut problem. Kenyen wasn't foolish enough to state it that way, however. He wasn't too sure why Tunric, Zellan, and the others hadn't asked for his real name. Even Kenyen would've thought they'd want to know, to backtrack his story. Then again, I suppose they don't want me asking about theirs, either; what a person doesn't know, he cannot be forced to give away. Not that I'd complain, since my story would fall apart rather fast.

  "... What do you know about blacksmithing?" Tunric finally asked him.

  The non sequitur puzzled Kenyen. "I... learned a little bit of it, back in the Family."

  He hadn't claimed which Family he was from, yet. Tunric lifted his chin in a go-on gesture, so Kenyen elaborated.

  "When I was young, back in one of the farming years when we stayed by the capital, there was an interest in developing armor and weapons for the women and the non-shifters. We had a good supply of iron and coal for making steel, so between planting and weeding, a number of us got to spend time in the city forges, helping smelt the ore, pump the bellows... I even had a chance to hammer on the steel," he stated, shrugging. "I liked it, but I was more interested in being a shapeshifter. I can't remember which bordering kingdom was making everyone worried at the time, and it later came to nothing, so we didn't do much more than the one summer's worth of work."

  "Do you still remember enough to make something small?" Tunric pressed. "Like, say, a knife?"

  Kenyen frowned in thought. "I might be able to... but I'd have to watch a blacksmith working with metal for a bit before all of it came back to me."

  Tunric looked at the other two elders. They exchanged a series of looks, eyebrows lifting and lowering, mouths twisting, then quirking. One of them finally gestured at Tunric, who sighed roughly.

  "Fine." Turning back to Kenyen, he lifted his chin. "Imitate my face."

  Unlike the blacksmith question, Kenyen had anticipated something like this. Actually, he had expected to be asked to imitate Traver's face, but no one had brought the youth up from the cellar, yet. Studying the older man's appearance for a moment, Kenyen reached for the saddlebags he had tucked under the stout table separating the sleeping half of the cottage from the eating half. Inside the left one was the steel mirror he had salvaged from the forest floor.

  "Without looking in a reflective surface," Tunric ordered, guessing what Kenyen was doing.

  Sighing, Kenyen sat up and acquiesced. It wasn't easy; he had to feel his face expand with the plumpness of age, feel the sagging of his cheeks and the graying of his hair. Unlike Cullerog, Tunric was clean-shaven, but his jowls did have hints of black and gray stubble. His brows were also a bit bushier, his gray-salted, dark brown hair pulled back in a tight braid, and his nose had been broken twice. Kenyen almost swerved it to his left, before remembering the mirror rule; if he was supposed to imitate Tunric, it had to swerve to the right instead, pointing the opposite way from what Kenyen himself saw.

  He only changed his head, however. To have fully imitated the older man, Kenyen would've stressed his skills as a shifter. Partial shifts were one thing, particularly brief ones. Full shifts, or repeated, lengthy shifts would have required a sacrifice in compensation.

  Zellan and the two elders peered carefully between the two of them. They nodded slowly after several moments. "Not bad," the gray white–haired man admitted. Kenyen hadn't been introduced to him. "Not bad at all. He didn't quite get the eyelashes right."

  Kenyen squinted. They were doing this in the light of the hearthfire and half a dozen oil-dipped reeds; their smoky flames fluttered and curled, making it somewhat difficult to see whenever a draft seeped through the one-room cottage. He made a few small changes to his eyes, and the elder nodded in approval.

  "Not bad. He just might do."

  "No, not bad. Most of the free men we have aren't the right age for this. It takes a young man to play a young man, but some are too old, and the remainder are too young," the other elder stated. His hair was more gray than black, but lacked the white of the first one, and his mouth shadowed by a mustache that ended in long points on either side of his chin.

  "Tell me about the boy I'd be imitating," Kenyen offered, "and I'll tell you whether or not I can do it."

  Tunric chuckled darkly. "How arrogant. Keep it in check, boy. We've been playing this for as long as you've been alive."

  Kenyen knew that wasn't true; the words of his sister-in-law's mother hadn't hinted at anything remotely related to the theft of Corredai identities, and he was older than his sister-in-law. He didn't argue, though.

  "He's the son of a farmer. A dirt grubber and a cow milker. He's also best friends with the daughter of a certain blacksmith and his Healer wife... and apparently became her betrothed right before leaving the area," Tunric stated, mouth twisting.

  "If he's a farmer, why do you need to know if I know blacksmithing? Shouldn't you be asking if I can fake farming like a Corredai?" Kenyen asked.

  "You're fresh off the Plains. Unless you went out of your way to avoid it, you know how to tend animals and grow food," Zellan dismissed.

  "We believe the blacksmith knows the secret for making a certain something which interests us," Tunric explained.

  "It's not bluesteel, is it?" Kenyen asked, puzzled by the possibility. While it was true only a few blacksmiths on the Shifting Plains knew how to make the metal, which was the only metal capable of solidly wounding and permanently scarring a shapeshifter, he couldn't figure out why Banished criminals would want to get their hands on more of it.

  "No. Not bluesteel—what it is, you don't need to know. Not at this point in time," Tunric dismissed. "But if you're going to imitate the betrothed of the blacksmith's daughter, then it's possible you'll have the opportunity to hang around his workshop without nearly as much suspicion hanging over your motives as anyone else would have."

  "Do you want me to apprentice to him?" Kenyen asked, lifting a brow.

  "Only if he offers," the white-haired elder countered. "Don't push. Things go badly when you push. As it is, you'll be walking into this role with the handicap of suffering from a blow to the head."

  Kenyen twitched, taking a half step back in pure, instinctive defense. Tunric chuckled, eyeing his raised hands. "Relax, boy. We'll teach you how to fake a concussion. Though we might have to rough you up a bit to make it look believable. Your betrothed's mother is a Healer, after all—what do you think of females?"

  The sudden change in subject threw Kenyen. He blinked, recalling belatedly the women-hating words written down in the book that had sent him and the others into this land. Aware that all four men were studying his reactions to his words, Kenyen answered the question. "Ah... nothing, really. They're important for cooking and tumbling and begetting sons, but... I guess you could say I really don't care, either way."

  "Can you seduce a woman?" Zellan asked him. "You'll want to stay on the blacksmith's good side; you can't just take her and tumble her. Though she is an outkingdom woman, and therefore no different than any earth-whore from the Plains."

  If he hadn't already read the accounts of the horrible ordeals suffered by his sister-in-law's mother, Kenyen might not have been able to keep his face calm. Calling an earth-priestess an earth-whore was a dee
p insult to the time-honored, culturally honorable task of giving physical comfort to unmarried men, back on the Plains. Women were to be respected, and maidens allowed to remain chaste, untouched.

  After the Aian Empire had shattered, its capital literally turned into a crater during the Convocation of the Gods, the survivors in the area had been about as civilized as the deeds written about this Family Mongrel. That the Shifterai had pulled themselves out of such violent barbarism and had established a successful, peaceful society was something to be praised, not vilified. Earth-priestesses gave their efforts out of compassion, nor were all of their tasks sexual in nature.

  So instead of flinching at the insult, he gave Zellan's words careful thought. "Can I seduce a woman? As in, ingratiate myself with this betrothed girl, to the point where she'll encourage her family to cozy up to me, or at least permit me to cozy up to them? It would help if she's attractive, of course, but... I think I can. If nothing else, as the daughter of a Healer and 'my' betrothed, I could play the part of the grateful invalid."

  "Females are often quite gullible, if they think they're needed," Zellan agreed, smirking.

  The dismissive insult turned Kenyen's stomach. It wasn't nearly difficult enough now to picture the abuse Atava's mother, Ellet, had suffered at the hands of these callous curs. Yet this is only the tip of the claw. I suspect the wounds these beasts tear through their victims are the kind which dig painfully, permanently deep.

  "Alright. Light the globe and take him into the cellar. Get all the information you can out of the boy," Tunric ordered. "Imitate his whole body, too, though you're close enough to him in size—you might lose a shape. Run through your mind the ones you want to keep, and which one you're willing to forget."

  Kenyen nodded. He didn't like the idea of losing a shape, but knew it would probably happen anyway. He hadn't been able to progress beyond seven pure forms for the last two years, so it wasn't likely he'd be able to add "Traver Ys Ten" as his eighth shape at this stage of his life.