Changer (Athanor) (56 page)

And Louhi is strolling the shore, her pale hair and white skin seeming as if the fog that crowds the shore has taken a mind to grow flesh and blood.

“Greetings, Great Durag,” she says, her voice tinkling with laughter, a brittle sound like crackling icicles.  “Welcome to these empty shores.”

“You have knowledge I desire,” he says gruffly.

“
Ka!
 Why am I not surprised?” she answers.  “Perhaps because we do not call upon each other with any frequency?  Perhaps it is because your Amphitrite is missing?”

“How do you know?”

“What type of sorceress would I be,” she says in tones light and mocking, “if I could not learn of such momentous events?”

Actually, her source is the Head.  Although it had been affected by Oswaldo’s weakening of Lovern, it has not been as severely debilitated as it had claimed.

“Don’t you agree that I am powerful?” she purrs.  “Now, what do you wish of me?”

“I have claimed Lovern as hostage until my queen is returned,” Duppy Jonah replies.  “You alone of all our people have held him prisoner.  Tell me what I must do to keep him.”

“You do not think he will honor his duty to his King?” Louhi says coolly.  “
Ka!
 Perhaps he will not.  His honor is a flexible thing.  What payment do you offer me for my knowledge?”

“Pearls, gold, diamonds, jewels of all sorts are mine to give,” Duppy Jonah answers, casting a chaplet of pink pearls and gold wire at her feet.  “I also can retrieve many things that the sea has claimed.  Would you have statuary from Thera?  Incan gold from Atahualpa’s ransom?  Temple archways carved of porphyry and jet retrieved from island kingdoms lost to the memories of humankind?”

“I live a simple life,” Louhi says, gesturing back at the
tupa
.  “Where would I put a grand statue?  How in this modern world would I explain a sudden fortune?  My situation for this identity is a simple one.”

“There are ways to do this thing,” Duppy Jonah says impatiently.  “If you do not covet a fortune now, let it be put by for a future life where you may not choose to live so simply.”

Louhi picks the chaplet from the sand and caresses its delicate weaving, spinning the pearls between her fingertips.

“A pretty thing, this,” she says.  “I am not foolish enough to tempt the wrath of the Great Durag, especially when his
kultani
has been taken from him.  First, let me tell you that the spell by which I once held Merlin prisoner will do you no good in this circumstance.”

She raises a slim hand when the waves begins to stir angrily.  “The spell takes time to cast, more time to gather the elements needed for the weaving.  You need something that will work quickly.”

“I have servants all over the seas and some free to travel the land,” Duppy Jonah protests, his tone a low roar.  “Anything I desire can be collected within hours.”

“Yes, but some must be gathered only under certain circumstances,” Louhi says.  “Dew from the cup of a saffron crocus on a morning when the moon is waning.  A feather from the tail of a blue jay that has just sung its first spring carol.  Water melted from snow gathered in Stonehenge on midwinter’s night.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Still, there are other, less complicated ways to incapacitate a wizard.  If I teach you some of these, I will demand a great price, for I am teaching you things that might be used against me in turn.”

“Ah…”  The sound is the groan of waves pulling back from the shore when the tide is ebbing.  “I may know of these ways,” Duppy Jonah says guardedly.  “I am as old as the seas.”

“Then we are at an impasse.  I will not offer my knowledge without a promise of a price paid, and you do not wish to promise to pay without knowing what the wares will be.”

“Precisely.”

They study each other.  Somehow, the slim figure standing on the shore is the stronger, for Duppy Jonah concedes first.

“I will give no blanket promise of service,” he says.  “I am no fool.  Nor will I promise any of my get or of my wife’s getting for your taking.”

“Would you promise inaction?” Louhi asks.  “Promise that one time of my choosing you will not interfere, even if called on by Arthur himself?”

Duppy Jonah frowns, beetling brows of dank seaweed.  “I might, but not if my Amphitrite was in danger nor if you were trespassing in the rights that are mine as Sea King.  I would not provide you the key to my kingdom.”

“No.”  She laughs her icicle laugh.  “I did not think that you would.”

“Nor would I promise inaction indefinitely.”

“A year?”

“No.  That is too great a time, even for athanor.”

“Half that?”

“I know various ways to imprison a wizard, Louhi, and I do not believe you can breathe water indefinitely.  As you commented earlier, my patience has been sorely tried.”

“
Ka!
 Perhaps a day?”

“A day—define it as twenty-four hours in sequence and I will make this pact.”

Louhi pauses to think.  “If you add that you would not take revenge for acts done during those twenty-four hours, I agree.”

The waves rumble: “As long as those deeds do not violate the other provisions I have stated, yes, I can agree.  I am not such a fool as to think that you would need my inaction if you believed that I would approve of what you might do.”

“You are too clever, Great Durag.”

“Then we have a deal.”

“One where you have gotten the better of me,” she agrees.

Louhi looks hurt, so hurt that Duppy Jonah casts a small, locked box onto the shore near her feet.  “It holds a pretty brooch of emeralds and golden topaz.  Call it my gift, sorceress.  Now, tell me what I wish to know.”

Sitting gracefully on a boulder that has been rounded by the caress of sea and sand, Louhi begins.

“Of course you know that cold iron impedes the use of magic, but what many do not know is that the ingesting of mineral supplements containing nutritional iron can have a similar effect.  Essentially, the wizard finds his own blood becomes his enemy.  Incidentally, this is why wise sorceresses know (despite male-propagated lore to the contrary) that they are most powerful at the time when their menstrual blood is ebbing…”

She continues speaking, and Duppy Jonah listens, nodding, frowning, smiling, and, at last sinking beneath the waves, satisfied that he will know best how to hold Lovern and how to weaken him so that, if his death becomes necessary, the wizard will not be able to prevent it.

Louhi bends to pick up the bracelet of moonstone and jade that washes onto the shore as Duppy Jonah vanishes.  It is a lovely thing, scooped from the bottom of the China Sea.  Slipping it onto her wrist, she smiles and bows to the salt spray.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she says.

She waits until she is safely within her
tupa
to release the triumphant laughter she has caged beneath her breast.

Just shy of dawn’s first light on the fifth of July, while Arthur still sleeps the uneasy sleep of a king who hears the rumbles of war and Sven Trout sleeps the uneasy sleep of one who has eaten far too many ballpark hot dogs, three figures depart the palatial house in Belém.

They drive directly to the small airfield where they keep the airplane
Caiman
, unaware that clinging to the roof of their all-terrain vehicle is a sturdy capuchin monkey, or that a resplendent red-and-blue-feathered macaw soars over them, pacing their vehicle with preternatural ease.

Cleonice assumes the pilot’s seat, running the small aquaplane through preflight checks.  Isidro unlocks the hangar’s bay doors, pushing them back on tracks that cry metallic protest.

Oswaldo stands some distance from all this massed metal; red vegetable dye is brushed on his face in ornate patterns, and a short staff topped with feathers and shells is in his right hand.  His feet are bare and he stamps the damp ground at the verges of a runoff channel, muttering strange phrases and frowning at the omens he reads in the jungle sounds.

“We’re going to run into trouble,” he says to Isidro, rinsing off his feet before donning his sandals.  “Lots of trouble.  I do not see either Vera or Amphitrite; moreover, something dark hovers over the entire picture.  I see Death reaching out her long-fingered hands.”

“For whom?” Isidro asks, trying to sound casual and failing.

Seduced by the success of terrorist politics in the human world, Isidro had forgotten that the athanor governed themselves by different rules.  Anansi’s hints that they were in danger of being declared outside of Harmony had shaken him so badly that he had neither slept nor eaten since.  Now his eyes burn with something far more dangerous than fanaticism—raw terror.

“I can’t tell,” Oswaldo says, “but Death rides with us.”

“Death,” Cleonice says, padding out to them as silently as if she were already in jaguar form, “has always ridden with us.  I think the proximity of all this metal has thrown your magic askew, Oswaldo.  Or are you like Isidro, too terrified to act?”

“You are insane,” Oswaldo comments calmly.

“Arthur says that we are outside of the Accord and in danger of being declared out of Harmony,” she answers.  “What is insanity to that?  Come, the
Caiman
is ready.  We will have more concrete answers within a few hours.”

They board the plane, unaware that the vehicle already holds two stowaways.  Not wishing to be vulnerable, the Changer has taken the shape of a jaguar.  

His hope is that Cleonice will think any trace of the scent is a remnant of her own.  Normally, this would be ridiculous risk, but with the odors of gasoline, oil, metal, and human sweat to cover his own, he permits himself hope.

Anson has remained a monkey.  Together they crouch in the small cargo area behind the last few seats, one fighting an impulse to kill, the other fighting an impulse to flee.

It is not a particularly comfortable ride, and it lasts longer than the stowaways had believed it would.  Clearly, the South American contingent had not settled for depositing their prisoners a few miles from Belém but had taken them far inland.

When at last the
Caiman
splashes to a landing in a broad section of the river, Cleonice motors parallel to the shore.

“I don’t like this,” she says.  “No sign of them.  We’re going to have to go ashore.  Get the raft, Oswaldo.”

Suddenly, the Changer and Anson realize what they have been crouching behind.  Anson scrambles under a seat.  The Changer shifts into a slender snake, not worrying that it is a type once found only in Asia and now extinct for several thousand years.

“Coming ashore, Cleonice?” Isidro asks.

“Yes.”

“Very well, come along.”

“I don’t,” Cleonice says with a hard-eyed glare, “need your permission.”

Oswaldo raises his hand in a gesture both weary and tense.  “Let’s wait to tear each other up until later.”

He hasn’t washed the red dye from his face, and his expression is unfathomably grim.  The other two cease their bickering and the raft is readied with experienced efficiency.

When the three rebel athanor are on the water, the Changer slithers to the open door.  Slipping into the water, he shifts into a sizable caiman alligator.  Then he drifts, waiting for Anson to take his hint and hitch a ride to shore.  The monkey does so, chattering nervously.  The Changer might be said to be smiling if the long-jawed alligator mouth did not always smile.

Once ashore, Anson takes to the branches.  The Changer considers.  Given the many shapeshifts he has performed that morning, he is growing quite hungry, but the caiman is not swift on land.  Two of his three potential opponents are not shapeshifters; Cleonice, as far as he knows, is restricted to the jaguar form.  

Still considering, he creeps forward where he can better hear the rebels’ conversation.  They have stopped in a clearing bearing the marks of human habitation, although the rain forest is already effacing those marks beneath vines and new growth.

“Gone!” Isidro is saying, inspecting a space where hammocks once hung.  “I never imagined they would be so courageous.”

“They went by water,” Oswaldo states, indicating a tree stump.  “Enough trees have been cut to make a decent raft.”

“They could have bound it with vines,” Cleonice adds, “or with strips cut from those canvas packs.  I told you that the machetes were an overgenerous gesture on your part.”

Isidro is shaking, reeking of a mixture of rage and terror.  “Cleonice, we needed to be able to state beneath a truthstone that we had given our prisoners what they needed to survive.  No one but an Indian can survive here without a machete.”

“And even they prefer to have one,” Oswaldo adds.  “Stop passing on the blame, Cleonice.  You’re being catty.”

She sneers down her long nose, looking very catlike indeed.  “Vera and Amphitrite will have gone with the current toward the sea.  I could track by land.  You two could take the plane.”

“If they are clever enough to make a raft,” Isidro says, “I doubt they will expose themselves to surveillance from above.  We  had better track them from the boat.”

“Ashore,” Cleonice insists, “I can catch their sign more easily.  They are clever enough to hide it from casual view.”