Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) (31 page)

Reluctantly she turned away, breaking out of her hover to set course for Banunis. For Sylas.

Ayriene returned to Banunis alone and sick at heart, and was placed under guard in her quarters. Deygan and his army had not yet returned from the Aerie. She was not allowed to see Sylas, nor to send him a message. She was angered by news of Sylas’s imprisonment, but she had to tread carefully. If Sylas were as important to the Aerie’s future as Yinaede had implied, and carried a bloodline as vital as Donmar made out, then Deygan must uncover no hint of it. He was perfectly capable of killing Sylas to ensure the changers never recovered.

Her thoughts returned to Miralee’s death, and to her daughter’s impassioned plea that Ayriene not return to Banunis with Sylas. Her daughter had been convinced that Sylas would cause Ayriene’s death. But now two of her children were dead, the third dead or lost to her. If it took her own life to save Sylas, she was ready to make that sacrifice.

She heard the commotion when the army returned two days later: hooves on stone, shouted orders, jingling of harness. But still the king did not summon her. He meant to let her suffer, it seemed. It was not until the following day that she was called to his presence.

“I’m surprised you came back. You stand accused of destroying my son, yet you have the nerve to return. You are braver than I thought, or more stupid.”

She wanted to lash out at him—to scream that because of him
she
had lost a daughter, and maybe a son as well. Sylas, she told herself. Think of Sylas. She would do him no good by antagonising the king.

“Destroy? He is not dead. I don’t know what has happened to Prince Jaevan, Sire, but-”

“He cannot speak. He shows little, if any reaction when spoken to, even when it is his own father that speaks.” Deygan’s voice became a choking gasp. He raised his hand to clasp his throat as if throttling the voice that betrayed his weakness.

“I gave him nothing harmful. Blood elder has been used to suppress the change for centuries. Sylas himself uses blood elder to prevent him being called since he does not yet have control.”

“The same as he gave my son?”

“He uses the leaves, piercing his skin with the juices. A piercing lasts a week, maybe more, when it is first used, before the body builds an immunity to it. The potion I prescribed for your son is taken once a day.”

“And how does this blood elder not affect your apprentice, when it paralyses my son?”

“It does not paralyse your son, Sire. That is impossible. Whatever has happened to Prince Jaevan is entirely separate, and I will get to the bottom of it. Believe me.”

“And the Chesammos uses the same thing, but once a week, but my son was to drink your potion every night? How is that right?”

“Prince Jaevan uses a decoction of the root, Sire. That is milder. It holds off the onset of the change a short while, as we needed time to discuss his training with the council. Sylas needs stronger medication now that he is fully through the change. It mingles with his blood, introduced through his skin by the needles. That is the only way effective enough to prevent changing to a call once changing has run its course, but before the changer achieves control of their own transformations.”

Deygan grunted, clearly unconvinced by anything Ayriene said.

“So why do you not use the same method on my son that you do on your apprentice? Why do you keep your own safe and jeopardise my boy?”

Ayriene closed her eyes, willing herself to stay calm and patient. “It is Sylas who takes the riskier route, Sire. His dose is less frequent but stronger. The way he uses blood elder can cause side effects, and if used for too long they become permanent. And of course there are the marks. The introduction of the blood elder juice through the skin leaves a red pin prick of colour on the skin, somewhat like a rash.”

The marks were shocking enough on the golden skin of the Chesammos but on Irenthi skin they would stand out all the more. Deygan had been adamant when she put the methods to him; his son’s skin would not be permanently marked as Sylas’s had been. Casian had one or two, put there by Jesely when he was at his most vulnerable. Most changers had one or two, for that matter—it was almost a badge of belonging. Jaevan would never belong. He was crown prince. He had to learn what he needed but never truly cross into the changers’ world. Never become one of them.

A thought occurred to her.

“Has the prince taken his potion since the attack which you believe left him mute, Sire?”

“Of course he bloody hasn’t! What sort of a fool do you take me for, woman? Why would I give him
more
of something that so clearly poisoned him? Do you think I’m mad?”

“And he showed no discomfort during your attack on the Aerie?”

“Discomfort? No. He has barely said a word since he took that Destroyer-cursed filth of yours. He stares into space. That is all.”

So he had not reacted to Deckhan’s callings? He should have been able to hear them at least, and she would have expected him to show some physical reaction, maybe discomfort. She had never come across anything like this before.

“May I see him?” The sooner she saw Jaevan, the sooner all this could be resolved.

King Deygan was not a man given to flights of fancy, and his anger and worry sent chills into Ayriene’s heart. What if the blood elder had truly harmed Jaevan? What if it was irreversible?

“I’ll take you to him. Pray that you can cure him, healer, for it will be your head—yours and the boy’s—if you cannot.”

Chapter 31

N
othing had prepared Ayriene for what she found in Jaevan’s bedchamber. She had left an intelligent, spirited prince on the verge of young manhood—keenly interested in the world, observant of details, determined to right wrongs he saw around him.

Not anymore.

Jaevan sat in an armchair, face pale and drawn like one who had suffered a long illness. Brown shadows lurked beneath his sunken eyes like smudges of long-dried blood. When she entered he barely registered her presence—maybe a slight movement of the eyes, a momentary hint of recognition, then nothing.

Acutely aware of Deygan’s gaze on her, Ayriene tried to conceal her shock at the sight. Overwhelming pity, followed by fear for herself and for Sylas. This was none of Sylas’s doing, she was certain. Nothing she had left with him could do this, and although he devoured books, she doubted he would have found anything to produce this effect in any of her herbals. Ayriene herself could think of nothing—no combination of things—from her years of experience that would leave a person in this state. Dead, yes, or sedated, but not this… emptiness.

She knelt beside Jaevan, feeling his heart beat, his skin temperature. She looked into his eyes, examined his tongue, bared his chest to check for rashes or bruises. Nothing. No signs or symptoms, no hints or clues. Just a boy staring out through dazed eyes, distant and shocked as if he had seen things beyond his comprehension.

“Prince Jaevan?” she said, hoping for a reaction, anything to show that his mind was undamaged. “Can you hear me, Highness?”

Behind her, Deygan puffed out his chest indignantly. “Is this the best you can manage? Feeling his forehead like a nurse with an infant? He is not sulking, woman. He has been like this for three days now—not speaking, not moving.”

“Is he eating? Drinking? Does he sleep?”

Deygan frowned. “There’s the strange thing. Put food before him and he will eat, if he’s hungry. Same with water, or ale. He will go and relieve himself. He will take himself to bed and dress and undress himself. But he makes no sound and scarcely reacts if spoken to.”

“Can you bring me a quill and ink?”

“Your apprentice tried that.” Deygan’s voice was brusque. “It didn’t work.”

“Indulge me, Sire. I would like to see for myself.”

Writing materials appeared as if by thought. Deygan expected an instant response from his staff, and generally got it. Ayriene set a sheet of parchment on Jaevan’s knee, dipped the quill in the sooty ink and pressed it into his hand.

“Can you write what happened, Highness, even if you cannot tell me?”

He held it without protest, but no more. No effort to bring quill to paper, far less write. No motion. Not a flicker of a muscle. He might as well have been carved from stone.

She moved a cup of water within his reach and he turned to look at it, reached out, raised it to his lips and drank, setting it back down as naturally as he ever would have. No hesitation. No feeling of unnaturalness. In that few seconds he was himself again, slipping back behind his mask as soon as the cup was back on the table.

“He will turn the pages of a book, but with no sign that he understands. He will not communicate with so much as the twitch of a finger. Tell me you can reverse this, healer, or you must face the consequences.”

She shook her head. “I doubt I can, Sire. This seems to me more like an affliction of the mind, not the body.”

“Are you saying my son is mad?” Deygan’s face twitched.

“No, Sire. Say instead that His Highness has shut himself off from the world. It may have been his choice initially, or it may not, but I think he could not come back now even if he wanted to.”

“But you can cure him?”

She drew in a long, slow breath. Healers could not cure minds, only bodies. She could pretend to minister to him, to draw the charade out for another day or two until Deygan lost patience—but after all, what would be the point?

“No, Sire. I am afraid I cannot.”

The look on his face was as clear as any death sentence.

Sylas was led from his room, barefoot, his hands bound behind him. This was it, he told himself; he was going to die. He hoped he would make a good end—wondered if anyone would tell his mother. Word of the Aerie’s destruction would have reached the desert by now, and she would be beside herself with worry.

When he entered Jaevan’s chambers, Ayriene knelt on the tiled floor of the anteroom with Deygan looming over her. Jaevan was to one side, with a middle-aged woman in attendance. At his age, Jaevan should have progressed to a manservant. King Deygan obviously felt he had regressed to a nurse.

“This is none of Sylas’s doing, Sire,” Ayriene said. “If Prince Jaevan has indeed been damaged, though in truth, I cannot see how, then the fault is entirely mine.”

He could not let her do this. “No! Mistress Ayriene, I must have done something wrong. I must—” Guards pushed him to his knees beside her. The floor was cold and hard.

“Silence!” Deygan shouted again, drops of spittle catching on his moustache. “If you speak unbidden, Chesammos, I shall have you gagged. Do you understand me?” Jaevan whimpered and the woman shushed him. At a gesture, the guards withdrew, leaving the five of them alone.

Sylas bowed his head. “Your Majesty, I beg your pardon.” His knees hurt already. He wondered how long Ayriene had been kneeling, how much her knees must ache. Could a healer heal herself? Maybe she could heal the bruises as they formed. A strange thought. Fear made his mind distance himself from the gravity of the situation.

“Your concern for your apprentice is admirable, Mistress Ayriene, but his guilt cannot be denied. He only narrowly escaped punishment over the attempted poisoning; you can hardly expect me to be lenient.”

Jaevan whimpered again and Sylas held his breath. With his eyes, he implored Jaevan to speak, only speak and make his father be merciful. But Jaevan’s eyes were sad and dull, not their former sparkling green.

“Spare the boy, Deygan,” Ayriene said, and Sylas froze, expecting anger and harsh words from the king at the use of his forename. “Kill me, if you must punish someone, but let the boy go.”

“You are worth ten of him, Ayriene. Twenty. The boy is Chesammos, and you are a talent. For your skills, I might be prepared to keep you alive. You would have to renounce changing, of course, swear fealty to me.”

“Here the boy may be nothing, but in the Aerie he was my equal. No—” She shot a sharp glance at Sylas before turning back to Deygan. “Not in ability, maybe. But at the Aerie all are equal whether man or woman, fair skin or dark. Casian never quite understood that, I fear, and sought advancement based on his skills outside the Aerie. I trust he will find fulfillment with you instead.”

Casian? Was she trying to tell him something? No. Surely Casian had not been involved in what he had seen from the battlements. However estranged from the changers, he would not assist in their slaughter.

“Casian has been raised to command the king’s guard,” Deygan said. “The Aerie’s loss is my gain. I see potential in him, even if you changers did not.”

“And this advancement commenced when, if I may ask?” Ayriene’s voice was cool, but polite.

“I know what you prod me for. You want to turn your apprentice against him, for some reason which escapes me. Well then, yes, he led the assault on your Aerie. Did a damn fine job of it, too. We came out of it with scarcely any damage to men or horses, thanks to him.”

Sylas stared at the floor, willing his stomach not to empty. Casian had led the attack? He thought of what he had seen—the flames licking up into the sky—and what he had not seen his own mind supplied for him. Men and women running and dying. The walls of the Aerie crumbling. The herb gardens where he had spent many happy hours trampled underfoot by Deygan’s horsemen. Was it all gone?

“The Aerie is rubble and the changers are slain. They deserved it, in the end. They supported rebellion and those who would harm my sons and me.” He turned to address Sylas directly. “They are dead, boy. There is no Aerie any more.”

Jaevan let out a low moan and wrapped his arms around his chest. Sylas was sure he understood what his father had said. Jaevan had not completely gone. He was just locked away inside himself where no one could reach him, waiting for Sylas, or someone, to find the key that would release him.

“I will have my dues, Ayriene. Your boy has taken my boy’s life from him, and I will take his in return. But because he has meant so much to you and to my son, I will grant him death by the blade instead of the noose.” He grasped the hilt of his sword, the pommel adorned with a single large cabochon linandra. Ridiculous, Sylas thought wryly, that he should notice such a thing when the blade could separate his head from his shoulders at any moment. The sword slid from the scabbard, the steel almost silent against the oiled lining. Sylas swallowed hard and made the Lady’s sign as best he could with his hands bound. Begging the Lady for strength to meet his end with dignity, he squeezed his eyes tight shut and waited for the slash of the blade.

The air split, but it was not Deygan’s sword that did it. Jaevan’s voice raised in a cry that raised hackles on the back of Sylas’s neck. It was a howl so primal, so heart-wrenching, that his eyes shocked open and fixed on the prince writhing nearby, his attendant trying without success to restrain him. Jaevan broke free and flung himself at Sylas, clinging to him, looking back over his shoulder at where Deygan stood motionless, sword half-raised.

“Get off him, boy,” he said, “Take my son away, nurse. He does not need to see this.”

The attendant knelt beside Jaevan, crooning softly like a mother to a babe, trying to prise his fingers from Sylas’s arm. Jaevan’s fingers gripped tighter, until Sylas was sure he bore the marks of Jaevan’s fine hands on his skin.

“I…cannot, Your Majesty,” she said, the colour mounting in her fair Irmos face. “I beg pardon, Sire, but he will not come.”

Deygan swung the sword in irritation and the woman flinched, anticipating the edge of the blade.

“Jaevan, let go, my prince,” Sylas whispered urgently, not wishing Deygan to overhear him, yet trying to make Jaevan listen over his howls of terror. “Your father is angry, and he may hurt your nurse if you continue.” But Jaevan clung on, tears streaming down his face.

“Guards!” Two men-at-arms came in at the run. “My son is overwrought. Please take him to his bedroom.”

They managed to drag him away from Sylas then, but Jaevan screamed, thrashing and kicking until the guardsmen had little choice but to place him on the floor for fear he would harm himself. As soon as he sensed them loosing their grip, he was back, arms round Sylas’s shoulders, his body forming a barrier between Sylas and Deygan. Jaevan’s eyes glittered, not just with tears, but with a steely determination.

“Damn you, Chesammos! What is the meaning of this?”

“I think he is trying to save me, Sire.” Bizarrely, Sylas could hardly keep from smiling. Jaevan loved him. He loved him enough that his feelings could break through whatever ailed him to protect his friend from his father.

Deygan sheathed his sword and stepped forward, taking hold of Jaevan’s shoulders. He pulled, trying to ease Jaevan away from Sylas.

“Come now, boy. It goes with being a king. Sometimes dispensing justice is hard on the justice giver as well as the judged.” Jaevan sobbed and held tighter.

Sylas gnawed on his lip. That was easy for Deygan to say. He wasn’t the one kneeling on the floor waiting for his head to be severed. He shifted position. With the prince’s weight added to his own, his legs were going numb.

“King Deygan,” Ayriene said. Sylas started. He had almost forgotten she was there. “Your son is begging for mercy for his friend without any words being necessary, Sire. Does this not prove to you that your son is capable of understanding? Of communicating in his own way?”

“Damn it! It proves he can howl like a wounded animal. Come on, boy. Let go now!”

Deygan gave a mighty heave. For all the king’s slightness he was a trained soldier, and stronger than his looks might suggest. Jaevan was again wrenched from around Sylas’s neck. No sooner had Deygan pulled him away than Jaevan resumed his preternatural wailing: a sound to chill a man’s blood.

Sylas swallowed hard. He had never pretended to be brave. His nerves were stretched taut and he wanted to scream at Deygan to do it—to put him out of his suspense and kill him. His gaze only shifted from Deygan’s face to look nervously at the sword.

“Be quiet!” Deygan shook his son by the shoulders. “Be quiet, do you hear me? You shame me, carrying on like this.” He turned to Ayriene. “If I let you go, do you have something that can calm him? A sedative? Something to make him sleep?”

She narrowed her eyes, watching the king closely. “And what will you do when he wakes up to find his best friend dead? Do you plan to keep him sedated indefinitely?”

“He has formed an attachment to the boy that will pass. Casian is to be Jaevan’s companion, as much as his duties will allow. Jaevan will soon forget about this heathen.”

Jaevan’s agitation increased once more. Sylas did not ask Deygan’s permission to speak, but addressed the prince directly.

“Please don’t, my prince. If your father has made up his mind then this will not change it. I would not have my last sight be of you in such distress.”

Jaevan’s breath came in heaving gasps, his sobs wrenching themselves from his chest, but he turned to regard Sylas.

“Calm yourself, Jaevan. This way time will not age us. Our friendship will always stay the same.”

The prince let out a strangled whine at that and slumped to the ground, his face in his hands. Sylas considered going to him on his knees, but his legs protested, and keeping a wary eye on the king, he got unsteadily to his feet. Crossing the floor to Jaevan he squatted close by, talking softly as the prince rocked back and forth.

“Untie me,” said Sylas, then as Deygan hesitated, brows drawn so far down his eyes were almost entirely hooded, he spoke louder. “Untie me. I swear I will do nothing to harm either of you, or to escape. I swear on the Lady.”

Deygan drew a dagger from his belt and cut the cords that bound Sylas’s hands. Rubbing his wrists, red weals showing where the cords had chafed his skin, Sylas dropped to the floor beside Jaevan, whose agitation had increased again at the sight of his father drawing his dagger. Sylas drew Jaevan’s head to his chest, and the young prince sobbed his despair.