The Changeling (8 page)

I hope I don't get that mean when I'm old,” Watcher said as she and Owen left the town.

Children followed them to the edge of the forest, waving good-bye as they disappeared. The trees were so thick that Owen had to lead his horse.

“If we're not careful,” Owen said, “we may never get that old.”

“Why did he have to be so nasty?”

“Maybe deep down he's more sad than mad. Who knows what he's been through?”

“Yeah,” Watcher said, giggling. “Maybe he was a Wormling as a child. Sometimes you can be mean yourself. Maybe you're just sad. Or it could be all the jargid meat.”

Owen's horse pulled away and walked off the path. “Come on, boy,” Owen said. “Why can't horses talk here? Almost every other animal can.”

Watcher turned to the horse and made a noise in her throat.

The horse whinnied, shook his head, and pawed at the ground.

“What did you say?” Owen said.

“I asked if he wanted us to name him.”

“And . . . ?”

Watcher shrugged. “I don't understand horse, but he seems upset.”

“All I need is a picky horse.”

As Watcher led the way, Owen's thoughts turned to Erol and his family. Had they been wiped out by the Dragon, or were they on the run, searching for a safe place to live? Owen feared he had been responsible for their being attacked.

Watcher was still talking about mean people. “. . . Think of Mordecai and all he's been through, and you can understand why he's grouchy sometimes.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You're not listening to a word I'm saying!” Watcher said.

“Sure I am. ‘Be more considerate of people even when they're unkind.' That's straight out of
The Book of the King.
”

Watcher gasped and stopped, and the horse whinnied and reared, brushing the branches.

“What?” Owen said.

“I thought I saw something.”

“You spooked the horse!”

Watcher rolled her eyes. “He's only sad,” she muttered. “So, back to the book. It really says something about that?”

“Yes; a passage says that no matter what others do to us, we should treat them the way
we
want to be treat—”

“There!” Watcher pointed with her snout, and Owen glimpsed something moving along the path. The horse reared and broke away, galloping through the trees.

“Stupid horse,” Owen growled. “It was probably just a mole or something. If you hadn't made such a fuss—”

“No!” Watcher yelled, starting off through the trees. “We have to leave this place!”

“But the village is this way.”

“Hurry!” Watcher called.

Owen examined the path again, and it seemed to churn like a tornado, swirling storm clouds of dirt. He was entranced until Watcher raced back to him. “Follow! Now!”

But Owen couldn't pull away. The swirling on the path had spread to the tall grass and was more intense, so fast that Owen could hardly stand.

“Iskek!” Watcher shouted. “An iskek is under you! Run!”

Owen took a step, but it was like trying to walk on a shifting carnival ride. His feet sank and he jumped, trying to run, but he tumbled into the swirling dirt.

Watcher was screaming and the horse whinnying above the awful sound of stirring earth, but Owen was mesmerized by the scene below him.

Something grabbed Owen's ankles like a vise, and he cried out. As he began to sink, he yanked out his sword and punched it into the earth, trying to stab whatever was there. But each thrust seemed to hit nothing but soil.

Gray eyes appeared slowly before him in the dusty haze. Was this what Watcher called an iskek?

The pressure on his legs reached his kneecaps now, and he swung his sword toward the eyes. They darted and disappeared, and the hold on his legs became tighter, fiercer.

All Owen could think to do was recite from
The Book of the King
. “ ‘The King is my caretaker who gives all I need. He calms me and provides rest in the green field and points the way past the peaceful stream. He stirs my heart, strengthens me, and guides me to the right path. . . .' ”

As the vise grip of the iskek slowly moved upward, Owen struggled for each word. “ ‘Even though I travel the valley of darkness, where my enemy waits to devour me, I am not afraid. The King is with me and comforts me. . . .' ”

Was this how things would end? Had he come this far in search of the Son only to be squeezed to death by an unseen enemy?

Owen dropped his sword and reached into the dirt, feeling the squirming, squeezing scales of something working its way up his body.

If this iskek reached his chest, it would squeeze the air from his lungs, and Owen knew his life would be over.

Watcher stood helplessly on a knoll above and watched as the Wormling slowly sank. Bardig had told her that an iskek attack was the most horrible way to die. He had once climbed a tree and tried to grab the hand of a friend as he was pulled down by an iskek. Bardig's expression as he told the story was enough to make Watcher hope to never see such a sight.

She was vulnerable because she could sense things from above but not below. And because she was so light, an iskek could drag her under quickly. Bardig had warned her never to become complacent when walking in the Lowlands.

“One look into those lifeless, gray eyes, and you'll never make it,” Bardig had said. “No one has ever survived an iskek attack.”

Watcher raced back to the sinking Wormling, running around him, trying to avoid the whirling earth. She wished she had a rope to throw around the Wormling, but all she found was a rotting vine that snapped when she pulled it from a tree.

She used her teeth to pull on a sapling, but she couldn't wrench it from the ground. Watcher kicked at the roots, but the horse suddenly appeared and nudged her out of the way, grabbing the roots with his huge teeth and popping the sapling from the earth like a weed.

As Watcher dragged the sapling near the Wormling, she heard him reciting the beautiful words from
The Book of the King
. She had heard them many times on their journey, especially just before they went to sleep.

“Reach as far as you can!” she shouted.

The Wormling's breath was shallow. “No . . . stay back. . . . It will get you.”

She pushed the sapling toward him, running it over the swirling ground, careful not to step into the vortex. “Take this!”

“I can't get my hands free!” he said, gasping.

“Then grab it with your mouth!”

The Wormling caught the sapling and tried to hang on, but he was left with a mouthful of leaves. “Can't . . . breathe!”

“Try again!”

He shook his head. “Find . . . the Son. . . . It's up to you. . . .”

“No!” Watcher yelled, and she spotted something on the Wormling's shirt. A white tail, and it seemed to be struggling to get free.

“Mucker!” Watcher whispered. “Wormling! Recite more of the book so Mucker will grow!”

The Wormling's eyes flashed, face red, eyes bulging. “Can't speak.”

Watcher racked her brain, trying to remember some of what the Wormling had read and recited. Would Mucker grow if
she
recited the passages?

“ ‘Content is the person who . . . who does not listen to the advice of evil people . . . or even talk with them. But his pleasure comes from the King's wisdom and the words he has given.' ”

The Wormling had sunk to his chest now.

Watcher couldn't see Mucker anymore, but she continued to call out the words. “ ‘Search diligently for the King's realm and his goodness, and you will be given everything you need. Don't worry about what will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself.' ”

The Wormling took one last gasp as the sand reached his chin.

Watcher leaped into the swirling soil, shouting, “ ‘Ask the King and he will provide; hunt and you will discover; knock on the door and the King will open it for you.' ”

Watcher's forelegs were suddenly pulled under, and she called out, “ ‘As long as the King gives me breath, I will honor him and thank him!' ”

Gray eyes pierced the sand, and Watcher continued, “ ‘Allow your heart the freedom it craves and then have the courage to follow it!' ”

Something changed, and the grip of the iskek lessened.

Watcher struggled free and pulled herself out of the swirling soil. She called out more passages at the top of her lungs. She could barely see the hair of the Wormling now, but with a mighty push, he was up, gasping and coughing.

Watcher pushed the sapling toward him again, and the Wormling grabbed it, but a tentacle of the iskek's black body shot through the topsoil and encircled him.

Watcher grabbed the roots with her teeth and was then joined by the horse.

Just as the Wormling was being pulled back into the whirlpool, Mucker's wriggling tail shot out of the ground. With him came the iskek, almost making Watcher let go. Its eyes were gray pools of dread, its head the size of the horse, tentacles like an octopus's wrapping the Wormling again and again.

Mucker, grown to the size of a jargid by now, bared his fangs and sank them deep into the flesh of the monster.

When the iskek took one tentacle from the Wormling and wrapped it around Mucker, the Wormling pulled his sword from the ground with a zing and aimed for a spot between the iskek's eyes. The iskek shook the Wormling, and his sword nearly fell to the ground.

The beast rose from the earth, looming black and hideous over Watcher, the Wormling wrapped with two tentacles, Mucker with another, and supporting itself with several more. It looked like an upside-down tree to Watcher, with tentacles stretching out like limbs.

The Wormling hacked the tentacle holding Mucker, and he fell. He quickly sliced two more, sending the iskek teetering, and then the Wormling thrust the sword deep into the head of the monster.

Slowly, with a shudder and a whine, the iskek toppled. The Wormling chopped the tentacles holding him and dropped to the ground as the iskek crashed into the forest.

They walked from the scene in silence, Owen leading the horse, Watcher trembling.

Finally she said, “You know you're the first ever to survive an iskek attack.”

“I wouldn't have survived without you.”

The horse nudged Owen.

“All right, you helped too,” he said.

Owen was finally able to smile. It felt good to just breathe and not taste sand and dirt. He had tried to hold his breath when first dragged underground, but the iskek squeezed around his chest so hard that he'd lost feeling in his legs and arms. When he went under, all he saw was blackness, an unending darkness.

Except . . .

He had seen a figure. A man? An angel? A demon? The being appeared to be dressed in white, with a short-cropped beard and salt-and-pepper hair. He looked unlike anyone Owen had ever seen, and yet he felt he knew him. The being bore a look of concern, but there was a sense of peace about him, as if everything would somehow be all right even if Owen was pulled into the depths. And when Owen shot back to the surface as if from a cannon, the man—or the vision—was gone.

Watcher's recital of
The Book of the King
had caused Mucker to grow, but now he was small enough to fit inside Owen's pocket again.

A few miles from the scene, Watcher said, “Do you want to stop? I see shelter above, and it's the heat of the day—”

“Keep moving,” Owen said. “We should get to Yodom as quickly as we can.”

Owen lamented losing Drushka's food in the iskek attack, but at sunset, which came frighteningly early on this side of the White Mountain, Watcher spotted an apple tree. The three ate until they were full. Owen enjoyed hearing the horse crunch the apples with his large teeth, and he was surprised when the steed sat by them as a dog would.

In the night, fog blocked the stars, and the path became rocky. The horse became agitated, knocking a rock from the path. Owen noticed that it was several seconds before he heard it land.

“Let's stop here,” Owen said.

“In the open?” Watcher said.

“Just until daybreak and the fog lifts.” Owen took off his backpack and cleaned it out, then placed it on a rock and laid his head on it.

Watcher and the horse were asleep within minutes.

Owen closed his eyes, his father's voice echoing through the corridors of his mind.
“I did nothing to help you understand. I blocked you at every turn.”

* * *

Owen awoke suddenly in the morning, a chill rushing through him. The fog had lifted, and he sat up, peering at a sight he would never forget. Not five feet away lay a sheer drop into the valley. Talon marks marred the side of the rock wall. Across an expanse too wide to jump, the path continued.

Owen woke Watcher, who glanced at him knowingly. He had stopped them, had saved them from certain death.

“There must be another way to Yodom,” Owen said.

Watcher winced. “Either up or down, unless we go all the way around the mountain, but that would take days.”

The horse whinnied.

“The Dragon's minions will discover the iskek's body,” Watcher said. “They'll figure out where we're going.”

The horse blew his lips.

“Let them,” Owen said, gathering his pack. “We can face anything now.”

“Don't be too sure of yourself. A little fear sharpens the senses. We almost died back there.”

The morning was clear, though a mist still hung on the mountain. They were high above the valley, but the mountain seemed to go on forever. They carefully made their way back, heading for the forest.

“Down there.” Watcher pointed. “Another pathway that should take us to Yodom. And we don't have to enter the valley.”

Owen was heartened, but the horse pawed at the earth and clucked.

“What's wrong with him?” Owen said.

“I told you; I don't understand horse beyond a few words.”

By the time they reached the trailhead, the horse was lathered with sweat and his eyes darted. Watcher held up a hand.

Owen heard nothing. He moved out in front on the path, his sword clanging against a stone. To his left, the earth rose up, creating a narrow passage.

The horse stopped and nickered.

“Grab his reins,” Owen said.

“No, wait. There's something up ahead.”

“Invisibles?”

Watcher shook her head.

“All the more reason to hurry,” Owen said. “We have to make it through this.” He stepped forward, eyes on the end of the path that loomed like a tunnel.

Something moved into the light where the path curved down toward the valley—something large and upright, holding a stick or a weapon.

A horn blew and two figures appeared. Owen thought the musicians of Erol had found them, but these seemed bigger and menacing. One had horns on either side of his head and shook an object high in the air. Then a whoop rose like a cheering section at a football game, only lower in pitch, and more running figures poured into the opening.

“Vaxors!” Watcher said.