Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter (2 page)

Grass viper eyes weren't particularly adapted to seeing in the dark, but the path was wide and straight, and he could tell it opened into a larger space. Determining it was large enough, Kenyen transformed into a fourth form once he was beyond the tunnel, changing into the shape of a hunting cat. Once he did so, he could see a few details. Light from the front part of the cave seeped through a couple of gaps in the rocks—which had been deliberately placed, he now saw, for there were no signs of smaller chips or dust resting among the larger chunks on the backside of the pile, only on the front, as if to make it look like a true rock fall.

Those faint beams of light allowed him to see the bones lying on the packed earth of the alcove. Most of the flesh looked like it had been picked clean by insects or small animals; what little was left had dried along with the bones themselves, and nothing large had disturbed the lay of the body. More disturbing, it looked like rodent-chewed remnants of leather had been looped around the wrist and ankle joints of the body. A pile of desiccated waste lay to one side, and a bucket to the other.

"... Kenyen? Kenyen Sin Siin, where are you?"

This time, it was Ashallan Nur Am who called to him. One of the many female shapeshifters of Family Lion, Clan Cat, the princess wasn't a particularly strong shapeshifter—five pure shapes at most—but she was an experienced warband member and huntress, and the nominal leader of this expedition.

Since there was enough room for him to take human form again, Kenyen reshaped himself and responded to her call. "I'm back here, Highness! Behind the rock pile. There's a path big enough for a small cat, and from this side, the lay of the stones looks like they were deliberately placed."

"What are you now, a stonemason?" Bellar called back. Kenyen couldn't see his face but could hear a slight edge in the older man's voice, the barest hint of upset. "I told you those rocks are unstable!"

"Stop playing around, Kenyen." Ashallan sighed. He interrupted her before she could order him back out.

"There's a dead body back here, Princess," he told them, raising his voice a little to make sure he would be heard. "It looks like he or she died in here as a prisoner."

That caused an immediate uproar. The others called out questions to both Kenyen and Bellar, some merely confused, some accusatory. Ashallan's voice cut through the others, sharp and hard.

"...
Enough!
Bellar Sil Quen, you seemed rather eager to keep us away from that rock pile. If Kenyen's words are true, then such eagerness is suspect. Manolo Zel Jav, I brought a Truth Stone in my right-hand saddlebag. Fetch it for me."

"Of course, Princess," the older shapeshifter murmured.

"Narquen Vil Shem," Ashallan continued, "you have a rat form, do you not? See if you can find that tunnel Kenyen used. Anyone else have a form small enough?"

"There's only enough room for one other, Princess, before we crowd this place too much," Kenyen called out through the wall of rock separating them. "As for where I went, I passed through it as a snake, so you should be able to see my tracks. But there's enough room for a rabbit to hop through—actually, if you could bring the smallest of the lightglobes, that would be great. The light back here isn't very good. Only a cat or better could see some of these details in the dark, but not all of them."

"Narquen, take it and go," Ashallan ordered.

"Well, if you'll forgive me for not using a pure shape, Your Highness..." the shifter in question murmured.

Some of the light gleaming through the gaps in the rock pile shifted. It grew stronger down at ground level, shifting with the shadow of the ratlike creature pulling it along. Narquen had taken on a largish rat form with extra muscular limbs and an elongated, prehensile tail, which he had wound through the netting their people used to carry and hang the precious, enchanted spheres.

Kenyen moved out of his way, giving him room to expand back into his natural form. Picking up the netting, the other shifter lifted the globe to one side, letting its light fall on the body, the bucket, and everything.

"He's right," Narquen confirmed after a long look. The slightly older shifter raised his voice so that he could be heard through the wall of stones. "These rocks were piled deliberately and stabilized on this side. The bones of a human are also back here, with signs that it was bound and kept here for a while. What looks like a water bucket, and a corner of this little pocket-cave where he voided himself... Wait—Kenyen, does that look like writing under the body?"

Frowning, Kenyen crouched along with Narquen, peering as the other shifter angled their source of light for a better look. The soil back here was thin, some of it hard-packed, the rest just smears on the hard stone of the cavern floor. Though the letters were smudged in a few spots, words had been scratched into dirt and rock alike.

He wasn't as scholarly as his older brother Akodan, but Kenyen wasn't illiterate, either. Few were, on the Plains. Squinting, he studied the markings carefully. "Yes, it's definitely writing... From the position, I'd say...
this
rock was used to scratch it into the ground one letter at a time—yes, you can see the scratches on the pointier end, here."

"Yes. And the letters were scratched several times to try and deepen them," Narquen agreed. He hesitated, then gingerly lifted one of the arm bones. "But why are they only
under
the body? Why not elsewhere in this place?"

Kenyen scratched behind his ear, then shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want his captors to see what he was writing, so he lay on top of it?"

"Help me move it—Father Sky, Mother Earth, forgive us for disturbing this unfortunate person's resting place," Narquen added in wry reverence. "But—careful with that bone—it's pretty obvious he was a prisoner, here. Or maybe it was a she. If that book of your sister-in-law's is right, they were more likely to torment women."

"It could've been anyone," Kenyen agreed, grimacing as they carefully shifted the corpse. Once the unpleasant task was complete, they peered at the letters again. It didn't take long for Kenyen to figure out what the words were, smeared spots and all.
"I... am... the real... Tunric Tel Vem?... Tel Wem?"

Narquen shrugged. "Looks more like a
W
, maybe? It's hard to tell with some of the scratches laid over each other. What's this word here?"

Kenyen shook his head. "Too smudged to tell.
This
bit could be either
of Nespah
or
of Mespak
or something between the two. If I remember the maps right, those sound like two of the valley-holds, places with more tea plantations than actual villages or towns to the south. Neither location looked like they were all that close to the Plains."

The other shifter shook his head. "I only know a little bit about the kingdom of Correda, and I only glanced at the maps. We'd have to check the ones we brought."

"Speak up!" they heard Ashallan order. "What have you two found?"

Kenyen answered her, raising his voice again. "It looks like this body was a man named Tunric, which I've heard is a common name for men in Correda. Tunric Tel Vem or Tunric Tel Wem. He was from either Nespah or Mespak, we're not sure which."

Narquen rubbed his chin, murmuring, "... That's rather an odd thing to say, isn't it? That he's the
real
Tunric?"

"If he was worried about people finding his body, he'd just say he was Tunric," Kenyen agreed equally as quiet, frowning. "But to emphasize he's the
real
one means he feared his identity was in doubt. Which means he feared someone was going to try to pretend to be him. But, the magics for casting an illusion spell are very complex and taxing. With magics in this whole region deeply weakened by the Shattering of Aiar, a mage that strong would have had to come from very far away."

Narquen put his hand on Kenyen's arm. "Not a spellcaster, Kenyen. It could have been a shapeshifter. If these Family Mongrel types were cruel enough to brutalize women, then what's to stop them from perverting their abilities from the purity of animal forms to the atrocity of echoing human faces? We may have done it as children when learning how to make small shifts, but we don't go around pretending to be each other once we move on to animal shifts. These curs have no such honor."

"Atava isn't the sort to lie, and apples rarely fall far from the tree," Kenyen replied, thinking it through. "The scribe who raised her would therefore have been equally honest, particularly one entrusted with writing legal contracts for his fellow Mornai. The only doubt lies in the words of Atava's mother. Did she tell the truth, or did she exaggerate and even lie? With her long dead, we can't ask her directly..."

He fell silent for a few moments, thinking, then voiced his thoughts aloud.

"There are plenty of different animal tracks layered with human ones in the dirt of the main cavern, enough to say that shifters lived here for a while," Kenyen reasoned out. "So many different wild animals would not mingle openly with humans. So shifters stayed here, and a man who feared his true identity was being stolen died here. Which implicates dishonorable shapeshifters."

"Then she was most likely telling the truth," the other shifter agreed.

Narquen's agreement confirmed Kenyen's own thoughts. The Shifterai were nomadic most of the year, but they were not an ignorant, uneducated people. Logic was prized among their kind.

The other shifter nodded at the desiccated corpse. "The men who left this body here were not above extreme cruelties, to imprison and leave a man to die behind this wall. The words in that book have a solid kernel of truth within them, between those tracks and this man's demise—when I dragged the lightglobe in here in one of my smallest forms, it looked like others had dragged supplies in via the same route. The bucket probably held water, which they'd bring in via skins."

"A little water, a little food... enough to sustain him for days, maybe even a turning of Brother Moon. Long enough for them to interrogate him, until they had wrung all the information they needed to try to take his place in the greater world. Long enough for him to realize they were probably going to kill him once they were through." Kenyen sighed roughly, rubbing his forehead. "So then the important question is, is someone still impersonating this man? And why? And how long ago did this man die, and was he really from the holdings of Nespah or Mespak, and if so, did his impersonator go back?"

Narquen chuckled under his breath. "That's more than one question, you know. But good ones all the same." Raising his voice, he called out to the others. "I have verified what Kenyen has seen back here. It indeed appears that someone was kept back here as a prisoner... and was either slain back here or simply left to die."

"How unpleasant. If you two are done back there, we have the Truth Stone, now," Ashallan called through the rocks separating them from the main cavern. "I want you to help us question Bellar, here."

Both men shifted shape and made their way back through the small tunnel, bringing the lightglobe with them. Once in the main cavern, they both returned to human form, loins covered in modesty-preserving fur long enough to don the clothes they had folded and set aside. As he dressed, Kenyen noted that Bellar Sil Quen didn't look happy to see the white marble disk in Ashallan's hand, standing with his arms folded across his
chamak
-covered chest. Bellar reluctantly pulled one hand free, accepting the stone the middle-aged woman held out to him.

"You know how this goes," Ashallan reminded him. "State a lie, then state the truth."

"My name is Marro," Bellar obligingly muttered, clutching the palm-sized disk. A shift of his fingers revealed blackened imprints where his fingers had touched the surface. They faded after a few moments, leaving nothing but white, unblemished marble. Gripping it again, he cleared his throat. "Look... he may have been banished from the Plains, but there is nothing in the law which says I cannot talk with my brother. And yes, I've met with him over the years. Always
off
the Plains."

A shift of his fingers revealed the unblemished truth of that statement. Ashallan nodded, her expression neutral. The other two female shifters watched him with a mixture of curiosity and wariness, the same as most of the males. Kenyen finished clasping his pectoral collar around his shoulders, and wondered if he should shift his nose to something sensitive enough to pick up whether or not Bellar was nervous about these revelations, perhaps hiding something by omission, if not through a lie.

"Nollan... we disagree on several things, but he's still my brother. And for the last ten years, he's made a life for himself in Correda as a tea farmer," Bellar told them. "When I heard about this expedition being planned this last winter, I flew into the mountains to meet with him, to see if Nollan had anything useful to tell me. He..."

"Go on," Ashallan urged quietly when Bellar hesitated.

Bellar looked uncomfortable, nose wrinkling and brow furrowing, but continued. "He gave me a funny look. Kind of like I was a bug and he was debating whether or not he'd squish me for it. He'd never looked at me like that before. Then he sighed and... and he just told me to keep people away from this cave, particularly the back of it. But I don't know why, and he didn't tell me why, and I
didn't
know about the body back there. I swear it on this stone."