The Changeling (11 page)

We worked as a team,” Rachel said, stroking her husband's scant hair. “We lived in a cottage on the castle grounds, and I tended a portion of the King's gardens. They were the best years of our lives.”

Owen said, “He mentioned a son.”

The Scribe looked to his wife. “We had a son and two daughters, didn't we?”

She nodded.

“When the Dragon took me to find out what I knew and to erase my memory, he used—” At this the man broke down, his face in his hands.

Rachel whispered, choking back her own tears, “After his work on
The Book of the King
, we returned to our village. But by then darkness covered the land. The Dragon had heard about the book and wanted to know more. So he took my husband. . . .”

The Scribe wiped his eyes. “I wish I could show you what you're up against. Torture. Unspeakable pain. It's as if he were able to crawl into my mind and root around with his sharp talons.”

“But he did not break you concerning the missing chapter,” Rachel said.

“How could he? I did not know where it was. Only you did.”

She nodded. “And when the evil one brought Patrick—our son—and said he would kill him unless my husband told him . . .”

“You couldn't give him the information,” Owen said.

“Patrick was slain before his eyes,” Rachel said, a tear hopscotching down her wrinkled face.

Owen clenched his fists, his face flushed. If only he could have killed the Dragon in the castle instead of just slicing his leg.

“I vow justice for you and your son,” Owen said.

“We can only hope.”

“Now, about the missing chapter . . .”

Rachel said, “I put it where no one would think to look. Inside the White Mountain.”

“Where prisoners are held?” Owen said.

She held up a hand. “Years ago there was no mining, and the place seemed remote, with many hiding places.”

“Exactly where did you put it?” Owen said.

The hair on Watcher's back went up. “Something stirs outside.” She ran to check.

Rachel lowered her voice, and Owen leaned forward, smelling her pungent breath. “Inside the White Mountain. It has a series of winding tunnels and passages deep inside. There was an entrance from this side, but the Dragon has sealed it off, and you can get in only through the pinnacle, which is treacherous and icy, even in the summer.”

“How do the miners get in?”

“Flown in by the demon flyers.”

“So I couldn't just climb it?”

“It would be a miracle if you survived the ascent. Humans lose their breath at that altitude. Ice forms on your eyelids and your lips crack and—”

“I understand,” Owen said.

“Anyway,” Rachel said, “even if you somehow made it to the caverns, you would have to find the exact place, somehow getting past the neodim who guard the entrance like sentries.”

“Neodim?”

“Ask your Watcher about them sometime. Deadly is what they are.”

“I defeated four demon vipers,” Owen said.

“Very good,” Rachel said, seeming impressed. She leaned closer. “Imagine a being five times as big as you with twice the deadly venom as those vipers. Better to just keep looking for the King's Son without that missing chapter. Besides, how would you read it?”

“Why did you take it to the White Mountain?” Owen said. “You could have hidden it anywhere in the village.”

The woman looked around. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You're not telling the truth,” Owen said.

“Tell him, Rachel,” the Scribe said, his face filled with questions. “Why
did
you choose the mountain?”

She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “A voice in the night said I should hide it there.”

Chills ran down Owen's back. “A whisper?”

“Yes, but it was clear. I was to take the missing chapter to the Great Hall, and there were specific directions. But there were so many tunnels and passageways. In the inner recesses of the Great Hall, I found, just as the voice had said, a round design on the wall. As instructed, I buried the chapter directly underneath the design.”

Watcher rushed back inside. “Invisible demon flyers are taking more prisoners to the White Mountain. And one is flying a scouting pattern. They may be leading the vaxors here.”

“Vaxors?” the Scribe said. “It's been years since we've had to deal with their kind.”

“Deal with them we must,” Owen said. “Where is your meeting place in the village?”

Rachel told him and Owen stood. “One more thing. The design on the wall. What did it depict?”

“The Dragon,” she said.

Someone sounded a bell, summoning men and boys of warring age. In the center of the village, a fire pit filled with wood blazed in the night, casting orange shadows. People gathered, whispering, tittering, rumors flying.

Watcher pulled the Wormling aside. “We should help these people and then use Mucker to tunnel inside the mountain.”

“He hasn't healed from his battle with the iskek. I'm afraid we'd lose him forever, and someday I need to return to the Highlands.”

“Soon it will be cold here,” Watcher said. “I can't imagine how frigid it would be at the top. We should go as soon as the vaxors are vanquished.”

The Wormling looked at her with kind eyes. “Watcher, you know how valuable you have been and that I would hate to go anywhere without you, but I need to travel alone.”

“But the demon flyers. How will you elude what you can't see? And who knows what else lurks in those chambers?”

“Rachel says there are neodim.”

Watcher closed her eyes, trying to shake the vision. As a youngling, she had strayed from the mountain and come upon a clear pool, where she saw her reflection for the first time. Trees swayed nearby, and a great thumping/crashing froze her in her tracks until she managed to back away from the water and retreat behind a rock.

She shook as a hideous being emerged, so ugly and menacing that she had to turn away. It snorted and gurgled and lapped at the water, then returned to the forest. Later her father told her that she had seen a neodim and she should never again stray from the mountain.

“What is this neodim?” the Wormling said.

Watcher shook her head. “I have seen only one and that at a distance, but even with your sword and all your training and cunning, I fear you won't get past one, let alone many.”

The Wormling set his jaw and stared at Watcher. His eyes were like fire, but there was still a gentleness to them. “A portion of
The Book of the King
speaks to this: ‘Do not trust in your strength or your speed, in your own wisdom or cunning, or in the number of your weapons. You must put your hope and trust in the King and his power, and he will guide you to the goal.' ”

“What, are you to leave your sword and your most trusted companion here?”

“Watcher, your hooves would slip on the ice. I can't bear to think of you on some ledge, trying to hold on, freezing to death.”

“I have a warmer coat than you.”

“Stay with Humphrey and the villagers. If the Scribe loses his memory again, you could recite some of
The Book of the King
.”

“And you?”

“I'll find the missing chapter, and then together we'll find the Son.”

“What if you don't return?” As soon as she said this, she knew she had hurt the Wormling deeply. “I shouldn't have asked that, but I fear what might happen if you don't come back. Do I continue the search?”

“No matter what, we will see the face of the Son together. I promise.”

A gaggle of voices came from the village center, and Owen hurried over with Watcher and Humphrey. Men spoke angrily to each other, shaking fists and raising sharpened sticks.

“You've heard the warning!” a tall man said, and the crowd quieted. Owen recognized this farmer, the brawny one with bushy sideburns. “A warring party of vaxors is headed our way. They may reach us by morning.”

“It's
his
fault!” a skinny man said, pointing at Owen. “It was him and his spies that brought them to us.”

The crowd turned. Sideburns moved away from the fire and stood in front of Owen. “What do you say to that?”

Owen stood tall. “I'm not a spy and neither are my friends. True, the vaxors may have followed us, but we will help you defeat them.”

“He'll sabotage us from behind our own lines,” someone yelled.

“Let's kill him now so we can focus on the vaxors!” another said.

“No, the vaxors are after these three. Let's give them up! The vaxors don't want us; they want them!”

The crowd cheered and moved toward Owen, but he did not raise his sword. Humphrey reared, and the front of the crowd backed away. A farmer threw a rope around Humphrey's neck and separated him from his friends. When a young man grabbed Watcher, she bit his arm.

“The vaxors do want us,” Owen said, “but they won't stop there. They'll destroy your homes and the entire village. We must work together.”

“We have a treaty with them,” Sideburns said. “We have lived at peace with them.”

“They are allied with the Dragon,” Owen said. “They don't care about a treaty any more than the Dragon does.”

The crowd became angrier and surrounded Owen. They took his sword and began to tie him, but someone shouted, “Stop!”

It was Rachel, along with the Scribe. “He and his friends came to warn you!”

“Spies!” Sideburns yelled.

“No! Look at my husband. He's back and thinking clearly because of the Wormling.”

“What does this have to do with the vaxors?” another farmer said.

Rachel scurried forward, holding the Scribe's elbow. “The Wormling brings healing, not discord. He means you good and not evil. Listen to him and do what he says.”

“It's true,” the Scribe said, his voice shaky.

People recoiled, appearing surprised at his voice.

“The Wormling spoke healing to my soul. He can speak words of victory for your fight.”

Sideburns stared at Owen. “Well?”

The men let go and Owen faced them. “We can help you defeat the enemy, but we must move quickly.”

Daagn, leader of the vaxor horde, crouched at the top of the ridge and peered down with red eyes into the dark village of Yodom. His heart beat with a dull thud. His scout had sighted the horse the Wormling had used to jump the chasm. The enemy was near, and he had clear orders from the Dragon: Kill everyone. Do not leave man, woman, child, animal, or anything that has breath. The Dragon required only the body of the Wormling and his sword.

Soon the sun would cost the vaxor horde its element of surprise. Daagn was almost ready to signal the attack.

The massive, ugly creature had narrowly escaped death when one of his men pushed him from behind. Daagn had frantically regained his balance, then casually pulled the man forward and tossed him into the abyss. He could not allow such an act, even if it might have been a mistake.

Grasping his ax, he whispered to his second-in-command, “Two waves, Velvel.” (Be informed that the whisper of a vaxor is like your normal speaking voice. Their ears are recessed, and so much hair and wax and dirt are caked inside that they must nearly shout at each other to be heard.) “I'll lead the first from the left; you angle down, and we'll meet at the fire pit.”

Velvel growled his obedience with excitement in his voice. “We will crush them, Commander.” His nose was elongated, and he had more hair on his face than on his head. His given name had been Graadl, but as he took on the appearance of a wolf and ate ravenously, his parents had changed his name.

Daagn scanned the hillside once more with eyes that could detect movement in the darkness, unlike humans. But nothing moved. Even the smoke seemed to hang in the air, waiting.

It was not revenge that drove Daagn. The men who fell to their deaths had been weak or unlucky. He was glad to be rid of them. Neither was he spurred by some allegiance to the Dragon. He served the beast not out of devotion but rather from the fear of being devoured by that all-consuming fire. Obey or be killed. It was as simple as that.

What drove Daagn, however, was a desire for blood. A love of killing, of seeing opponents so scared for their lives that they were reduced to pleading. The begging made the victim that much more vulnerable. “Bury your ax deep enough to kill,” he told his men as they practiced, “but not so deep that you silence their cries.”

His forces, sporting war paint on their faces and arms, had not been home in years. They had traveled the countryside, laying waste to village after village. Some heard them coming and simply fled their homes and possessions. While that made a village easier to plunder, the joy of warfare and bloodshed was gone.

Daagn hoped this village would be different, perhaps as much sport as the first he had ransacked with his father years before. He had been put at the back of the line because of his age but had quickly moved through the ranks of fighters, wielding his ax. The vaxors struggled over walls and eluded boiling oil, and Daagn had arrived at the front in time to see his father crushed by a boulder dropped from the castle wall. Daagn had lingered, grasping his father's hand, fascinated by the blood that oozed from the man's mouth. Sadness and anger would come later, but at that moment he'd borne only a thirst for death to match the deadness of his own soul.

Now, crouching in the predawn darkness, Daagn licked cracked lips with a green tongue through pointed teeth. He ran a finger along the edge of his ax until a point of crimson beaded on the tip. He tasted it and smiled. The prospect of earth stained with blood beckoned.

Adjusting the animal skins on his back, he gave the signal.