The Changeling (21 page)

Watcher, tied to the chair and facing away from the door, snapped awake as it opened. She sniffed the air and craned her neck, though she could not see who it was. Despairing, still she believed that if she died here, the King's plan would carry on. Perhaps with a different Wormling, perhaps with the same—if he had somehow miraculously escaped. He might have to find another Watcher if he had stumbled onto the King's Son and they were making battle plans.

The door closed, and she braced herself for a blow.

Watcher heard a curious turning of pages and strained to turn and see her attacker. Footsteps. A hand gently on her back. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

That was the Wormling's voice! Watcher allowed herself to hope, and a wave of relief swept over her.

He moved into view. “Oh, Watcher, what have they done to you?”

His clothes were grimy and stained, but he held something that took Watcher's breath. “How did you get
The Book of the King
?”

“It's a long story,” he said. “Let me unbind you.”

Watcher stiffened. “You're not the Wormling! You're the Changeling! You've fooled me twice before but not this time!”

He moved closer and lowered his voice. “Watcher, I swear with my life, it's me. They
think
I'm the Changeling, but Nicodemus helped me subdue him—”

“Nicodemus?”

“I'll tell you later, but we must get out of here.”

Watcher narrowed her eyes and looked him over, using all her sensing abilities. Still she couldn't be sure. “Tell me something about you the Changeling would not know.”

“I lived in a bookstore with my father. A strange man, a good man named Mr. Page, came in one day and handed me this.” He hugged the book to his chest. “The man cut me with a sharp knife.”

“But you once told me this Mr. Page was good.”

“He was. He took something from underneath my skin. It made me limp.”

Watcher leaned forward. “All right. I believe it is you. What is your plan?”

“I've convinced the king of the west to have Humphrey ready.”

“The king is not loyal to the Dragon?”

“Hardly. He anguishes over his daughter. I believe his heart still leans toward the true King.” Owen tugged at the ropes behind her.

The Dragon sat in a chamber on the first floor, wincing at the sound of his vaxors chanting a drunken homage to his divinity. They had gotten into the king's wine and were now reveling and throwing chairs at each other. The Dragon motioned RHM close. “Go tell them to shut up or I'll have them put to death.”

When RHM returned, he entered with the queen. “Sire, the lady wishes to have a word.”

“My dear,” the Dragon intoned, smiling, searching her face.

The woman curtsied. “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but I wanted to apologize for my husband. He has been under such stress. That outburst was unlike him. He knows you will keep your word and that our daughter will be returned safely.”

“I came very near to annihilating him. He is a lucky man.”

“And I am grateful for your forbearance, Highness.”

“I showed great restraint. Had it not been for the Changeling, he would have been hauled out of that room in a bucket, like Daagn. Where is he now?”

The queen gulped. “I'm not sure myself. A servant said he saw him heading toward the barn. He never goes there. I looked out in time to see him bring a spotted horse, not of our stable, to the front of the castle.”

“Sire?” RHM said. “That would be the horse of the Wormling. Perhaps the Wormling lives.”

“Nonsense. You heard the Changeling.”

“But was that truly the Changeling? After you left, we found the clothing of the hired hand behind the curtain. The Changeling never left clothing behind.”

The Dragon scratched his chin. “The Changeling entered just in time to stop me from charring the king. . . .”

“And his report sealed the fate of Daagn,” RHM said.

“Are you suggesting I erred?”

“Of course not, Wise One. Daagn deceived you and paid the price. I am merely suggesting that the Changeling may not be who he says he is.”

The Dragon stood, his face clouded. “Where is he?”

“Locked in the room with the Watcher.” RHM leaned closer. “And we have given him
The Book of the King
.”

Moving so fast that he knocked the queen to the floor, the Dragon broke through the door and into the hall where the vaxors caroused. They stopped and stared, some diving under tables to escape the flames sure to come.

Instead the Dragon lumbered to the room in which Watcher was locked. A gurgle emanated from his throat, and the guard stumbled out of the way just as the Dragon's stream of fire engulfed the thick, wooden door. Bursting through, the Dragon roared. Watcher's bindings hung to the floor, and the window stood open.

Owen did not have his sword, but he had the book, Mucker, Watcher, and Humphrey. And that was enough.

However, something troubled him, a memory that kept poking its head out of the ground like a prairie dog. It was of Mr. Page in the bookstore, cutting into Owen's foot.

Quickly, Owen described his meeting with Nicodemus. “Before he left me, he told me this path leads to a rocky area where you can hide,” Owen said. “I'll meet you there.”

“What?” Watcher said. “You're not going with us?”

“I can't leave the king of the west in danger. The Dragon has to know he helped me.”

“And what will you do without your sword? without us?”

“I'll convince the king of the west to come with us and help find the Son, his future son-in-law. And I will retrieve my sword.”

“You'll be seized,” Watcher said. “I know it. You risked your life for me. I can't let you go back.”

Owen shoved the book into his pack and strapped it to her back. “Keep this for me. I can't risk the extra weight.”

“I'm scared for you,” Watcher whispered.

Owen touched her shoulder. “The words of the book remain the words of the true King. They will be fulfilled, and you and I will enjoy the victory he has promised.”

“Together?” she said.

“I am certain of it.”

Watcher pulled at the frayed cloak with her teeth until she ripped a foot-long strip. “Look for this material flying high above our hiding place when you return, and you will be able to find us.”

The vaxors were on the move, stumbling through the courtyard, eyes red and bulging, some heaving onto the ground.

Owen made it to the barn just as a demon flyer's piercing scream sounded overhead. He cloaked himself in a blanket from the caretaker's bedding and peered out the window.

Winged creatures Owen had never seen before descended on the castle. Their wings would span several football fields. The flying monsters carried cages, all but one filled with humans wasted away to nearly nothing. The other bore a new regiment of vaxors in fresh battle array.

The flyers set the cages down near the barnyard and soared away. The vaxors poured out of their cage whooping, frightening the prisoners in the other cages. Owen hoped to dart out and release them, but there were too many vaxors, and the metal locks were enormous.

Suddenly everyone in the castle was driven out—maids, cooks, gardeners, even the caretaker who looked after the livestock. Behind them, pushed like the others, were the king and queen. The king had taken a terrible beating, and his clothes were singed. The queen looked pained.

As the Dragon stalked out, bringing up the rear, RHM hurried along beside him. “End it now, sire. Incinerate them all.”

“No, this is the final piece of the puzzle that will accomplish my goal. The people of the land will learn they cannot trifle with me.” The Dragon looked to the sky and cried, “Bring me the Wormling and the book!”

A great groundswell of dust arose as invisible beings lifted off.

The Dragon approached the king and queen and smirked. “I could exterminate you now, before your subjects. But I'd rather see you humiliated.”

“Please,” the queen said, sobbing. “You promised. Our daughter.”

“My lady, you will never see her again. Her blood will anoint my throne.”

The woman broke down. “I hate you!” she screamed as the king held her.

“If you value your own life,” the Dragon said, “you will hold your tongue.”

Owen spotted his sword and the missing chapter in the Dragon's talons. The creature mince-stepped, gaining enough speed to get airborne, accompanied by a cadre of flyers in full formation.

The vaxors led the people toward the cages.

A vaxor entered the castle with a torch, and by the time he ran back out, smoke was billowing through windows and doors. The king and queen huddled in their cage, hiding their eyes.

Owen found a dull ax and readied himself. If the vaxors were taken away in their cage first, Owen would break the locks off the other cages before the flying beasts arrived. These people would be a perfect fighting force led by the Son.

Movement behind Owen startled him, and he turned to face another vaxor with a flaming torch.

“So, we have a stowaway, do we?”

Owen sat at the edge of the cage, covered by the caretaker's blanket and jostled by many others pressed in behind him. Enormous wings flapped at the air, making the cage rise and fall like waves on an angry ocean. They were so high that Owen could not see the ground for the clouds. He rubbed the bloody bump on the back of his head.

Someone whispered, “You were fortunate it was a new vaxor who caught you. Velvel would have delivered you to the Dragon.”

“No doubt,” Owen said.

Others in the cage looked at him strangely. “Who are you talking to?”

The voice again whispered, “I do not want them to see me, Wormling.”

“Nicodemus?” Owen said. “You've come to free us?”

“It is forbidden.”

Owen closed his eyes, his head throbbing. “How could that be forbidden? I have come all this way, and I'm no closer to my destination than when I first began. Tell me! How could freeing us be forbidden?”

“What do you know of the Son?” Nicodemus said. “That he is courageous. That he will be a great warrior and lead many into battle. That he is shrewd and capable of overcoming the Dragon's schemes.”

“Why go over this again?”

“Stay with me. What does
The Book of the King
say about the Son and the Dragon?”

Owen leaned hard against the side of the cage, the wind filling his hair. “That the Son would crush the Dragon's head, but the Son would be wounded.”

“Wounded where?”

“In his . . . heel.”

“Is there anything you failed to tell me?” Nicodemus said. “Something you failed to recognize about yourself?”

Owen's eyes darted. He was speechless. Finally he managed, “Me? It can't be. I am the Wormling, the one who will
find
the Son.”

“But can't a man be more than one thing? A reader as well as a writer? The seeker as well as the sought?”

“No, no,” Owen said, writhing. “It can't be. That would mean—”

“What?”

“That the Queen in the Badlands—”

“Is your mother.”

It was too much to bear. “And the King is my father.” Owen shut his eyes tight, reeling.

And a bride waits for me.

Could it be? Was it possible that all this time, the one Owen had been seeking was himself?