Changer (Athanor)

JANE LINDSKOLD

Obsidian Tiger Books

Copyright Information

Changer

Copyright © 1998 by Jane Lindskold.

First published by Avon Books, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form.

Cover design by Pati Nagle.

Obsidian Tiger Books, Albuquerque, New Mexico

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This one is for Jim Moore, with love

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
would like to thank the people who contributed in ways great and small to the creation of this book.  Jan and Steve (S.M.) Stirling encouraged me by asking pointed, intelligent questions about the work in process.  Both Sage Walker and Walter Jon Williams offered tidbits of information that saved me making stupid mistakes.  Phyllis White of Flying Coyote Books steered me toward many fine texts on coyotes and shared with me anecdotes about coyotes and coy-dogs.  David M. Weber read the manuscript and provided feedback.  Jim Moore, my husband, read the manuscript and offered me detailed comments on the developing story.  For his thoughtful assistance and for his simply being his wonderful self, I am very grateful.

Introduction:  
Magic Circles on the Sidewalk

C
hanger
had its genesis during the Summer of 1994, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

At this point, I’d been living in Santa Fe with Roger Zelazny for a month or two.  We’d decided to take a break and go for a stroll, window-shop, grab some lunch.  We’d parked the car on a side street, then walked toward the plaza along a very narrow sidewalk.

I noticed that someone had inscribed an elaborate pattern into the concrete when it was wet.  I stopped, astonished at what I saw.

“It’s a magic circle, a pentagram, complete with crystals!”

Roger nodded, kept walking, not in the least surprised.

That was the moment my novel
Changer
was born.  I don’t mean in its final form—like Athene from the head of Zeus, full-grown and in armor—just that at that moment I resolved to write a novel set in New Mexico soon, before the shine wore off the place, before I, too, took magic circles in the sidewalk for granted.

Now those of you with methodical minds are checking copyright dates, noting that the book wasn’t published until December of 1998.  You’re thinking, “What happened?  I’ve heard that publishing can be slow, but four and a half years?”

To be honest,
Changer
had a more troubled birth than most of my novels.  I started it soon after the events recounted above.  I had a strong image of what Changer himself looked like, that he was an immortal, associated with a community of immortals.  The revenge theme was also firmly in place.

Mythology and folklore were my gateways into science fiction and fantasy, so I was already familiar with a considerable amount of material when I decided that my immortals would have links to numerous mythological figures.  I wanted to touch myths from over a long period of time and from all over the world.

I was well into this exploration, when life got in the way of writing.  Roger died in June 1995.  I was deeply depressed and overwhelmed.  Suddenly, not only was my beloved dead, but I also had to find a new place to live, figure out what I was going to do, deal with all sorts of fallout.

At that point, I was also working on the computer game
Chronomaster
.  That project had to be finished.  I don’t program, but I wrote the storyline, based on some ideas of Roger’s.  Later, I wrote the dialogue that went into the game itself.

(Scot Noel, my contact for the
Chronomaster
project, was astonishingly and amazingly kind and supportive.  I met with a lot of kindness in those black days.)

When
Chronomaster
was done, I went back to work on
Changer
.  I have a note in the daily writing journal I keep that by early September I had a hundred pages written.

A little later, I was approached by Prima Publications and asked to write both a novelization of
Chronomaster
and the player’s guide.  I was also beta-testing the game.  I worked on all of these projects simultaneously.  I find a note in the writing journal: “Thank God for work.”

While all of this was going on, I was also house-hunting, moving, doing edits for my novel
When the Gods Are Silent
.  I finished the
Chronomaster
projects.  By this time, the contracts had been finalized to let me fulfill one of Roger’s final requests—that I finish his two uncompleted novels:
Donnerjack
and
Lord Demon
.

I also signed a contract for
Changer
at this time.

The manuscript for
Donnerjack
had to be completed before I could write anything else, so I immersed myself in it.  By mid-June of 1996,
Donnerjack
was written and mailed off.

Now that I had some time to myself, I wrote some short fiction and tried to get back into
Changer
.  I found myself writing more slowly, unable to make any significant progress.  Finally, I figured out why.  
Changer
had been begun during one of the most difficult periods of my life.  I couldn’t go back there, but neither did I want to abandon a story and characters that meant a lot to me.

I consulted with Jim (who by that time I was dating), then made a tough decision.  I would discard the whole of what I had written—roughly two hundred pages at that point—and start over fresh.  On September 16, 1996, I began again with a somewhat different approach, using what I’d learned about employing multiple points of view when writing
Chronomaster
and
Donnerjack
.  This enabled me both to “open up” the novel and explore a more complex storyline.

That version of
Changer
is the novel that came out in December 1998—that won the Zia award in 2000—a book that started many years before with a magic circle inscribed on a sidewalk in Santa Fe.

Dream tonight of a compass rose

Points smashed finny flat

The scent of my blood on the wind

1

There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age.

—Sainte-Beuve

D
eath comes in many forms, but it has one smell, a smell of blood stagnating, of flesh stiffening, of breath grown stale.  Later there is decay, and that can have many smells: sweet and sick and sour.  But death has one smell.  Returning from hunting, a limp rabbit in his jaws, the dog coyote smells another death carried in the wind from his den.

Dropping the rabbit, the dog coyote crouches and sniffs the breeze.  Death is there, death in quantity, and with it other smells.  The smell of human sweat, of gunpowder, of horses, and of blood—coyote blood.  He does not need to see more to know who has died, but he creeps forward nonetheless, a very uncanine dread blending with his coyote terror.

From the shelter of a low-hanging bush he sees two humans, both dressed for riding.  Their horses are picketed to a tree a few paces away, shifting nervously, either at the smell of fresh blood or at the scent of carnivores, the dog coyote cannot tell. Nor does he care: His attention is all for the humans.

One is skinning a dead coyote.  The overwhelming smell of blood should mask identification, but the dog coyote knows the scent, knows the reddish pelt of his older daughter; her black-tipped tail is blown by a faint breeze in a parody of life.  He does not need to see the thin scar running from shoulder to flank to know that the pelt already hanging from the saddle of one of  the horse’s is that of his mate.

He bites back a wail of grief and rage.  Still crouched in concealment, he looks to where the second human kneels by the mouth of the den, twisting something with his gloved right hand, his head tilted as if listening.  

The dog coyote’s hearing is much more acute than the human’s, and he hears the frightened whimpers of the pups beneath the earth.  Perhaps those infant cries would have softened the human’s heart, but he does not hear the cries, only the sharp, short scream as the wire gig rips into the puppy’s belly.

“Got it!” the man grunts, satisfied.  Pulling on the wire, he hauls out the pup.  One thump from his hand breaks the puppy’s neck, and the crying stops.

The dog coyote, who is more than a coyote, can do nothing but watch as his baby’s body is tossed into a sack already lumpy and bloodstained by the corpses of its littermates.  Bitter lessons from centuries past have taught him to hold still at such times, to preserve himself even when he cannot preserve those he loves.