Changer (Athanor) (66 page)

“I’m trying to evoke the Amazon river,” she says, tilting the loom so that he can see the twisting blue bordered by green, splashed with brilliant colors.  “It’s more abstract than representational, and I’m not completely happy with it.”

“Ah.”

They sit in silence for a time, Vera weaving, Anson watching.  When the Spider drains his glass and begins swirling the ice cubes about the bottom of the glass, Vera asks: “Are you worried about the Changer?”

“Impatient to know what has happened, maybe, and, yeah, maybe worried, too.”

“Jonathan doesn’t seem worried.”

“I know.  I tried to talk with him this morning before I took the pup for a run, and he smiled inscrutably, quoted himself, and walked off to his room with a law book.”

Vera smiles.  “Jonathan told me once that he didn’t say half of the things attributed to Confucius, but, since everyone thought that he did, he memorized all the sayings.”

“No!”

“Truth.”  She runs a line of blue and green, the latter interrupted with splotches of orange, then looks at Anson, her grey eyes serious.  “I think that Jonathan’s worried, too, but I’m not certain he’s worried about the Changer.”

“No?  Maybe not.  And what are you worried about, Vera?”

“Does it show so clearly?”

“You’ve been tearing out almost as much as you weave, dear lady, not exactly what I’ve learned to expect from you.”

“Ah.”  She considers, rips out a line, puts it back in again after replacing some of the light blue with a darker shade.  “I am worried.  I’m worried about the Changer—I’m more worried that Sven Trout has chosen to make war on him.”

“Sven.  Yes.”

“Sven is not one to forget that fire burns,” Vera says.  “Any hold he has over the Changer is flimsy at best.  What does he believe will stand between him and the Changer’s vengeance?”

Anson crunches a bit of ice.  “An ally in Louhi.”

“Not enough.  There are other sorcerers, even with Lovern imprisoned, who could neutralize her.  There must be more.”

“When we rescued Shahrazad,” Anson offers, “we were given a token made from her blood, spittle, and hair that would have enabled Louhi to slay her even at a great distance and to control her from a lesser one.  They are taking the Changer’s blood.  Perhaps they believe they can bind him in some similar way.”

“That’s a thought,” Vera admits, “but I doubt we have the full picture.”

She stares at her beadwork as if tempted to tear out more, then stops and adds another couple of rows.  “I feel a desperate need to know more.”

“Perhaps the Changer will tell us,” Anson says.

“But will he share what he knows with us?” Vera says.  “I admire him greatly.  I’ll even admit to finding him almost painfully attractive, but I don’t trust him to realize that his needs and the needs of the larger group are the same.”

“And do you think they are?”

“I don’t know,” Vera admits.  “Arthur has been badly shaken by the South American contingent’s rebellion.  He hates when he must declare someone outside the Accord, and he nearly had to ask for them to be declared outside of Harmony as well.”

“True.”

Vera beads.  Anson rattles his ice.  Shahrazad whimpers, her toes twitching as she chases something in her dreams.

Or perhaps it is she who is chased.

The Changer awakens as the sun is westering.  He lies on the bed in the house in Bernalillo.  Listening, he knows that he is alone in the house.

Painfully, he sits upright.  His entire head aches; his lips are parched.  The area where his right eyelid hangs limp over an empty socket throbs to the beating of his heart.

Taking inventory of his resources, he realizes that he is too weak for even a minor shapeshift.  Louhi may have taken only her quart of blood, but he has lost more over the night.  It soaks the bandage wrapped loosely around the side of his face, crusts along his temple and mats his hair.

His attempt to replenish the anticipated loss may have made matters worse by raising his blood production beyond the level his system could sustain with an open wound.  Absently, he wonders if Louhi was careless or if the injury was deliberate.  Given his capacity to heal, he is willing to believe the latter.

Standing, he totters to the bathroom and re-dresses his eye socket with a folded washcloth tied on with strips torn from a towel he curses for its fluffy bulk.

His suspicion that he was meant to bleed, if not to death, at least to incapacity, is confirmed when he finds the refrigerator stripped of every last item of food.  Even the bottles of condiments are gone.  The freezer is also bare, but in the back of an otherwise empty cabinet he finds a partial box of stale dog biscuits.  These he softens in water and devours.  He has eaten far worse.

Unable to hunt, unable to shift into anything that could metabolize grass and weeds, he must wait until Anson and Jonathan return for him.  The hours pass with glacial slowness.  The phone is disconnected, so he cannot call for help.  The drone of the television only makes his head hurt more.

At last, he curls into a ball on the sofa, his head on the remnants of the shredded towel.  He realizes the extent of his weakness only when he is awakened by the front door opening.  Had it been an enemy, he would have been dead.

But it not an enemy.  It is Anson, followed by Jonathan Wong.  Etiquette forbids comment on his state, but he can tell they are shocked to find him so pale, bloody, and weak.

Reasonably, they should expect his condition, but reason does not govern emotions, and he is one of the ancients, the great shapeshifter who normally mends his wounds with a casual shrug.  Even athanor are subject to their private legends.

“Can you walk, Changer?” Anson asks.

“After a fashion,” he says in a rough, dry voice that testifies to his dehydration, “but I would prefer to lean.”

“Then lean on me,” Anson says, handing him a glass of water.

“First, do you have anything to eat?”

Anson pats his pockets and produces a candy bar, a partial roll of hard candies, and a stick of gum.  The Changer all but grabs them and wolfs them down.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to swallow your chewing gum, Changer?” Jonathan Wong comments with a hint of a smile.  “Let Anson get you to the van.  I’m going to make certain no trace of you is left behind.  From what I can tell, you bled pretty freely.  We don’t want the homeowners calling the police when they get back.”

“Thanks.”

As the Changer hauls himself up on Anson’s bony shoulder, he sees Jonathan pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves.

“First piece of evidence,” the lawyer says, plucking the torn and blood-splotched towel from the sofa.  “I wonder if there are trash bags in the kitchen.”

“There are,” the Changer says.  “I couldn’t eat them.”

“Still a sense of humor, old one?  Good,” Anson says.  “Now put your weight on me, and we’ll go out slowly.  I have a box of donuts in the van and maybe a thermos of coffee.”

The Changer considers asking him to fetch them to him, but an animal nervousness advises him to flee this place of pain—a place to which his enemies could too easily return.

When Jonathan finishes, the Changer is sprawled in the back of the van, finishing off the donuts with a voraciousness that Anson watches in admiration.

The portly Asian tosses a full trash bag into the back of the van before getting into the front passenger seat.  “I had to take the bed linens.  They were ruined.  The mattress should be salvageable.  Mostly, he bled into a pillow—which I also removed.”

The Changer swallows coffee.  “Thank you.”

“A pleasure.  It is easier to prevent an investigation than to derail one once it begins.”

“Confucius say,” Anson chuckles.

“Not in so many words, but yes,” Jonathan agrees.  “I’m going to advise Arthur that someone should come back and treat the sofa cushions and mattress to remove the stains.”

The Changer studies him.  “I will owe you.”

Jonathan bows slightly.  “I do not insist.”

They depart then, and, after a short stop at a fast-food place where Anson places an order that astonishes even the bored teenage clerk, they drive back to Arthur’s hacienda.  The Changer cannot possibly devour everything Anson has provided, but he makes enough progress that he can patch the bleeding wound.

“It was made with an enchanted tool,” he comments as he feels his body resisting the prompt to shift and close.  “I cannot heal it completely—at least not quickly.”

“Dr. Kocchiu…” Jonathan suggests.

“No.  I don’t wish anyone else to know how weak I am.  Louhi will wonder whether her enchantment had power over me.  She may even have spies watching our best healers.  Leave her wondering.”

Anson nods somberly.  “He has a point.”

When they arrive at the hacienda, Arthur, Eddie, and Vera come to meet them.  Shahrazad wriggles from Eddie’s hold and leaps into her father’s lap as soon as the back of the van is opened, her tongue trying to bathe his wound in puppy kisses.

“Easy,” the Changer says, but his tone is fond, not angry.

He holds her with what firmness he can manage, and she, sensing his weakness, obeys, content to flop on his lap and be fed cold french fries.

“You look terrible,” Eddie says bluntly.

“I don’t feel very well,” the Changer agrees, “but let me sleep and eat, then I will tell you what I have learned.”

Arthur nods.  Anson briefed him via the car phone, so he already knows that Sven and Louhi have vanished once more.

“There will be time enough,” he says.

“I sincerely hope so,” the Changer responds.  “I most sincerely hope so.”

His smile is not a pleasant thing.

24

Dime con quien andas, decirte he quien eres.
(Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you what you are.)

–Cervantes

T
he Changer sleeps the clock round and into the next day, waking only to eat with animal concentration and then to sleep again.  No one, not even Arthur, dares to question him during his infrequent waking spells.  There is something cold, and, if they had the courage to admit it, something desperate, in his single yellow eye.

Shahrazad keeps vigil over her father, leaving only for twice-daily runs—the morning one with Anson, the afternoon with Arthur.  Thus, she is the first to note when he awakens more in possession of himself.  She does not think to notify anyone, so the Changer has time to stretch, compose himself, and inventory his injuries.

He is not pleased with what he confirms.  Normally, as long as he has the energy, he is able to shift his shape into one that is uninjured.  Whatever Louhi has done to his eye socket is preventing this.  He can shift shape, but the shape always lacks an eye.  If he is not cautious, the socket begins to bleed.

Growling, he devours the food left out for him and goes to sleep, this time as a coyote, delighting Shahrazad to no end.  She curls next to him, half-guarding, half-cuddling.

Vera, making a routine check, finds them thus, nods politely to Shahrazad, and does not disturb the Changer further.  She suspects that he has heard her entry, but as he chooses not to acknowledge her, she does not press her company.