Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1) (8 page)

When he finished, he felt
relief, and an overwhelming sense of tiredness. He looked around, and noticed
that they were in a pine forest now, in a protected bower with a soft bed of
needles spread forming almost a nest. Ruchalia pushed him into it, and helped
him get comfortable and lie down.

“Rest,” she said. “We have
spoken much, and there is more to come, but for now, let your mind and body
renew themselves in sleep.”

“Thank you,” he said, feeling
it an effort to speak. “For—for everything.”

She shushed him, then began
humming a lullaby. It sounded strange in his ears, a true song from a sow to
her piglets. He fell asleep wondering if he could reproduce it on the harp.

Gwydion awoke in the middle of
the night, shaking from a dream. He had been a stag again, but this time the
boy with the bow had shot him. He was disoriented and confused in the dark,
but he felt Ruchalia beside him, warm and peaceful. He had a different pang
then, a memory of Sweet Nose growing big beside him in their den.

He grumbled in frustration, and
was tempted to leave Ruchalia and figure out what Math wanted him to learn
without her. But her warmth lulled him, made him drowsy, and soon he was
asleep again.

When he woke next, he could see
sunlight coming in from outside, but the bower was still cool and dim. He
stood and stretched, feeling better than he had in some time. His mind was
clear, and his heart was no longer so heavy. He trotted into the fresh air.

He found Ruchalia sunning
herself on a large flat rock overlooking a valley dense with trees. They were
high on the mountainside, where the trees were just beginning to thin and he
could see snow at the very crest. He heard Ruchalia singing, but as he got
close enough to make out the words, she stopped.

“Good morning,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure you were ever
going to wake up,” she said, turning to look at him.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Almost three days. Are you
hungry?”

Gwydion checked himself. “Not
yet, but I can tell I will be, soon.”

“That’s part of being a boar,”
Ruchalia said. “We have great reserves, and value deliberation over blind
instinct.”

“That’s not the perception of
boars among humans.”

“But you also couldn’t conceive
of a boar being a shapechanger, either.”

“True.”

Ruchalia stood and stretched
her back. “Let’s go find something to eat.”

As they entered the forest,
Gwydion said, “Ruchalia? This may seem like a silly question, but how are we
talking?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, deer talk mostly through
body language, and some vocalization. Wolves do the same, but communicate
more. Humans use mostly speech, with a little body language thrown in. But I
don’t see any of that between us.”

“Boars speak mostly with our
thoughts,” she answered.

“You can read my mind?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I
mostly only hear what you want me to hear, although if you are not paying
attention, I can sometimes hear you. It sounds like you’re talking to
yourself.”

“So yesterday when I told you
everything—”

“Day before yesterday,” she
corrected.

“Right, day before yesterday...
Was I sharing more than just words?”

She glanced at him. “That’s
very perceptive,” she said. “And fairly accurate, I would say. It’s one of
the reasons why you were so drained afterwards.”

“But if that kind of sharing
was hard on me, how was it on you?”

“Here we are,” she said as they
entered an alpine meadow filled with wild melons.

He ignored the scent of the
fruit, and how it made his stomach twist in hunger. “You didn’t answer.”

She turned so that she was
looking directly into his eyes. “I am much older than you realize,” she said,
and he felt the weight of it, the weariness of both tremendous joy and
tremendous pain. She nodded at his comprehension. “I understand what you are
going through, and I sympathize, truly I do. But I have also known far worse,
and have experienced it, absorbed it, and made it my own. Your story will
become a part of me, too, and I will become a part of you. I think you will
change from the experience far more than I.”

He bowed to her, the only
tribute he could make to what he had glimpsed.

She laughed, hiding the deeper
part of herself again. “You shouldn’t waste time with such useless gestures,”
she said. “Not when breakfast awaits.”

They dug in, smashing melons
and devouring them, seeds, rind and all. Gwydion finished six before he felt
satiated. He waddled over to where Ruchalia was watching him, and collapsed
beside her.

“I think I could go back to
sleep for another two days,” he said contentedly.

“You know, it can be awfully
lonely hanging out with you,” she teased. “Besides, I thought it might be a
good time to tell you about your uncle.”

Gwydion sat up. “You said he
visited you often?”

“He said I was one of the
wisest creatures he had ever met. I told him he needed to travel more.”

“I sometimes wonder if I would
have gotten along with a younger version of him.”

“Possibly.” Ruchalia cocked
her head. “He’s not as mischievous as you are, but he wasn’t as sanctimonious
as he sometimes comes across, either. Still, he wouldn’t mate me, and I
certainly did my best to seduce him.”

After a moment of stunned
silence, Gwydion said, “I’ve rarely seen the humor. He’s oftentimes gruff and
very strict.”

Ruchalia smiled at his
discomfort, but allowed the subject to stay on track. “I gather his father was
too, from what he told me,” she said. “The last time he visited me, his father
had just died, and we talked for several days about what it meant to be a
leader. He was very nervous about becoming a lord.”

“The more I think about it, the
more nervous I am as well. What did you advise him to do?”

“I told him it was simple,” she
said. “Uphold the law, but show mercy when needed. Be kindest to the lowest.
Don’t be afraid to stand up to the most powerful when you know that you are
right, but be willing before then to admit you are wrong. Be certain when you
make war, and doubtful when you make peace. You are responsible for your land,
good and ill, and your choices will be reflected by the people under you.”

Gwydion frowned. “But that
seems so trite.”

“Sometimes the best advice is
in a proverb we have heard a million times. But if we don’t ever heed the
advice, it doesn’t matter how familiar, and yes, trite, it is.”

Gwydion bowed low so that his
tusks scraped the ground. “You are indeed wise.”

Ruchalia snorted. “When you
live as long as I have, you get to experience firsthand what works and what
doesn’t. And believe me, I tried the things that don’t work plenty of times
before I was convinced.”

“And yet you are still alive,
and willing to share what you’ve learned,” Gwydion said. “How is that not
wisdom?”

Ruchalia sighed. “Because I
still feel like I have so much to learn.”

“That sounds like wisdom, too,”
he said.

They spent the day wandering
the woods, talking and comparing stories about Math. As evening approached,
they rested in a meadow under the warm afternoon sun. Ruchalia said, “So is
Math going to teach you how to shapeshift on your own?”

Gwydion shrugged. “It’s hard
to say what my uncle may or may not do, no matter what the subject is, but
doubly so with my training.”

“Are you interested in
learning?”

Gwydion looked at her closely.
“Are you offering to teach me?”

“Well, you should at least be
able to take your own shape if you want,” she said.

“And if I can take my shape,
then I should be able to take others?”

“Very good,” Ruchalia said.

“I would very much like to
learn that.”

“Then watch, using all your
senses,” she said. He saw her concentrate, and realized he could hear her
holding the thought in her mind that she should be human. He could feel the desire
welling inside her like a wave, but she let it go not with a crash, but by
trickling it into the image she had formed in her mind. Her body began
changing, faster than he expected, but still much slower than he had done so
far.

She stood up, a not quite
homely woman with short brown hair and broad curves in her hips and bust. “Stop
leering and try it yourself,” she said. She sounded like she was at the bottom
of a well, but he realized that was because she was speaking only with her
mouth.

Gwydion thought about looking
at himself in a mirror, and tried to find the power that Ruchalia had. It
eluded him until she said, “Stop reaching for my power and use your own.”

“Right, sorry,” he said, and
turned his focus more inward. He found the well within himself, and began to
use it, letting it swell in his chest until he could feel the wind touching
every bristle on his body. He pulled in a little more, feeling like he would
explode, but hanging on to it.

“That’s right,” Ruchalia said.
“Now let it go, slowly.”

Gwydion felt his limbs growing
longer and fuller, felt his hair changing from coarse bristles to something
softer and finer. The transformation seemed to take forever, and was not
exactly pleasant, although it did not hurt the way he expected. After some
endless time, he stood in front of Ruchalia, gasping for breath and feeling
like he had just fought Gil.

“Very good,” Ruchalia said. “You
took to that surprisingly fast. It usually takes two or three times for a
beginner to get it right.

“Does it ever get any easier?”
Gwydion said.

“Of course. It just takes
practice.” She looked at him closely. “Are you ready to try it the other way?”

“In a minute,” Gwydion said.

“Take your time,” she said.

He watched her as he caught his
breath. Her dress was simple but well made, but the short hair threw him.
Every woman he knew had long hair. “What determines our form?” he asked.

“Mostly just being ourselves,”
she replied. “For instance, I know what a horned owl or a barn owl looks like
in a general sense, but exactly how I will look as either is based mostly on
just me being me.”

“And clothes?” he said.

“Ah, well, that’s a bit
trickier.” She swished her dress about a little. “A lot of it has to do with
how you see clothes. Humans see it as necessary, so it is part of the
transformation. Boars don’t, so it’s not.”

Gwydion took a deep breath and
felt the last of the shakes leave. “And say I wanted to have a full beard.
Could that be part of the change?”

“With practice,” she said. “For
now, you should concentrate on general form, not specifics.”

“Okay,” he said. “Here goes.”
He built up the power within himself again, and began releasing it, holding a
picture of a boar firmly in his mind.

And nothing happened.