Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1) (9 page)

“Try it again,” Ruchalia
urged. “Think about more than just the shape, think about the feel of being a
boar.”

“Shape and feel,” Gwydion
said. “Got it.” He concentrated again, and began to feel the change
happening, but he couldn’t seem to make it finish. He snapped back to his
human shape, and fell to his knees in exhaustion.

Ruchalia came and knelt beside
him, steadying him with her arm around his shoulders. He leaned into her,
enjoying the strength of her. She hummed a song, different than what she sang
as a swine, but with the same promise of comfort and rest. He could feel
himself drifting in and out of consciousness, but he gradually began to rouse
himself. “Why am I having so many problems?” he said.

“Relax,” she said, helping him
stand up. “It’s your first time. You made the one transformation, and that’s
an excellent start. Can you walk?”

“Some, I think,” he said. “As
long as we don’t have to go far.”

“Just along here to where there’s
a stream with a deep pool where you can drink while I can get you some suitable
food,” she said. As they walked, he was aware of her hip rubbing his, and it
took a great deal of concentration to keep his feet moving.

They went back into the trees,
where the fading light had completely disappeared. Fireflies confused his
eyes, but he could hear them getting closer to the stream, and then Ruchalia
was sitting him down and scooping handfuls of water to his mouth. It helped
revive him, and when she asked if he was okay while he got food for them, he
waved her away shakily. She returned with melons that she broke open and fed
to him. Gwydion soon felt more like himself, and stopped feeling like a
walking earthquake.

He said, “I want to try again.”

She replied, “I thought you
might. You’re not completely unlike your uncle.” She stood up and brushed herself
off. “Watch me,” she said. And try to hear me after I’ve changed. It will
help put you in the right mindset.”

She transformed, and began
grunting at him. He tried to hear what she was telling him, but he couldn’t
quite make it out. Unconsciously, he began pulling in his power, using it to
try and hear her. He almost didn’t notice that his whole body was
transforming, only that her words were becoming clear.

“Good!” she said. “Now that is
a handsome shape, and fits you well.”

Gwydion tried to look down at
his shape, but his tusks and his proximity to the ground hindered him. But he
felt more energetic as a boar, and he asked Ruchalia about it.

“We swine have greater
endurance than humans,” she said. “It’s something to keep in mind as you shape
shift.”

“I’m not up to it tonight, but
what other animal do you think I should try?”

“A squirrel,” she said after a
moment. “That will help you learn about size changes, and will provide a good
contrast to some of the animals you’ve been before.”

She led him to another pine
needle bower, and they curled up together. “Thank you,” Gwydion said. “For
everything.”

She nuzzled him and said, “You’re
welcome.”

They spent the next week
practicing shapeshifting, until Gwydion could do it at a moment’s notice. He
found that he could change the style of his clothes if he worked at it, and
also found that carrying different things gave him a slightly different look
when he became an animal. Ruchalia laughed at his insistence that it was all
important, but Gwydion was imagining running across Dyfed as a wolf or a stag
but still having his harp and his sword when he needed them. When he told this
to Ruchalia, she said, “You think too small.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, why stick with a wolf
or a stag?” she said. “You could be a squirrel of course, but go further: try
a salmon, or a whale, or a falcon, or a frog.”

“So any living thing is
possible?”

“Possible, but not necessarily
a good idea.”

Gwydion sighed. “Okay, explain
it to me.”

“No, I will not,” she said. “Turn
into a squirrel, and tell me if you can understand why some living creatures
would be dangerous to become.”

“Okay, I will.” It took him a
few tries, but soon he had shrunk down and grown a huge tail. Looking up at
everything was momentarily distorting, and he looked around quickly and
scampered up the nearest tree. He looked down to see Ruchalia looking up at
him.

He could just understand her
words, although it sounded disjointed in his new ears: “How feel you?”

He began chattering at her, although
he didn’t know if she understood squirrel. He told her he was fine, but
hungry, and there were nuts he had to find and store, and didn’t she know
winter was coming?

He stopped, unsure of where all
that had come from. The squirrel brain was trying to tell him to hurry and
scurry, but he forced himself to sit still. The effort made him shift back to
human form, sitting on a small branch that quickly broke under his weight. He
only fell three feet, but it still bruised his backside as well as his ego.

Ruchalia was laughing at him,
and she became human to help him up and brush him off. “What happened?” he
asked.

“You spontaneously shape
shifted,” she answered.

“No, I meant when I was a
squirrel. It was like all the sudden I had no control over my thoughts.”

“And to a certain extent, that’s
exactly what happened.” Ruchalia turned back into a boar and began trotting
off. Gwydion also changed, and quickly caught up with her. “Your brain is
like your clothes,” she said. “It does not go away, but it’s not exactly
present, either. But how accessible it is is somewhat dependent on your
shape. As a boar, you feel quite rational and coherent. But what about when
you were a deer?”

“I was more rational at first,”
Gwydion said. “And it faded with time, so that when Math came for me, I barely
remembered my name.”

“That’s how you get trapped,”
Ruchalia said. “It is easy to remember yourself as some creatures: ravens,
cats, pike. They all have a fairly high self-awareness, which means you will
too. But you want to avoid becoming a worm, or an ant, or a newt, or a
minnow. In general, the smaller the animal, the more mindless, although there
are exceptions. Wrens are very intelligent, for instance, while gulls are only
clever when trying to steal food.”

Gwydion sighed again. “There’s
so much to this. I feel like I’m never going to get the hang of it.”

“I know it seems that way,” she
answered, “but mostly you just need practice. And self-control. Remember,
there are some things that override rationality in any creature: hunger, fear.
Sex.”

Gwydion was suddenly very aware
of how desirable she was, and if he hadn’t been paying attention, he would have
tried to seduce her immediately. Instead he said, “How did you do that? I
swear you didn’t change a thing, and yet suddenly all I could think about was
mating you.”

She chuckled deeply. “It’s a
skill, just like any other. As a boar, it is mostly a mental projection, and I
see who responds and how. As a human, it would be the sidelong glance, showing
just a little more skin at my throat or on my leg... I think you get the
picture.”

“Very clearly, yes,” he said.
He forced his thoughts back to the topic at hand. “But even hunger can be
overcome, correct?”

“Nicely sidestepped,” she
said. “Yes, most things can be overcome if you have the willpower.”

“The more self-awareness, the
more willpower,” Gwydion mused. “So I should avoid becoming a plant, I’m
guessing.”

“Mostly, yes,” she said. “Trees
are the exception, but there are some dangers inherent to it, of course.”

“Of course,” Gwydion said
dryly.

“You wanted to know all this,”
she said.

“You’re right, and I’m sorry,”
he said. “Please, tell me about becoming a tree.”

“Well, with a tree,” she said, “the
danger is not so much losing yourself, although that can still happen. The
bigger danger is in losing track of time.”

“How do you mean?”

They had come to a small river,
and she paused to drink. Looking up, water running from her mouth, she said, “I
haven’t talked so much in an eon, I don’t think.”

“And I haven’t listened this
closely ever,” Gwydion said. He took his own drink, and then followed Ruchalia
up to a grassy bluff overlooking the water. They lay down side by side in the
warm sun. “The danger in becoming a tree is losing track of time,” he prompted.

She snorted and shook herself
slightly. “Just daydreaming,” she explained. “Now, about being a tree… Look
down there. Do you see that patch of birch trees? And a little further back,
there is a grove of oak?”

“Yes, I see them.”

“Okay, let’s say you become a
birch,” she said. “They live about 50 to 75 years, which is very close to the
lifespan of a typical human, yes?”

“Barring ill-luck, yes,”
Gwydion said.

“Becoming a birch is a simple
matter of experiencing life as a tree,” Ruchalia said. “But those oaks will
live from three to four hundred years. If you are not prepared for that kind
of perspective, it can distort your sense of time. You become an oak, and when
you shape shift back to human, what you thought was a fortnight, or maybe a
month, has taken years to everyone you know. Some are particularly bad about
this: you think you’ve become an olive tree for a day, and a decade has passed
to everyone you know.”

Gwydion looked at her. “Is
that how you live your life?” he asked. “Everyone you meet is dead and gone
before you know it?”

She looked at him with a
crooked smile. “You have the makings of a very wise man.”

“Me?” he said in surprise. “I
can barely comprehend all that you are telling me, and I have struggled with
the simplest principles.”

“But wisdom is more than
knowledge, and more than self-control,” she said.

“Tell that to my uncle.”

“I did, many times,” she said.
She rolled over on her back, twisting her torso in contented scratching.

“How did he resist you?”
Gwydion asked. “I know that I will not be able to for much longer.”

“Ah, but the resistance is part
of the game,” she said. “As for your uncle… he thought mating me would violate
his principles.”

“How would it not?” Gwydion
asked.

“There are rules for humans,
and there are rules for deer, and there are rules for wolves,” Ruchalia said. “Did
you consider the doe you mated, her feelings or her wishes in the matter?”

“Well, no.”

“But according to your uncle,
that should have been your first thought. Except that you weren’t a human when
you did that, and even if you had been well trained, some instincts are
impossible for some animals to overcome.”

“And that’s why I fought the
big buck,” Gwydion said.

“And as a wolf?” Ruchalia
said. “You had your choice of mate, right up until the mating. Then all other
bonds were excluded. Even now you are concerned that your mate will not be
able to move on after your disappearance, that she will not be able to bond
with another wolf. Again, this is perfectly normal as a wolf.”

“And now that I am a boar?”

Ruchalia shrugged. “Boars are
normally fairly solitary, so we feel inclined to mate when we get a chance to.
But we are not driven to it, and no matter how much I wanted your uncle, I
respected his right to say no. Anything else would have violated
my
principles.”

“And then there are humans, who
are not supposed to mate unless bonded first, in marriage, preferably.”
Gwydion watched the river below for a while. Finally he stood and shook
himself. “It’s all too much for me right now.”

“You are dealing with a lot,”
Ruchalia said. “And I don’t know how much time you have to figure things out.”

“Days,” Gwydion said. “Not
decades.”

That night, as they lay
together in their pine bower, Gwydion said, “My uncle will be here soon, I
think.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged. “It’s a feeling,
mostly. Kind of like a storm that’s gathering.”

“Is going home so bad then?”

“Not at all,” Gwydion said. “It’s
just that this time with you has been more instructive than any I have known,
and I will be sorry to see it end.”

She rubbed against him. “I don’t
think your instruction is quite complete, do you?”

“You don’t ever give up, do
you?” he said.

“Should I?”

He began rubbing back. “No,”
he said, nuzzling under her chin. “No, you shouldn’t.”

They made love several times,
including once as humans, at his request. Ruchalia said she enjoyed it, and
Gwydion didn’t doubt it, but he was sure that she preferred mating in her form
just as much as he preferred mating in his.

He said as much to her while
sunning themselves in a meadow. “What would you expect?” she replied.