Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) (4 page)

On his second visit—the one after Lynto’s death—his village had seemed smaller and dirtier. And sadder and quieter, without his brother. Everywhere he went, everything had reminded him of Lynto. His father was devastated at the loss of his more promising son, but Craie’s face dared Sylas to spot any grief or to show any of his own. A man must be strong, whatever the Lady hurled at him. Sylas’s old friends had kept their distance, but whether to avoid intruding in his family’s mourning or because they no longer considered him one of them, he didn’t know.

His sister had wrinkled her nose at him, saying he sounded different and smelled like an Irenthi—as if she knew what an Irenthi smelled like. He might have sounded different. Weeks of speaking Irenthi instead of Chesammos had led him to adopt some of that language’s speech patterns. And he smelled of the fragranced soap used by all the changers. Did it hurt that he was clean, instead of stinking of old sweat?

He had worked for his father again, wishing afterwards that he could soak in warm water to ease the pain in his shoulders and back. But baths, much less warm ones, were an unknown luxury in Namopaia, with every drop having to be drawn from wells so deep it took all morning to haul the buckets to keep the families in water for a day. He had hardly been able to move next day when he tried to rise from his pallet.

“You see,” his father had said, “he is too good for us now. The boy can hardly stand after a single day’s work. He’ll suffer in the linandra pits when they finally decide he’s learned enough to come back, or throw him out as a waste of their time. And he’ll struggle in the wrestling competition at his piercing, up against the men for the first time. No doubt he’ll disgrace us.”

Craie’s Chesammos tongue had sounded harsh to Sylas’s ears. Maybe he
had
become ‘fancy’ after all. The village had felt too small, the scent of poison gases on the air oppressive. Villagers had felt the fine cloth of his clothes and rolled their eyes. He had returned to the caigani, not because he was more comfortable in it—he felt self-conscious and exposed—but because his shirt drew catcalls and comments about how he thought himself a lord now he had spent a few months with the changers.

They envied him, he told himself: no more than that. He did not put on airs and graces and pretend to be superior. Not at all. They wished they could live at the Aerie, eating well every day, sleeping under warm clean blankets and with the chance of a better life. Namopaia was no longer his home. He had outgrown it—wanted beyond reason to stay at the Aerie. This would be his last trip home in a wagon, he vowed to himself. The next time he came to Namopaia, he would fly.

Chapter 4

W
hile Sylas endured his ride to Namopaia, the Aerie mourned a changer whose death had touched them all. Young Adwen had only been fourteen years old, yet he had been a controlled changer and a remarkable talent. Not all the people who crossed the Aerie’s lake for the dedication of his niche had known him well, but all knew his parents: his late father, Kerwen, and his mother, the healer Ayriene. Many made the crossing for Ayriene’s sake, but there were younger faces too: friends of Adwen and his older brother and sister.

Boats crossed back and forth for most of the morning, carrying changers and humans, young and old. There were many more people than places in the boats, and those who could row well were kept busy shuttling the mourners across in parties. Early arrivals wandered the island’s paths, visiting niches commemorating friends and family or forming small groups to stand and talk in respectful tones.

The island was small and rocky, and its craggy interior was full of the small alcoves cut into the rock that the Aerie used to remember their dead. In a society where some members were buried, some consigned to the Lady on a funeral pyre, and some returned to their own lands, these niches became their permanent memorials. Nearly all held personal effects—small items of jewellery, portraits, and the like. Most held a feather to show the person remembered had been a changer. Some held a pipe or a piece of parchment to denote a master changer or a scholar.

Ayriene and her surviving children crossed last, with members of the changer council. This would be the final public ordeal for Ayriene, although she knew from losing her husband six years before that there were difficult days to come. Kerwen had died of a wasting disease for which the Aerie’s healers had no cure. That had been hard enough, but Adwen had died from a fall: from wounds Ayriene would have been able to heal had she been on Chandris. But the mother and son had been on the mainland, far from the aiea-dera—the island’s energy which enabled her gift.

The ceremony went past in a blur. She trusted council leader Donmar to give Adwen a heartfelt oration, and she coped with the ordeal by withdrawing—refusing to hear his kind words and effusive praise of a talent wasted. She linked with her kye, taking herself partway into the Outlands. This should not be happening. She could not lose Adwen. Not her baby.

Her other son, Garyth, said a few words which she hardly heard, and her daughter, Miralee, gave a subtle nudge when the ceremony required her participation. She would face her grief in a time and place of her own choosing, and without others’ eyes on her, however sympathetic those eyes might be.

Donmar’s voice cut through her detachment. “And now we come to the most symbolic part of the dedication. Ayriene, do you have the feather?”

Ayriene’s throat constricted when he spoke. All she had to manage were two small words, but now that it was time she could hardly choke them out.

“I do.”

“Would you like to lay it in the niche?”

Donmar spoke softly and Ayriene could hear the concern in his voice. As a newly-raised master, Donmar had taught both Ayriene and her husband, although his duties as head of the changer council had curtailed his teaching by the time her children underwent the change. All three of her children were changers, two of them talents. Adwen, her youngest, had been only the second healer talent, along with Ayriene herself, in several generations.

Miralee’s grasp tightened on her forearm. Ayriene knew her daughter was finding this difficult. Miralee always showed her emotions openly, and the taut control of the dedication would be stretching her endurance to its limit. Garyth stood at her other elbow, silent and strong. Her two remaining children, giving her as much support as they were able for the duration of the ceremony. For her sake, repressing their own grief.

Of course she had the feather. Not one of Adwen’s actual feathers—he had died in human form, as all changers did—but one she had found on the lake shore that morning. Pure white, she lovingly stroked its vanes back into place until it was perfect. Like her perfect boy.

She stepped forward, Miralee and Garyth shadows on either side, and placed the feather into the niche carved into the rock. Ayriene paused, adjusting it, placing it just so. As if it mattered how the feather lay.

Her son was dead.

Donmar uttered the concluding words and the crowd dispersed, negotiating spaces in the returning boats as soon as they considered themselves far enough away from the family group. Donmar had an embrace for Miralee and Ayriene, a handshake for Garyth—and then he left them. Miralee walked a few paces away along the shore, taking the opportunity to cry, free from the intrusive eyes of the other mourners. Garyth watched after her anxiously, torn between sister and mother, assessing which of them most needed his strength. He compromised by pacing restlessly between the two, transforming his grief into action, as he so often did. Her eldest had always been a bundle of barely-controlled energy, even as a child.

Ayriene sat on a rock opposite Adwen’s niche. Her legs, wobbly through the ceremony, finally felt as though they would give out. Garyth handed her a water skin and she drank deeply. Of her children, he was the only one without a talent. He maintained it didn’t matter—that as the first child, everyone was only concerned he proved to be a changer. After two changers in the family, he said, all the pressure of expectation had fallen on Adwen. Even with both parents able to feel the kye and transform, no child could be certain of inheriting the gift. Her youngest had more than risen to the challenge.

Adwen’s death left Ayriene once more the only healer talent. The thought made her tired. A healer talent, and she still had not been able to save him. Some days the tiredness and guilt almost consumed her.

The three waited, Miralee red-eyed but back in control. Their silence was punctuated by birdsong on the island, the buzz of conversation on the shore, the gentle splosh of oars cutting through water as the rowers went back and forth carrying their passengers. They had no words, but each took comfort from the others’ presence.

Ayriene retreated into herself. It was how she had coped when Kerwen died: that and the need to care for three young children. When there were no more mourners to transport, two rowboats set out from the lakeside, a single rower in each. The young men waved to Garyth; they were friends of his.

“We thought you might like a boat to yourselves,” called one, getting into the boat with his friend. Thoughtful, like Garyth himself.

They waited for the two young men to set off back to shore before taking their places in the one remaining boat. Garyth took the oars and Ayriene and Miralee shared the bench seat in the middle.

“It’s all right to grieve, you know,” Miralee said, squeezing Ayriene’s hand. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing him. You don’t need to hide it with us.”

The pit of Ayriene’s stomach clenched, twisting as if she were entering her transformation. It had never occurred to her before how similar the two feelings were: the crushing void of bereavement and the wrenching coldness of leaving part of oneself in the Outlands. She had left part of herself in that niche.

“It was my fault.”

Garyth and Miralee exchanged looks—her daughter as golden-haired as she, her son dark like his father and brother. They had been so alike, Garyth and Adwen, but Adwen’s face had still been round, smooth, and boyish where Garyth’s, four years older, was taking on the more chiseled planes of manhood and had the dark shadow of a beard on its cheeks.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Garyth said, cutting a path through the water with the oars. “It was an accident. Things happen.”

They did not understand. How could they? She was the healer of Chandris and she had let her son down. She concentrated on her breathing, feeling her gut unclench, the aiea rushing in to fill the emptiness.

“I took him off the island. I could have healed him here, but so far from aiea-dera, I was just a hedge herbalist.” Hardly that, she admitted to herself. With the Aerie’s knowledge and training behind her she was far more accomplished than a common village healer. But that was how she had felt, with her child facing death and she being unable to help.

“We can’t all stay on the island for fear of what might happen,” Miralee said. “Look what you came back with. All those plants and bushes to grow here. We’ve used the yellow edmea, did you know that? Jasia’s baby threatened to come too early no matter what the midwives did, and the tea has made the baby rest easy. If it roots here, we can send cuttings out to midwives in the towns and villages. Who knows how many babies will be saved?”

“So it is a trade then? Jasia’s baby for Adwen? Your brother, and a healer talent, for a servant’s child?”

“I didn’t mean that.” Miralee’s face clouded. “You know I’d sooner have Adwen back. But at least some good came of the trip.”

“And I didn’t mean to imply that one life is worth more than another. But I find it hard to see anything but waste in Adwen’s death. Anyone could have fetched the edmea; it didn’t have to be me. It didn’t have to be us.” She focused on the geese strutting on the shore, trying to stop her vision blurring. Cold filled the empty place in her heart, like the lake water rushing back in after the dripping wooden oars had passed.

“What will you do now? You know the infirmary would love to have you here training healers for a time.”

Ayriene paused. She knew the reason for Miralee’s question. Ayriene coped by carrying on as normal, by forcing the grief to the back of her mind and pressing herself to work. It only suppressed the grief—contained it like water behind a dam—but she held it deep inside, letting it out rarely and only in private. Miralee would sit with Ayriene every chance she got, talking about Adwen and Kerwen, remembering them and crying. Garyth handled it differently still. He threw himself into physical activity—whatever and wherever he could find it. When his father died, he had helped the gardeners who tended the Aerie’s fields and orchards, digging and pruning and carrying loads from sun-up till full dark. He had become a great favourite, and still worked there now. Ayriene felt bad, but sharing Miralee’s grief might break her this time. Her daughter would have to carry her own burden.

“I don’t know. I thought I might travel. There are so many people out there who need a good healer.”

Miralee’s face fell. “I hoped you’d stay for a while. You and Adwen had the same talent, so it was natural that you’d spend time together. We see so little of you.” Her voice caught in her throat. “I miss you.”

Miralee would cope if Ayriene left. She had Garyth to help her, and must have other friends her own age. But her words had pricked Ayriene’s conscience. If Miralee felt neglected, Ayriene could not leave her daughter to grieve alone. “Maybe for a while, then.”

Ayriene did not need to be an empath to read her daughter’s delight. She would stay then, if it meant that much. The infirmarians would need instruction on the correct use of the herbs she and Adwen had found, for one thing. And they were always short-handed; they could use a trained healer. Maybe she could cope with Miralee’s reminiscences, if she could immerse herself in her work. As the prow of the boat crunched onto the black sand shore, Ayriene resigned herself to staying in the Aerie. For now.