Shapeshifters (51 page)

The concept made me shudder. I recalled thinking how valuable it would be to know what the future held, but I would never want to pay that price.

The deeper explanation of Hai's madness, though chilling, did not explain the loss of time I had experienced, and my lingering disorientation. As I recalled the strange, painful incident, Nicias went a shade paler.

“The magic that still lingers in the Cobriana line disturbs falcon magic; it acts like a spark,” Nicias said, sounding shaken. “If Hai were already half-caught in a
sakkri'a'she
when you began to dance one, your being there might have triggered something. Or her being there might …” He trailed off. “I have to tell you something I've put off. It can wait until after we deal with Urban, but tomorrow, I need some time.”

“Yes, of course.”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “Salem, Sive, Prentice and Marus are all here, waiting for us—for you. Do you need to rest, or are you ready to speak to them?”

“I'm as ready as I'll ever be.”

 

I wasn't losing time anymore, but the night continued to progress in a kind of haze. I felt as if there was something I
was missing. My sense of frustrated ignorance was not helped by the meetings that followed.

None of the guards had seen anything. Marus and Prentice, both of whom had been pulled from their beds, seemed legitimately horrified as they swore their innocence. Salem first reacted as I feared all the dancers would—with pure fury, which he immediately directed toward Prentice—but he responded to my appeals that, in this, he needed to be a cobra first and a dancer second. We needed him on our side.

We had no proof of guilt, very few suspects and even fewer leads. The only concrete decision that we were able to make involved Urban and the nest.

“Salem and I will help Urban back to the nest and explain that we're doing all we can. We need to make sure that the dancers know we're on their side so no one will think about taking justice into their own hands. We can't afford vigilante retaliation. My parents should be here soon. They …” What could they possibly do to make things right?

Nothing can make this right.

Urban, Salem and I were welcomed into Wyvern's Nest with anxious eyes and horrified questions. Rumors about what had happened had already reached the southern hills, and the only way we could calm people at all was to beg them to be quiet for Urban's sake, so that he could rest.

Salem helped Urban to a comfortable spot near the central fire as I faced the questions I had anticipated.
Who did it? Were they avians? Was it Prentice? Of course it was Prentice; everyone knows he hates dancers. Was it Marus? Everyone saw him hit Urban earlier. Will the attacker be turned over to the serpiente for nest justice?
Everyone had a theory and a proposed solution. Urban freed me from the interrogation; Salem took over for me, as if he had not nearly come to blows with Prentice in the Rookery just minutes before.

I joined Urban on the pallet of blankets and cushions that the other dancers had put together in front of the fire. Mindful of his injuries, I nevertheless lay as close to him as I could without pressing against him, knowing that he would
want that comfort even more after having been denied it among the avians.

Almost immediately, he shifted to close the distance, my warmth and companionship more important than bruises.

I only meant to lie down for a few minutes, but the night had been too long. I didn't even realize I had fallen asleep until a wolf's howl startled me awake.

Urban woke when I stirred, and he asked, “Something wrong?”

“No,” I answered. “Just the wolves. Go back to sleep; you need the rest.”

“I've been ‘resting.'” He shifted and winced. “I don't think that doctor remembered that she was talking to a dancer when she told me to stay off my feet for a week. I feel like I'm going to crawl out of my skin if I don't move, and it's only been a few hours.”

Carefully, I put an arm around him. Worse than the doctor's orders to stay off the injured leg, no doubt, was her warning that it might not heal right if he didn't.

He sighed and closed his eyes again to sleep. As I did the same, he ran an idle hand through my hair, tickling the feathers at the nape of my neck. It reminded me of when we had been children, curled together in the nest at the end of a day of mischief. He had always been fascinated by my feathers.

“Oliza?”

“Hmm?”

“I … never mind.” He sighed.

I opened my eyes and saw in his gaze something un-childlike.

Abruptly the mood changed. Though I knew that Urban considered himself one of my foremost suitors, I had always seen him as a friend, nestmate, safe companion when the rest
of the world was cruel. That safer world fractured into sharp, fragile pieces as he turned my head so that he could steal a very
adult
kiss.

I pulled away instinctively. “Stop.”

I had no doubt that he would, no fear. He smiled sadly, knowing the answer before he asked, “Don't suppose you're just saying that because I'm injured and you're worried about hurting me?”

I shook my head.

“Can't blame me for asking.” In the space left between us, the night air suddenly felt colder.

A few minutes crept by in near silence, broken only by the chattering of predawn birds, as we both pretended to return to sleep. I don't think it surprised him when I stood up, saying, “I'm going to see if my parents are back yet.”

Not far away, Salem was watching us. Rousing Rosalind, who had been curled against his chest, he hurried to meet me before I reached the doorway.

“I need to see if there is any news,” I said. “I shouldn't have stayed as long as I did.”

Salem sighed. “Good luck. Urban's not just any dancer. He grew up in Wyvern's Nest; he's like everyone's little brother.”

“Which means he's going to have a lot of big brothers looking for payback,” I said. “I know.”

“Oliza …”

“Yes?”

“He
is
a good man. Don't let a bunch of thugs scare you off.”

If only it was that easy. “I have to go. Take care of him.”

“We will.”

As I paused at the doorway to glance back, Salem and
Rosalind repositioned themselves so that they bracketed Urban. He wouldn't be alone.

Once outside the nest, I walked silently toward town. My parents would have come to the nest if they were back, but I could still go to the Rookery to see if anyone had learned anything. Maybe there had been a witness. Maybe … maybe so many things that seemed unlikely.

I had just needed to get out of there.

I touched a hand to my lips.

My parents had married for politics and then fallen in love. If I had to do the same, would I be as lucky as they were? I wondered how many generations of ruler had made the same decision.

As if to match my bleak thoughts, the clouds opened up and the first spatter of rain landed just as I crossed the market center.

I walked quickly across the green marble plaza in which the symbol of
Ahnleh
was combined with an equally ancient avian sigil, the Seal of Alasdair, and paused before the white marble statue that stood at the center: a true wyvern, slightly taller than I was, its tail curled around the base, its wings spread proudly, and its head raised as it shouted to the sky. It had been built the year that I had been born, when the idea that avians and serpiente could live together was new and so many had been filled with hope.

I couldn't remember what it felt like to be that proud and sure. Maybe one could manage it only when caught in the coldness of stone. I stared at the wyvern, envying her, as I let my body shift into
my
half form.

The wings that tumbled down my back were the same color as the feathers at my nape, varying from gold to rusty red to nearly black; the snakeskin that covered my body from my
ankles to my neck was black with a red sheen. My eyes shifted to a deep amber, the whites disappearing and the pupils becoming slit; my fangs were filled with a cobra's poison.

My full wyvern form was similar to the statue, but this was my half form, my monster, a form no one I knew could see without flinching.

I leaned against the cold marble wyvern, putting my arms around her lithe body.

In half form, my senses were almost as keen as those of a pure cobra and those of a hawk combined. That was why I heard the sound of bare feet slipping slightly across the rain-slicked marble plaza floor, and why I felt the body heat of several creatures suddenly surround me. I turned to flee or fight, but I had no chance to even recognize my attackers before their hands slammed me back into the statue. One of my wings smacked into the ridge of its back, and I gasped as I felt bones break, my vision wavering so that the figures around me were nothing but vague outlines in the rainy morning.

Before I could recover, one of my attackers grasped my wrists, and others extended my wings without care for the broken bones. The pain made my stomach roll and I choked back bile.

“I'm sorry,” said a voice that seemed familiar as I felt a blade begin to cut my long flight feathers.

My gasps were halted as someone put a cloth over my mouth and nose, muffling me and cutting off my breathing until I spiraled into unconsciousness.

Time passed in an odd, warped way, so that I could not tell how long I was in my strange, rocking prison, less than half-awake. Sometimes I would open my eyes and there would be light; sometimes it would be dark as pitch. Most of the time, my vision was too blurry to tell any more than that.

 

The first time I woke with any true awareness, I found myself lying on my stomach in human form, though I did not remember returning to it. I tried to shift, and the combination of pain and dizziness forced me to stop and cry out as I clutched at the wooden planks beneath me.

 

Sometime later I came to again. My world wasn't swaying as badly, but my head was pounding and my mouth felt cottony. People were talking nearby in loud voices, which seemed to warp and waver, swirling in the air. Someone asked, “Can't we let the princess out now?”

“This whole area is infested with wolves,” someone else responded. The voice … I knew that voice. “No need to let them see her.”

There was a pause; then someone else said, “She's moving around again.”

“Bring her something to eat and drink.” The speaker was Tavisan, the leader of the lion mercenaries. But why had they done this? Had the wolves hired them? Kalisa wouldn't have; who were her rivals? I did not know what might benefit them.

The wall of my tiny little room was peeled back, letting in a bit of light from their fire. The lion who blocked the doorway was broad shouldered, and his gaze never left me as he put a canteen of water and a plate of simple food in front of me.

“Wait!” I called after him as he started to move away. My voice cracked; my throat was so dry. He ignored me and carefully fastened the leather wall back into place. “Tavisan!”

I could barely speak above a whisper. I grabbed the canteen of water and chugged half of it before I even noticed the smell of roasted meat. Starving, I shoved food into my mouth. I needed strength to …

Needed to …

The thought drifted away. Woozy, I lay down again, and belatedly the word came to mind:
drugged.

 

When I slept, my dreams were hazy visions not just of home but of whatever fate I was going toward. At one point, I woke, screaming, from a nightmare about butterflies.

“Milady, I cannot possibly—”

“Tavisan, please.”

When I fell asleep again, the image changed to Urban,
bleeding—and then it was Marus instead. Sometimes others; sometimes all of Wyvern's Court. The dancer's nest was on fire. Sometimes there were falcons, and occasionally lions.

I knew I had to get away. To
run.
Far away, because someone had me, and they weren't afraid to use violence—I remembered my wing breaking—or to drug my food. The haziness left from the drugs made it impossible for me to concentrate for very long, and I struggled to keep from drowning in fear.

 

Finally I woke fully enough to realize that I was inside some kind of covered litter. The walls and the top were leather, and they were attached so firmly to the heavy wood floor that in my weakened state I could not pry them away. I still worked at it, trying to ignore the way my stomach rolled with every movement, and I nearly collapsed as the vertigo hit me.

The drugs were in the water, I decided. I had to stop drinking it, to clear my mind so that I could make a plan instead of continuing this useless scratching.

Eventually it occurred to me that mercenaries worked for payment. Surely Wyvern's Court could offer the lions more than their current employers—and if prizes would not work, a pride of lions was not stronger than the serpiente and avian armies.

“Tavisan!” I shouted again. “You know who I am. Talk to me. We can work something out.” I waited but heard no response. “Tavisan, you were in Wyvern's Court the day before I was taken. When my people find that I am gone, they will quickly discover your role in my abduction. Is the payment you have been offered enough to risk the wrath of Wyvern's Court?”

I heard whispering among the lions carrying my litter then.

“Tavisan, she has a point. Wyvern's Court—”

“I know what I'm doing.” The leader's voice was certain.

“But what if—”

“Do not question me,” he snapped.

“Tavisan, you are destroying your own people,” I argued. I had a vague memory of arguing with him before. How many times had I woken, in my drugged state, and perhaps said these exact words?

“Oliza, I apologize for your rough treatment. I wish it had not been necessary. Even so, you are wasting your breath.”

I continued to call to him, alternating between threats and promises, sometimes trying to bargain with Tavisan and sometimes appealing to his people, but I received no more answers. Eventually my throat was again too raw to continue shouting, and I dared not drink to soothe it.

I avoided the drugs long enough to clear my mind, but after two days without water, the cramping in my body became so severe, I knew that dehydration might kill me. I curled up in a ball in the corner of the litter, trying to concentrate on something productive.

They had clipped my wings. They had clipped my wings and then fed me a poison to force me back into my human form. I knew the process because it was one of the most severe punishments meted out in avian society.

It permanently locked someone out of both her half- and full-avian forms. Locked me from my wings. My serpiente form would be unaffected, but my hawk was gone.

Grounded, forever. There was no cure; there never had been. That was why the avians used it as a final punishment, and only for the most extreme crimes.

Stop it, STOP IT!
I tried to force the thoughts away.

Suddenly the ground was tilting, and I heard yelling, mostly in a language I did not know. Howls, shouts, sounds of fighting. My litter swayed again as whoever was holding it stumbled.

Instinctively, I threw myself to the side that was tilting. The impact of my body against the wood made me see stars, but I did it again, and again—

Until my litter tipped and hit the ground
hard,
one side splitting as the wood broke with a crack as loud as a thunder-clap. I blacked out for a moment but was too frantic to do anything but drag myself up afterward. I crawled through the split, gasping at the cold outside. Instantly soaked, I forced myself to move. Water, on my hands; I licked it off gratefully.

I didn't know who was fighting, and I didn't waste time looking. With the drugs slowing me down, I rose to my feet, sprinted, stumbled, rolled as I fell and fought to my feet again.
Woods.

The forest looked like a haven and I scrambled into it, cutting open my hands, knees and arms on brambles in my mad flight.

 

Later I collapsed, choking on my own heavy breathing; body cramping, demanding water, food and sleep. I could give it two of those. There was water everywhere; I scooped it up in my aching, frozen hands. Cold.

Sleep.

I hoped I wouldn't be found. I curled up to conserve as much heat as I could, but I wasn't even shivering anymore. That was good, I decided. Not so cold now.

Sleep.

 

It felt as if days had passed, but all I knew for sure was that the sun was out when I opened my eyes and sneezed on fur that was across my face. There was some animal next to
me, giving me its warmth. I had enough clarity of mind now to realize that the creature—a wolf, I realized as I turned—was the only reason I
had
woken. I must have been on the verge of freezing to death when I had fallen asleep.

Snow.
That was why there was water everywhere. I had seen snow once, when I had gone with the Vahamil pack far to the north, but that had been nothing like this. This was deep and thick and still falling from the gray sky above.

I looked at the wolf, not for an instant believing that it was a wild beast, though unable to tell if it was from the pack with which I was familiar.

“Thank you,” I said, shivering.

The wolf tilted its head, questioning.

I could feel the human in it—in
her
—and I knew that my savior was a shapeshifter. But she was looking at me without any human comprehension. “My name is Oliza. You saved my life, I think.”

The wolf stood up and started plodding away from me. I stayed where I was, and she paused, looking back. She didn't need to speak; her warm brown eyes seemed to laugh at me, saying,
Follow.

Where was I? I could remember only the last couple of days with the lions, after I had stopped taking the drugs, but the change in weather was drastic enough to make me think that we had traveled weeks away to the north. Weeks that I had been away from home, weeks during which my people should have come after me and found me.

I was too lost, and too weak, to travel on my own. So I followed my silent guide, though my steps dragged and my stomach rumbled. The drugs still felt thick in my system; I was perspiring even as I shivered, the winter air slicing through my clothes and freezing my sweat. The world kept
turning to fog around me, but whenever I drifted, the wolf was there, bumping into my legs and guiding me in the right direction.

When I stopped, unable to move any farther, the wolf nudged me into a hollow where the snow was not so thick and the wind could not reach. She brought down a rabbit and we shared it, the raw meat disgusting to the “civilized” part of my mind but a welcome meal to the sensible,
starving
one.

My guide did not let me sleep. I suspected that she was worried I would not wake. After our meal I dragged myself back to my feet and we kept walking.

I spoke to the wolf as I walked. My stories were disjointed and often trailed off as I forgot what I had been saying, but my mute guide didn't complain. She made no indication that she understood, but the words helped keep me focused.

“I walked away, that was the last thing I did,” I said, thinking of Urban. “He was hurt because of me but … I couldn't stay …”

Why had no one come for me? They had to know that the lions had taken me.

“My Wyverns. Gretchen, and Nicias—did I tell you about Nicias?” I thought I had. I had talked about magic … or something, earlier …“My best friend,” I whispered. “The only man in Wyvern's Court not related to me who I can be alone with without causing a scandal. Shouldn't be a scandal.” I had never been tempted to do anything scandal worthy. Oliza Shardae Cobriana, her mind always on her throne. It might have been nice to be a carefree child for a while, chasing butterflies in the summertime.

I envied Salem and Rosalind. What I wouldn't have given to look at someone with—“they love each other so much.” Had I said the beginning of that thought aloud?

I was getting confused. I was repeating myself at times, but other times, I knew I was saying only fragments of sentences.

“I need sleep,” I said. “I'm so tired.”

I stumbled, going to my knees in the snow. My legs were numb. At least they didn't hurt.

The wolf nuzzled my shoulder with a whine. I put a hand on her shoulder and pushed myself back to my feet.

“It would be nice to be in the nest now,” I mused. “A fire to keep warm. People around. Sometimes it drives me crazy. Serpiente don't believe in privacy, and it gets so that even your thoughts don't feel like your own, but it would be nice to be warm. Nice if Marus and Prentice didn't look horrified when …”

I realized I had stopped walking again only when the wolf bumped against the backs of my knees. She whined, trotted ahead a few paces and tossed her head in a way that made me look at the horizon.

The fires burning in the distance were the sweetest signs I had ever seen. Desperation gave way to hope, and I started moving faster, stumbling forward because I couldn't run with legs that had gone numb hours before.

Someone saw me and called out, and in that moment, my energy fled me. I had held on to it only because the wolf had demanded I keep walking. Poison, malnutrition, dehydration, exhaustion, cold and injuries caught up to me just in time for me to collapse into the arms of a young man I had never seen before.