by James Peart
Mereka now leading the way, the Druid fell in behind her, then Simon and behind him Christopher, staying close as per Daaynan’s instructions. There was a string of taverns at the end of the street they were on and the corner of another with large clusters of people gathered around and inside the buildings. There were musicians in some, plucking an array of stringed instruments with a quick, lively tempo, and a few songsters. Daaynan didn’t recognise the words to the songs but he didn’t listen to music in general. They were upbeat ballads about life in the town sung with bawdy, gallows humour. He didn’t think they had much to celebrate. The lyrics were dark and occasionally obscene, which seemed to fit Dhu Nor.
The Axe and Stump was at the epicentre of the general hubbub, a large, sprawling construction that creaked and moaned from the weight of the bodies inside. It patrons stamped and swayed with the beat of the music, ale glasses swinging wildly, the beer (Simon called it beer, Daaynan remembered) looping perilously out of the glasses and onto the sawdust floor. Those that had had their fill rolled out of the tavern, lurching and pitching onto the street, uttering bawdy jokes and obscene witticisms. One of them brushed against Christopher, knocking most of his beer onto the floor. He began to curse him when he noticed Mereka instead who had drawn back her hood, her ash-blond hair spilling its length onto her shoulders, radiant in the dim light of the ale house. Ignoring Christopher, he proposed that she might take a room upstairs, maybe stay a few days in town, he could be her guide. It was alright, he owned the tavern. Daaynan gave the man a look which was intended to warn him off, yet he was oblivious to it, his eyes never leaving Mereka’s face, not even as Simon forcefully grabbed his arm.
“Get your hands off her, Crol!” came a roar from the other side of the house. The owner of the voice shortly emerged into view, a hulking brute of a man with a huge, weather worn face and surprisingly gentle eyes. Tearing Crol away from Mereka with one massive hand, he seized the man’s near empty glass with the other and put it on a nearby table. Winking at Simon, he said “I’m the only one who currently holds the license for these premises. Give him enough mead to drink, Crol will tell you he owns half of the Nor but that doesn’t make it true.”
“It’s...nice...very lively,” was all Simon could say.
The man shot him a sardonic look. “D’you want it, boy? Place has been a millstone around my neck since the day I bought the license.” Crol slid to the floor, perhaps in an attempt to escape the other man’s grip. In one fluid movement the owner of the Axe and Stump got hold of him again, dragged him to his feet and propelled him outside. Turning back to the group, he said. “Now, at the risk of sounding nosy, where is it that you’re from? Because you’re certainly not Nor people, I could tell that the minute you stepped into this establishment.”
“My name is Daaynan,” the Druid said. We’re from Carasan, or at least my friends are.” He indicated Mereka and the Englishmen. The owner looked doubtfully at them. “We’re searching for a man called Drett Peers who is said to work here. Do you know where we can find him?”
“Carasan, you say? Let’s put that aside for the moment. I’m Wade Torn, owner of the Axe and Stump, at least on my better days. Drett works from here alright. I put him in a back office, but he has nothing to do with the actual running of the tavern. Do you mind me asking who gave you his name?”
“My friend here,” the Druid indicated Mereka. Torn looked her over once more, taking in her obvious beauty, the spill of ash-blond hair fringed over her brilliant jade-grey eyes and fine, delicate featured face. “With respect, my lady,” he said to her, “if Drett had known the likes of you, he would have told me; told everyone, I’d suspect. The name is familiar though,” he considered.
“I knew him briefly some time ago,” Mereka said, “when I was...different.”
“Indeed?” He turned back to the Druid. “What do you want him for?”
“He is known to procure rare items from time to time,” Daaynan told him. “He trades them. The rarer the better, we were informed. I would gladly tell you more but I think we ought to conduct this conversation in a more private setting.” He indicated their surroundings with a sweep of one hand. Torn looked at the Druid, assessing him, then nodded abruptly. “Come with me.” He guided the company through the maelstrom of revellers to a nook in the corner of the tavern with its own door and window and a small bench around a narrow table. He ushered them inside then fastened the latch on the door and gestured them to sit. The sounds of the tavern around them faded in the intimacy of the nook.
When they were all seated, Daaynan continued. “We are in search of one such rare item. A Carrion bird.”
Wade Torn gazed unflinchingly at the Druid. “Look,” he said, “Drett works for me. He buys and sells unusual items, true, but I employ him as a negotiator. I match buyer with seller and send him out to trade. After agreeing on price, I pay him a commission and keep what is left over. That’s the way it’s done. Now, an item like this is hard to find but I happen to know where I can get my hands on one. You will have to deal with me. This kind of bird is valuable on the secondary market, so it is expensive. What have you got to trade?”
“Wait a minute,” Mereka said, cutting off Daaynan before he could answer, “Why are we listening to him? We came here to talk with Drett Peers. That’s who we should speak to.”
Torn faced her, his gentle eyes probing. “My dear, contrary to what you may have been told, this is the way things work. Drett is away on business and even if he weren’t, this conversation would still be happening.”
She shook her head. “How has Drett managed to live in style all these years by earning a mere cut from a deal?”
“He’s a born trader and negotiator and I pay him a generous commission. Now, I’ve outlined the situation and you must take it or leave it.”
Daaynan studied the man before him. There was no mistaking the seriousness of his words. He meant what he said, or he wanted them to think so. Was he being sincere? There was no such thing as a completely honest trader but there were those that would fool you from the beginning. He saw greed in the other’s eyes, but was he lying? Simon looked to be doing his own thinking while Christopher’s expression was neutral, his gaze distant, his mind away with other kinds of birds. He smiled inwardly at his private joke. A fleeting thought crossed his mind that a month earlier he would not have made such a humorous association.
He considered the matter and decided he would trust Wade Torn.
“You have a deal,” he stated, “if you accept what we have brought to trade.”
Torn nodded brusquely. “Let’s see it.”
The Druid produced from an inner sleeve in his cloak an object wrapped and knotted in a velvet cloth. He placed it on the table and untwisted the cloth, revealing the meta-crystal Mereka had given him before her transformation. Its diamond-like surface reflected the light that shafted in through the nook’s window in fiercely glittering bands of colours, its central red flaw pulsing like a tiny heartbeat. Daaynan stared at it, as if trying to draw strength from it. He was beginning to feel very weak. It was growing harder and harder to concentrate. No doubt the effect of the King’s magic in him.
The tavern owner stared at the crystal, then at the Druid and Mereka. “Where did you get this from?” he demanded. “It belongs to the woman,” the Druid told him. “Then you are not what you appear to be,” he whispered, shaking his great head. “You are a crossling! An Alterform that changes from man to woman and back, belonging to neither gender. I thought there were no more left in Carasan.”
“Does it matter who or what she is...?” Daaynan began, but Mereka gestured him to be silent. He did so, more because a sudden, wincing pain ratcheted through his body, leaving him momentarily breathless. As his vision swam, he still noticed Mereka watching Torn’s expression carefully, seeing something in it that caught her attention. “What do you know of crosslings?” she asked him quietly.
“More than you would have guessed,” Torn said. He leaned back on th
e narrow bench, his soft eyes rolling up to the ceiling, yielding to an unseen force that descended suddenly on the table. The air in the small nook shimmered with a vague intensity, the glasses of beer moving of their own accord, tapping an irregular pattern on the surface of the counter as they vibrated and shook. Simon and Christopher began to shift away from where the big man sat. Only Mereka and the Druid stayed put, staring at Torn as if transfixed. Something snapped around the barman’s face, a veil not unlike the one which had covered Mereka’s, back in the forested cove, one of skin and tissue that pulsed and fluxed across his features, livid and pounding, a mass of shifting tissue that slowly transformed the landscape of his face. When it ceased, the veil igniting in a flashing spot and disappearing, the small company found themselves staring at the point where Wade Torn had sat.
In his place was a woman.
Mereka gasped. Christopher glanced down at his beer. Simon and the Druid looked at each other and then at the person that had replaced Torn. He/she still had some of the barman’s features. The eyes were the same, pliant and yielding...and yet, Daaynan thought, was there a more intelligent spark in them? He thought so. And the shoulders, if not the face, were still broad and strong, perhaps even for a man. It was the face which registered most of the change. It was pale, and had a delicate structure and cast, as if made from bone china. It seemed to absorb the light in the room with a discreet, calming tranquillity.
“You’re a crossling,” Mereka whispered.
“And you used to be one,” Torn said, “but you are only a woman now.”
“How did you know?”
“Because you never sensed what I was. A crossling is born with a sixth sense. It features more with some but it is always there. I knew you weren’t one when I first saw you, but I admit that I was confused as you seemed to bear the hallmarks of one of our kind. It was in the way you held yourself, much like those of us do in the female state. Then I saw the meta-crystal and understood it was yours and I knew for certain.”
“If all this is true,” Daaynan said, “and you are what you say you are, then why didn’t you already know what we had to trade? Why go through this routine in the first place?” Out of the corner of his eye, the Druid saw Simon shake his head and heard him mutter something about not believing what was staring him in the face. If he’d had the courage to voice his words louder, he would have told him that what you see and what you hear are two different things and your life might depend on knowing the difference. “Why didn’t you use your extra sense?”
“We can...” Mereka said, before correcting herself, “...could...only do that as women.”
Torn nodded. “Your friend is right.” “As a man I am unusually perceptive, but in me as I am now, this sense is very strong. For example, I know you are a Druid of immense power and that you are currently struggling with this power.” She lifted her hand. “Don’t worry, I will not speak of this to anyone. Someone has infected your magic with a brand of their own and you are chasing that same someone north to Brinemore in the hope of confronting him. You know him as the King, but he is an ancient sorcerer, lifted from the vaults of the dead, alive in a time when such sorcerers had absolute reign over their lands.”
“This is true,” Daaynan said slowly. “Can you tell us where he is at the present moment?”
“I can, but you already know or sense this. He is within reach of the city. He too is struggling with this fusion of both your magics. Listen to me, Druid. It is not just your magic that is combining. Your minds are locked in a battle for supremacy, one vying against the other for control. This is the sickness you are feeling: each of you finds the other distasteful yet neither of you wishes to give up control. Access to the other’s magic is too tantalising a prospect to leave aside, I would imagine.”
Daaynan leaned forward, his hands spread before him, flattening on the counter. “If I were to gain control, if I somehow subdued him, would that be enough to put a stop to the Steward?”
“The Steward of Brinemore. This is your ultimate goal, to destroy or replace him.” Here, Torn glanced quickly at Christopher before turning back to Daaynan. “On your own you will not be successful. Together with the King’s strength, you might succeed, but the Steward knows you are coming, knows how many of you there are, though he is not aware of the man you have in mind to replace him with. Oh...the Steward has drawn a Tochried into this world!” Torn’s entire body flinched with the impact of some dark understanding and he broke his gaze on the Druid.
“What is a Tochried?” Daaynan asked.
There was no answer. “Tell me. What is it?”
“It- it is a Maegera. An elemental being of the dark. They existed so long ago but never on this plane...whoever or whatever persuaded this one to come here must have been powerful, or extremely influential.”
“Is it like those Faerie creatures he sent to Daaynan’s castle?” Simon asked. “Creatures from another era?”
“No, no. The Faeries had their spell here. This being exists independent of time and place. Until recently, they weren’t aware of countries like the Northern Earth, or any lands whatsoever.”
“Like in a different dimension,” Simon spoke in mild wonderment. “in light bodies...pure spirits.”
Torn shook her head. “You don’t understand. They come from Outside. To us, in their natural state they would be invisible. I don’t know if they’ve ever taken on physical, or even ethereal, form before.”
“Can you tell us about this one?” Daaynan asked her.
“The Tochried that has crossed over into this world is wild, unpredictable. It identifies as male, but in reality it has no gender. It...”
“What magic does it possess? What can it achieve?”
“Anything you can imagine, and more besides. I don’t know much about this one as, to my knowledge, they have never expressed themselves in this way before, but if it decides to invest itself with powers it could have near unlimited physical strength.”
“What about the person who brought it into being? Surely the Steward was not responsible for that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see past this creature, it hurts too much.”
Daaynan reached forward and gripped Torn by her collar. “You have to tell me how to defeat it! It, or the person responsible for it being here. You must tell me now!”
Torn fell back against the other’s grasp, helpless and afraid. “I...the Steward can control it, but only once. It is a command that it will only obey, a final directive...
“There is another...one who can shape its thinking and behaviour...he calls it the Thrust. I don’t know much about him. This man lives in the shadows, but he has been helping the Steward. He was behind the attack on your keep, manipulating the Faerie creatures to attack you. I don’t know any more. Really.”
Daaynan released his grip on Torn, sitting back down. “I’m sorry to have done that,” he said, eyeing her rumpled collar. “It’s important that we find and stop Longfellow before he can put his plan into action. Is there anything more you can tell us, anything we should know?”
A single tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away distractedly, regaining her composure. “Longfellow has mobilised a portion of his army whose task is to track and destroy magic users,” she sniffed. “He does this while he secretly uses this man’s magic to control the Tochried.” She leaned forward suddenly. “Confront him, Druid. Put an end to him. The Northern Earth is better off without such people.”
Daaynan offered her the crystal. “Thank you for your help. Now, could you bring us to the Carrion bird?”
“Keep it,” Torn said, looking at the crystal. “You may need it.” She turned to Mereka. “You know how it works?”
Mereka nodded. “It protects the wearer against the use of sorcery.”
“Yes, but it can only be employed a number of times before the light inside it fades to nothing. When this happens, it becomes just an ordinary crystal, not much more valuable than a piece of rock. Now, you do not
have a lot of time and I must yet take you to the bird.
“Come, follow me.” She rose, her face running, beginning to change, to transform back into the Wade Torn they had met on entering the Axe and Stump. Daaynan wondered quietly what effect this changing back and forth would have on an individual, indeed what effect Mereka’s transfiguration had had on her. He noticed Simon looking at her and wondered if he were thinking the same thing. He could have found an accommodation of sorts with people here in Dhu Nor, just as Mereka had in Carasan, yet in the end it hadn’t been enough, had it? We all have our cross to bear, he thought darkly. Was this the way of things in Simon’s England? He thought it likely, knowing Simon’s particular cross. Would this experience change Christopher for the better? Only time would say so.
Torn unlatched the door and the company followed him through the tavern. They were ushered quickly past the revellers and through a side-door that led to a series of back-offices along a dusky corridor. They turned right and left, past an office which Torn announced to belong to Drett Peers whom they had by now all but forgotten, and into a rear vestibule with a door that opened onto a yard. There was a large cell in one corner of the yard which looked specially constructed to house something valuable. On closer inspection it was a tempered steel cage with sheet metal laid over iron bars, the metal exposed in a window-like frame to permit the viewer a glimpse of what lay within.
Peering out through the window was the largest bird Daaynan had ever seen.
It was powerfully built, like a bird of prey, with a heavy, almost ponderous head and a large, smooth, yellow hooked beak. Its legs were strong and muscular, ending in formidable looking talons that would rend flesh and more besides. Its feathers were a mottled brown and white, the endings of some tipped in gold to form an irregular pattern along the length of its body. Its eyes were arresting: blue-green in hue, they glanced at the small company with a knowing awareness; sharp, yet not entirely unfriendly.
