Changelings at Court

by Ken Altabef

  She was the designated heir in body and legend and spirit. So be it. But that did not make her capable or wise. Moon Dancer had tutored her in a particular way, instilling in her core a moral center that perhaps some of the others lacked. But she didn’t always know what to do. She struggled not to let the others see her insecurities. Moonshadow had the power of the Moon to back up her decisions but were they the right ones?

  Self doubt. An ugly thing.

  The idea of a spy among them, working against their purposes, sabotaging their chances for freedom, disturbed her greatly. She knew very little about the longstanding feud between the Summer Court and the Winter. The falling out had occurred hundreds of years ago. Moon Dancer had never told her the story and had always urged Moonshadow not to ask. She believed that the animosity would die down eventually if the old feud hatreds were not perpetuated. Moon Dancer hadn’t directly forbidden anyone to talk about it of course, but her ideas held sway and seemed to make good sense.

  But Moonshadow’s ignorance of the Winter Court left her drowning in darkness when it came to considering who might be an informant among their ranks. Even so, the name that first came to mind was Varney. She wasn’t even sure why that should be, but had learned enough to follow her instincts.

  Those instincts led her to Varney’s house, a small mud-brick shack well off the beaten track, in a rear corner of Barrow Downes quite near the mushroom caves. Moonshadow knocked tentatively on the thin wooden door.

  There came no answer and she tried again. And again. Eventually, the door creaked open to reveal an elderly faery. He was tall and thin, with only a few tufts of wispy white hair at the top resembling a bird’s nest, an extremely long nose and flabby, moist lips. The skin on the tips of his nose and cheeks had hardened with age to a thorny consistency reminiscent of tree bark. The open door released a spectacular smell of exotic orchids in bloom. The silhouettes of several small birds darted silently behind him.

  “Oh!” he remarked, “Moonflower. What a lovely surprise.”

  She chuckled. “Hello Varney.”

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips.

  Varney was almost two hundred years old and had lived among the Summer Court all that time. A very eccentric fellow, he held an unabiding love for two things—flowers and birds. While any of the faeries could claim a certain degree of green thumb, and green everything else in some cases, Varney was the only one able to raise wildflowers in the subterranean depths of Barrow Downes. His home was a veritable arboretum. Everywhere there were growing things but not just any growing things, not the usual toadstools and mushrooms which loved the dark; he grew an array of orchids and wildflowers with a rainbow of blooms all year round. It was said that he buzzed around fertilizing them by himself in some bizarre sex ritual and most people would not doubt it. Others thought his exotic flowers fed on liquid moonlight supplied directly from his veins.

  He also adored birds. And indeed sparrows and robins and the occasional cardinal could be seen flitting in an out of his windows at just about any hour. It was impossible to know which he loved more the flowers or the birds. Some said he raised the flowers just to keep the birds content. Others thought his miraculous flowers attracted the birds. Either way.

  “To what do I owe this visit?” he asked.

  Just then Moonshadow realized she hadn’t prepared anything to say. I’m supposed to sneak around the corner I guess, she thought, to ask about the flowers or something. She didn’t want to do that. She didn’t feel the need to do that.

  “I think there’s a spy here at Barrow Downes—an informant for the Winter Court.”

  Varney’s milky eyes went wide. “Subterranean subterfuge! Oh dear! Come in. Come in. You must tell me all about it.”

  He ushered her to a table in the center of the sitting room. The table was carved from an old oak tree and incredibly it seemed the thing was still alive for there was new growth sprouting from the sides and several shoots had recently been shaved down from the surface.

  “I don’t know much else about it,” she admitted. “A spy for the Winter Court. Who could it be?”

  “Meadowlark…”

  “Has gone to join them, I know. But there’s someone else.”

  He rubbed his face with long slender fingertips, causing a few dried flakes of bark to tumble down. “Threadneedle used to bed her, you know. The Dark Queen.”

  “It’s not him, either.”

  He sighed. “Really it could be anyone. She has a sort of power over men and women.”

  “What sort of power?”

  “Persuasion. Bone-deep seduction. Old magic, very old magic. She’s completely ruthless. But if you think she’s bad you should have seen the old fellow that came before her.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Og-Sethoth. That was his name! Now there was a nasty piece of work. I shudder.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “She killed him with desire.”

  Moonshadow didn’t want to hear any more. “You seem to know an awful lot about them.”

  He gave his arms a little flap. “Little birds tell me all sorts of things.”

  She decided to get right to the point. “How do I know you are Varney at all? They could have switched you.”

  “A changeling child?” he laughed. “At my age?”

  She didn’t find it funny at all.

  “Really, my dear. You wound me. Do you think a substitute could have grown all these wonderful flowers? There is only one Varney!”

  “The switch could have been a hundred years ago, before you even started the garden.”

  “Could be,” he admitted. “How do you know anyone is anyone?”

  She had no good answer.

  “One way comes to mind,” he said with a lecherous grin. “The answer is simple. We shall make love.”

  His request came as no surprise. Actually, she’d been wondering when he was going to get around to it. Varney had pressed her for sex many times before. Of course, she had refused him as she refused most everyone. She was very selective about her couplings and preferred only a rare female encounter. Varney had offered to make the change for her but it was nothing more than an empty gesture. Someone his age could never muster the wild energy needed to change gender.

  “Yes. Yes!” he said. “We shall do it right here. On the table!”

  Moonshadow sighed. “I really must be going.”

  “But you can’t even tell if I am who I say I am.”

  “I’ll just have to live with that.”

  She squeezed his hand where it lay on the table and went to the door. A pair of sparrows swerved across her path, dipping and swerving in a passion of their own.

  “Is there anyone you can truly trust, then?” Varney asked.

  Not really, she thought. Not really. But she must.

  “A few. I think.”

  She left, feeling even more confused than before. How was she ever going to find the traitor? What was she supposed to do? Have sex with all the suspects? Hey wait a minute, she thought. That’s exactly what I’ll do.

  Chapter 50

  Eric envisioned a mob of angry warders rushing up the stair. He grabbed his daughter’s hand and yanked her backward and out onto the first floor landing. She yelped slightly in surprise.

  He spun round, expecting to meet the tip of the floor sergeant’s bayonet. But the corridor lay empty. The warder’s desk left abandoned.

  “He must’ve gone to fetch the others,” Nora said, quickly gathering her wits. “Let’s go in here.”

  They stepped into the warder’s office, a small room just off the corridor. It seemed as cold and sterile as the rest of the Tower. It had a small wooden desk, splotched with ink and a few scattered papers. A small square window behind the chair, the bell rope dangling.

  “This won’t work,” Eric said. “They’ll find us in an instant.”

  Nora flitted around the tiny room. “I wish you had taken the guard’s jacket. Maybe then…”

  “Didn’t
think of it,” he said. “It doesn’t much matter now. Nora, I just can’t believe what you’ve gotten us into. I’ll give myself up. There’s nothing else for it. Can you escape, do you think?”

  “Father, this is meant to be your escape.”

  “No chance of that now. We’ve no time left.”

  “We can jump from this window,” she suggested, unlatching the pane.

  “Have you gone stark, staring mad?” He gazed down to the courtyard below. “There are a dozen men down there and look at those dogs.”

  “The dogs won’t bother us,” she said. “And we’ll have help. The wards against faeries end at the foot of the tower. We just have to get outside.”

  “No!”

  “It’s only a drop of six feet or so, if one were to hang down from the window casing. We could make it!”

  “Absolutely not,” he said eyeing the door to the little office. Surely the guards would be bursting in any second.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “Yes, I am.

  “No, I mean you’re right—there’s no time.”

  With that, she turned and climbed out the window. For a moment Eric saw only the tips of her fingers as they clutched the bottom of the sill. And then she was gone.

  His heart sinking in his chest, he rushed to the window to see Nora had landed roughly below. She tried to stand but it was obvious she’d twisted her ankle. A pair of redcoats noticed her and began their approach with forceful strides. They did not look conciliatory.

  “Damn it!” he said.

  Setting the blade of the rapier between his teeth like some raggedy pirate Eric climbed over the sill, dangled from the ledge and let himself drop. He landed squarely on the sodden ground below, his bare feet spraying mud. In addition to the guard’s jacket he considered he might also have stopped to ascertain a pair of boots. Never matter. He did not expect this debacle to take too long. He would try and defend Nora as long as he was able and buy her time to escape however she may contrive to do so.

  The Salt Tower marked the southeast corner of a rectangular niche of land within the Tower complex. One side of this space was bounded by the tall gray slate of the armory building and the other by the high wall of the tower’s inner enclosure. At one end rose the cylindrical tower from which they had just recently dropped. The far end turned into the greater yard of the prison just at the point where the Lanthorn gate broke the enclosure wall. The gate stood midway between the Salt Tower and Lanthorn Tower.

  The pair of yeoman warders were now upon them. One had nearly intercepted Nora by the time Eric stepped in front of her.

  “What’s going on?” the guardsman shouted.

  “Damned if I know,” said the other. “Someone said faeries.”

  “That’s George Wilkes,” said the first, pointing at Nora. “The other must be a nixie.”

  “No. That’s not George Wilkes! Come here, you!”

  “Leave her be!” Eric shouted, an instruction which must have sounded incredibly stupid because ‘she’ still looked very much like a big burly ‘he’. The guard did not understand but was glad to discuss the matter with his sabre.

  Eric raised his own sword crosswise in sign of surrender. He drew a long breath of cold air which only served to precipitate a minor coughing fit. The yeoman ignored Eric’s antics and swung at him full across the midsection. Eric had just enough time to swing the tip of his sword down and parry the blow.

  “I don’t want to—” The rest of his surrender was lost in another bout of coughing. Too late now, the guardsman went at him in a full-on attack. Eric had been trained from childhood by his father’s man-at-arms Fitzroy March. He could not claim to be a premier swordsman by any standard, but in truth, he did better than most. The jailer was, in comparison, a bit of a clumsy oaf. Eric had little difficulty parrying his broad strokes, keeping Nora safe behind him. While the yeoman lacked skill, he did have one powerful asset—an accomplice.

  Soon Eric was dueling both men simultaneously and he realized that he was badly out of shape and out of practice. He didn’t want to fight at all and avoided any deadly thrusts. He stung the weaker of his adversaries on the shoulder, hoping it might dissuade him, and left it at that. Still, he could not hold up his defense indefinitely and the guardsmen showed no mercy.

  One swung for his neck and Eric turned the blade aside. The other thrust for his body, striking him high in the chest. Eric felt the sabre’s tip scrape the inside of his shoulder blade, knocking back his arm, and then exit from his back. He dropped his weapon in the mud.

  “Well struck,” he mumbled. The blade withdrew. As he fell to his knees, he glanced behind him for any sign of Nora. She was already gone. How had she managed that? There was no one nearby except one of the Tower’s guard dogs. A dog? Was that Nora? If so, her glamour was accurate enough to fool anyone. He realized she could’ve escaped at any time.

  He raised both hands in surrender, coughing blood this time. But the first guardsman came in anyway, slashing his sabre back and forth with a malicious grin on his face. He was evidently not pleased with his shoulder wound. Not pleased at all. He stepped forward, drawing the blade back, and then swung in a killing arc.

  Eric saw his death coming straight at him. And then it was deflected with a clang. A strange green mist half-enveloped the guard. A tall, lithe figure stepped in front of Eric, knocking the yeoman’s sabre away. The Green Man!

  The pair of yeoman warders were no match for the skills of the Green Man. Eric’s savior had an easy time of it. He parried a blow from the second man, then spun round like a top, knocking the blade away from the other. He stepped inside his opponent’s reach and punched the man right in the nose.

  The second man danced cautiously to the side, trying to time his attack to an apparent opening but saw none. The Green Man shook his head in disgust, feinted a thrust at the man’s throat and with a deft flick, managed to disarm the yeoman of his blade entirely. The sabre spun away in a pinwheel arc and embedded in the ground at Eric’s knee. The Green Man ducked and spun and came up just in front of the second man, whom he punched in the face a second time.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know,” Eric said. He found it difficult to breathe, let alone talk.

  “Up! Come on. Let’s try then.”

  The Green Man extended a hand.

  “Thread… needle?”

  “At your service.”

  “And Nora?”

  “She’ll be waiting. Come now. Let’s away.”

  Eric pulled himself to his feet.

  “Hurry, hurry,” whispered the Green Man. “We’re not clear yet.”

  Threadneedle fairly dragged Eric around the turn of the armory. There he was afforded a view of the inner courtyard and all the bedlam that had erupted there. A dozen redcoats were locked in battle with an equal number of Green Men. A handful of jailhouse dogs yapped and snarled, harassing the faeries. There were even a couple of scrabbling chickens darting back and forth.

  Eric realized Threadneedle hadn’t killed either of the guardsmen he’d fought and it looked as if the other faeries had not done so either. Amidst their display of acrobatics and energetic fighting, they were wholly capable of disarming their foes without deadly violence. They were clearly restraining themselves even if they put at risk their own lives. They’re doing that for me, he realized.

  “Come on,” Threadneedle urged. “Don’t gawk.”

  Threadneedle pulled him along, and the pair exited through the open Lanthorn gate. The cobbled walkway between the inner wall and outer casements was apparently deserted, or perhaps the faeries had already cleared it of adversaries. They had a straight run to one of the several footbridges that spanned the Tower’s moat. As Eric limped along, a rifle shot whizzed past his ear. He felt the strength go out of his legs. Threadneedle practically carried him the rest of the way across the bridge.

  Eric saw a few faeries at the guard post on the other side. So many of them, all to stage this breakou
t in broad daylight.

  A rifle shot whizzed past Eric’s head.

  “A fat lot of trouble… to rescue… a corpse.”

  “You’re not quite dead yet,” Threadneedle replied, helping him down the half flight of steps that led to the wharf. Eric was propelled onto a small fishing boat that lay in waiting. This was a flat-bottomed skiff twenty feet long made of fenland reed with a half canopy of brown linen. Three faeries accompanying him on the skiff immediately took the appearance of a salty crew.

  “The River Police,” he heard someone say. He felt too dizzy to open his eyes but felt the acceleration as the faery boatmen tugged earnestly at the oars. The disguise would probably not help them much as the King’s Runners were adept at chasing down various vagabonds on the river, be they faeries or regular longshoremen thugs.

  Eric nearly dozed off, but a cool rag placed to his forehead roused him again. He did manage to get his eyes open. And he saw Nora sitting beside him.

  “Be strong, Father,” she said.

  He wanted to reassure her, even though he felt the life draining out of him. But it was too hard. He hadn’t the strength to speak. He made a vain attempt at adjusting his shirt to try and keep her from seeing all the blood. He wanted to tell her he loved her but he just wasn’t able.

  He noticed she’d chosen to appear in her human form rather than as a faery. He was no longer sure which was her normal appearance—human or faery. But the idea that she had chosen to appear as his daughter in his final moments warmed his heart.

  Eric felt his life slipping away. He nearly passed out again but was yanked up from his seat. “Step to, my lord!” someone whispered.

  He was dragged up the side of the skiff and onto the deck of a cargo ship. The small fishing skiff continued noisily on its way, presumably drawing off the river police pursuit. As he passed the nameplate on the schooner he read the name clearly as the Durham Flyer, one of the last of the Grayson ships. He smiled.

  Chapter 51