The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  “Toward or away from our goal?”

  “It pains me to say it ain’t that simple.”

  “Again, I think we’d do much better staying on the ridgetops, where we can keep our goal in sight,” Athena said.

  Cram shook his head. “Miss Black taught me that the ridges lie acrost our path. If we stay on top of ’em, we go sidewise to our goal. The only way is to cut straight through. Never mention that we stand out like a boil on a pig’s bottom up here.”

  “The valleys, however, are steep and awash with patches of thorn and briar,” Boyle said. “I fear that because of the difficulty of the terrain, we are moving with less . . . speed than before.” She studiously did not glance at Henry.

  “Finally,” Henry said, and pulled himself up on a low-hanging branch.

  “Finally?” Boyle said.

  How could she pretend that she did not know what he meant? “Finally we speak of the thing that is stuck in your craw.”

  “And that is?”

  “I am slowing you down,” Henry said.

  “What of it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What of it?’?” Henry couldn’t breathe. The throbbing in his leg had moved up into his chest. “I cannot go faster. I am trying, but I cannot.”

  “I did not claim that you could go faster. Nor did I claim that it was in any way personal,” Boyle said with care, and that care galled him even more.

  “No, neither did you claim any of the responsibility!”

  She looked at him as if he were a sick puppy. “Responsibility?”

  “Responsibility for . . . this.” He could not name it. He waved his hand over his leg.

  Athena laughed. “Is that what this is about? The stairs?”

  Her laughter pulled his fingers into a fist. “How could it not be about that?”

  “Henry, that was a long time ago,” she said. In the silence that followed, she blew out her breath. “Fine. What more can I say? I did not know you. You were keeping us from our goal. I had to make a flash decision, and so I did. I pushed you. I would do the same again.”

  “I am glad to know how we stand then.”

  Boyle opened her mouth. She shut it. Then she began again. “Henry Collins. I consider you a comrade. I will fight beside you. I will even defend you. I see that you are hurt, and I take responsibility for that hurt. But I will not coddle you. Now, I have a ridiculous valley to cross.”

  True to her word, she started down the hill. And Henry watched her go through a haze of rage. He was perfectly positioned to see something launch itself from the tree above and plummet toward her.

  Time slowed, almost to a standstill.

  Father Friel had often said that he was the quickest thinker in the Jesuit school in Port Royal, but Henry disagreed with that description. It was not that he thought quickly. A more accurate description of the phenomenon would be that at occasional moments not of his choosing, his experience of the passage of time slowed drastically. This slowing gave him an opportunity to examine problems or questions at a leisurely pace. This was one of those moments.

  The cat was about Athena’s size and thicker, weight 150 pounds or so. It was neither a bobcat nor a lion of the mountains. It was heavily muscled, especially on its squat hind legs. Its fur, various shades of green and brown. Its paws stretched outward, each with an enlarged hooklike claw that looked sharp enough to shred muscle. Two flaps of skin extended from its chest to its forelegs, creating wings of a sort. Its elongated prehensile tail ended in a wicked-looking ball of ridged bone, about the size of two fists put together. Henry had read of ball-tailed cats, the mythical predators of the western forests, but he had never imagined he would ever see one.

  Without waiting for Henry to finish his inspection, time sped back up.

  The cat pulled its forepaws in and twisted in the air so that the ball of bone was now plummeting at Athena’s head. Henry grabbed a vial from his pouch, but the beast was too close. He yelled, “Boyle!”

  Athena spun, just barely pulling her head from the path of the tail. The creature screeched and opened its flaps, and the ball slammed into her shoulder. The girl cried out and went down.

  Another yowl sounded behind him. He whirled to see a second of the creatures crouching on a limb, directly above Cram. It bunched its hindquarters, and this time Henry did not hesitate. As it leaped, he reached inside of himself for his Source and threw the vial. It hit the oak tree with a clink and puffed into a cloud of black powder, covering the tree and the cat. Henry pushed with his Source.

  The black powder turned blue. It exploded in a gout of fire just as the cat leaped. Fire might signal their presence to trackers, but that was the wager: some fire or no Cram.

  The flaming thing hurtled out of the tree, yowling, and headed straight at the serving boy. Cram threw himself in the only direction possible, down the hill. He tumbled, rolling, but if he made any sound, it was drowned out by the burning animal before Henry. Its eyes glimmered, and it spun, tail swinging around like a flail. The ball struck Henry full in the belly, knocking the air out of him. He was flying for a long moment, then slammed into a tree trunk. Bright spots flickered across his vision. The flaming cat screamed in rage, awash in chemystral fire that burned far more hungrily and fiercely than a normal one, and it leaped, hook claws outstretched. Henry threw himself facefirst to the ground. Heat licked at his neck, but the cat, mad from burning and fear, landed just past him. Three steps away, it fell to the ground, twitching and mewling.

  Henry pushed himself up. The smell was terrible. He leaned on a tree and retched. Pain lanced through his stomach with every move. It would have been easy to stop. It would have been easy just to sit down and hope Athena Boyle and Cram could handle the other one. But he could not.

  He stumbled to the top of the slope.

  Below, in the clearing, Cram lay unmoving. Athena stood with her back to a tree, facing not one but two cats. Her sword moved back and forth between one and the other. One bled from its foreleg. The other spun, and Athena danced around the tree. The ball smashed into the bark, just where her knees had been. Her sword licked out. The creature sprang out of the way, tail raised for another strike.

  Her skill, her balance, her anticipation: it was breathtaking. And ridiculously, in a low, singsong voice, she was talking to the cats.

  “That’s right, pretties. I’m the one who will give you some sport.” The injured one turned to Cram and hissed. Athena lashed out with her sword at its flank. “Not that one. I know you only want to play with conscious mice.” The ball of the other swung at her, and she ducked behind another tree. Bark flew. Athena darted to the other side to strike again, but the cat was there, anticipating her attack. It lashed out with its forefoot, and Athena twisted desperately aside. She gasped and stumbled back, the other cat circling. But she had nowhere to go. The briars formed a solid wall of thorn behind her. The cats closed in, tails whipping back and forth in anticipation.

  Henry found he could not move. On the stairs in Philadelphi, she had left him for dead.

  Athena saw him. “Henry!”

  He looked down the slope at her. Then he turned away.

  CHAPTER 20

  That palisade is too danged low. Nain’t you never seen a ball-tail jump?

  —Ernesta Coolidge, huntrix

  Henry Collins turned and walked away. His thoughtful face and ragged hair disappeared over the lip of the hill.

  “No,” Athena said under her breath. She could not believe it. For Cram’s sake at least. She knew where she stood with Henry, but she had always thought there was a fellow feeling between him and the other boy. Nor did the chemyst strike her as a coward. She thought that at least, when they finally had it out, it would be face-to-face. Well, she would not give him the satisfaction of calling after him.

  The cats closed in. How absurd to die in this forsaken wilderness, with no one to witness and no reputation to be gained. She kicked out and caught the wounded one in the face. It yowled and raked its keen claws at her
. She whipped her leg back into the tearing thorns of the brake, but her blood was up so high she barely felt them. The paw lashed in again, and she tried to parry it; the madly strong thing batted the blade away as if it were a Christmas bauble. The sword spun through the air and fell to the ground just a few feet away. It might as well have been miles.

  Too quiet on her other side.

  Only by instinct did she duck, and the ball of bone at the end of the other cat’s tail smashed into the briar, just where her chest had been. The beast screamed and twisted, lashing out at her neck. Only one direction left. She hunched her shoulders, closed her eyes, and pushed back with all her might, iron-hard thorns raking across her back, her arms, and her face, into the hole made by the ball. She drove her feet against the earth until the thorns were too thick for her to move, and then she opened her eyes.

  The branches had sprung back into place behind her, like a curtain, and a good two feet of briar stood between her and the cats. Her tricorne, quirked at a jaunty angle, hung midway between her and the outside. The wounded cat launched itself after her but then scrambled back, yowling in pain and frustration. The other one just stared at Athena. They were intelligent, these things, not just cunning. Pack tactics for hunting, diversion, isolating the wounded. The staring one was the larger of the two, with grizzled whiskers and a blaze of white fur on its shoulder, surrounding a wicked-looking scar that trailed down its back. It hissed at Athena.

  It turned toward Cram. The boy was still lying on his side, moaning, only half awake after his tumble down the hill. She cursed. How had she left him so defenseless?

  “No,” Athena whispered.

  The big cat stalked toward Cram, tail whipping back and forth.

  “No! Cram! Wake up! Move, you daft butler!” Athena yelled. No response. But what could she do? The other one stood sentry, planted between her and the sword, licking the wound on its leg. If Athena pushed her way out of the brake, they would be on her in seconds, and what would that do for Cram? Once she fell, they would have him for dessert. And what help then for Ruby Teach?

  She yelled, “Oi! Whitey! Here! Come for me, you motherless tabby! Come on!”

  The big cat just looked over its shoulder at Athena, and she could swear that the thing smiled at her. It turned back, and its powerful legs bunched to spring. Athena could not watch, but she had to. She owed Cram that much.

  Fire came over the hill. Blue fire blazed from the torches in both of Henry Collins’s hands. Screaming like a mournful banshee and limping like an angry grandfather, he hobbled down the slope. The torches burned like daylight in the shadows of the hollow. Both cats hissed and yowled, backing away from Henry, who stood over Cram like Leonidas at Thermopylae. Then he advanced on them, swinging the torches as if he wanted to fly. Henry edged toward the wounded one and singed its fur. It howled and launched itself away over the hill. Henry speared one torch into the ground at Cram’s feet, grabbed the other with both hands, and then came toward the big ball-tail, stabbing the torch forward like a spear, and yelling, “Ha! Hie thee! Felidae! Back to the dark with your brothers! I singed one of yours to death, and I will not hesitate to singe you as well! Beware of the singe-er!”

  He truly needed to work on his taunts.

  With the last “Hai!” the big cat had had enough and bared its fangs at Athena one last time. It turned, leaped up over the hill, and was gone.

  Henry Collins doused the tree limb torch and hobbled over to the briars. “You in there, Boyle?”

  “I am. I am indeed. Thank you, Henry, for coming back for us. That fire was well thought, though I do wonder if we may have given ourselves away.”

  He pried at the branches with the branch. “Fire put the fear into them. They would have feasted on us otherwise. No thanks necessary. It was Cram I came back for. Let’s unravel how to get you out of those thorns.”

  He would not let it go, that moment on the steps. “Hail, and well met to you, too. By the way—”

  “I do not have time for pleasantries, Boyle. Now that those things have our scent, they’ll keep hunting us.”

  “I do not think that will be a problem.”

  “Why not?”

  She could see it plain as day, hovering over his shoulder like some kind of halo. “Because I think you’ve lit the forest on fire.”

  The cats did not return. Nor did any other animals, as they seemed to be much more preoccupied with the preservation of their pelts.

  Athena emptied the contents of Cram’s sack on the ground.

  The boy looked up in woozy horror. “Milady, nooooo.”

  She ignored him and tore through the meager remains of her supplies. Henry did the same right next to her. “Henry, do you have anything that could put out the fire?”

  He looked up. The blue chemystral blaze was spreading quickly along the ridgetop. “No,” he said, pawing through a worryingly small collection of flasks and powders. “I could make some of it change color. Possibly.” He turned to Athena as he scooped it all back into his pouch. “You?”

  “Nothing.” She nodded her head upslope. “That is far too large for my powers.” She jiggled a flask of colorless liquid. “I could cover us all in breathable water for at most half a minute.” Her minor training in chemystry was useless compared with something like this. She piled the reagents into his pouch. “Here, just take all of it.”

  It was no small thing to give another chemyst your reagents, and Henry recoiled. “What? No.”

  “Just take them. No time to argue. Save that wind for running.” She reclaimed her sword and their packs, they got Cram on his feet, and they lit out. The serving boy was groggy but able to stand with their help. The crackle of the fire grew to a rumble, and little flames peeked out of the undergrowth at the top of the hill.

  “Come on!” she shouted. They scrambled to the top of the next hill supporting one another, a drunken six-legged crab, and stopped to take their bearings.

  “Oh, my,” said Henry. He was looking back the way they had come. Beyond their little hollow, the fire spread across the landscape, a curtain of blue flame that widened as they watched. The hungry thing wanted the whole forest.

  “I do not know about you two, but I have no desire to end my life a fricassee,” Athena said. Bravado was her only weapon against the creeping fear. “I invoke Captain Wayland Teach! We run until we drop, and then we pick ourselves up and run some more.”

  Each of the next two hills was steeper than the last. Athena tasted charcoal, and the smoke was getting thicker. A corset of iron cinched across her chest, and each breath was a battle. Cram kept looking left and right, as if for a trapdoor out of the forest. Henry’s face lay frozen in a mask of concentration, teeth bared and clenched like the big cat’s. He was lagging. Cram was supporting him, and Athena was supporting Cram. How long could she keep going without someone to pull her?

  Henry cried out. Her shoulder wrenched. He was lying on the ground, clutching at his leg. The mask of concentration was gone, replaced by pain, frustration, and fear.

  Athena saved the breath she might have cursed with and scrambled to his side. Cram was there on the other.

  “No!” Henry yelled. His voice barely carried against the thunder of the fire. “I am slowing you! I will burn us all.” He wrestled in his coat for something, and he pulled it out. It was the journal and its button key. “Take it!”

  A copse of trees burst into flame barely fifty feet away.

  “Go!” he screamed.

  Cram looked to her, pleading. For what, she did not know. To go? To stay? To sprout wings and fly them to safety?

  Henry was slowing them. But had they all not pledged themselves to Ruby? And who would even be able to translate the thing?

  “Lady Athena!” It was Cram.

  The ground moved beneath them like a landslide. Athena caught a glimpse of horns and hooves, and then all she could do was to grab Cram by the collar and throw them both sideways to the earth in a heap. A huge buck galloped past, right through whe
re Cram used to be, so close Athena could see its black nose glistening. It paid no mind to them, and neither did the stream of deer that followed. The hooves churned up the ground of the hollow like fresh farm soil only a foot from their prone bodies.

  Cram was already on his knees. “That way!” he shouted, pointing after the deer.

  It looked like more fire there, not less. “Are you certain?”

  Wild eyes. “Go!”

  She crawled over to Henry and put her face next to his. “You get up, Henry Collins! If you lie here in the earth, bemoaning your fate, then so will we! We all will die here, and you take that weight to whatever scholar’s Hades you’ll be going to.” She tapped the journal. “This is yours to bear! You are the only one who can unlock it!” He shook his head, eyes down. “Damnation, Henry! You know what this means! If the journal goes unlocked, then Ruby goes unfound!”

  Henry looked at her, and something brittle flickered there. But he moved.

  He gathered his hands under him and pushed. Athena and Cram grabbed him, and they were off.

  The three of them lit out after the deer. The smoke bit at Athena’s eyes and nose, and she could barely see the tracks ahead of them. She dared not look back. The heat licked at her neck, and there was no room for anything but holding on to Henry and putting one foot in front of the other.

  Step.

  Step.

  Slosh.

  It was a puddle. No, it was a pond. No, it was a lake. The smoke cleared for a moment, revealing a great mound of fallen trees, apparently floating on the surface at the center.

  “There!” Cram yelled, but Athena needed no urging. She forged forward into the water, legs, waist, chest, as the icy cool rushed over her. Shapes in the smoke stood in the shallows. Deer, a fox, a family of rabbits. Her next step found no purchase as the shore dropped off. She flailed backward into the other two.

  “Too deep past here!” she yelled. The island of fallen trees was still off in the distance. Cold crept in through her leathers.

  “We can’t stop!” Cram yelled back. “Water’s too cold. Can’t stay in it for too long!”