by Voss Foster
Gutt opened his eyes again, nodded to Bancroft, then looked back at me. "In the meantime, I'd like to take you to someone who can crack into your memories and try to get them a bit clearer. It'll be easier while everything is still fresh."
"Okay, now wait a minute." My stomach tightened and I went cold. "You want someone screwing around in my head?"
"It's perfectly safe, as long as we don't dawdle. It wasn't my first choice because…well, because I had a feeling you would react this way. But if there's anything that could be hiding in your thoughts, we need it."
Gutt wasn't always on the same level of discomfort as me when it came to magic, for obvious reasons. So I looked to the only other potential point of sanity available: Bancroft. Not that I didn't trust Gutt with my life, but…it was my brain, damn it, and a second opinion was only logical.
To my slight horror, Bancroft nodded. "It would be helpful. What you described is still a mystery, and I do know that a shapeshifter is the longest possible shot in the world, no matter how closely it might seem to match up."
I had to assume if there were any misgivings, Bancroft would have brought them up with me. We weren't buddy-buddy, but he at least didn't ever seem to want me dead. Still, every time I'd ended up on the receiving end of magic, other than medically necessary magic from Casey, it didn't turn out so hot for me. "Is there any other way?"
Gutt patently didn't answer that. "The longer you take to convince, the more your memories will degrade."
Well shit. That just figured, didn't it? "All right, but if they hit the wrong bundle of nerves or something and I suddenly can't wipe my own ass, that is on the two of you."
Gutt grinned at that, so I guess we were past the whole "angry that shapeshifters might be on the table" part of this situation. "It's not some primitive rutting like brain surgery, Dash. Think of it more like…guided meditation with a little hypnosis."
Yeah right. "Well that's fine, then. Clearly I'm the guided meditation type."
Once again I was in the Kingdoms, in the giant shining metropolis of Nedelwald. It was as a close to a unified capital as there was in the Hidden Kingdoms, populated with preets from all over the place. All different families, all different origins, all different interests and skills coming together to form this beautiful, gleaming city-state. Gutt and I muscled past gorgons and giants and ogres and scads of dwarves that only came up to my waist and gnomes that only came up to my knees.
This was in a separate part of Nedelwald from the archives I'd visited before, but it still glowed from within. Streets of neon pink bricks, walls in all sorts of hyper-saturated tones, from lime green to deep indigos and violets. And signs that, like every other bit of text in the Kingdoms, were so bright and sparkly they were totally unreadable to my Mundane ass.
Gutt led me into a square, gleaming white building a few yards from the nearest corner. Aside from the sheer starkness of the color, it was quaint by comparison to the rest of the buildings. It stood just one story high, squeezed between two sweeping brick buildings that stacked on top of it like an exceptional game of Tetris had gone down during construction.
Inside, the air was thick with sweet smoke. Like a thousand vanilla beans all burning on top of a pile of honey. It was cloying, almost oppressive just to take a single breath. And the smoke also hazed everything out, so the door on the far side of the room was just a little out of focus.
Footsteps echoed, signaling an approach. I turned to see an elf woman walk out of a doorway on the right side of the room. She had long white hair tied back in a tight braid. It revealed the delicate points of her ears, pierced through with gold rings that pulled them back and down. She was wrinkled and cragged and withered, which for an elf meant impossibly old. Not just eighty or ninety, but many hundreds of years. It wouldn't have been a polite thing to ask about, but it was tempting.
Her eyes flashed to me, a deep mahogany brown. "I'm one-thousand-seventy-three."
"I didn't mean to stare. I'm sorry."
"You weren't staring." She tapped a slender, bejeweled finger to her temple, smiling over the counter at me. "You were thinking, and I have a knack for knowing what you're thinking. Which is why I assume you're here." Her gaze slid over to Gutt, and her smile widened. "N'Gutta. It's been too long."
"Fazil." Gutt lumbered to the counter. It was a hell of a tableau, seven feet of solid muscle embracing half a wrinkled old feather over the counter. "I would love to stay and chat, but this is business."
"Yes, you're working in the Mundane, now. Good solid work, even if the Kingdoms miss you." She sighed and looked him up and down. "Elemental children. That…it was something people did in war times, but even then it was frowned upon. It turned the court of public opinion against anyone who dared to even think of such a thing."
"Well, we intend to stop it. We might be able to pull some information from his memories." Gutt waved me forward. "Dash saw one of the people responsible, but they got away before he could do anything."
She nodded. "It wasn't that long ago, so it shouldn't be too much. And no, I'm not going to discuss price with you, N'Gutta. This is for the public good, and I most likely owe you a favor or two." Back to me. Her eyes were dark, but they still pinned me in place as she looked me head to foot and back again. "You did make the right call, Dash. The child needed someone, and what would shooting the attacker have gotten you?"
"Well…a dead bastard?" Okay, she made my skin crawl a little bit. Which she probably also knew, since it dared to pass through my head.
"When you're a mind-reader, you learn a great deal about privacy. You don't need to worry about me judging you harshly or anything. My skill set is often unnerving, even to those closest to me." She cracked her knuckles, then stepped around the counter and gestured to that far away door, the one hazed behind smoke. "This way. It won't be much to get through this, I promise. And I won't alter your memories. That is a service I don't give away for free."
Another chill through my veins. "But it's a service you offer?"
She shrugged, gliding her way through the smoke to the door, sheer sapphire robe trailing and whipping behind her. "I certainly wouldn't do anything so illegal. Right N'Gutta?"
"We never used it for anything unsavory." Gutt nodded, as though that was somehow reassuring. "Some of the guards saw things that would have broken them if the memories weren't altered. It let them live a normal life."
Okay. The Kingdoms were taking on a definite dark edge the more I learned about them. I guess that was to be expected from a group that kept a giant, world-ending serpent locked up with blood magic. You know, just in case they ever needed to use it for something.
"Every society has secrets, Dash." Fazil unlocked the door and pushed it open, revealing a mostly smoke-free room, lit by glowing white orbs that floated up at the ceiling, bobbing and swaying gently of their own accord. "Admittedly, keeping Jörmungandr alive was perhaps not the wisest decision we made as a society, but I'm sure citizens of the Kingdoms would find certain aspects of Mundane life just as unpleasant."
I walked in, my stomach in my throat. I really wanted to say that we shouldn't do this. The whole mind-reading thing was freaky as shit, and it wasn't getting better the longer I talked with Fazil.
There were two lush, high-backed chairs in this room, glowing faintly gold, the cushions black satin. Fazil sat in the one on the right. "I promise, you're in safe hands. Think of the children."
"The children are the only reason I am thinking about doing this." And I sat across from Fazil. It was a surprisingly comfortable chair, but I still sat just on the edge, feet firmly on the flagged-stone floor just in case I needed to make a run for it.
"It will be easier if you relax and trust me." She circled a thin hand through the air and fragrant, sweet smoke poured from the center of the ring she drew. I couldn't avoid breathing it in, and when I did, my body sort of… melted. I leaned back in the chair and my muscles slackened. Suddenly, it didn't seem so strange or so wrong that she could get into
my thoughts so easily. It also didn't seem wrong at all that this was maybe a little coercive on her part. Whatever. I was feeling too good to care.
Fazil sighed, lowering her hand so her fingers pointed straight at the center of my forehead. "Well, I have to say, I haven’t had anyone quite this easy to get to in some time. I suppose humans aren't keen on protecting themselves from this sort of magic, are they?"
"Human physiology is similar to elven and sorcerer physiology," said Gutt. "And you always said those were the easiest to work with."
"Fascinating." She twisted her hand back and forth, shifting her fingers forward and back, up and down. It looked like she was trying to jimmy a key into a lock, rocking back and forth and trying to push forward all at the same time.
Then she thrust. My chest tightened, my head went even fuzzier than before, but only for a second. Then I felt positively normal. Still relaxed from the smoke, but maybe a little less melty. "Okay, what's going on?"
"I unlocked your memories." As though to demonstrate, she held up a ball of glowing green light, maybe two inches in diameter. "Relaxing like that is a common side effect. The process straightens out all of your feelings, and it's doubly so if the memory is stressful." She rolled the little ball around a few times, examining it. "Which this one would appear to be."
It finally clicked and…well, it was actually pretty cool, if I was honest. Although without her little smoke trick, I'd probably be shitting myself. "So you're holding my memory? That's what the light is?"
"In so many words." She rose, going to a cabinet behind her chair. She pulled out what looked like a bottle carved from marble, but still glowing like everything else in the Kingdoms. It was banded in gold filigree, and the mouth flared out far wider than the base. "Now, why don't we see what we're working with here?"
She dropped my memory into the bottle. It caught in the flared mouth and just floated there. When Fazil waved her hands around the bottle, it began to vibrate, and my little memory ball exploded, suddenly several feet in diameter.
It was a little weird to see. I was walking up the steps into the trailer again, pushing open the door. Working my way around the vines, now, then looking back at Gutt, and then seeing Yeshin pierced through on the floor.
"I would have helped if I could have," said Gutt.
"I know." I rose and moved closer to my own memory. "Don't worry."
The memory continued on, taking us into the kitchen. There was Lorath, shaking and sprouting vines around him. And behind him… "That, Gutt. That's what I saw."
Apparently Fazil was in complete control, because she stopped playback on the scene, or whatever the proper terminology would be for that. She stopped with that yellow bastard in perfect focus behind the kid.
Gutt walked closer, trying to get a good look, squinting and leaning in so close he was almost touching noses with the thing. "I…don’t know. Still nothing I've seen."
Fazil cleared her throat. "I have. You won't like the answer, I can already tell. It's exactly what you're thinking it can't be."
Gutt turned, frowning. "Shapeshifters aren't real."
Fazil said nothing more, just let the memory keep playing. I had my gun. I told him to stay where he was. Lorath asked for help and, as I turned my gaze away from the target…well, apparently there was more in the memory than I thought. More to it than I remembered. The edges were a little vague, a little fuzzy, but there was no question to what I saw as it all played out. What all of us saw.
The wax-skinned man shot down to the ground. He shrank when I looked away. It was all in an instant, but focusing on it…there was no doubt. "It must have been in my peripheral vision?"
Fazil nodded. "It's good that you came so soon after this happened. The memory was already beginning to degrade. Another few hours and we might not have made anything out at all."
Gutt stepped back, shaking his head. "This can't be true." He sat in the chair I'd been in, face pale, eyes wide. "Shapeshifters are pure myth, and a good thing for all of us. How can you combat one? How could you stop them? That can't be a shapeshifter."
"You're no fool, and no amount of you decrying what your eyes saw is going to change reality." Fazil sat in the chair opposite him again. She waved her hand behind her and recalled the memory ball. It whizzed across the room, shrinking back to its original size. "Shapeshifters are very much real. They're just… unlikely to be seen."
"You've seen one?" Gutt leaned forward. "You're saying that you've seen them."
"You see a lot of things in a thousand years." She beckoned me over with a finger. When I got close enough, she pushed the memory back into my forehead, then wiggled her fingers back and forth again. I guess that was locking everything back into place or something. "I will certainly keep an eye out for anything unusual, N'Gutta. But this will be a difficult one. Shapeshifters are notoriously difficult to find. They can shrink to an inch if they need to, as you just saw. Inherently skittish. Widely distrustful. So the rumors go, at least."
Gutt rubbed a hand up and down his face. I guess this was really throwing him for a loop. Not just because he was wrong. I figured I had to say something. "Hey, I guess now you know how the humans felt when they found out people like you were real. It's a bit of a blow to your sense of everything, but we got through it. You can, too."
"Shapeshifters, Dash. Maybe it's just one shapeshifter. A final survivor."
Fazil shook her head instead of letting him hold onto hope. "As I said, they're skittish. They're very insular. The chances of having one working with anyone outside of its own community are impossibly low." She rose again and moved to the door back into the main part of her shop. "I can get you information on the people to talk with. My knowledge is only passing, but there are others who've taken a much deeper dive into their civilization than I ever could."
Gutt stood and nodded, but that was all. So I stepped in. "It would be great. We have someone talking to researchers he knows, but if you have better information—"
"I most likely have better information than the old human researcher who's currently looking into things, yes." She smiled coyly at me, but it faded when she looked back to Gutt. "You have to know there are things that will challenge your worldview, N'Gutta. Even at my age, these things exist." A pause before she continued. "I see. You're afraid of them. You're afraid of what this means. That's valid. Shapeshifters are not easy enemies." She reached across the counter. There was no fiddling when she rocked her hand back and forth this time. She immediately set her fingers into a specific pattern and jerked her hand to the right.
Gutt blinked a few times, the brightness creeping back into his eyes as his face relaxed. He nodded to Fazil. "Thank you. I was caught in a spiral."
"Yes, it was getting depressing, so I stopped it. Poor etiquette, having such a troubled mind in front of a mind-reader, don't you think?" She winked at him, then bent down and rustled around under the counter, only to come back up with a small wooden chest. "I'll copy the contact information I have. I would recommend talking to the scholars here in Nedelwald first, for obvious reasons, and leave the Sekari scholars for the end, if you need them at all."
I glanced to Gutt just as he glanced at me.
"Oh. Al-Sekar." Fazil continued in her search through the strips of parchment in the box, making magical copies of one here and there as she thumbed through. "Al-Sekar is involved in this somehow. Interesting. It might be worth talking to…well, let's go with Charth. He's an immigrant to Al-Sekar, so not nearly as attached as the others might be to 'the way things are supposed to be.'" She finished up and handed us a stack of paper that, luckily, wasn't glowing, so it could actually be read by a normal human person. "Yes, there's something going on with Al-Sekar and the shapeshifters, and no I don't have enough information to be helpful. That would take a deep dive into someone's mind, not simply passing conversation. But the people there who know are afraid to talk about it at all."
I took the stack of parchment and nodded. "Thank you. For that and—"
"Yes, I'm not so scary and unsettling after you figure out I can calm you down from the ledge, am I?" She grinned. "I do hope I'll see you again, N'Gutta. For something less business-related and more brandy-related."
He nodded to her. "I'll do what I can. Once this case is through."
"I do wish you luck on this. Terrible to think this would be happening again. Terrible to think it ever happened at all. And no one even knows why." She shook her head and walked back into her little room off to the side. "Terrible, terrible thing."
Gutt and I stepped back onto the street and into fresh air. I looked at him once we were out. "Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine, that's not the issue." He sighed, shaking his head. "If the legends and stories can be believed, even one shapeshifter would be a handful. And if Fazil is correct, then we're not looking at one shapeshifter."
"Why are they so much more dangerous than anyone else? A bullet is a bullet, and magical handcuffs are still pretty effective, last time I checked."
"They're an unknown, which means maybe our restraints won't be good for anything at all. And they're dangerous because they can be anywhere. If they're real, and there are many of them, there could be a dozen here around us right now and we wouldn't know, until they grew taller than the buildings and crushed us underfoot."
"Oh. Okay, that sounds kind of bad. But we killed Jörmungandr, remember? Remember that whole thing? And no matter how big and bad these shapeshifters might be able to get, Jörmungandr was way more dangerous, and those terrorist bastards were just about as violent."
"Yes, and how many people died during our attempts to figure that case out?" He shook his head one more time, then opened a portal. "I hope you're ready for a big meeting. This needs everyone."
"We're going back to DC."
"I'll call Bancroft so we can get him there. The Burlington PD doesn't need to hear all of this, not until we have some kind of plan worked out."
