by Jean Johnson
Yes!
"Ugh," he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. "I think all th' noise that brat's making is pulling th' sap outta me... Let's finish this tomorrow."
Rising from his seat, he removed his shirt and stepped out of his trousers, shifting shape into an old sheepherding dog. Curling up in front of the fire, the shifter wiggled a few times to get comfortable, then settled his head on his paws. Solyn turned her attention to her other target.
This time, the use of her spell made him sneeze openly, twice, before a yawn split his mouth wide. Getting up, he picked up the iron tongs leaning against the stone-built hearth. Pushing and piling all the cinders together, along with enough ashes to bank the fire so that it would stay burning through the night, he finally set the tongs back down.
Another yawn was followed by a third sneeze, then he moved off toward what she presumed was his bed... which was out of her line of sight. Quickly, Solyn kept his face firmly in her mind, and pushed her magics into the shape for the anesthetic spell. The moment she heard the bed frame creak, then go silent, she released the spell. The bed creaked again, but he didn't sneeze.
Hoping her spell had worked, she returned her attention to the dog-man. The noises from below had ceased. Unsure what that meant, she quickly regathered her inner energies. Just as she released them, the trapdoor shoved up. Startled, Solyn almost lost control of the spell.
"Hey, Cullerog!" Tarquin called out, pushing the panel the rest of the way up. His tousled head appeared, sporting a grin. "I got 'er all wet, just the way you like. Dirt grubber, down there, can't keep it up long enough to plow the bitch, so it's your turn!"
Frowning at the lack of response, he climbed out of the cellar and padded toward the bed. That was when Solyn hit him with her gentle sleep spell, too. He paused and yawned, swaying.
"I don't... Tired," he muttered. Turning to look at the shapeshifted dog, he scratched his head, yawned again, then looked the other way. Toward the shuttered window. His eyes widened.
Afraid he had seen her, Solyn panicked and flung her other spell at him. His eyes rolled up and he sagged to the floor with a thud. The dog-man didn't move, though the flames of the lamps on the table danced from the impact.
Unable to see what was happening, Kenyen flinched at the noise. He glanced at Solyn, whose eyes were wide, one of them lit in a thin vertical line of the light shining from the cabin interior. She relaxed after a moment, relieving him.
They both stiffened at the sound of a voice, light and hesitant.
"... M-master?"
Solyn swayed closer to the crack in the shutter. An unkempt head appeared in the trapdoor opening. Wide brown eyes stared at the fallen body of the shifter named Tarquin Tun Nev, then darted around the room. They didn't even glance at the shuttered window where Solyn watched, holding her breath.
With an animal-like scramble, the woman climbed out of the hole. Hesitantly, she touched Tarquin, shoved a little on his shoulder. Then shook him hard. He stayed asleep. Crouching, the woman covered her mouth with her hand, then glanced at the bed. Scrambling in the same direction as Solyn's second target, she disappeared from view.
The sounds of the bed squeaking and cloth rustling suggested she was trying to wake him as well, then she came back into sight and poked at the dog. Shook the dog. Rose up to stand straight, both hands over her mouth and a wild, wild look in her eyes. Whirling, she faced the shelving to the right of the fireplace, where the kitchen supplies used by the shepherd were stored.
For a long moment, the woman stood there, thinking whatever thoughts might be tumbling through her head. Then she dashed forward, snatched the largest knife off the shelf, and ran back to the dog. Solyn flinched back from the window the moment she saw the older woman fling the blade high.
Concerned by her flinch, Kenyen was even more alarmed by the meaty thud and faint whine of a dog in pain. It changed to the groan of a man with a second thump, followed by a wheeze. Pushing Solyn out of his way, he took her place at the crack in the shutters, peering inside just in time to see the blade descend again. That third slicing stab spilled blood across the floor. The dog was no longer a dog, but instead a naked elderly man, bloodied and unmoving, indicating he was dead.
The woman scrambled for Tarquin's body next. Kenyen opened his mouth to protest, to do something, but she was too fast. This time her aim was more true; her slumbering victim—her victimizer—made no sound, dying with only two jabs of the blade. His face melted and changed, restoring it to the real one in the limpness of his death. She slashed at him a couple more times, her movements frantic with the release of her fears and her rage, though she fought them with nothing louder than panicked gasps.
Yanking the blade out one last time, she rushed for the bed. Fear coursed through Kenyen. Not for the old shepherd; this was merely a form of delayed justice at the hands of one of his own victims, given Tarquin's last words. He feared instead for Traver, chained up and nearly helpless in the cellar. Thrusting away from the window, he bolted for the door.
By the time he flung it open, the naked woman was half covered in blood, but she was still on the bed. Whipping to face him, she snarled in fear and rage and launched herself at him. This, Kenyen knew how to handle. Moving forward to meet her charge, he side-stepped her thrust, grabbed her arm, twisted it, and flipped her over his hip, using her own momentum against her. It wasn't always necessary to shift into an animal shape to fight.
He didn't try to remove the blade from her grasp, but he did plant his foot on her ribs, pinning her to the floor. Snarling, she writhed, trying to wriggle free with surprising strength. Grunting with the effort of containing her struggles, Kenyen called out, "Solyn, help me! Calm her down!"
Unnerved by the violence, knowing from her Healer's training just how deadly those wounds were, Solyn gathered her courage and hurried inside. Focusing her gaze firmly on the older woman and not on the liquids staining the floor, she held out her hand and hummed a lullaby, using the sound to shape her power into a net around the woman.
The combination of magic and song soothed the woman's struggles, dulling some of the fear and rage in her gaze. Nose itching, Kenyen loosened his grip, waiting to see what she would do. The woman clung to the blade, but did nothing more than watch them warily. Carefully, he released her arm, stepping back from her body. She rolled into a crouch, gaze darting from him to Solyn.
"We're not going to hurt you," Solyn stated. "We're only here to free our friend, the one in the root cellar."
Chains rattled down below, proving Traver was still alive, though he didn't call up to them. Like a feral beast, the woman stayed in her crouch, her expression disbelieving. She finally settled her gaze on Kenyen and spat defiantly at his feet, then looked up warily, knife clutched at the ready.
He didn't take offense. "Solyn, give her what you're wearing. And some of the money, too."
She caught his meaning. "And one of the baskets—she's in even more danger than we are," Solyn added at Kenyen's sharp look. "She needs to run as far and as fast as that spell can fly. I'll find something else to levitate for my own use."
"Alright," he agreed. Solyn nodded and began unfastening her oversized, borrowed tunic. Now was not the time for modesty, but rather expediency and compassion.
"You... you help me?" the woman asked, glancing between them, though she gave more of her confused attention to Kenyen, whose Traver-like face she had seen before. "You're... you're one of them!"
"No," he corrected her, shaking his head. "I am Shifterai. A real one, not one of these curs."
"Liar!" she spat. "Bonfire! I saw you!"
"I only pretended to be one of them to save his life," Kenyen countered, pointing at the open trapdoor.
"He's telling you the truth!" Traver called out in a semi-strong voice. More metal clanked as he shifted, his voice echoing up from the cellar. "I told him to pretend to be me, in case I was captured!"
Shaking her head, the woman looked like she was more in bewilderment than in denial. Soly
n, slipping out of the loose trousers, caught her attention. When the younger woman held out the clothes, the older one snatched them with one hand, clutching them to her damp chest. She looked warily at Kenyen, who held up his hands.
"So long as you don't attack us, I won't touch you," he murmured. She watched him warily for a long moment, then started climbing into the trousers.
Solyn ducked out through the door, making the older woman freeze. Kenyen didn't move. The half-naked woman glanced between him and the door, then continued struggling into the garments.
"Why?" she finally asked, all but spitting the word.
"Twenty-three or more years ago," Kenyen told her, "these curs kidnapped a Zanthai woman. Ellet Sou Tred." She froze at the name. Gently, he asked. "Did you know her?"
She shrugged stiffly, not answering.
"She was treated much like you for a couple years. Then there was a grass fire. She escaped through it and fled to the Mornai. She gave birth to a little girl, then died... but before she died, a scribe wrote down what happened to her. Last year, her daughter ended up on the Plains, among the real Shifterai. When we learned what these Mongrels had done, what her mother had told to the scribe who raised her little girl, we decided to hunt them down. I was the first to stumble across them. Literally," Kenyen added wryly. He didn't look at the bodies on the floor. "We are going to stop them."
Her shoulders shook. Fingers fumbling over the tunic, one hand still clutching the bloodied knife, she finally shoved the horn buttons through their holes. And sniffed, letting Kenyen know she was crying. Solyn stepped back into the cabin; the younger woman had taken the time to don her own clothes and had a shallow, oval, loop-handled basket in each hand.
"I have enchanted these baskets so that they will fly. The spell will last only until sundown tomorrow," she explained carefully, holding up one of them. "But this one should keep its spell long enough to get you far, far away."
"En... enchanted?" the woman asked.
"Yes. I am a mage. Something of a mage," Solyn amended. She quickly explained how to start, stop, and steer the enchanted item, and coaxed her pupil into repeating them. The older woman mumbled her way through the instructions, her gaze fixed firmly on Solyn and the basket. The younger one repeated them again, coaxing her to get them right.
Confident the woman wasn't going to attack either of them, Kenyen quietly climbed down into the cellar. Traver had shifted position, not only to pull up his borrowed trousers but also to avoid the blood trickling down from overhead. The smell of blood was thicker down here, mixing uneasily with the musty smell of damp earth, rutting, and the contents of the slops bucket.
"I take it that basket thing she talked about is going to get me out of here, too?" Traver muttered, and relaxed at Kenyen's nod. He lifted his wrists, changing the subject. "Where's the key?"
Kenyen shaped the tip of one finger into a claw. "I'm not sure. I didn't exactly have a chance to interrogate them."
Concentrating, he dredged up his memory of the original key and shaped his claw to match it. Poking it into the hole, he twisted his wrist. For a moment, the lock remained stubborn, then the inner parts gave way with a dull click. Traver sighed in relief, shaking off the cuff. Kenyen poked at the second one. It, too, was stiff, but it, too, released the latch. He oofed, caught in a hug from the other man.
"Cora bless you," Traver muttered, hugging him hard. "I got your message... most of it... the last visit."
"I'm sorry about the bruises." Kenyen returned the embrace. "If I'd known..."
"It wasn't bad," Traver dismissed, letting go. "It was only for a few days, and I knew you'd come back for me. They threatened me with a lot worse, but mostly they just demanded that I tell them everything I knew about Ysander and Reina, and kicked, or slapped, or pinched when I didn't know. Or didn't respond fast enough.
"They said you still needed to hear things from me, so they weren't going to do worse if I cooperated. They wanted to know about Reina's Healer experiments, and whatever I could tell them about all the things the blacksmith has made through the years. I didn't tell them anything useful. I made sure of that," he added darkly, looking down at his cloth-covered legs. "I won't trade saving my life for ruining someone else's."
He pushed to get to his feet. Kenyen quickly wrapped his arm around the Corredai's ribs, helping him up. "I take it tonight was the worst of it?"
Traver shuddered. "Don't... don't tell Solyn. She didn't see, did she?"
"No, she didn't see anything," Kenyen promised, helping him toward the ladder. "But she did hear everything."
"Wonderful," Traver muttered, flushing. "Well, I'll presume her flying basket trick will help us to escape, but where are we going?"
"You're going to fly as far away as you can. You'll take the clothes off my back, some food and some coins, and you'll find an inn. You'll stay there until we come for you, when enough of these curs have been caught that I don't have to pretend to be you anymore. Solyn said you'd know where the city of Hemplan is located, and that it's far enough away, no one should be able to recognize your face."
"No." Traver shook his head, reaching for the rungs. "I'll do what I should have done. I'll fly right to the capital, and find a Magister, and tell him or her my entire story."
"A what?" Kenyen asked, unfamiliar with the term. "Is that a kind of mage?"
"A judicial mage," Traver explained. His arms and legs shook a little as he started to climb. Kenyen planted a hand on his rump, lifting with a stretch of his body to help support the younger man in his climb. "Thank you. I haven't exercised in too long. I feel as weak as a newborn lamb."
"What will a Magister be able to do?" Kenyen asked, boosting him into the main cabin. He moved to blow out the lamps hanging from hooks in the root cellar's ceiling as Traver replied.
"Well, for a start, he or she can authorize whatever you need to do, in tracking down the rest of these face-stealers. We don't have one in the valley," Traver told him, "but then we normally don't have major criminals running loose."
Solyn added her voice to the explanation. "Magisters are exceptionally strong mages pledged to support the just laws of the kingdom. They're only found in the big towns and cities, but they have all sorts of spells to determine if someone is telling the truth and the legal backing of the King to take care of matters if a severe bit of law-breaking is brought to their attention. They don't usually handle the petty crimes, like minor theft or being drunk in public. That's either for the city guards, the King's Guard who hunt down bandits and the like, or for the elders of a particular holding to handle—you, what's your name?"
Climbing up out of the now-dark cellar, Kenyen emerged in time to see the woman blinking in thought. "I... Parma. My name was Parma," she finally admitted. "Parma... Nol Vyth. But they called me Bitch. I... I haven't been called my name in... in..."
Solyn touched her arm, giving her silent sympathy.
"Hello, Parma. It's very nice to meet you, now that we're both free," Traver told her gently. He offered her his hand.
Parma stared at it. She didn't flinch from it, but it took her a long moment before she finally shifted the knife to her other hand and clasped his fingers. "N-Nice to meet you. Traver. It's... very nice to know you won't die. Like the... the others."
Her words made all of them think of the many men the curs of Family Mongrel had no doubt replaced over the years. For a moment, they remained silent in grim, somber respect. Finally, Traver breathed deeply.
"Will you fly with me to the capital, Parma?" he asked her. "Will you help me find a Magister, and will you be brave enough, strong enough, to tell them everything you know? Or almost everything?" he added, glancing at the bodies. "We don't have to mention how you helped free both of us just now. Not until they know just how necessary it was."
Kenyen looked at the young farmer with respect. Greater respect, since Traver's quick thinking and bravery had already proven themselves in this mess.
"I think that's a brilliant idea." The oth
ers glanced at him, so he explained. "One witness, however much he may believe his words are the truth, is one thing. Particularly with a tale as wild as rogue shapeshifters stealing the faces and the identities and the lives of innocent Corredai. I wouldn't have believed it so quickly myself, if I hadn't been confronted with all the evidence I've seen. But two witnesses, both of them swearing to the same story on a Truth Stone? That will be hard to dismiss."
"Yes, they'll have to listen to both of you, if both of you go," Solyn agreed quickly.
"I promise you will be safe with me," Traver added, still holding the older woman's hand.
She hesitated, then nodded, a single jerky movement of her head. "You... I will trust. You were... You didn't, down there. You," she added, looking at Kenyen, "I will not."
Again, he held up his hands. "I do understand, and I'm not offended. I'm just glad you're free."
"Speaking of which, we should get moving," Solyn urged them. She glanced briefly at the bodies, shuddered, and lifted her chin at the door. "The sooner we get out of here, the less scent we'll leave behind. If nothing else, when he doesn't show up in the morning, Tunric will come looking for Tarquin. Even if they technically aren't the original father and son, he'll have to come looking."
"He's... evil," Parma muttered, shivering. Her fingers gripped the hilt of her knife until they were visibly white. "Evil."
"All the more reason to make sure he gets taken down," Kenyen promised her. "These Mongrels, these curs, are like rabid animals. You don't let them live. You just kill them, quickly and cleanly, so their infection cannot spread. You did that, and I'll make sure this Magister knows it, if he or she questions you about it. But first, we have to get you to that Magister, and that means leaving this place."
Solyn moved first, heading out the door. Parma followed, with Traver behind her. Kenyen took a moment to check for signs of footprints. The only ones were the few smudges left by the older woman's bare toes. For all her kills had been bloody, they weren't overly messy, thanks to the cracks between the floorboards. There were no other signs that anyone else had been here tonight.
