Shapeshifters

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “Doubtless his parents think many of their words are deserved,” Syfka answered.

  I hesitated, curious what else they would say when they thought I was not listening.

  “Perhaps some of them are,” Araceli admitted. “But our war with the serpiente was over thousands of years ago, and yet they still teach their children a hatred of us.” After a long silence, during which I almost continued on my way, she added, “I cannot stand to lose another child to ancient conflicts, Syfka. But how can I compete with a hatred that has endured thousands of years?”

  The raw pain in Araceli’s voice cut me more deeply than anything she had said so far.

  As a child of Wyvern’s Court, I was far too familiar with her sentiment. I had seen serpents wary of avians, and avians wary of serpents, despite the efforts our leaders had made to bring the two groups together. I had thought myself beyond that hatred because I had been born a falcon. Instead, I had learned to hate my own blood.

  I continued on my way out, tracing the halls I had come through with Araceli, and resolved to try to look upon what I found here with a more open mind. I would not dismiss everything my parents had told me, but I would try not to be as biased as an avian matron watching the serpents’ dance.

  ONCE BACK OUTSIDE, I hesitated at the foot of the palace. I might have dreamed of the chance to explore this city, but to stand at its edge with no destination and no guide was overwhelming.

  In the distance, I caught a glimpse of an elegant spire shimmering like a violet mirage on the horizon.

  Thinking that landmark as good a destination as any, I started forward, only to find that the roads of Ahnmik twisted in unpredictable ways. What had seemed to be a straight path only moments before turned out to curve so that after several minutes I found myself on the cliffs where the ocean met the island.

  Turning back, I could see the city: the three yenna’marl, bone white and sharp against the sky, and a trio of arches that seemed to be in the center of the city. Again, I could see only the edge of the strange violet spire.

  I tried following the beach and found myself by a bridge that seemed to connect Ahnmik to another, smaller island, one peppered with lush greenery.

  Exploring that area would have to wait. I had a feeling I was lost enough as it was. I glanced behind me, wanting to confirm that I could still see the yenna’marl and get my bearings from them.

  The odd tower that had caught my attention was practically brushing against the road on which I now stood. How could that be?

  It seemed almost as if the walls were made of liquid, and the violet that had seemed so bold at a distance was muted up close. The arched doors were smoke black glass, slick and ominous in the white city. They had no handles, though I could see the seam between the two. Two symbols marked that doorway: shm’Ecl.

  If you can’t, it will destroy you, my father had warned me. It will numb your body and mind, until it drives you into what is called shm’Ecl. There are rooms on Ahnmik filled with those who have succumbed to it, those who could not learn to control their power. They are neither alive nor dead, neither awake nor asleep.

  I pushed against the doors almost in a daze, bracing myself for whatever lay beyond and yet needing to see the fate my parents feared so much.

  Inside, the building was completely silent. All day I had been listening to the songs Ahnmik sang, music that seemed to seep from the walls and roads, but now I felt as if I had been struck deaf. The air was heavy, so thick with power that walking was like trying to move underwater.

  The hall in which I stood was round, with a silver domed ceiling, and walls that were pale at the top but darkened to nearly black where they touched the floor. A spiral ramp circled along the edges of the room, ascending to where it hid the rest of the ceiling from my view and descending beneath the level of the floor. All along the walls were doorways, some open and some closed.

  “Maenka’Mehay-hena’hehj? Meanka’las?” a deep voice asked. What lies beyond Mehay? Beyond eternity? The old language came more easily to me now, and I understood what he said as he continued. “Nothingness, Ecl. That which never was and never can be. Commonly, it is translated as destruction, but more accurately it is lack of existence.”

  I turned to find a man whose body and face made him appear a few years younger than I, but whose eyes, liquid blue like the ocean, gave him away as being ancient.

  “The minds of the shm’Ecl are lost somewhere that we in this world can never hope to reach. Their magic is unpredictable. In some moments, they lash out at hallucinations, nightmares, pain that drives them ever further from us. But most times, they are simply still, their minds as numb and empty as the womb of the void.”

  “Servos?” I asked when he paused and stared into the distance.

  He nodded, not seeming to focus entirely on me. “And you are Nicias.”

  Nicias?

  A voice whispered through my mind, making me jump. It was one that I had heard several days before, when I had first fallen in the woods, and then again in my dreams.

  Servos sighed.

  I heard the song from my dream, heard it and for the first time understood the words.

  Of eternity, of silence, of coldness, of stillness. Of Ecl. He who dwells with Ecl knows of void. He who dwells with Ecl knows of death. But he who dances with Ecl, he is lost, for he who dances with Ecl brings to life the world of death. So dance.

  The song sent a shudder down my spine.

  “You hear it?” Servos asked.

  I nodded, searching the room for the singer.

  “You can’t see her from here; her room is near the top of this hall,” Servos explained. “Her name was Darien. She was a dancer, and part of the highest choir. Most people cannot hear her voice, even when they stand beside her.”

  Of eternity, of madness, of heat, of movement. Of Mehay. He who dwells with Mehay knows too much. He who dwells with Mehay knows of creation. But he who dances with Mehay, he is lost, for he who dances with Mehay cannot leave the dance and will face the fire. So dance.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Servos said abruptly, “I need to see to one of my charges.”

  He did not wait for a response from me, but turned to descend the ramp underground.

  Darien’s song stopped and was replaced by a whispered chant:

  Nicias Silvermead, Wyvern of Honor, Nicias of Ahnmik, heir to the heir of she who shines in darkness, Nicias fool child, Nicias wise one.

  The words fluttered in my ears, almost teasing, sighing along a few notes from on high. Irresistibly drawn, I started up the ramp. I thought that the shm’Ecl were not aware of their surroundings, yet this woman who was supposedly one of them called me by my name and by many titles, some of which I used for myself and some of which I wanted no claim to.

  My gaze was drawn to one of the open doorways I passed. Inside, a figure was lying on the floor, her ink-dark falcon wings crumpled behind her, broken and scored by tarlike bands of black and crimson. Unlike the graceful, delicate designs that painted the white city, these marks were vicious and ugly, but they shone with the iridescent sheen I had come to associate with falcon magic.

  I did not know her by name, but I recognized the familiar line of her jaw, texture of her ebony hair and warmth of her fair skin. I was sworn to the royals of Wyvern’s Court, which included the Cobriana, and I could not fail to note that this young woman had cobra blood.

  I knelt and put a hand on her arm, needing to try even though I had little hope of stirring her.

  Without warning, I found myself back in my nightmares. The black ice rippled and warped, jutting skyward to form razor blade walls, uneven and mazelike. Beneath it, I saw shadows moving, talons and fangs scraping the ice as they reached for me, and I shuddered.

  I leapt aside as a serpent reared its head, blocking my path, the tips of its milky fangs glistening with drops of venom. As I stumbled, my arm brushed against one of the jagged walls of ice, and I gasped in pain as my skin was sliced open.

 
; It is only illusion, I told myself, hoping that was true.

  I stepped toward the serpent. There were glints of red in its eyes, like the vermilion magic on the girls’ black feathers.

  It spread its hood, but there was no crest on its back as I was used to from my dealings with other cobras. Only this slick black on black.

  I see you’ve met my daughter, Hai. Darien’s voice whispered through the land. Her father was … The cobra slid soundlessly into the ice, and the jagged landscape smoothed as Darien trailed off, leaving a lingering sense of sorrow.

  Your mother could walk the minds of those no one else could touch, Darien told me. It seems you have inherited her skill. I don’t recommend it, not here in the Halls of shm’Ecl. The minds of Ecl’s lovers are unfriendly places.

  Come to me. We need to speak.

  She pushed me from the illusion.

  The first thing I realized when I returned to reality was that my arm truly was cut. The cloth of my shirt was not torn, but the skin beneath was; my own blood had darkened the fabric. A black coil of magic, like that which wrapped Hai’s wings, had twined around my hand, and I could feel where it snaked up my arm and across my shoulder. Cold seeped from the tarlike bands.

  I stood unsteadily, holding my hand against my chest and wondering whether Servos would be able to explain all this to me. Or maybe Darien herself.

  A few wobbly steps up the ramp took me to another doorway, and beyond this one, I heard a voice I knew.

  “My lady suggested that I visit you this morning, to make sure I am ready to return to her side. I had a dream last night, you see,” Lily was saying to a still form before her, “in which you woke. You came back to me ….” She sighed. “This morning when I first opened my eyes, I thought for a moment that it was true. We—”

  She tensed and without turning said, “Nicias, meet my brother, Mer.” Lily pushed herself to her feet, so I could see her brother clearly.

  Mer’s features would have given away their relationship even if Lily had not spoken of it. He knelt on the floor, his wings tucked behind him, his head bowed and his hands on his knees.

  The posture was so relaxed and peaceful, he looked as if he was about to draw a breath and stand.

  “Oh dear,” Lily whispered as she took in my condition and swiftly crossed the room to take my hand. “Someone should have warned you. The shm’Ecl who respond to nothing else can sometimes still sense royal blood. Not all of them are happy to be drawn from their dreams. Hold on a moment, and I can fix this.”

  As she spoke, she unlaced the cuff of my sleeve and pushed the material off my arm to assess the damage. The bleeding had already stopped, and now the black lines on my skin began to fade away. Even the bloodstains on my shirt disappeared.

  “Who was it?” she asked.

  “A girl, further down. She looked like she had cobra blood.”

  “Hai,” Lily said softly. “Her father was a serpent who came to this land several years ago; her mother—” She shook her head. “The Empress’s laws forbid our kind from having children with outsiders, because they always turn out this way. Their magic grows too quickly, too wildly. As a young child, Hai would become lost in illusions no one else could see. One day she stopped speaking. Finally, a few years ago, she fell while dancing. She lost control of her magic, and you can see what it did to her. Even if she regains her mind, her wings are broken; she will never fly again.”

  “With all the magic on this island, there is no one who can heal her?” I asked.

  “Hai is …” Lily hesitated, seeming to look for words that wouldn’t offend me. “It may sound harsh, but she is mixed-blood. The cobra blood in her is like a poison. It will always burn her, and it will burn anyone who tries to save her. Those few who are strong enough to mindwalk the shm’Ecl are needed elsewhere. They cannot afford to risk themselves trying to save one pt’vem dancer.”

  She might be “one pt’vem dancer” on Ahnmik, but all I could see were her torn wings and tortured body, and the pain she must be in.

  Walking out of those halls with Lily, while leaving that broken cobra behind, went against every vow I had ever taken as a Wyvern of Honor, but I had to do it. There was no way to help her.

  AFTER WE LEFT the hall, we did not speak of Hai, and for some reason I felt oddly reluctant to speak of Darien.

  “Are the roads really singing?” I asked instead. I had heard my parents and Lily say that they did, but I had always assumed that the phrase was a metaphor for beauty.

  Only when Lily looked at me with surprise did I realize that I had fallen into the old language without thinking. It simply felt natural to me, like something remembered instead of learned.

  My own surprise made her laugh. “Ahnmik’s voice is the one spoken by your magic, by your blood and your dreams,” she explained in the same language. “I told you that you would learn it swiftly, once you were here.” Returning to my original question, she said, “Outsiders don’t hear anything, but to one who is falcon-born, they sing. They also shift position. And some say that if you close your eyes and walk blindly down them, they will lead you where you should go.” Wryly, she added, “But I don’t recommend it. They have a dry sense of humor, and a tendency to dump unsuspecting zealots in the water, or lead them into very awkward positions. Though there is a story of a young man who found his true love when the roads led him through the back door of her house and into her bedroom.”

  I laughed, my curiosity piqued. Perhaps that was why I had been unable to find the halls that had caught my eye from across the island until I had turned my attention elsewhere.

  “So the roads are alive in a way?”

  “They’re imbued with thousands of years of magic from those who live here, soaked with their dreams and thoughts, and thus given a personality of their own. Sometimes if you sing, they will sing back to you. Or sometimes they will knock you off your feet, depending on whether you can carry a tune.”

  “Dangerous paths to walk.”

  Lily stopped, tilting her head as if she had heard something. “If you would like to begin your study, Araceli is available now.”

  “How …” I trailed off because the question seemed stupid in this realm.

  Lily answered anyway, though not how I had expected. Her voice brushed across my mind, as it had at Wyvern’s Court.

  It is a skill you will learn swiftly, she told me. “This way,” she added aloud.

  How long had it been since Araceli and Syfka had left me alone in the city? I had not managed once to think about the consequences of having my magic bound. How was that possible?

  I had thought us far from the yenna’marl, but we turned a single corner and were only a few steps from the courtyard.

  There was no visible fence or wall around the testing yard, just the abrupt change from the crystalline roads to the white sand. In the center of the triangular yard was a pool of water, its surface like glass; offset around it were three white birch trees, each reaching toward the sky like a pale hand.

  Araceli was kneeling there, her fingertips trailing through the still water. When she saw us, she stood and approached.

  As she crossed the shimmering sand, it held no footprints, no sign that anyone had been there only moments before.

  She nodded at Lily, but spoke to me. “Nicias, I apologize for leaving you alone earlier, but my meeting with Syfka could not wait. I am glad to see that you found a capable guide in my absence. Are you ready for your first lesson?”

  She said this as if we had not argued the last time we had spoken, as if we had agreed and the decision had been made.

  “I have some questions first, if you don’t mind,” I said, though I didn’t know what she could say that would make me feel more certain.

  My choice was either to master my magic, or to have it bound. If I had it bound at this point, I would be giving up everything. Perhaps I could learn just enough to be able to do a force-change. I recalled the harsh way Araceli had spoken of that magic. I knew that even if
I found someone willing to donate his wings, I would never be able to take them.

  “Yes?” At Araceli’s prompting, I struggled to put my thoughts into coherent order.

  “I do still intend to go back to Wyvern’s Court,” I asserted.

  She nodded.

  “By studying here, am I tying myself to this land? Or will I be able to leave when I choose?”

  “I learned from your father that one does not attempt to imprison a prince in his own kingdom,” Araceli said, her words obviously chosen with care. “Once I believe you have enough control over your magic to survive off this island, I will let you leave. You are lucky in that your royal blood will enable you to gain that kind of control. Most falcons are never able to safely leave the island.”

  I heard the prerequisite in her promise. “And if I chose to leave today?”

  “I wouldn’t need to stop you,” she said. “I would need only to send Lillian to pick you up out of the ocean, hopefully before you sank too deep for us to bring you back.”

  I shuddered at the unpleasant image. “Can you give me some idea of how long it will be, then, before you will deem it safe for me to leave?”

  “Falcon children are tested for their magic for the first time when they are four years old. They grow up using magic; they begin to memorize its patterns as naturally as they learn to speak and walk.” She paused to consider. “The bonds on your parents and the way in which you were raised denied you that early training. I don’t doubt that once you gain any control over your power, you will learn its finer points quickly. However, I don’t know how difficult that first step might be.” The first hints of impatience slipping into her voice, she added, “The sooner you allow me to begin your instruction, the sooner we can find out.”

  She was right. I didn’t really have a choice, except for whether to keep fighting the inevitable.