by James Wyatt
"Kelas," Nara's voice still came from the crystal orb in front of him, "you know Vec."
Vec? It sounded like a changeling name, and the newcomer confirmed the suspicion by dropping the killer's face, leaving no face to replace it, just featureless gray skin and limp white hair. Was Vec the changeling who had appeared in his office the night before, and the same one he'd faced in Kelas's house?
"Vec led Thuel's mission to capture Gaven, and failed-of course. Thuel doesn't know what he's dealing with, so Vec was not properly prepared. But Vec and I have spoken, and I'm convinced that he's the ideal person to fill your other changeling's role in our plan."
Vec pushed the door closed and leaned against it, his lipless mouth twisted in a strange sort of smile.
"Vec will kill the queen," Nara said.
Kill the queen-the other changeling's role? Kelas and Nara had planned for Aunn to be the assassin?
"I see," Aunn said. His eyes were fixed on Vec's blank white orbs.
"There's just one flaw in your plan, Nara," Vec said. His face began to change again-soft and round, with dark hair hanging over pale blue eyes. "This isn't Kelas ir'Darren." The face of the servant girl from Kelas's house wore a triumphant expression.
"You damned fool," Nara said.
Vec's triumphant smile dropped from his face as he tried to see into the crystal globe. Aunn glanced down at it as well. Nara looked disgusted.
"Do you actually think I was ignorant of this deception?" she said. Her gaze was turned in Vec's general direction. "As long as he thought I believed his ruse, he was still useful to me."
Aunn tightened his grip on Kelas's sword and glanced at the door. If he struck now-
Vec must have had the same thought, for he looked up at Aunn in a sudden panic, a dagger appearing in his hand.
"Now kill him," Nara said, "and prove your value to me." But the two changelings were already in motion.
Aunn jumped onto the chair and stepped up onto the desk, both to clear his path to the door and to maximize the advantage of his longer blade. He swept the blade wildly as Vec tried to stab at his legs, and drew one cut across the other changeling's forearm.
"You fool," Aunn snarled, doing his best impression of Kelas in a fury. "You've ruined everything." He shot a foot at Vec's head and managed a glancing blow. For a moment, he thought it might work-Kelas clearly had Vec cowed, and the changeling recoiled from both the blow and the rebuke. But then Vec stood straighter and began to change, taking on Kelas's face himself.
"Do you mock me, changeling?" Vec roared in Kelas's voice. "You think it's funny to wear my face?"
Cold fear gripped Aunn's chest-not fear of Vec, but the raw terror that Kelas had instilled in him over years of training. He fought it, trying to fix the image of Kelas's dead body in his memory.
"I already killed Kelas once," he said through gritted teeth.
"You dare to threaten me?" Vec yelled, and he launched a fresh assault, beating Aunn back. As Aunn shuffled back out of his reach, Vec stooped to grab the legs of the desk and heaved. The desk reared up under Aunn's feet and threatened to crush him against the wall. He managed to jump clear, toward the door.
The door burst open, and Aunn saw one of the soldiers stationed to guard the Tower, gawking in at the two Kelases in the office. Clutching a longsword in front of him, the soldier glanced between the two changelings, panic on his face.
"He's a changeling and a traitor!" Vec yelled, pointing at Aunn. "Seize him!"
"Idiot!" Aunn drew himself up to Kelas's full height and tried to wrap Kelas's imperious air around him, but Vec had a head start on that. "Don't involve yourself in something you don't have the wits to sort out." And don't get yourself killed, he added silently-I don't want to watch this bastard kill another innocent.
"You'll see the truth when he dies!" Vec shouted, and pain stabbed through Aunn's side.
Aunn cursed himself. He had let the guard distract him, let himself worry more about the guard's survival than his own. He batted at Vec with Kelas's blade, and he felt the dagger slide out through the muscles of his lower back. As he turned his full attention back to the assassin, he tried to assess the wound, probing the mutable flesh around it with his mind. He would probably survive it, assuming the blade wasn't poisoned-and assuming he didn't take any more wounds like it.
Vec lunged at him again, but Aunn deflected the blade with an awkward parry. The guard stupidly inserted himself between them, pushing Vec back with his shield.
"Drop your weapons, both of you!" he said. "I'll take you both to Thuel and let him sort it out."
"Are you blind as well as stupid?" Vec roared. "Can't you recognize a changeling when you see one?"
Aunn knew what Vec was doing. It never occurred to most people that anyone of their acquaintance could be a changeling. People knew they existed, of course, but mostly from outrageous tales and occasional reports in the chronicles. And that ignorance made them very susceptible to suggestion-once the idea was planted, they'd start to see changelings everywhere. Even the guards in the Tower of Eyes were easily fooled.
Sure enough, the guard turned to examine Aunn's face, suspicion in his eyes, exposing his back to Vec's blade.
"Watch out!" Aunn shouted, but in the same instant the guard's eyes went wide with pain, then his knees gave out.
"And so the queen will fall," Vec whispered, a feral grin twisting his face.
Aunn spent only an instant weighing his options. He could stand and fight, but he was already badly wounded and holding a weapon he didn't favor. He could try to run to Thuel for help, but Thuel was probably at home asleep, despite the guard's brash declaration. Besides, Aunn was no longer any use to Thuel, and the Spy Master was bound to figure that out soon enough. He needed to get out of the Tower of Eyes, out of Kelas's body and clothes, and out of the whole damned mess he'd put himself in.
He bolted out of the room, pulling the door behind him. The guard's body and the door would slow Vec slightly-just enough to allow Aunn to escape, he hoped. He tore down the deserted hall, Vec's footsteps pounding behind him.
"Coward!" Vec shouted, still playing Kelas's role to the hilt, trying to batter Aunn's will into submission-and perhaps to rouse more guards. "Come back and accept the punishment you've earned!"
Pain seared across Aunn's back from his wound with every step he ran. A moment with one of his wands would close it, but he didn't have a moment to spare. The pain sapped the strength from his legs and made his head swim. He felt as though he were running in a dream, making no progress through an endless tunnel, with his pursuer closing quickly.
He burst through a door into the center of the tower, with a wide stair twisting down to the ground floor. Aunn vaulted down, stumbled on the stairs as a fresh jolt of pain stabbed across his back, and ran as fast as he could manage down the winding stairs. A knife clattered against the stone just ahead of him, then nearly sent him tumbling down the stairs as he tried not to step on it. In that off-balance moment, a second blade bit into his shoulder-a small cut, but Aunn didn't need any more wounds. He fumbled in a pouch at his belt as he continued down the stairs, searching by touch for a wand he normally kept close at hand.
Polished wood, a smooth stone at the tip, fiery lines of power twisted and coiling inside-he found the wand he sought, drew it out of the pouch, and pointed it up the stairway. He had to pause a moment, stopping his rush down the stairs, to focus on loosing the knot of magic in the wand's core. A spark flew up from the wand as if from a bonfire, and erupted in roaring flame above him. As the fireball filled the stairway, Aunn ran again, and a moment later he burst through another door onto the ground floor of the Tower of Eyes.
Two soldiers posted at the entrance turned at the sound of the door, hands reaching for their swords. They were all that stood between him and freedom, but how was he going to get past them? They had orders not to let him out-not Kelas nor anyone else who might be a changeling, which meant anyone at all. There wasn't a face he could put on that wo
uld convince the guards to let him through the doors. He fingered the wand in his hand, toying for just a moment with the idea of blasting the guards out of the way.
No, he thought, I'll leave killing soldiers to Vec.
He changed his face quickly, before the guards could get a good look at him in the hall's lantern light. "He tried to kill me!" he shouted, finding and slowly settling into Thuel's pitch and clipped accent. He was breathing hard, out of breath, bleeding-the guards wouldn't think twice about his voice not sounding quite right. He pointed at the door he'd just burst through. "The changeling!"
The guards got their swords out and hurried toward him.
One stammered, "Sir, I–I thought you left the tower…"
"I came back," Aunn barked. He wasn't dressed like Thuel, and the other guard was thinking a little too hard about the situation, from the look on her face.
"We didn't see you-" she said.
"You don't think I have ways of getting in my tower that you don't know about?" he roared. "Now get ready to stop that maniac!"
The guards positioned themselves between Aunn and the swinging door, and Aunn heard Vec's steps coming down after him. They were uneven, as if Vec were half stumbling down the stairs. Aunn edged back from the soldiers, toward the beckoning freedom of the tower's exit, but the suspicious guard shot a glance at him.
"Haunderk!" Kelas's voice roared from the doorway, sending a lance of cold fear though Aunn's heart. He knew Kelas was dead-he'd stripped the clothes and armor from the dead body himself-but he couldn't forget a lifetime of lessons so painfully learned.
When Vec appeared in the doorway, he did not look like Kelas anymore. The burst of fire had burned his clothes and seared his skin, leaving pinkish-gray welts across his face and chest. His hair was white except where it was blackened by fire, and his face was frozen somewhere in between a horribly disfigured Kelas and his true changeling visage. The soldiers recoiled in horror, and Aunn used that moment to bolt for the door.
Am I leaving them to their death? he wondered. Letting Vec kill them so I didn't have to dirty my own hands?
"Stop him, you fools!" Vec called behind him.
"Come back here!" the suspicious guard shouted.
Well, they'll get through this all right, Aunn thought. Another few steps, and he felt the cold night air on his face. He ran across the broad, well-lit street that radiated out from the palace and past the Tower of Eyes, chose the narrow mouth of an alley and ran into it, letting its darkness close around him.
He ran through dark alleys and across bright streets until his breath failed him. He stopped, tried to quiet his breathing enough to listen for the sounds of pursuit, and heard nothing. He sank down against a wall and sat in the darkness until his breath came more easily.
He unfastened one of Kelas's belt pouches, opened it, and dumped the contents out onto the ground. A glowstone clattered on the cobblestone, shedding a faint light that let him see the rest of his and Kelas's belongings he'd dumped out-a ring of keys, a small knife with its blade folded into its hilt, several sets of identification papers, his wands. He found the wand he needed and touched its tip to the wound on his back, then his shoulder. Tingling warmth spread through his body, knitting his injured flesh back together and restoring some of his flagging energy.
He removed another pouch and dumped its contents out with the rest. More papers, the shard of masonry he'd taken from Gaven's cell, the silver torc he'd removed from Dania's body and then taken from the wreckage of the Dragon Forge. He found a tinder box as well, and set it in his lap.
He had one more pouch, which he removed and dumped out, and then he unbuckled his sword belt and took off his clothes as well. Naked but not feeling the cold, he changed-he let his body relax into no form at all. It was hard at first, to resist shaping himself and instead just let his body be what it wanted to be, but once he began letting go, his flesh gladly slid from his control. Shorter than Kelas, slender and smooth, gray-skinned and white-haired. He tried to look at his face in the blade of Kelas's sword, but he didn't have enough light.
"I am Aunn," he murmured.
He crouched back down to the ground and began to sort the things he'd dumped out of his pouches. Everything that belonged to Kelas went in one pile, everything that was his in another. Using Kelas's identification papers as kindling, he started a small fire in that pile, then one by one, he added his own belongings-starting with his own sheaf of identification papers, showing half a dozen different names and faces he never wanted to wear again. He fastened Dania's torc around his neck, rubbed the masonry shard between his fingers, and watched his old life and Kelas's slowly burn away in flame.
"I am Aunn," he said again. "This is who I am."
CHAPTER 22
The turning of the age?" Ashara said. "That's what Havrakhad said."
Cart nodded. "Yes. And now I understand it." He strode through the streets, forcing Ashara to hurry her steps, half running, to keep up.
"What are you talking about?" The pace was making Ashara breathe heavily again, and her words came out between deep gasps for air.
"He could explain it better than I."
"But he didn't, did he? Cart, what's going on?"
"I saw something," Cart said. He wasn't sure he could describe it, or in any way help Ashara understand what was suddenly clear to him. "We live in an age of darkness, but it's drawing to a close."
"You sound like Gaven now."
Cart slowed his pace just slightly. "Do I? Interesting."
Ashara caught up and took his arm. "The Time of the Dragon Below he was talking about, and the rise of the Blasphemer-is that the end of this age?"
"Perhaps it is."
"So what does the next age hold?"
Cart looked down at her and was struck again at the expressiveness of her face. Shadows and lines beneath her eyes, which he hadn't noticed before, told him how tired she was. Creases in her brow spoke of worry and anxiety. The hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth, and something in the warm brown of her eyes whispered of what he was coming to recognize as her affection for him, mixed with something else-something else that made her want to smile, or made her think of a reason to smile.
"I think that's largely up to us," Cart said. "Now come on!" He stepped up his pace again, and Ashara had to let go of his arm as she hustled to keep up.
"What's the hurry? Do we have to save the world right now?"
"We might."
Ashara gave up asking questions after that, saving her breath for running as he led the way back to Havrakhad's apartment.
As he walked, Cart imagined his footsteps-the steady beating of the metal and leather in his feet against the cobblestones-as one beat in a larger cadence, as if he were part of an army marching toward the kalashtar's home, an army of truth and light marching forth to do battle against the darkness. It comforted him to think in those terms, as if the axe at his side could help him against the nightmare monster he'd seen, as if the age of darkness were an enemy army he could stand against. As if he and Ashara were not alone in the dark streets of Fairhaven, cut off from what few allies they had.
But if his steady strides were a marching cadence, a steady drumbeat impelling him forward with determination and resolve, Ashara's steps were a fluttering descant that lent a hint of panic to the march. They reminded him of the frightened mobs he'd seen fleeing from the quori or screaming at the barbarians' approach in his visions. Part of him wanted to join his steps to hers, to run from the threat they faced, to pretend there was nothing they could do but wait for the age to turn.
Then his steps brought him into the small immigrant neighborhood where Havrakhad lived. There weren't enough kalashtar in the city-or members of any race native to their homeland of Adar-to form a district of their own, the way that dwarves had established a community around the Kundarak enclave or Karrns clustered around Drake Street on the east side. Instead, the kalashtar lived in an apartment building of Aundairian construction, which would have bl
ended perfectly with the white plastered buildings on either side if it weren't for the colorful banners that streamed from balconies and windows on every one of its four stories. On their previous visits, Ashara had mentioned another distinguishing feature that he was blind to-the aroma of Adaran cooking, which made use of spices and seasonings unfamiliar to Aundairian nostrils.
"Cardamom," Ashara said. "Oh, Cart, I wish this were all over and I could just go home and cook a good meal, relax in front of the fire, and sleep in my own bed."
The yearning in her voice made Cart melancholy. She was longing for simple comforts and pleasures that meant nothing to him, and he couldn't imagine what it would be like to share them with her. When this was all over, would there be room in her life for him?
He pushed open the door to the apartment building and started up the stairs. Ashara trailed behind him in silence, perhaps lost in her reverie, perhaps wondering why he hadn't answered her. He took the stairs slowly, one at a time, so she could keep up. And, he told himself, so he didn't make as much noise.
At the top of the stairs, Ashara broke her silence. "What will you do? When it's all over?"
Cart shrugged. "I don't know. I've always been a soldier. Already I'm feeling my way in the dark, but at least I have a purpose. I suppose it's just a matter of finding a new purpose."
"One mission after the next."
"Something like that." Cart reached the door to Havrakhad's home. Ashara started to say something else, but he held up his hand and she stopped. The door was open.
"Havrakhad?" he called quietly.
The door didn't look like it had been forced, and peering into the dark room beyond he didn't immediately see any sign of violence. Even so, the situation felt wrong. He slid his axe from his belt and called out again, a little louder.
Hearing no answer, he glanced at Ashara, who nodded, and stepped softly through the open door. A dim glow filtered from an inner room, giving him just enough light to distinguish the general outline of the room.
"Havrakhad? It's Cart."
