Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter (34 page)

"I wouldn't know," Kenyen returned dryly. Backing up to the bed, he sat on its edge. "I can't shape magic. Let's see that book. I'm not the scholar my brother is, but maybe two heads can make more sense than one?"

Nodding, she sat down next to him and opened the book. Flipping through the pages, she found the ribbon marking the spot where she had last finished. "This is a grimoire, a personal spellbook. Some of the things in here are very simple, while others are complex. There are notes on the purpose of each spell and possible variations, of course, but most were written to make sense to the mage who originally wrote them. Others are from those who've used this book for their own studies in the years since, but all of them were from trained mages, so naturally I haven't had much luck in deciphering them..."

Eleven

The basket spell, Kenyen decided, was both terrifying and exhilarating. He supposed it might've been less perilous to have flown in the daylight, where the trees and hills weren't shades of gray to his owl-shaped eyes. It was always easier to see things in full color than with night sight. It might also, he acknowledged privately, have been
more
alarming to be flying about in the daylight, because then he'd be that much more aware of how flimsy the flower basket was and how far off the ground it carried him.

It was exhilarating because it
worked
... and it wasn't the power of his own wings that lofted him into the air, but rather a simple tugging pull on the broad loop of the wicker handle. Flying like this was unnatural. Undeniably, indisputably unnatural, and remarkably fun.

To rise up, he simply pulled straight up. To fly forward, he first lifted up, then pushed the handle forward. To slow down, he pulled it back, toward his chest. A turn involved a combination of twist and tilt toward the necessary direction, and sometimes he swooped a little too fast, but it wasn't difficult to stop.

The only drawback to this mode of locomotion was that Solyn couldn't reshape her eyes to see in the dark, and hadn't the first clue how to cast a spell to give herself the magical equivalent of owl-vision. She could craft little glowing balls of light, which she somehow fixed onto the back end of his basket, allowing her to follow him. That meant he was responsible for her safety as well as his own, but because she was following him, he couldn't
see
where she was in relation to him.

Some shifters could literally grow eyes in the backs of their heads, but Kenyen wasn't one of them. Twisting to look behind him made his basket fly oddly, so he couldn't do that, either. When they came near the high meadow where Cullerog and his sheep lived, he maneuvered carefully between the trees flanking the fields, picking a path down to the ground with plenty of room.

Once the basket was on the ground, with his legs stretched out in front of him, getting the spell to stop was as easy as grasping it firmly with both hands. The soft noise of her landing in the grass behind him was a relief, and a glance showed her faintly illuminated in the blue glow of the three tiny mage-lights she had created.

Getting out of the basket required an awkward wiggle. He heard her trying to smother a giggle and shushed her quietly. They both worked themselves free and stood. Clad as she was in baggy spare clothes of Traver's, hair pinned tight to her head and reeking of lanolin grease applied to the soles of her sandals and the palms of her gloves, she grinned at him. Then again, he wasn't much better, with his hair bound up and his gloves and sandals coated in sheep grease as well, though at least Traver's clothes did fit him better.

The trick of clothes and grease were needed to minimize their own scent as much as possible, hiding it behind the familiar smell of the real Traver and the much stronger smell of sheep. With Cullerog being a shepherd, that meant he was surrounded by the woolly beasts, and the scent would already be everywhere in the cabin. It was Kenyen's idea to dress in the spare sets of clothes, partly for the smell but also to ensure he would have fresh changes while staying elsewhere. It was Solyn's idea to use a lanolin-heavy ointment she had fetched from the herb-room, along with thin wool gloves that could be discarded quickly.

Each of them had an oilcloth sack. The one Solyn carried was filled with a change of clothes for her and a pot of softsoap, so they could wash the ointment from their sandals and hands. The other, slung over Kenyen's head and shoulder, contained bread and fruit filched from the kitchen for Traver to eat and several slices of greenvein cheese.

"Ready?" he whispered.

Nodding, she picked up her basket with one hand and gestured with the other. A single murmur extinguished the lights. His nose itched, warning him that the effects of the cheese were starting to wear off. Removing one glove, he dug into the bag, broke off a chunk of cheese, and stuffed it in his mouth; sneezing from her magics could get them in serious trouble if it happened at the wrong moment.

He tugged the garment back on and picked up the basket. Overhead, stars twinkled through the treetops. Neither the large white form of Brother Moon nor the smaller orb of Sister were visible at the moment; the larger celestial orb of Brother Moon had already set for the night, being close to the new, and the smaller one of Sister Moon wouldn't rise for another hour or so. That didn't leave a lot of light for the normal, non-shifter eyes of his wife, but it did help reduce their chances of being spotted by any Mongrels in the shepherd's home.

"Can you see anything?" he asked, concerned about her safety.

"Well enough," she returned, keeping her voice low. Though he had explained to her he would be using an owl's sight to see a dozen times better than any human could, Solyn didn't think her own night vision was bad. "If we stay out of the heaviest cover and move slowly, I should be fine."

"We'll head uphill, and approach from near the ridge, where there aren't windows to look out from," he told her. "Crouch low, keep the basket on the far side of you from the cottage, and use your hands if you need to. Try to move like a sheep."

Though he was little more than a silhouette with a hint of details thanks to the starlight, Solyn smirked at him. "Is that something you do often? Imitate sheep?"

"No, but I have moved like an animal—as an animal—when sneaking up on bandit holds. This is no different. Be ready with your spells," he warned her. "If I gesture for you to stop, get low to the ground and hold still. When we're close, I'll scout the cabin and see how many are in there and whether they're asleep or awake."

Nodding, she moved slowly and carefully. Noise was his biggest concern; he had learned in the warbands how to move through a forest at night, but she didn't move too badly, testing each footstep for noisy dry twigs before trusting her weight to the ground. It took a while to move up through the woods at that pace, and it took time to move slowly out across the upper meadow, pausing now and then to lower their heads, as if cropping at the grass.

No one charged out of the cabin. Nothing slithered out of the grass or flew down out of the sky. Insects chirped, night birds twittered, the wind occasionally whistled along the ridgeline off to their right, and the stars slowly moved by overhead. When they were within just a few lengths of the moss-dotted slates of the cottage roof, he gestured for her to stop and wait. Obediently, she hunkered down.

Shaping horselike ears, Kenyen listened. Night sounds from all directions but the cabin. Someone in the cottage was talking; from the muffled low level, he thought it might be coming from the basement. Creeping forward, he enlarged his ears and tested the wind with his nose, since its direction was in his favor, blowing from the cabin to him.

Sheep, of course, and smoke from the hearthfire. Cullerog the shepherd, the shifter who was the dog... and two familiar smells, one feminine, the other masculine. He couldn't place it immediately, but someone was visiting the small structure. Easing closer, he set his basket under the eaves and listened intently, creeping an inch at a time toward the hole he had used to escape, earlier.

"... And how do you like
that
?" a male voice murmured. It was followed by a grunt of pain and a faint clank of metal. "I wonder if he can rut on her as many times in a single night as
I
can?"

The boastful tone, the smell, and the voice clicked together.
Tarquin is in there?

"Lick harder, bitch; he's getting soft again. We can't have poor Traver rutless on his
wedding night
."

At that taunting, an ugly suspicion rose in Kenyen's mind. He found the right hole by the gleam of light coming from within and squeezed his upper body into the shape of a snake. The partial shift was difficult to maintain, but it allowed him to extend his serpentine head into the hole far enough to have his guess confirmed.

It wasn't easy for one man to violate another without doing so personally, but Tarquin had found a way. The same middle-aged woman from the bonfire meeting now crouched over Traver, who had his—Kenyen's—gathered trousers pulled down to his ankles. Her tangle of messy dark hair hid exactly what she was doing at his groin, but that much was obvious. It was the bruises covering Traver's legs that concerned Kenyen. Several of them looked like they were days old, while others were fresher.

He hadn't checked Traver's body visually past that first night, just the face and general build. Guilt rose up in Kenyen at that neglect, guilt prodded further by the memory of how Traver had flinched when he had drawn letters on that unknowingly mottled leg.
Of course he couldn't have told me about it; if he had, I would've had to fake an equal level of ruthlessness... and this does lend weight to the thought that they're just going to kill him as soon as they have what they want.

Tarquin moved into view. The curly-haired shifter was naked and blatantly ready to do some rutting. He knelt behind the woman, and Kenyen quickly retreated, drawing his upper body back through the hole. He shifted awkwardly in position, rearing up to peek through a crack in the shutters. Cullerog was awake, along with an equally age-grizzled shifter. They were playing some sort of grid-and-counter game. Kenyen had seen a similar board in Traver's home, but didn't know how it was played.

This time, the grunting from below was feminine. The exclamation, rough and coarse, was masculine. "... See this?
This
is how a real man ruts!"

It was accompanied by worse sounds and a mock-howl. Moving one of his pieces, the gray-haired, gray-bearded shifter asked, "You gonna rut on 'er, later?"

"Thinking about it," Cullerog muttered, moving one of his pieces. "If my sap'll rise."

His companion chuckled. "That boy's got 'nough sap for both of us."

Seeing no one else in the building, Kenyen reshaped his head and chest. Easing back, he turned and gestured. The brownish lump on the hillside moved, creeping down the slope toward him. By the time Solyn reached his side, a few clouds had drifted into view from the east. They were lighter around the edges than they should have been, suggesting the rise of Sister Moon wasn't that far off.

The sounds coming from the root cellar, a mix of grunts, slapping flesh, and crude observations, were obvious enough that Solyn blushed. Focusing firmly on Kenyen's gestures, she watched him point at the window and hold up two fingers, then point down below and hold up three. He folded down one of those. She guessed that meant one of the three was Traver, leaving two other targets for her.

Nodding, she set her basket not far from his and rose up on her knees. Putting her eye to the crack between the two shutters, she peered into the cabin. Two elderly men sat at a table not far from the hearth. Between the crackling of the fire and the flickering of two oil lamps, she could see their faces easily enough.

I can't put either of them to sleep suddenly. If I did it to the first one, that would alarm the other one, not to mention the sound of either man falling out of his chair would put the idiot down in the cellar on his guard... assuming he'd notice it over the noises
he's
making
, she acknowledged.
So the gentle dreams spell will have to be the first choice. That way, they'll lie down of their own accord.
Then,
I put them out firmly with the anesthetic spell.

Focusing on the one with the beard, she reached for him with the part of her senses, her mind, that could sense his living energy.
Dormanuuu,
she thought, shaping the meaning behind the word, the sense of exhaustion and the need for slumber. The other man's nose twitched. He finished his move in the game and rubbed at his nostrils, pinching them briefly. The bearded one started to reach for his piece... and yawned.

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.