Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter (5 page)

Kenyen, unfastening the pony's bridle so she could eat as well, looked up at that. "Melting?"

"One minute it would be Tunric and his boy Tarquin, the next they were each somebody else, and they didn't look related anymore. Then they'd go back. The others, too. And they had hand mirrors, and they were looking into them. Now that I'm older, I realize they were practicing or something. And joking and laughing, and saying things about who they thought would make a good 'replacement candidate' next. I didn't know the names at the time, but later I learned some of them were men like Tunric, merchants and landowners. Powerful men in their communities."

"That doesn't sound good, but it does sound like something Family Mongrel would do," Kenyen muttered grimly. Grunting, he pulled the saddle from the pony's back. It was damp with sweat, not river water, and would need airing so the beast didn't gain any sores.

He wished his brother was here; Akodan was better at thinking strategically, at figuring out how to outflank an enemy.
All I can think of is the horror of not knowing who all the man-shifters might be and how many of their victims died in caves like the original Tunric did. I have no clue how to find all of the shapeshifted curs from Family Mongrel, nor how to stop them. I know something will come to me, but at the moment...

"I didn't know what to think, or what to do about what I saw," Traver muttered, his voice barely audible over the stream. "They scared me. They shoved each other, talked coarsely... and there was this woman. I hadn't seen her before. She was dirty, and barely dressed in rags, and she scuttled about like a... like a timid mouse, and they hit her if she didn't move fast enough. And... other things." He shrugged, hugging his arms to his chest. "I told a friend of mine, and sh... well, they said they believed me, because of some things that were happening that they'd seen, too. But it was late, I was young, I didn't dare get close at the time, and I couldn't find anything out after that. Nor could my friend.

"Everyone seemed so normal. But... little things kept adding up over the years. Until I was hunting through the hills again and found another bonfire. I didn't dare get close enough to see much, but I saw enough to know they're still out there, and one of them is definitely the man calling himself Tunric Tel Vem."

Kenyen didn't miss the way the other young man kept looking at his food. "You want something to eat?"

Traver nodded. Scooping the bread and cheese off the ground, Kenyen dusted them off, then broke each in two and gave the younger man the cleaner halves. Taking a bite himself, he chewed and thought. Both his mare and the shorter pony cropped at the grass growing along the banks, feeding while they rested. Finally, Kenyen swallowed and asked, "... Why did you want me to shift shape twice? What was that about?"

"They have these marks on their forehead. Bluesteel scars," Traver told him. "They have a way of covering it up when they're pretending to be a human, but it shows up when they've shifted into an animal shape."

Kenyen eyed him, then snapped a twig off the nearest aspen tree and drew a swirling, line-crossed mark in the dirt at the edge of the riverbank. "A mark like this?"

"Yeah, that's it," Traver agreed, peering at it. "At least, I'm pretty sure. It's been several years, like I said. Some of them I think had two lines through the swirly bits."

"The mark means Banished from the Plains. Two slashes means both the Shifting Plains and the Centa Plains. It's an automatic death sentence if they cross the border, if they have two." Kenyen frowned and pitched the twig into the river. "How did they cover it up?—No, I can't believe I'm actually asking this... You
can't
cover up a bluesteel scar. Once you've been marked, it's there for the rest of your life. Not even a Healer's best spells can remove it!"

"That's not true. If you had a..." Traver caught himself, flushed, and cleared his throat. He swallowed and gestured at his head. "They do this skin-flap thing with their foreheads. And they grow a fringe of hair along the edge, then comb it into the rest and tie it in a ponytail, or sometimes a braid. And they also wear headbands across their foreheads. There are some days when I wonder if every Corredai man with his hair pulled back or his forehead covered is secretly a shapeshifter in disguise."

The thought both disgusted and intrigued Kenyen. Wondering if it was even possible, he moved over to his saddlebags and dug until he found the hand-sized, polished steel mirror his father had given him at the onset of puberty so he could study himself more carefully while trying new shapes. The lightly scratched surface could have used repolishing, but it allowed him enough of a view to frown at himself and slowly bulge out a flap of skin. Growing hair along the edge was the tricky part. After the fourth try, he caught the Corredai youth staring in half-horrified fascination.

"That is... so... I'm sorry if this offends, milord, but that is just
disgusting
. Skin shouldn't
move
like that!" Traver swore, shaking his head.

"Little partial shapings like this are not looked upon with great favor, I'll admit," Kenyen said, smoothing out his brow. "We prefer to honor the animals created by Mother Earth and Father Sky by making ourselves look as natural as possible, indistinguishable from the real ones. It's... not
common
for us to pretend to shape ourselves like others, save for maybe in our earliest years—not to scare you, but I used to be somewhat good at making myself look like my friends. I haven't done it in years, though, and I only ever did it for a laugh. My mother made me stop after a few turns of Brother Moon."

Traver digested that. He nibbled on the remaining cheese in his hand. Finally, he shrugged. "Can you still do it?"

Kenyen blinked, bemused by the odd request. "I suppose I could
try
. I was only doing this to see if it could hide the scar in question," he added, gesturing at his forehead. "It looks like it might actually work."

"I already know it can cover the scars," Traver agreed, dismissing the subject. "What I want to know is, can you make yourself look like someone else?"

"The question is, why?" Kenyen countered back.

"Well, since I don't know who
is
a... a man-shifter, and who's the real person, then maybe the only way to find out is to get invited to one of those midnight bonfires and catch them all in one place," Traver offered, shrugging. "The best way to do that is to pretend to
be
one of them. Only I can't shift my shape. You can."

The idea was perverted: a true shifter didn't imitate another person. Animals, yes. People, no. Not once they learned to control their abilities. But Kenyen couldn't deny it also made sense to try.

Since he lacked any other candidate, Kenyen faced the other man, lifted his mirror, and carefully started shaping his face to match. Traver's forehead was a little broader, his chin a little more pointed, and he had a small tuft of not-quite-beard on his chin. The sort a young man would try to grow to make himself look older. His eyes were lighter brown, his nose thinner, if with a little bump from having been broken and reset, and there was a mole near the Corredai's left ear.

"Um... you put my mole on the wrong cheek," Traver told him, gesturing at the right side of Kenyen's head. "It's on the left, not the right?"

Flushing, Kenyen tried again. He got the face more or less right, but when he tried to smile, it looked awkward. Sighing, he relaxed his face. "Something like this would take practice. Same with the forehead-flap thing. And that's just the face; there's also the body. I'm a tiny bit taller, with narrower shoulders, and our muscles are bulked up differently. I might lose the sense of one of my other shapes if I tried to really grasp a total transformation."

"I have no idea what that means," Traver admitted, shrugging, "but like I said, it was just a thought. You said there were other Shifterai here in the mountains, in a town somewhere nearby? True Shifterai?"

"Yes, they're headed to Teshal to question someone," Kenyen said.

"Then I guess we should saddle up," Traver agreed. "One of them might be able to do it."

Kenyen bit back a retort on that, rephrasing his reply a little more politely. "It's not a matter of power; it's a matter of control. I might lose the sense of a less-familiar shape, but I can do it. I'd just need to practice for a bit. And we're not leaving for a few more minutes, to give the saddle and pad a little more time to dry. Your pony will also need to be walked for an hour or two, and her hocks checked for swelling. But we should be able to reach the village of Kethrin by nightfall.

"From there, I think it's just a couple days to Teshal, maybe less if she recovers tonight. When we do get there, Ashallan of Clan Cat, Family Lion, is in charge of our search," Kenyen told the young man. "She can hear what you have to say and decide what should be done about these man-shifters. If they really are banished ex-Shifterai, then part of your problem is in a way our fault." Kenyen checked both sets of tack. His was almost dry, but the pony's saddle was still a little damp. "You should take care of your mount a little better, you know."

"Well, I've been in kind of a hurry. It's bad enough I left the caravan in the middle of the night," the young Corredai man muttered. He grimaced and pressed a hand to his stomach. "Ugh, that was a bit too much cheese. I love eating it, but it doesn't always like me back—um, if you need me, I'll be in the bushes..."

Kenyen chuckled and flicked his hand, giving permission. He still had his shirt and pectoral necklace to pick up, plus a bit of food to eat and his waterskin to refill. "Take your time. Just don't take all day."

The other man nodded, grimaced, and hurried off into the undergrowth. Kenyen eyed his mirror in curiosity and tried folding the flap of skin from his hairline down this time. That seemed to work better than trying to haul it up from his eyebrows, while allowing him to keep the lead edge properly fringed with hair.

Forming and retracting it a few times, he ignored the noises in the distance, playing with the minor changes, then tried tracing a false scar on his forehead. After almost getting it right, he chuckled, relaxed his flesh, and reformed it so that it appeared
reversed
in the mirror, which meant it would display correctly on his brow for anyone who wanted to look at his face and read it.
Right versus left, yes... mirrors are great for looking at oneself, but even they don't show you how you look to others.
Sweeping the extra fringe into a partial braid atop his head, Kenyen checked his reflection, wanting to know if the seam could be easily seen.

A crash in the bushes and a startled yelp—which evolved into a scream and more thrashing—made him drop the polished scrap of steel. Launching forward through the bushes, he shifted stronger muscles and grew claws on his fingers and toes, giving him better traction across the forest floor. Foliage rustled with another yelp, followed by a thud. Bursting through the branches, Kenyen leaped and hit the figure that had pinned the Corredai man to the ground, sending the two of them tumbling.

Both males scrambled apart, whirling and facing each other on hands and toes. Kenyen's feral, feline hiss, teeth bared and body tensed to spring, was met by the other man's bared canines and wolfish growl. They stared at each other. A crackle of dried leaves and twigs distracted both of them. Traver froze, his trousers mostly pulled back into place, his fear-filled attention more on the stranger than on Kenyen.

The stranger, older than both of them by a few years, glanced between Kenyen and Traver, visibly torn between dealing with his original target and the newcomer. The unexpected shapeshifter. With instincts honed by nearly eight years' worth of experience following his brother into battle with the rest of the South Paw Warband, Kenyen struck.

"
My
prey," he growled. "Find your own!"

The stranger glanced briefly at the wide-eyed Traver, then looked back at Kenyen with a smirk. "Well, I do have a prior claim. I suggest we secure him, then discuss the matter in a civilized way. Did anyone send you here?"

"A former son of Dog. He didn't give me a lot of information," Kenyen hedged.

"What sort of information?" the other shifter asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Strangers have been sniffing around certain
caves
. He only told me enough to do
this
," Kenyen added, freeing one hand from the ground to tap his forehead, though he didn't actually reveal the fold of shapeshifted skin held upright in its braid. "Then he told me to head south, to Nespah. And to bring a gift."

Glancing pointedly at Traver, Kenyen studied the other shifter out of the corner of his eye. The man looked at Traver, too. While his attention was diverted, Kenyen shifted his face. When the man glanced back, he twitched and blinked. Kenyen knew the imitation wasn't perfect, but his nose was a lot more snub like Traver's and his brow a little higher, his cheekbones a little broader, and his chin a little softer with the signs of youth. He grinned, displaying feline-long teeth, then reshaped his face back to normal with a little shake.

The other shifter studied Kenyen a long moment, then pushed himself upright, glancing around the woods. "Right. I'm taking you and him to see the others. He had a pony he took with him..."

Kenyen smiled slightly. "I convinced him to stop riding and let the poor thing rest. I was just waiting for him to use the bushes before making my move, so I wouldn't have to deal with that later. I didn't expect anyone to stumble across us, let alone a fellow shifter."