Chapter 11
The Changer
The day that Voran and his companions left Vasyllia, it began to rain—a steady, insistent kind of rain that chilled deeper than snow. It never stopped long enough for the three travelers to dry their clothes, and soon they gave up altogether. Saddle sores became an ever-present reality, despite the cold. Voran forgot to take the necessary precautions, for which he silently cursed himself in language he never used in public. Judging by Mirnían’s stiffness, Voran was not the only one. Dubían merely sulked. In their mutual discomfort, all remained silent.
Mirnían’s guard of ten warriors traveled with them for the entire first day. But they were not trained woodsmen. They were slowing Voran down, and their racket could be heard for miles. After conferring with Dubían and Voran, Mirnían ordered them to return to Vasyllia. Voran knew what Dar Antomír would think about Mirnían’s decision. He also knew how little Mirnían cared about that.
It took them three days to reach the place where Voran bonded with Lyna. Voran hoped that he would see her again, though his rational mind told him that was unlikely. There was no change in his inner flame, no surge in his yearning as they approached. If anything, the closer they came, the less he felt anything, as though something were dulling his emotions from without.
“Why can’t it make up its mind?” roared Dubían, face red as his beard. “I can understand rain; I can understand fog. I hate both of them, but at least I can understand them. This…this is like sweat. It’s not raining, it’s sweating!”
Voran pushed his exhausted charger up through a cleft between two tree-crowned hills. When he came to the other side, he hoped to see clear indications of the pilgrims’ passage through that region.
“Voran, what is it?” asked Mirnían.
Voran could not understand. There was no sign of the pilgrims. Nothing. Until that moment, their trail—old food-scraps, strips of torn fabric hanging on black hawthorn, trampled earth—was unmistakable. But here, in the place where he last saw them, their trail veered off the road toward a wood, where it vanished.
Mirnían laughed. Dubían looked near to tears. Voran wanted to vent his frustration by hacking down the nearest tree with his sword.
“Well, now what?” said Mirnían pointedly, as though this was all Voran’s fault.
“I don’t know,” Voran said. “It’s too late to go on in any case, especially if we’re going into those woods. The morning is wiser than the evening.” Or at least I hope so.
“I knew you would have some sort of inspirational nonsense from the Tales, you fool,” burbled Mirnían. He walked off, head down and shoulders slumped. His words stung Voran like the slap of a birch-switch.
As their mounts munched on the last few greens remaining among the ascendant browns, Voran gathered wood for the fire. Like the insistent buzzing of a fly, he felt Mirnían’s anger, though the prince pointedly refused to look at him.
In the failing light, swarms of swallows kept him company. They wheeled low, almost at ground level. It’s going to rain, thought Voran. But the sky was already planted with stars, and no cloud obscured their glint. Neither was there any heaviness in the air. And yet, the birds seemed weighed down. There was something chaotic about their flight, nothing elegant about their circles. A few almost flew into each other, and there was none of the usual playfulness in it. Voran shivered with unease.
All three of them took turns trying to light the fire. All three failed. It seemed to break something in Mirnían’s resolve. Voran felt a wave of anger slap him a split second before Mirnían spoke.
“Voran, I have long wanted to ask you. You must have thought of this much over the years. Why do you think Otchigen murdered all those innocent people in Karila?”
Voran’s nails bit into his palm as he balled his fists. What a coward, he thought. Mirnían could find nothing to attack Voran with directly, so he struck in his soft place, in the place that he could not defend.
“You as well, Mirnían?” asked Voran, pushing the nails deeper into his palm, hoping the pain would keep the anger at bay.
Dubían tried to play conciliator. “Never mind what other people think.” He glared at Mirnían. “I’ve always been sure Otchigen was also killed in the wild, only his body was never found.”
“I don’t know,” said Voran. “Somehow, if he were dead, I think I would be more sure of it. No, he’s alive, but something prevented him from saving those people. It’s not an easy choice to willingly return home only to face judgment.”
Mirnían chuckled, clearly understanding Voran’s implication, but he said nothing.
“Voran, tell me. What sort of a man was Otchigen?” asked Dubían. “I would be honored to hear it from you. All the seminary rumors smacked of jealousy. He was a great man, and great men are not often liked.”
The unexpected kindness of the big man touched Voran.
“Everyone seems to think that my father was the Dar’s enforcer, a man who thought better with his axe than with his head. But they never saw him tell stories. Every evening he would gather us around the hearth. Some evenings it was something from the old tales, sometimes he told us of his youth. I loved it when he spoke of his first meeting with my mother. He had a particular way of speaking. It was almost in song.”
Like the Sirin. The thought struck him with unexpected revelation. He had always known it, but in some deep recess of the mind. Truly, there was something otherworldly about Otchigen when he told stories, leaning on one of the carved columns in their hearth-hall, always the same column. He would shed his years as he spoke, and every time he recalled his early days courting Aglaia, she would sit on her bench, rocking herself gently as she sewed something, pretending not to look at him. Her eyes looked different in those moments: they shone with intense color, revealing a wealth of shared remembrance, pride, and something deep, strong, poignant. The memory made Voran think of Sabíana.
Dubían put a hand as big as a cauldron on Voran’s shoulder in what he intended as a gentle caress. It nearly bowled Voran over.
“You must miss them very much,” whispered Dubían. There were tears in the big man’s eyes.
“Yes.” The tightness in his chest lessened for a moment, but as it did, the old yearning for Lyna flared up. He missed Lyna even more than he missed his parents, even more than he missed Sabíana. I’m so confused, he thought. Bonding with her was supposed to make the wistful itch disappear. She was supposed to order my inner world. Instead, I’m more lost than I ever was.
The morning was no wiser than the evening. At first light, Voran followed the trail of the pilgrims into the woods. As soon as he stepped into the trees, the trail vanished. But there was something else. Something crackling behind his ears, like a lightning bolt beyond his peripheral vision. Something wrong with the wood. It was not quite there.
Mirnían noticed it as soon as he joined Voran, a few minutes later.
“Did you feel that?” he asked. “What is wrong here?”
Dubían was more enlightening in his reaction. “There was a doorway here,” he said, with quiet certainty, “into the Lows of Aer.”
Voran nodded, while Mirnían shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“What do you mean was?” asked Mirnían. “Can these doorways move?”
Dubían smiled, clearly pleased at knowing something Mirnían did not.
“I thought everyone knew. Once entered, a doorway into the Lows shuts forever. Then you are forced to wander in that perilous realm, filled with all manner of strange beasts and people, until either you find another doorway, or you are forcibly taken out of it.”
“Do you not hear how ridiculous you sound?” Mirnían turned back to the camp.
“Wait,” said Voran. Something stirred inside him. They needed to go forward.
