Fey 02 - Changeling
Read Fey 02 - Changeling Online
Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
CHANGELING
THE SECOND BOOK
OF
THE FEY
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Changeling
Copyright © 2011 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
Published 2011 by WMG Publishing
Cover Art Copyright © 2011 by Dirk Berger
Cover Design Copyright 2011 WMG Publishing
First Published 1996 by Bantam Books
The Fey Series
(In chronological order)
Destiny: A Short Story of The Fey
The Fey: Sacrifice
The Fey: Changeling
The Fey: The Rival
The Fey: The Resistance
The Fey: Victory
The Black Queen: Book One of The Black Throne Series
The Black King: Book Two of Black Throne Series
The Place of Power Series: Book One [Coming Fall 2012]
All of the Fey series will be published by WMG Publishing
in both electronic and trade paper editions
in chronological order starting in the spring of 2011.
Table of Contents
To Aaron J. Reynolds,
for all the wonderful summers.
I love you, Kiddo.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks on this one go to Tom Dupree for adopting me; Carolyn Oakley for her enthusiasm; Renee Dodds for ignoring my moods; Nina Kiriki Hoffman for being honest about my writing; Jerry Oltion for reading fantasy; Kathy Oltion for being my guinea pig; Mike Resnick for keeping me on the straight and narrow, and for covering for me; Kevin J. Anderson for being a friend forever; and to Dean Wesley Smith for all the love, faith, and warmth.
He put words to the memory years later, when he tried to tell people of it.
Some doubted he could remember, and others watched him as if stunned by his clarity.
But the memory was clear, not as a series of impressions, but as an experience, one he could relive if he closed his eyes and cast his mind backwards.
An inverse Vision.
None of his other memories were as sharp, but they were not as important.
Nor were they the first
:
Light filled the room.
He opened his eyes, and felt himself emerge like a man stepping out of the fog.
One moment he had been absorbing, feeling, learning--the next he was thinking.
The lights clustered near the window, a hundred single points revolving in a circle.
The tapestry was up, as if someone were holding it.
He turned his head — it was his newest skill, but he saw only the curtained wall of the crib.
Voices floated in from the other room — his mother's voice, sweet and familiar, almost a part of himself, and a man's voice -- his father's?
His nurse sat near the fireplace, her head tilted back, her bonnet askew.
She was snoring softly, a raspy sound that sometimes covered the voices.
He could barely see her face over the edge of his crib.
It was a friendly face, with gentle wrinkled features, a rounded nose, and generous mouth.
Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, her nostrils fluttering with each inhalation.
He reached toward her, but his fingers gripped the soft blanket instead.
A cool breeze touched him tentatively, smelling of rain and the river.
The lights parted to let a shadow in.
The shadow had the shape of a man, but it was dark and flat and crept across the wall.
He put his baby finger in his mouth and sucked, eyes wide, watching the shadow.
It slid over the tapestries and across the fireplace until it landed on his nurse's face.
He whimpered, but the shadow did not look at him.
Instead, it molded itself against his nurse's features.
Her hands moved ever so slightly as if to pull it off, then she began twitching as if she were dreaming.
Her eyes remained closed, but her snoring stopped.
His mother's voice penetrated the sudden silence.
"You will not give him a common name!
He is a Prince in the Black King's line.
He needs to be named as such!"
The nurse's breathing became regular.
The twitching ceased.
If not for the blackness covering her face, she would have appeared normal.
"I thought Fey named their children after the customs of the land they're in."
His father's voice.
"Names have to have meaning, Nicholas.
They are the secret to power."
"I do not see how your name gives you power, Jewel."
The breeze blew over him again.
He peered over his blanket at the window.
The lights were no longer revolving.
They had formed a straight line from the window to his curtained crib.
The lights were beautiful and tiny, the size of his fingertips.
They gathered around his crib, twinkling and sparkling. Suddenly he was warm. The air smelled of sunlight.
"I'll agree to the name if you tell me what it means."
The voices moved back and forth, near and away, as if his parents were circling each other in the next room.
"I don't know what it means, Jewel.
But it has been in my family for generations."
"I swear."
His mother sounded angry.
"It was easier to make the child than it is to name him."
"It was certainly more fun."
He turned to the curtained wall, wishing he could see through it, wishing they would come to him.
The lights hovered above him.
They were so beautiful.
Blue and red and yellow.
He pulled his finger out of his mouth and raised it toward the lights.
By accident, he touched a blue light and pulled his hand away with a startled cry.
With the smell of sulfur and a bit of smoke, the blue light became a tiny naked woman, with thin wings shimmering on her back.
Her skin was darker than his, her eyebrows swept up like her wings, and her eyes were as alive as the lights.
"Got him," she said.
His fingers hurt.
He snuffled, then looked at his nurse.
The shadow still covered her face, and she was breathing softly.
He wanted her to see him.
But she slept.
The tiny woman landed on his chest, put her hands on his chin, and looked into his eyes.
"Ah," she said.
"He's ours, all right."
Her hands tickled his skin.
The other lights gathered around her.
With a series of pops, they became more winged people, all dark, all graceful and small.
The men had thick beards, the women hair that cascaded over their shoulders.
They landed around him, their bare feet making tiny indentations on the thick blanket.
He was too startled to cry.
They examined his features, poking at his skin, tugging on his ears, tracing the tiny points.
"He's one of ours," the woman said.
"Skin's light," one of the men said.
"Lighter," another man corrected.
Their voices were tiny too, almost like little bells.
In the other room, his mother giggled.
He moved at the sound, knocking some of the little people over.
He reached for his mother.
She giggled again, deep in her throat.
"Nicholas, it's been just days since the babe."
His father laughed, too.
The little people got up.
One of the men came very close.
He squinted, making his small eyes almost invisible.
"Nose is upturned."