Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) Read Online Free

“I’m sorry, Sylas, I can’t. But now that I understand the problem I can investigate. I know of one other changer who heard more kye than normal. I shall see what I can discover.”
    Sylas perked up. “What happened to him?”
    “Leave me to investigate. It was a long time ago and I don’t remember it clearly.” The bell struck three times, and Jesely rose to go.
    “I have a class now. Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
    “Yes, Master. I have a lesson with Master Gwysias.”
    “Very well. I doubt I shall have any news for you before you leave for home, but maybe when you return I shall have an idea how to proceed, if the Lady wills it.”
    “Maisaiea-yelai,” Sylas echoed him in the Chesammos tongue, pressing his thumbs and fingertips together in the Lady’s sign. As he made the gesture, Jesely caught sight of the boy’s palms and drew a breath in through his teeth. Few of the masters took a switch to their pupils, much less on their hands, but Gwysias the master of the scriptorium did, from time to time. Gwysias was convinced that Sylas’s failure was due to laziness or downright stupidity.
    Jesely did not walk as briskly as usual on his way to his class, but turned what Sylas had said over and over in his mind. The lad was a puzzle, that was certain. In all his years dealing with failing novices—the slow learners and the dull-witted—he had never encountered one like Sylas. The boy was bright enough. His mother had, against his father’s wishes, taught him the rudiments of reading and writing. But kye voices calling in his head? Was the bird kye refusing to make itself known to the boy? Or were so many kye trying to claim him that he was becoming confused, unable to hear the one to which he should be bound?
    The council and Sylas’s father alike were demanding results, if for different reasons, and if he was to help Sylas, Jesely was going to have to dig into old history. He would have to turn up parts of the past that he would rather leave forgotten. For he had loved Shamella, and she had died when she was scarcely older than Sylas was now. If the kye had killed her, he owed it to Sylas to save him, if he could.

    Sylas sat hunched over a long wooden table in the library, flanked by bookcases holding tomes bound in leather or linen. The smell of parchment and dust and old ink hung in the air, and settled on his skin. The room whispered of generations of changers before him who had studied here, but none, he would wager, had ruined more work or spilt more ink on their fingers. He was so absorbed that he did not notice Casian until he spoke.
    “Very nice. I like the way you have drawn the veins on the leaves. What is it?”
    “Medelerinn. That’s what we call it, anyway. It grows in the cracks in the rocks near our village. Not much grows there—the rain kills most plants before they can even take root—but medelerinn can grow pretty much anywhere. My mother steeps the leaves into a tea that cures headaches. I saw some outside this morning and it made me think of home.”
    He turned in his seat to look up at the silver-blond Irenthi man. Casian, freshly washed and dressed in clothes befitting a lord’s heir, looked fully recovered from his flight. Sylas’s mouth dried at the sight of him, as it always did, his breath taken away by Casian’s pale skin and high cheekbones. The haughty air of one who has grown up in wealth and status and come to expect it as his right only added to his glamour, in Sylas’s opinion.
    “And this one?” Casian pointed to the sketch below.
    “Esteia. Another desert plant. That flower forms seed pods about so big.” He showed Casian the length of the first joint of his index finger. “The seeds look like nuts—tempting if you’re out in the desert and short of food—but they’re deadly poison. Eat one of them, or just lick your fingers after picking one, and at first it looks like you’ve got a fever. Then you get bruises all over your skin. Eight or