Free Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) by A.C. Smyth Page B

something approaching awe, his fingers stroking the table where the windows cast coloured ripples like oil on water. Deygan remembered that feeling. He had attended his father in this chamber as a boy, learning how to rule as he observed his elders wrangling over points of law. And the Chesammos. Always they discussed the Chesammos.
    Deygan was proud of his son. At twelve, Jaevan knew two languages besides his native Irenthi, and was an accomplished archer and fencer, although his physique did not yet lend itself to Deygan’s preferred broadsword. In an unusual move, masters from the Aerie had tutored Jaevan and his brother, Marklin, for a time. Deygan intended the changers’ slant on the history, philosophy, and religion of the island and its inhabitants to give Jaevan valuable insight into the people he would one day rule. The youngest prince, six-year-old Rannon, would join his brothers in their lessons soon.
    Deygan noted how Jaevan made careful notes with quill and ink as his elders spoke, the tip of his tongue poking out from one side of his mouth in concentration. He wrote a good hand, and he tucked a stray lock of white hair behind his ear when it flopped across his face as he wrote. Deygan himself wore his hair tied away from his face with a simple leather thong. His head was bare. He rarely wore his circlet any more. Let the other holders wear theirs if they wished; he wore his rank in his posture and demeanour.
    “There’s more to it than that,” Lord Holder Garvan said from his position midway along the table on the opposite side from Deygan. “Linandra production has been falling steadily for the last few months. I have ordered my men to search returning digging parties starting on the next rota.”
    “The number of Chesammos in the desert has fallen,” said Lord Holder Tramalick of Easthill. “Could that be behind it? Or the lack of activity from Eurna recently?”
    “The mountain’s activity goes in peaks and troughs,” Lord Garvan returned. “And the time between the peaks has been getting shorter over the past few generations. The last peak of activity was nineteen or twenty years ago, as I recall, around the time you came to the throne, Sire.”
    Eurna had been very active then, and Chandris had seemed likely to suffer a king’s death, a major eruption, and an enemy invasion in the space of a few weeks.
    Deygan nodded. “Indeed so. There are always tremors, of course, and the movement of the desert brings new deposits close enough to the surface for the Chesammos to detect. There should be no shortage of linandra. Does anyone else have any theories?”
    Beside him, Deygan could feel Jaevan’s attention subtly altering. For whatever reason, the lad had always been fascinated with the Chesammos and the changers, and Deygan wondered if allowing Jesely to tutor him might not have been a mistake. The lad had acquired some unconventional ideas about the Chesammos from that particular master.
    To King Deygan, the Chesammos were only important to the island for the work they did—producing the ash bricks to build Irenthi towns and cities, and digging the precious linandra stones on which the wealth of the island itself was built. The few that remained in the uplands laboured in the fields or kept the livestock. If any managed to rise to become changers, or master changers, that elevated them beyond their race and gave them the status that their abilities accorded. For the rest, all Jaevan would need to know was how to keep them in line.
    “The Chesammos are becoming more and more idle,” said Garvan. “A few raids on their villages should shake them up—remind them of their place.”
    If Garvan considered using his small but well-trained militia, he must be concerned by recent events. Garvan was a tolerant man, by Deygan’s standards. He regarded the Chesammos as irksome, as most of the lord holders did, but largely let them be. Tolerant, but not soft. If he needed to send troops into the desert