Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

contract came through a couple of days ago, and although her friend had had her nose in a book, as usual, she’d said, “Sure, Mandalee. Whatever you need.”

Cat frowned and searched her memory. “I think I vaguely remember saying that, but to be honest, I must not have been paying attention, because I don’t recall anything about you needing my help against a wizard. Just that you were going demon hunting miles away. Mandalee, I’m sorry, but why didn’t you remind me?”

“When?” Mandalee demanded. “I haven’t seen you since! You’ve been here all the time.”

“You could have contacted me sympathically,” Cat suggested.

“No, Cat, she couldn’t,” Dreya spoke up. “The shields around my Tower block incoming mental communications. Telepathy or anything similar. Some wizards favour mental attacks over physical ones. Had you but mentioned you had this sympathic link, I could have adjusted the shield, just as I did today.”

“So, what happened?” Cat asked Mandalee.

“I got lucky is what happened!”

It had taken pretty much everything Mandalee and Shyleen had to kill the demon, but the wizard was linked to it, so he knew instantly and came for her. Shyleen got between Mandalee and his first blast of magic, which nearly split the leopard in two. All the time, Mandalee was mentally screaming for Catriona who, as far as she was concerned, had promised to be there. Mandalee thought she was dead, for sure, when two figures whooshed overhead.

“It happened too fast for me to see properly, but it was most likely Daelen StormTiger fighting another of his great battles with Kullos or the dark clone – as if we don’t have enough problems without them!”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Dreya affirmed.

Mandalee blinked in surprise, then dismissed it as unimportant.

“Yes, well, in this case, I suppose it was just as well because it distracted the wizard – only for a moment, but it was long enough for me to run him through. Then, just as I’ve found a druid temple to take care of Shyleen, I get a sympathic message from you, Catriona, asking me to come and help you, after you singularly failed to be there for me!”

Cat opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say, except, “I’m so sorry, Mandalee.”

“And would ‘sorry’ have brought Shyleen back if that wizard’s magic had been just a bit stronger and killed her?”

Cat shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “Thank the gods it wasn’t,” she whispered.

“You should thank them,” Mandalee insisted, “because that’s the only reason I’m even talking to you rather than killing you.”

Cat offered to fly to Shyleen immediately and make sure they were doing the healing right, but Mandalee was scathing.

“No! As I said, you don’t get to undo this. Besides, I don’t trust you not to get distracted by something on the way. The only reason I came here was to make sure you were OK, and this one,” she pointed at Dreya, “hadn’t hurt you yet.”

“Hurt me?” Cat said. “What do you mean ‘yet’?”

“She’s Dreya the Dark. Give her time.”

Dreya raised her eyebrows but did not deign to comment.

“Come on, Mandalee, that’s not fa—”

“—Not fair?” Mandalee snapped. “You seriously don’t want to talk to me about fair right now!” Before Cat could say anything else, Mandalee rushed headlong to ask, “I don’t suppose you’ve found a way to do anything about this,” she indicated her body, “amid all your research?”

“About what?” Dreya asked, not understanding.

As delicately as possible, Catriona explained about Mandalee’s gender identity issues.

“Oh, is that all?” Dreya said.

“What do you mean, ‘Is that all’?” Mandalee demanded.

Dreya held up her hands. “My apologies, I didn’t intend to belittle how important this must be for you. To me, flesh is fleeting – the magic is all. I just meant, do people seriously give you grief over this?”

Mandalee nodded. “Oh yes, prejudice is still very much alive and well out there.”

Dreya shook her head, her usual calm demeanour slipping to display anger. “When is the world going to actually move forward?”

With a facial shrug, the cleric replied, “I’ve often wondered the same thing.” She paused, then, before admitting, “You know, I don’t dislike you as much as I expected.”

Dreya gave her a wry smile. “Well, that’s progress, at least, and in return, I must say, you’re the least disagreeable White cleric I’ve ever met.”

Mandalee acknowledged that with a nod. “But you still haven’t answered my question,” she reminded Catriona.

Taking a deep breath and cursing herself for letting her friend down twice in one day, she had to admit that she had so far been unable to find a way to affect a permanent change. Shapeshifting wasn’t the answer – not by itself. Cat couldn’t hold another shape for more than a few hours. She tried to waffle about temporal magic, to turn back time for Mandalee’s body to a point before puberty when it was easier for it to switch tracks and develop along the biological female line before returning it to Mandalee’s current age. But she had to admit she had no idea how to do that.

“In that case,” Mandalee said, “it seems to me, there’s only one more thing to do before I go: this stupid experiment of yours.”

“Go? Where? Why?” Cat began, then realised, “Oh, of course, to stay with Shyleen until she’s better. But then you’ll come back, right?” There was no immediate response. “Right?” she prompted, panic rising. She couldn’t lose Mandalee. Obviously, she’d made a terrible mistake, but surely, they could work it out. Couldn’t they?

Rather than answer, she just asked, “Are we doing this experiment or not?”

“Screw the experiment!” Cat insisted. “Just tell me you’re coming back as soon as Shyleen’s OK! Please tell me that!”

“No!” Mandalee yelled. “I’ve always been there for you, Catriona,” she still couldn’t bring herself to use her nickname. “No matter what ridiculous radical notion you got in your head, even when you said you were going to fight Dreya the Dark, I was there for you. Then the one time I asked for your