"The Tower of Sorcery" - читать интересную книгу автора (Galloway James)

Chapter 8

Tarrin was quite amazed as he stood in the Hall beside the other entrants into the Novitiate.

This Selani was gorgeous.

She was stunningly beautiful, with swarthy, creamy brown skin and exotic white hair that was so thick it was amazing, silky and very fine, and hung down to her backside in loosely curled waves of brilliant white. She had a face that artists would sell their souls to capture on canvas. She was ethereal, delicate, and quite exquisite, with her slender nose and high, arched cheekbones and almond shaped eyes that were so intensely blue that even the pupils had a bluish cast to them. Tarrin could readily admit that he had never seen any woman that could compare to the ethereal beauty of this Selani woman who stood before him. Her body was as perfect as her face. She was amazingly tall, only a bit shorter than Tarrin himself, who stood a head over most men. Her generous figure and shape were perfectly proportioned for her tall stature, and she had a figure that rivalled Jesmind's, the first woman he'd seen that could compare with his fiery bond-mother. And just like Jesmind, Tarrin's sharp eyes could see the definition of the muscles in what brown skin he could see, for she wore a baggy sand-colored, long sleeved shirt and a matching pair of pants. She may look slender and delicate, but this was one flower with steel for a stem. Selani were warriors, and she had a warrior's body. Her scent was metallic, almost coppery, a clear symbol of her non-human heritage, but at the same time it was very spicy and clean, and he found it to be quite appealing. Tarrin noticed idly that she only had four fingers on each hand. Three fingers and a thumb. And her hands were not malformed, nor was she missing fingers; that was how they were meant to be.

She also had a look of aloof distance on her face. Elsa had said that she didn't like humans, but to Tarrin, it was more like a resentment at being in her current position. Tarrin had felt like that a few times, and that was exactly how he looked when he was in them. She didn't want to be here, and that was plainly visible.

The little ceremony of induction into the Novitiate was dry and dusty, and Tarrin didn't even listen to the Keeper as she droned on about being there to learn, obeying their teachers and the Sorcerers and all that rot. He was considering the Selani. Tarrin had an intense interest in her, for some unknown reason. She looked aloof, but Tarrin saw under that, and to him, she looked alone. He thought that, if he approached her the right way, that they could become good friends. He wondered if that wasn't why he was so interested in her. She looked very lonely to him, and he didn't like to see anyone suffer like that. The days alone with nothing but his fear as he ran from Jesmind and the Goblinoids had put a soft spot in his heart to people in similar fixes. Here was a young woman taken very far from everything she had known and thrust into a sea of confusion, where nothing was comfortable or understood, and surrounded by people to whom she could not relate.

After the little speech, the twenty or so new Novices were allowed to go sit down. Tarrin made a special note to sit next to the beautiful Selani woman, and once blessing was said, he turned to her. "My name is Tarrin," he told her. "I was told to show you the places in the Tower after class."

"I was told of you," she said in a toneless voice, which was quite pretty. Her accent was thick, and it made her voice sound very exotic. It was almost as if she was trying to sing the words of the Common tongue. "I do not need to be guided. I can find my own way."

"As you wish," he said in a carefully neutral voice. "Whatever makes you feel most comfortable."

That word had the desired effect. She blinked those luminous eyes once and regarded him carefully. "You are devious," she said in a calm voice. "There is more of a cat about you than fur, strange one."

"I meant no offense," he said. "You just look very unsettled. I meant to offer you friendship."

"Friendship is a thing that is earned, not given," she told him abruptly. "But your concern for me touches my heart. I would accept your offer. We will go see these places after this class."

And she spoke not another word. An Initiate gathered up the new Novices and escorted them to a large room with many chairs, all facing a small podium with a huge slate board behind it A small man with thinning brown hair and wearing a tight-fitting tunic and hose in the Sulasian style stood at the podium. "Good morning," he said as they were seated. "My name is Sheldin Brewer, and I will be your instructor in the subjects of history and geography," he introduced. "I know that some of you already know a good deal of history, and some of you know geography, but just be patient so that those who don't have a chance to catch up a bit."

And so he began. Tarrin knew a goodly amount of history, thanks to his father, but this Sheldin touched on events and places that Tarrin had never heard of. He also knew just about everywhere, as he roughly sketched in the four continents of the Known World and the kingdoms and nations on which they stood, and described very briefly the continent across the sea which was the domain of the Wikuni. Although it was a dry subject, the man's light manner and keen knowledge of his material made the class actually enjoyable, and he was surprised when the man broke the class for lunch. "All of you are to sit together at the table directly in front of the Mistress of Novice's table," he instructed. "An Initiate will come and escort each of you to where you need to be after lunch. We will meet again in this room tomorrow after breakfast. Good day to you."

"The man is learned," the Selani said in her calm voice as they walked back to the Hall.

"Yes, he is," Tarrin agreed. "I'd expect him to try to pull you aside pretty soon," he said.

"Why?"

"I don't think he'll pass up a chance to learn about your desert," Tarrin told her. "Nobody but your people go there, so he'll jump at the chance to ask you about it."

"It is our home," she said. "That is all there is to tell him."

"True, but he'll still want to know," he said. "Men like that are driven by the hunger to learn."

"It is a good quality," she observed. "There is honor in knowledge."

She still hadn't told him her name. Tarrin didn't want to push her too hard, though. He had the feeling that she could be very touchy, and he thought that if he put the wrong foot forward now, it would ruin any chance to strike up a friendship with her. Making friends with her was as much for him as it was for her, for in her Tarrin felt there was a kindred spirit, someone else here that did not quite fit in. From her he could expect honesty, and she had already put him at ease by not showing any fear of him. After they'd been seated in the Hall and the blessing was made, Tarrin discreetly watched her as she ate. He was curious about what she would and would not eat. She did not disappoint him by showing certain peculiarities. She would not eat pork, he noticed. Nor would she eat any chicken or goose. He didn't know if those were personal preferences or racial or cultural preferences, though. She ate a great deal of cabbage and stringed beans, he saw, and she especially seemed to enjoy the boiled potatos.

Initiates began to arrive, pick out a certain Novice or Novices, and then leave with them, taking them to their assigned work duties. Tarrin waited until he was sure the Selani was done with her meal, and then turned to her. "Do you feel like looking around?" he asked politely.

"It would please me to do so," she answered in a similarly polite voice.

Tarrin had a good memory, and Dar had been a good guide, so he mirrored his friend's course of the tour, showing her the important areas of the Tower. She seemed more or less unimpressed with most of it, showing interest only in the library. Tarrin gritted his teeth a bit when he showed her the baths. He had no idea how she was going to accept it.

"Ah, yes, this place," she said when they came down the stairs.

"They explained how it works?"

"Yes," she said. "I find nothing wrong with it. A similar custom exists among my people, but we use a sweat tent. Such an amount of water would never be used for bathing among me people. It is too precious." She looked at the water longingly a moment. "If only we had such riches at home."

"If water was this abundant there, it really wouldn't be a desert anymore," Tarrin noted.

She gave him a sidelong look, and then she laughed. It sounded like a cascade of silver bells. "I guess it would not," she agreed, smiling in spite of herself. "I would like to go outside," she said. "I came here in the night, so I did not get the chance to see much of the outside. But I saw much grass and other plants."

"Yes, most of the compoud is grass. I wonder how they keep it so short," Tarrin mused aloud. "There's a really big garden behind the tower proper," he told her. "It's very lovely."

She was awed more at the sight of the grass than she was with the massive size of the central Tower and the six smaller towers surrounding it. The sweeping, elegant bridges that connected the upper levels of the towers to the tower proper were nothing to her, for she was staring out at the expanse of the lawn. She even reached down and touched it. "It is so green," she said in a wondrous voice. "I have seen grass and forests ever since I left my home, but I was so spiteful at being sent here that I did not look at it. It is a beautiful sight."

"It's all I've ever known," Tarrin told her. "Maybe someday I'll see your desert, and then I'll be able to compare them."

"The Motherland is not without its own beauty," she told him. "The Painted Lands have such color that it would take your breath, and the mesas and ravines of the Broken Lands cast shadows across the land that merge with the color of the rock and the sheen of the heat that make the colors dance like rock snakes. We have green, but it is so small compared to the rest of the land that it is easy to miss. Here, everything but what the humans build is green, or brown."

"Let's go look at the garden," he offered. "And there's something else there that I think you may want to see," he added.

She was impressed with the gardens, spending a great deal of time going from flower to flower and plant to plant, looking at them, touching them, and smelling them. Tarrin didn't have to get that close to smell them, he could do it from where he stood. But it did make him appreciate the beauty of the gardens just a little bit more, watching her take in the sights of the living beauty of the gardens. After they'd worked their way through most of it, he got her attention with a paw. "Come on, there's something else I want to show you," he said. "It's kind of a secret, though, so don't tell anyone about it."

She raised an elegant white eyebrow. "Then lead on," she said.

It took him a while to find it again. The scent trail he'd made before was about two days old. Since he and Dar had crisscrossed the whole hedge maze more than once, that put their scents all over the place, and after that much time it was hard to tell the trail that led true to the ones that went to dead ends. He relied on his memory for most of it, and had led them almost right to the center. It was finding that elusive choked-off passage that was challenging. The Selani was starting to get a bit restless as they reached another dead end. "What are we looking for?" she asked.

"It's a very small passage that's so overgrown it's almost invisible," he told her, frowning. "It's very hard to find."

"I saw such a thing not long ago," she told him.

"You must have sharp eyes," he said.

"Yes," she told him. She led them back to the place unerringly, and it was indeed the opening to the maze's heart. "This is it," he told her. "Thanks."

"You are welcome," she said as she followed him into the living tunnel.

The serenity and beauty of the maze's heart had just as much effect on her as it had had on Tarrin. He still felt the same wonder and peace he'd felt the day before as he looked on the lovely statue in the center of the fountain. They stood at the entryway for several moments, as the Selani stared at the statue in mute awe. "My roommate and I found this place a couple of days ago," he said in a hushed voice. "We don't think anyone else comes here anymore."

"It is a wondrous place," she told him. "The statue looks almost alive."

"I know," he said, motioning her to follow him. They sat down on the stone bench in front of the fountain. "Well, I hope you found the time we spent together tolerable," he told her.

"I think you can stop with the subtle games, Tarrin," she said with a little smile. "If you are trying to connive yourself into my good graces, you may stop."

He flushed slightly. "I didn't mean it like that," he said. "I just didn't want to offend you."

"You have put quite an effort into trying to talk to me, and befriend me. Why?"

He looked at those intense blue eyes, and decided that blunt honesty was the only recourse. "When I saw you, you looked very lonely," he told her. "I didn't want you to be here and be unhappy. And aside from Dar, my roommate, and the two Novices that travelled here with me, none of the other Novices will so much as talk to me. I thought that since you're not human either, we could talk to each other on the same ground. If you understand me, that is."

She gave him a long, penetrating look, and then put a hand up against his cheek. "You are very perceptive, Tarrin," she told him honestly. "I do not want to be here, and I do feel a bit lonely and homesick. I am touched that you would put yourself out so much for my benefit when you do not know me. You have much honor, Tarrin. I would be honored to call you friend."

"I would accept it gladly," he replied.

She smiled. "My name is Allia. Allia Do'Shi'Faeden, of the clan Faedellin."

"That's a pretty name," he said.

"Thank you."

"How did you come to be here?" he asked.

She sighed. "It was not by choice," she said. "My father, the clan-chief, decided that a better understanding of the humans would be a wise thing. The lands of our clan rest by the mountains that separate the desert from the place you call Arkis, and over the recent years more and more of them have appeared in our lands. Some seek trade, but most come seeking to take from the land that which is for the Holy Mother Goddess. Our lands are rich in the metal gold, and many come to steal it from our lands. Gold is sacred to our Holy Mother Goddess, and we do not take it from the ground, but the Arkisians take without regard to the wishes of us or our Goddess. My father decided to send one clansman here, to this place, to undergo the learning that is offered so that we may better understand the humans, and to find ways to stop this thieving without having to wipe Arkis from the world. My father chose someone else for this task, not I. Not long before he was to make the journey, a katzh-dashi appeared at our camp. He took my father aside for some time and spoke with him. After they were finished the katzh-dashi left, and my father told me that I would go in the stead of he who was chosen. I was not happy about the choice," she said sourly. "I do not like humans. I think that the thieving swine Arkisians should be driven from our lands and made to come no more. After I made my feelings known, my father demanded twice over that I be made to do it. He told me that a wise chief always considers all options before making such decisions. He even made me swear a Blood Oath on it," she said with a sour grunt. "That was not nice. I am honor bound to treat those I hold in contempt with a respect I do not believe they have earned."

"Not all humans are the same," he told her. "I used to be human, before this happened to me."

"No, not all humans are," she agreed. "I understand that, but I still do not like them. I feel that any other breed of human would do the same as the Arkisians, should our desert be by their lands."

"I really can't say," he said. "Probably. Humans are driven creatures, and greed is a powerful motivator. Besides, they probably don't even realize they're taking something your people hold sacred."

"They do so once," she said with a note of finality. "It has long been the custom of our people to kill all who seek to invade our lands, save only merchants, who are given safe passage. For a long time, that was enough to keep all but the honest away. But lately we have had to kill more and more gold hunters who ignore the laws and the dangers."

"Well, things will work out," he told her. "Much as I like it here, we'd best not tarry. Odds are they either have people watching us, and they'll notice we're missing. And I don't want them coming in here looking for us."

"Truly," she said. "I have noticed such watchers throughout the day."

"We'll have to come back when we can slip away," he said. "I like it here, but the idea of others tramping around in here offends me."

"An interesting notion. Why?"

"Because this place almost seems holy," he told her. "I get the feeling we're welcome here, but I'd rather not insult whoever watches this place by leading others in here too."

Allia looked around. "Maybe you are right," she said slowly. "I have been honored to feel the touch of the Holy Mother Goddess upon my soul, and the feeling of this place is something like that. I think that some God or spirit does keep watch over this courtyard."

Tarrin was pleased to know that he'd not been far from the mark. Not long after they'd left the hedge maze, the Keeper herself approached them. She was alone, which said much about how safe she felt in the confines of the Tower grounds. Her face was pleasant, even serene, and when she spoke, it was with a calm, light manner. "Ah, Tarrin, Allia," she said. "I've been looking for you."

"Yes, Keeper?" Tarrin asked after he bowed to her. Allia also bowed, but it was a very stiff one.

"I've been thinking about you two, and I thought to approach you with an offer."

"Speak on then," Allia said in her calm voice.

"Neither of you are suited for the chores of a Novice," she said. "Both of you are warriors. If it does not offend you, Lady Allia, would you two like to spend your afternoons with the Knights? Both of you can continue to study the warrior ways, and perhaps our Knights can learn from you. And maybe you can learn from each other. Tarrin, you are an adept in the Ways, and Allia, you are an adept in your people's style of combat."

Allia looked at Tarrin. "I did not know this," she said. "You know the Northmen's hand-fighting?"

"I am one of them, Allia," he told her. "Well, I was, and only on my mother's side, but yes, I learned it."

"Long have I wanted to see if the Northmen were worth their mettle."

"So the idea pleases you, Allia?" the Keeper asked.

Allia gave Tarrin a speculative look. "The idea does please me," she said.

"Good. Oh, just one word of warning. As you can see, Tarrin isn't human. He's a Were-cat, and if you're not familiar with his kind, they have magical capabilities. One of them is that their blood and spittle can change other humans into Were-kin too. We honestly have no idea what effect it would have on you, Allia, since you are Selani. So you should exercise a bit of caution. Don't put yourself into a position where his blood gets into your mouth, and Tarrin, please don't bite her."

"I'd never dream of it, Keeper," Tarrin said in shock.

"Nothing is without risk," Allia said philosophically.

"Good," she said. "You may go back to your exploration now. Have a good day." And then she turned and walked away.

"You did not tell me you followed the path of honor," she said, a bit accusingly.

"I don't make much of an issue of it, Allia," he told her. "People are afraid enough of me as it is. I don't need for them to find more reasons to not like me. Oh, and the fact that I can change people is kind of a secret, Allia. Please don't repeat it."

"It will not pass my lips except when we are alone," she promised. Then she wiped at an arm. "I am in need of a sweat tent," she sighed. "I have not cleaned myself in some time."

"You don't smell it," he said. She gave him a cool look. "Allia, I'm not human either. My senses are very acute. Trust me, you do not smell."

"Well, if I must use that bathing pool, then that is what must be."

Tarrin sensed that she was very uncomfortable with that notion. "If it doesn't sound too forward, do you want some company?" he asked.

"Yes, that would please me," she said in a gratified voice.

He found out why once they reached the baths. Allia had never in her life been immersed in water that went past her knees. She was sincerely afraid of the idea of going into the waist-deep water, though she would die before she admitted it. He also found that, like him, she had absolutely no fear of appearing in front of others nude. Tarrin found that quality to be refreshing. She undressed herself boldly before him as he did so himself, then he lowered himself into the pool and waited for her. She stood at the lip of the pool hesitantly, looking out over all that water with a bit of a wild look in her eyes. He stood by the lip right under her and reached up a paw. "Come on," he said gently. "If you want, I'll teach you how to swim. The water's not quite deep enough for it, but I can give you an idea."

She took his paw, and lowered herself into the water.

She still had that wild-eyed look, and she would not let go of his paw. He winced a bit under her grip. This woman was strong. He thought that the relaxing heat of the water may loosen her fear somewhat, so he led her towards the far end, into the hotter water. He was very careful to stay as close to the lip as possible, to give her something solid to reassure her. "Let me know if it gets too hot," he told her as they advanced into the hotter water.

The hot water had its desired effect. The grip on his paw relaxed, but she still would not let go. He decided not to make an issue of it. She was doing something that she'd never done before, something that was new and a bit frightening. "I know it's a strange sensation," he told her. "Come on, let's go out into the middle. Once you see that you're not going to go in over your head, I think you'll be alright."

She looked at him intently. Her eyes blazed for just a moment when she realized he knew she was afraid, but then, curiously, they softened, then took on an appreciative look. "You are very subtle," she said, then she laughed. "Very subtle indeed. Am I so obvious to you?"

"No, but I could tell that you didn't like the idea," he told her. "And the grip you had on my paw told me alot once you got into the water."

She smiled then, a glorious smile that would make any man's knees weak. "You are quite a man, Tarrin," she said in her accented voice. "You will bring me much honor in our friendship."

"Well, thank you," he said.

"Now, you may wash my hair," she said in an imperious voice.

"Yes ma'am," he chuckled, reaching for a cake of soap, right after she let go of his paw.

Allia, Tarrin found, was a very serious, sober woman, dignified and very much bound to her precepts of honor and propriety. That wasn't a bad thing, not at all. But, on the other hand, he discovered that, once you got past that towering barrier of iciness that she put to the human world, she was a warm, vibrant person with a very rich sense of humor and a very perceptive view of the world. Tarrin saw alot of Jesmind in her, for they had the same practical, no-nonsense view of the world, and both had the same tendancy to speak whatever was on their minds. That told Tarrin that Allia trusted him, and that pleased him greatly. They talked of unimportant things during the course of the bath, as he washed her hair, then she unbound his braid and returned the favor. All in all, he liked Allia very much, even after only a short time to get to know each other. Much like he and Dar had done, Tarrin and Allia simply clicked, quickly finding a common ground and using it to build a friendship.

By the time he helped her from the water, they were both laughing and carrying on as if they'd known each other all their lives.

There were a couple of frictions, however. The main one was Dar. Because he was Arkisian, Allia took an immediate dislike to him, and Dar was instantly afraid of her. That was a wise thing, Tarrin guessed, and from then on the young man avoided Tarrin like the plague any time he was with Allia. Tarrin didn't ignore Dar, he just divided his time between his two friends so that he could spend time with both without leaving out the other.

The next day, Tarrin and Allia walked out onto the training grounds wearing their practice clothing. For Tarrin, it was his old leathers. For Allia, it was the same sand-colored baggy clothes which she had worn the day before. She'd worn Novice clothes that morning, and looked distinctly uncomfortable in them. She was wearing the trousers rather than a dress, and when he asked her why, she laughed in his face. "Selani do not wear such ridiculous things," she told him. "It would tangle my legs when I fight."

After a quick consultation with each other over the rules of the sparring match, they faced off to quite a crowd of Knights and apprentices looking on. They had never seen a Selani face off against an Ungaardt before. The rules they'd chosen were what Allia called "child's rules". Tarrin didn't want to hurt her, since he was so much stronger than she was, so he'd insisted.

What he didn't gamble on was that he had to hit her in order to hurt her. She was wildly, impossibly fast. He'd never seen anyone who could move with the blinding speed with which she evaded his attacks. Tarrin himself was fast, inhumanly fast because of his Were-cat nature, but she was even faster than him. Tarrin was quickly put on the defensive, using every block and evade tactic he knew to keep her blurring hands and feet away from his sensitive parts. The unfamiliarity of his own body worked against him, as he struggled to work the forms that he knew around his new body, but facing an opponent like her was no time to experiment, so he simply tried as best he could to defend himself against her using what he knew and his natural speed and agility. They helped, but her own speed and agility neutralized that advantage, and his promise to pull punches eliminated his strength advantage. With no advantages over her, he was facing someone more adept in her style of fighting than he was in his, and the pummelling he endured proved it. But, after a while, he had to concede that he had never been as good as she was, even when he was human. Allia could give his mother a good fight. He would have paid money to see them face off against one another.

After about an hour of getting beaten like a dog, Tarrin started to come to understand her moves, and started anticipating her attacks. She used set, specific forms, and once he identified them, he could predict which move she would flow into next. It still didn't help much, for her speed allowed her to change moves in mid-attack. She beat him almost at will, punching and kicking him almost anywhere she pleased for that first hour, until he managed to mount enough of a defense that her attacks could no longer find him. That look of light amusement dissolved into a set look of concentration as she had to start working to get past his defenses. She could still do it, but it wasn't nearly as easy as it had been before.

Tarrin came to understand why the Selani were so deadly at that point. Had this been a real fight, and had he not been a Were-cat, she probably would have killed him by now.

"Enough of this play," she said. "Now we spar for real."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that we do not pull punches," she said.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said.

"You will not, trust me," she said with a challenging smile.

"Alright, they're your bones," he shrugged.

One hit was all it took. Tarrin knew that. He had not used his full strength in their earlier spars. He blocked a side kick with a forearm with enough power to knock her off balance, and then he put a foot right in her belly. He did not pull the punch. Allia folded around his foot and was knocked backwards a few spans, then she sat down heavily on the ground, wheezing and gasping for breath with both hands to her belly. Tarrin knelt by her and put a gentle hand to her belly. He didn't feel anything wrong there; he'd just knocked the wind out of her.

"Goddess!" she said in a choked, breathless voice. "What did you hit me with?"

"My foot," he said calmly. "I'm alot stronger than I look, Allia. I tried to warn you."

"So you did," she wheezed. "I will listen to you next time."

Two instructors and a Sorceress came over. "Are you alright?" one of them asked.

"I will be in a moment," she said in a breathless voice. "You pack quite a punch, friend Tarrin."

"Maybe too much of one," the instructor said. "It will be very hard to train you when you have such a strength advantage."

"I can be careful," Tarrin said.

"It isn't the same," the man said. "You have to learn by doing, and doing your best. If you pull punches in training, you'll not learn as well as you could."

"I think that the Tower has something that could even things," the Sorceress said. "I'll make a few inquiries. I believe that we have a magical object that will augment the user's strength. Would that make it right to train him?"

"Would that give the wearer the same resilience as Tarrin?" the instructor asked. "Great strength does more than let you hit hard. It also gives you the ability to absorb blows. It has to be the same."

"I had never considered that," Allia confessed, speaking in a more normal voice. "We are a strong people, but we teach that speed can overwhelm power. Speed is more important than power."

"I've always believed that you need a balance of the two," the man told her. "Speed alone and power alone aren't enough. You need both. You'll find that most of the toughest men are also among the strongest. You can use that power to defend as easily as to attack."

"That's what the Ways teach," Tarrin told him, helping Allia to her feet. She put a hand delicately to her belly, but said nothing. The Sorceress stepped forward and put her own hand on Allia's stomach. The Selani looked about ready to kill the woman, but said nothing. "You've got a very nasty bruise forming here, and that blow injured the muscles in your abdomen. You're going to be very tender unless you let me heal this," she said.

"Then do so," Allia said in a calm voice, a voice that Tarrin could tell was tightly controlled. The Sorceress put her hand under Allia's baggy shirt, and Tarrin felt that sensation of drawing in again. Allia sucked in her breath at the icy touch of Sorcerer's Healing.

After that, Tarrin looked up. "It's getting late, and this is a good place to stop."

"Yes," she said. "I learned much today. I became overconfident, and I paid the price," she told him, putting her hand on her stomach. "I underestimated you. Tomorrow I will not do so again."

Tarrin winced. She'd beaten him almost at will all day. He'd gotten in that one shot because she didn't know the nature of her opponent. He had no doubt that she wouldn't approach him the same way again.

"But I am impressed. Your Ungaardt Ways are effective, but I can tell that you feel uncomfortable with them."

"I wasn't this way when I learned," he told her. "I'm still getting used to it."

"Yes, that would change things, would it not?" she observed. "I will train you in the Dance," she said. "They are more suited for you than your Ways, anyway. And I will teach you a civilized tongue," she added. "If we are to be friends, then we should be able to speak in a way that pleases us both."

"I won't mind," he told her.

"My language is not easy to learn," she warned.

"If we have anything, Allia, it's time," he said.

"Very well. Then let us begin now. Greetings. Azra shan."

Tarrin's life settled into a daily routine at that point, as he became settled into life in the Tower. The trials of the road faded from his worries, but the ever-present threat of Jesmind never went far from his mind. In the morning before breakfast, his time was spent with Dar, as they talked, and dreamed, and did the things that friends did. Tarrin liked the dark-skinned young man a great deal, for he was witty, friendly, and was very intelligent and mature for his age. Tarrin had no doubt that Dar would succeed at whatever he decided to do with his life, because he was so smart. After breakfast, and for the majority of the day, he belonged to Allia. Dar didn't seem to mind the Selani monopolizing Tarrin's time, for he'd listened and understood when Tarrin explained to him that Allia had nobody else. Dar himself had many other friends among the Novices, but Allia had only Tarrin. Just like him, the others were afraid of her. They feared her because she broke one boy's arm for patting her on the backside during dinner. Allia did not like to be touched by strangers, and much like Tarrin, she was not afraid to make it well known in any manner she chose.

After lunch, Tarrin and Allia went to the field, to train. That was, Allia trained Tarrin. She was quite a master of her fighting art, which she called ji'shen, which meant "the Dance" in the Selani tongue. They did indeed have an aritfact to even things between them, a pair of gloves made from a Troll's hide, which granted the wearer the proportionate strength of a Troll. The gloves smelled absolutely hideous, and the time he was on the field taught him how to ignore his nose as much as he learned the flowing, viper-like forms of Allia's fighting style. While they fought, Allia continued to teach him the words of the Selani tongue. Tarrin was a very bright young man, but he had a special talent for languages. He picked up on her native tongue quickly, and she was amazed at how precise his memory was. She only had to explain something to him once, or tell him the meaning of a word once, and he remembered it.

After they trained, they both found a way to slip away before dinner, and they met again in the hidden courtyard in the middle of the hedge maze. There, she continued teaching him not only her language, but a very complicated hand-gesture language that her people had created, so that they could communicate without speaking. It was technically a violation of her sacred vows to teach him that, she admitted, but she had no doubt that it would never go past him. She had placed her trust in him, and he in her.

They would then go to dinner, and afterward, they would retire to the baths. At that time of the evening, they were literally deserted. It was not even staffed by Novices. Here, his training yet continued, or they simply talked.

They were there on that rainy summer evening, listening to the rumbles of thunder that filtered through the thick walls of the Tower. Tarrin was laying on the stone on his belly, arms folded up under his chin, eyes closed as he enjoyed a backrub from his companion. The fact that both of them were nude, and that she was sitting on his backside, never occurred to either of them.

It was strange, how they had come together, he mused silently as her delicate yet strong four-fingered hands worked a knot out of his muscle. They shared a friendship that had become shockingly deep in an amazing amount of time. Much as he'd started to feel about Jesmind, Tarrin knew in his heart that he could trust his white-haired friend with absolutely any secret, and that it would go no further. He had told her secrets, things that he'd never told another person, not even Dolanna. She was the only living being aside from himself and Jesmind that knew what had happened between them. The whole story. He confided his deep-most private self to her, and she helped him talk out many of the strange impulses and feelings he had from time to time, which were extensions of the Cat which was inside him.

"Keep your tail still," she chided.

"What?"

"Keep your tail still," she repeated. "I'm sitting on it, and every time you move it, it presses up against-"

"Alright," he cut her off, and she laughed her silvery little laugh. In that respect, she was even worse than Jesmind ever was. She would talk about things that would make him die of mortification without so much as batting an eyelash. Where Jesmind would not do it in public, Allia would. He didn't want to know what his tail was doing, because she'd give him an explicitly graphic description of the whole thing. The fact that he was not ashamed of his body, yet he could still be embarassed by talk, amused her greatly for some reason. "I swear, sometimes you're worse than a wife," he said.

"We should be married, with what I've let you touch," she told him in the Selani tongue. Unlike her stiff, formal way of speaking when she used the human language, her mode of speech in her native tongue was much more relaxed. Although he didn't have the accent quite down, and he didn't know all the words, he did speak enough of it to understand her when she used it.

"You asked for it," he shrugged.

"So I did," she acceded. "But you really should be careful of your claws. I had trouble sitting down for three days after that."

"I said I was sorry," he snorted.

"And you think I'll forgive you so quickly? I may need a favor someday," she teased.

"You could have asked to be healed."

"And how would I explain claw scratches there?" she asked. "You know they'd start asking questions, Tarrin. What we do in private is our own affair, and they have no right prying."

"But we don't do anything."

"Precisely," she said.

"Sometimes I don't understand you at all," he said sourly, putting his head back down.

"Let's just say that I think that if they thought we were lovers, they would separate us. And I don't think either of us would permit that." He knew she wouldn't. He was all Allia had here. She almost clung to him and his friendship, surrounded by people who were either afraid of her or treated her like a laboratory experiment. Tarrin and Allia both had to endure endless interruptions from assorted Sorcerers, asking endless questions. One even asked to take a sample of their blood. The katzh-dashi's endless quest for knowledge was an admirable trait, but when that endless part was directed right at him, he found the whole matter to be very annoying. Tarrin was her only friend, the only person she felt comfortable enough to talk to. She was acquainted with the Knights on the field, but didn't really consider them to be friends. Faalken once confided that everyone thought that she considered herself better than everyone else.

Well, in a way, she did. She had an aire of superiority about her, that was true, but it was not arrogance, it was more like a knowledge that she could kick anyone's backside in the Tower without working up a sweat. Her own people were a very proud race, and they did consider themselves above the humans. But that was a natural trait; every race considered itself better than all the others. It was only basic nature. Tarrin caught himself sighing alot and saying "humans" in that same condescending tone that Jesmind had used. But she never acted that way to Tarrin. To her, he was an equal, a comrade, a good friend.

"I've been meaning to ask something," he said.

"What?"

"Why are there so many different ways to say 'friend' in Selani?" he asked.

"Well," she said, "that is because there are different levels of honor associated with each," she told him. "A visitor of another clan who is received with honor is a shih or shai, depending on if it is male or female." Selani had different forms of words when addressing women or men. It was the only language Tarrin had heard of that did that, and that made it very complicated. "A passing acquaintance in the clan is a shina or shaina. A friend is a shida or shaida. A very close, dear friend who is not of your own family is a bashida or bashaida. The closest form of the word is the Brother in all but Blood, or Sister, depending. That is deshida or deshaida. It is a serious taboo to use the wrong form."

"Is that so?" he mused. "Well, if we have to use the term we feel in our hearts, then I must call you deshaida," he said.

She was quiet a moment, then he heard her sniffle a bit. "Tarrin, I am honored," she said in a quiet, emotional voice. "But if you would be my brother, then you must accept the rites of my people," she warned in the human tongue, so there would be no mistake of translation.

He urged her to get off of him, and they sat down by the water's edge, their feet dangling in the hot water. Tarrin looked at her, and his eyes never really failed to go her shoulders. On each shoulder, she carried a single brand. On her uppermost left arm, it was a circle with a line through it and a crescent just inside the circle and over the line. She said that the circle and crescent were the symbol of her clan, and the line through it was the mark that denoted her status as the blood of a clan-chief. On her uppermost right, she carried a sword-on-spear symbol that she said was the holy symbol of her Goddess.

"Would you be willing to truly become my brother, a brother in all but blood?" she asked.

He didn't even have to think about it. "Of course I would," he told her. "You're very important to me, Allia. You and Dar are the only things that keep me from going crazy here."

"There is more to it than that," she warned. "You would be bound under the Oaths. For you, that would mean very little, for you have no true clan chief. But it would put you somewhat under the dominion of my Holy Mother Goddess, for you would have to swear an oath to obey her will."

"What would she want of me?" he asked curiously.

"I would have to ask her," she said.

Tarrin gaped at her a bit. "You've never told me you talk to your Goddess," he said.

"Don't you?" she asked, lapsing back into Selani.

"Not really," he said. "Karas is the God of the Sulasians, but he's never spoken to me."

"The Holy Mother has a more intimate relationship with her people that most Gods, deshida," she told him. "If I pray, she will answer. I must pray and ask her guidance on this. She may not accept someone not of the Blood."

What startled him was that she clasped her hands together at her breast and closed her eyes. Obviously, she meant to do it that moment.

Tarrin wondered at her request while she was silent. Even though it hadn't even been a month, Tarrin already felt that he was that close to her. She was the older sister he didn't have; to his surprise, he found out that she was thirty-seven years old. Selani aged at a slower rate than humans. Among her people, thirty-seven was barely of marrying age. As long as it didn't mean consigning his soul to an unknown God, he was more than willing to make her happy by accepting the oaths of her people. Tarrin wasn't a overly religious person, since neither of his parents were very serious about it themselves, but he started getting edgy when his soul was in the balance of things.

After a while, she opened her eyes. "The Holy Mother will accept you," she said with a smile. "She likes you, actually," she said with a gentle smile. "She is very thankful to you for being so good to me. She also said that since I am violating my oaths in teaching you what you should not know, that you had best be made a brother of the Blood. She was quite put out with me over that," she said with a depressed look in her eyes.

"What would she demand of me?"

"Tarrin, the Holy Mother demands nothing of us," she said gently. "What we do with our lives is our own choice. That you acknowledge her is enough. The Holy Mother Goddess has no dominion outside the boundaries of our deserts, so there would be no demands set upon you. But also that means that she cannot help you."

"I've never had a God help me before," he shrugged.

From seemingly nowhere, Tarrin almost thought he heard the impetuous stamp of a foot.

"What was that?" Allia asked curiously.

"Maybe it was thunder," Tarrin said. "The storm's still going on outside."

"Ah. It is your decision, Tarrin."

"Allia, I've already made up my mind," he said. "You're already like a sister to me, and I love you as much as my own family. I would be honored to formalize the relationship."

She smiled broadly at him. "Maybe it was the Holy Mother's hand that guided me here," she said. "I am now glad beyond reason that I forced to come into the human lands, else I would never have met you."

Tarrin reached up and put the palm of his paw against her cheek, swallowing up the delicate side of her face in his huge paw.

And so Tarrin stumbled into his room late that night, with his shoulders throbbing, but feeling very good about the whole thing. Allia never told him that it would be her Holy Mother Goddess herself that would put the brands on him. She had reached out from wherever it was she was at and touched him with her power, and that had burned the symbols into his shoulders just the same way they appeared on Allia. The pain was part of the rite, an acceptance of the pains and trials that came with adulthood, and he'd been warned that to scream was unseemly, and that he had to remain still and now squirm, for the branding was not instantaneous. If one moved or flinched, it was an evasion of the duties of adulthood, and that person took a bad brand, and was ridiculed and scorned. Tarrin had a bit of an advantage there, for his Were-cat nature allowed him to endure quite a bit more pain than a standard human. He still nearly blacked out though, which, he'd discovered, was an honorable thing. Blacking out was not in his control, and it proved that the person being branded was strong enough to hold still even under such intense pain. People who blacked out, curiously, did not take a bad brand, even though they did move. Tarrin suspected that the Holy Mother Goddess had a great deal to do with that.

Tarrin just worried that his regeneration would heal over the charred burn marks.

"You're in late," Dar noted as he turned to look at Tarrin from the writing desk.

Tarrin hunched over a bit, his tail drooping. Even putting himself in the water of the bathing pool hadn't eased the residual pain after the branding.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Allia branded me," he said shortly.

"What?"

"She asked me to become her brother, and I said yes. The brands were so that could happen. I couldn't be her brother until I was seen as an adult in the eyes of her people, and that meant I had to be branded. It meant alot to her, and to me."

"You take friendship seriously," Dar said, getting up. "I'll go steal some ice from the cold room," he offered. "That should take most of the bite out of it."

"I appreciate it," he said gratefully.

He returned a bit later with a small bowl of ice, which was wrapped into a kerchief and applied to one shoulder at a time. The ice blissfully numbed his throbbing skin, and he leaned back on his bed, back against the wall, sighing in almost ecstatic relief.

"That must have really hurt," Dar said.

"It was worth it," Tarrin said. "I can't even begin to explain the relationship I have with Allia, Dar. It goes way beyond simple friendship. I've never had so deep a connection with anyone. We love each other about as much as two people can who aren't married."

"Well, so long as it makes you happy, then I say congratulations," he said with a smile.

"It's not like we're betrothed, Dar," Tarrin chuckled.

"I know," he said. "But in its own way, it's just as profound, I think."

"More or less, yes," he agreed. "I did more than profess love for her. I promised to be like her own brother in every way. And family can be just as close as married couples."

"And in such a short time," he said. "What will your mother say?"

Tarrin gave him a look, then laughed. "We said the same thing," he admitted. "We don't understand why we took to each other so quickly either. Maybe it was fate."

"I don't believe in fate," Dar said with a smile. "It may have been the Gods."

"I doubt that," Tarrin chuckled. "Like me being friends with Allia was so important that it was demanded by the Gods. Get real."

Again there was that same sound, like the stamping of a foot. Tarrin sat up and looked around, and so did Dar. "See?" he said after a moment. "One of them is talking to us now."

Tarrin gave Dar a look, then he laughed again. "Give one knock for no, two knocks for yes," Tarrin said in a spooky, melodramatic voice. He shifted the ice against his shoulder, wincing. "These should be healed by tomorrow," he said. "I really hope that the brands don't heal over. I don't like the idea of being charbroiled every time Allia wants to prove to someone I'm an adult."

"At least you'd get used to it," Dar grinned.

"Not that, I won't," he grunted. "I've never felt pain like that before in my life. Not even my transformation into this shape was half as painful, and that was so painful I blocked most of the memory of it from my mind."

"That may be why the brands seem to be more painful," Dar said with surprising insight.

"Perhaps," he said, putting the melting ice in the wet kerchief back in the little bowl. "In any case, I'm tired, and I think I'll go to sleep."

"I'll turn down the lights."

"Don't bother. I want to sleep the other way tonight, and the light won't bother me at all."

Tarrin had an ulterior motive, of course. He didn't know if he'd have the same pain in the cat shape, and he was willing to try it and see. He undressed and changed form quickly, and, to his dismay, he discovered that the pain was just as present. He hobbled a bit, for he now had to support his weight on the branded limbs, but managed to curl up in a dark place under his bed and go to sleep.

Wake up, something seemed to whisper to him. You have to wake up.

Tarrin opened his eyes. It was dark in the room, and the sounds of Dar's breathing told him that his friend was sleeping. That was the only sound he heard. From outside the door, he could hear faint scraping noises, and then the sounds of a man breathing. Breathing that was a bit fast, Tarrin noted as he got up and padded out from under the bed, the pain in his forelimbs more or less shunted aside. He sat beside the door and hunkered down, smelling at the air drifting in from the other side. There were two human smells, both human men that smelled slightly of ale and prostitutes. And Tarrin could smell clearly the presence of steel, and of one other metal that took him a moment to identify.

Silver. The only non-magical substance other than fire or acid that could do him real injury.

His ears laying back, Tarrin listened intently as the two began to whisper.

"Is this the right room?" one asked.

"I'z be certain o' that," the other whispered back in a bizarre accent Tarrin had never heard before. "This'n be the right room, rightly so. Remember now, we'z can't kill the critter with nothing but this here sword," he instructed his companion. "It don't like silver, none at all. Now you'z be getting that magic trinket out and ready, so's the critter don't be a' hearin' us open the door. The boss done say that if we wake it up, it'll right fast send parts of us'n all over the room."

Tarrin changed form silently, his eyes flat and his ears laid back. They were here to kill him. But they didn't know that he was already awake. The thought that they were there to try to kill him filled Tarrin with a sudden rage, a rage that he fought desperately to control. For the first time in a very long time, the Cat in him rose up and tried to take control. He knew it was futile to try to outright resist it, for when it was his life in jeopardy the Cat called in a voice too powerful to deny. He had to try to channel the rage, focus it, to keep from totally snapping and going into a berzerking rage that would put innocents in danger.

"Are you's ready with the trinket?" the man whispered. Tarrin's sensitive ears pinpointed exactly where that voice had come from. And that was the man with the silver weapon, the weapon that represent the threat to his life.

Tarrin took stock in the door, measuring it carefully. Then he balled up a fist, reared back, and punched his paw through the door.

His paw opened the instant it was through, and his aim had been true, for the palm of his paw came into contact with a nose. His fingers closed around that head, wrapping more than well enough around it to get an unbreakable grip, and then he yanked the man back through the door. Tarrin noted that where his hand going through the door curiously made no noise at all, there was a sudden, loud tearing snap as the door was shattered from the force of Tarrin's pull, a sound accentuated by the shriek of the man in Tarrin's clutches. It was a small man, thin and wiry, wearing dirty townsman's clothing and with a silvered sword in his hand. The sight and smell of that weapon made Tarrin's eyes go totally flat.

Grabbing hold of his wrist with his other paw, Tarrin closed his fist.

The man's scream was cut off with horrifying abruptness, for he had no mouth with which to use, and no brain with which to direct the mouth that was not there. Tarrin's fingers drove into the skull and the brain, his inhuman strength digging down and under and then crushing everything that had been below the man's forehead, shattering bone and liquifying flesh. Blood and worse spurted out from between Tarrin's fingers as his fingers closed inside the man's head, literally tearing off the man's face. The other man looked into the door in shock as the dead man fell away from Tarrin, a hideous gaping hole where the front of his head had been, and blood and bits of flesh dripped and oozed from between Tarrin' fingers as he watched the body fall to the floor.

The man shrieked in abject horror and turned to flee, but Tarrin was on him before he could take a single step. He tackled the man and sent him sprawling to the floor, quickly getting on top of him and putting a paw on his chest to hold him down, and then opening his other paw, allowing what was left of the other man's face to drop from his grip. The man stared in desperate terror at the bloody paw raised over his head, claws out, with bits of flesh, bone, and brain dangling from the fur and from the claws. Tarrin's eyes glowed from within with an unholy greenish radiance that made the man squeak once he beheld them, and his face was twisted into a snarl of fury that almost made him like a raging beast. Tarrin very nearly killed him out of rage, but he managed to maintain at least some semblence of sanity. This man had been hired to kill him. Tarrin wanted to know who had done it. "Who sent you?" Tarrin asked in a hissing voice that made the man go very still. "Who sent you?"

"I-I can't say!" he wailed. "They'll kill me!"

"If you don't, I'll make you beg to die," Tarrin told him in a voice so evil that the man tried to sink through the floor to get away from him. "I'll gut you like a pig and drag you around by your entrails until you feel like talking." Tarrin lowered his paw, driving the tips of his claws into the skin of the man's belly. He squealed and writhed, then screamed in pain as Tarrin sank a bit more of his claws into the man's flesh.

The man bellowed as Tarrin slowly twisted his paw, digging the claws in deeper. "It was a Wizard!" he said in a high-pitched voice. "I don't know his name! Belleth knew it!" Tarrin twisted his claws. "Kravon!" he shrieked. "I work for Kravon!"

Then Tarrin felt a coldness at his back. He turned around, ignoring the many Novices that had opened their doors to see what the commotion was about. The shadows behind him seemed to coalesce, and then two slits of pure green radiance appeared. The unearthly cold told him all he needed to know.

It was a Wraith.

The man looked over Tarrin's hip at the apparition, and then he screamed a scream of such terror that it chilled Tarrin's blood. He did himself grievous injury as he suddenly thrashed against the Were-cat, whose claws were still sunk in his belly, but in his wild panic he felt not a whit of pain. The Wraith advanced with shocking speed on them and reached out. Tarrin knew that the touch of a Wraith was the cold of the grave, and it meant death. Even in his rage, he was still lucid enough to know when to bolt. He sprang away from the conjured creature, trampling the man under him in his flight. The man, bleeding freely from his ripped stomach, stared at the Wraith in terror, his body paralyzed by fear, watching that insubstantial hand.

Even as it sank into his chest.

The man made a single gurgling sound and arched his back, and then he moved no more. He remained in that hideously twisted position even after the Wraith withdrew its hand from his chest. The Wraith took one look at Tarrin, and then it simply vanished.

Control returning to him, Tarrin and a few other Novices warily approached the dead man as others screamed hysterically, and more than one Novice cried out or was noisily sick. The man's skin was blue, and the eyes were open and glazed.

The man's body was frozen solid.

Tarrin shivered when he felt the cold radiating from the frozen corpse, then he heard Dar moan and start retching. Tarrin had not left the other one in very presentable condition. Elsa charged out of her door wearing only a nightshirt and brandishing her axe, then stopped when she saw the nude Were-cat standing over the frozen corpse. "What happened?" she demanded hotly.

"This one and the one in my room tried to kill me," Tarrin said in a cold fury, panting to keep control of himself. The Cat was howling for blood, and it wanted to punish the ones who had dared try to take his life. It just wanted to destroy things at the moment, to vent its rage on whatever was handy, but Tarrin's rational mind wouldn't allow that. Such a mindless display of violence would solve nothing. But it still wasn't easy.

Elsa glanced into his room, which now had no door. She shivered a bit. "What did you do to him?" she asked, then she glanced at the blood and flesh still hanging from Tarrin's right paw. "Nevermind, I think I know," she said in a bit of a weak voice. "Tarrin, go down to the baths and wash off all that blood. Take Dar with you."

"Alright," he said tightly. Dar still coughed a great deal as they left for the baths, Tarrin stalking the halls unclad in a fury as Dar followed behind carrying Tarrin's robe. Down in the bathing chamber, Tarrin dropped into the pool and started cleaning off his arms and paws. He was a bit surprised at the amount of blood he had on him; it was even spattered on his face and chest, and smeared over his torso. He'd stepped through a pool of it, and bloody footprints. Dar sat on a chair with his head in his hands, leaned over and still coughing a bit here and there.

"Are you alright?" Tarrin asked as he climbed out of the pool.

"Yeah," he said weakly. "Just imagine waking up to see something like that," he said with a weak chuckle. "I don't think I'll ever eat meat again."

"Sorry, but he tried to kill me," Tarrin said. "And I doubt they would have left you alive either."

"I know," he said. "But why did you have to-do that?"

"It seemed appropriate at the time," he said. "I didn't even think about it."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Dar," he said. "I thought I was dead when I saw that Wraith. I'm just lucky it wasn't after me."

"What does that mean?"

"Wraiths are conjured up for a specific purpose," Tarrin told him, repeating what Dolanna had told him so long ago. "That's all they'll do, what they were conjured to do. That one was conjured to kill that man before I could get him to talk," he said with a growl. "All I got was-"

Tarrin's heart seized in his chest when a faint trace of an old scent touched his nose. He bowed down and sniffed delicately at the stone, trying to block out the strong smells of the mineral-rich water. The scent of her passage was still on the stones. Jesmind had been in the bathing chamber. A whirlwind of conflicting emotion welled up in him at that scent, and most primary of them all was fear. He feared Jesmind more than anything else in the world, because he knew, beyond any doubt, that she was there to kill him. And unlike most in the Tower, she was very capable of doing it. It was almost an ironic twist that she would show up so soon after he'd nearly been killed. It was like an omen.

"Dar," he said in a hushed voice.

"What?"

"Get up. We have to get out of here."

Dar looked around. "What's wrong?"

"Jesmind is here," he said in a quiet, forboding voice. "We have to get back to where there's people."

Dar scrambled to his feet, his eyes darting in all directions, handing Tarrin the robe and rushing after him as Tarrin made quickly for the stairs. They mounted the base of the staircase, but Tarrin stopped dead when a silhouette came around a corner and stood at the top. A silhouette with a tail. His heart froze in his chest, and then it was replaced with a calm, almost unemotional void. He had nowhere to run, and that meant that he would have to fight.

She came down step by step, slowly coming into the light. She was wearing the same white tunic and canvas breeches, which were a bit frayed and torn, but they were clean, just like her. Her eyes were glowing from within with that greenish aura, two slits of pure evil in the shadows, which were a clear indication of her fury. "It's been a very long time, Tarrin," she said in a deceptively mild voice.

"Not long enough," Tarrin growled, his ears laying back and his own eyes igniting from within.

"I hope you enjoyed your time here," she said, her claws coming out, "because you're out of it!"

And with that, she dove off the steps and slammed shoulder first into the startled Tarrin's chest, driving them both back down the stairs.

Both of them were Were-cat, and they both had the same abilities. Tarrin and Jesmind both knew exactly where they were in relation to the ground, and the stairs, so while they tumbled down they both fought to put the other under when they hit the bottom. Tarrin lost that fight, coming down right on the back of his head, but he almost instinctively kicked up and out as hard as he could. With his back on the floor, it gave him a brace, and Jesmind was hurled up and over his head. He rolled to his feet as she tucked in midair, tumbling end over end several times before lightly landing on her feet some distance away. Tarrin had time to rip the rope holding the robe closed and yank it off before she got set again, shedding the constricting garment and not giving her anything to grab onto except his hair. He flung that robe in her face as she lunged at him, covering her head and upper torso, then he ducked down and let her sail past him. Her tail hooked his ankle as she passed, and it almost yanked his leg out from under him. He managed to keep his feet, but it instantly stopped her forward momentum, putting her in claw's reach of him. Even without seeing, she raked her wicked claws right across his chest, digging extremely deep furrows into him, furrows that went all the way to the bone. Had she hit him lower, he realized instantaneously, she'd have disemboweled him.

The pain was serious, but not more than he could withstand. He grabbed hold of her wrist before it could get out of reach, then reared back and slammed the sole of his foot into her cloak-clad head, yanking on her arm in the same instant to increase the force of it. She grunted in pain, and that turned to a yowl when Tarrin kept his foot up and pushed against her head as his grip on her arm pulled her into it, trying to break her neck. Her tail lashed around and up, right between the legs, sending a white-hot flash of excrutiating pain through him. He instantly let go of her, stumbling backwards against a chair as she stumbled back a few paces herself, tearing the robe from her face. Tarrin saw her eyes go completely wild, and she shrieked at him incoherently as she rushed forward. She'd lost control of herself, entering the rage that Tarrin had felt on the edges of his own consciousness many times, a rage that had suddenly boiled up in him in response to her own. Tarrin lost himself to the rage, and met the beast in her face to face.

Beast to beast.

Dar knew he should go for help, but for a moment, he was so horrified by what he saw that he couldn't move. Tarrin and that woman were, quite simply, ripping each other to pieces. There was a look of the most terrifying mindless fury on both of them, and they dealt each other the most grievous wounds with absolutely no regard for their own lives. He'd never seen such a display of sheer animalistic mindlessness in his entire life. They were on the floor, clawing, gouging, and even biting each other in an elemental display of abject fury, rolling to and fro and smashing chairs. The floor was quickly smeared and spattered with blood and bits of flesh and torn clothing, and huge patches of bare muscle and bone began to show on each of them. What was even worse, Dar could see that those hideous wounds were slowly closing themselves. They were both regenerating their wounds, and Dar almost got sick when he realized that the winner would be the one that could withstand more raw punishment than the other, which could keep up the healing even as the other sought to rip the flesh from the bones. It was a war of attrition, and Dar shuddered to think of the pain that either of them were feeling.

They rolled over the edge of the pool and fell in, and Dar's paralysis vanished as they did. Blinking, he rushed up the stairs, hoping beyond hope that Tarrin was still alive when he returned.

Tarrin managed to regain some part of himself at the shocking touch of the water. He kicked Jesmind away, put his feet under him, and kicked off the bottom, sending him out of the water like a sling bullet from a sling, catapulting him back up to the pool's edge. He was torn and beaten, and many of his muscles had been severed. His right arm hung limply at his side, the muscles used to move it ripped apart by Jesmind's claws. The pain was there, but it was a dull thing, something that festered at the back of his mind rather than dominating his every thought. She wasn't half as hurt as he was. She was much deadlier in a mindless rage than he, falling back on instincts that had kept her alive for five hundred years. He could not match her sheer brutality or mindless resistance to pain

Jesmind climbed out of the pool slowly. Her tail was missing more than half its length, which floated in the pool, and most of her left calf had been raked away by Tarrin's feet. She'd lost every bit of clothing, shredded in their brief savagery, but the look of mindless rage was still stamped onto her face. He knew that if he lost control again, she would kill him. She was more suited to it than he. He focused his rage, focused it into what he'd learned, what he knew. He'd met her on her own battlefield, and he had paid the price. Now he had to make her fight on his. She lunged at him, but he spun away, sliding just out of reach of her claws, bending like a blade of grass in the wind. He then then elbowed her in the back with his good arm, a move that was part of ji'shen, then kneed her in the side, which was a move in the Ways. They fell apart for a second, as Jesmind gasped for breath, then she turned around and rushed him again, straight ahead, uncaring about any defense he may erect.

It was almost too easy. Tarrin turned partially aside, as if to flee, then he pivoted and brought his right leg up, folded it around his knee as his back came to her, and kicked absolutely straight up, performing a standing split. The ball of his foot struck Jesmind right under the chin, the claws of his feet punching three holes in the base of her jaw. Her head snapped back audibly, and the raw force of the blow knocked her into the air. She made no attempt to right herself and land on her feet, coming down right on the base of her neck instead. She crumpled in on herself like a rag doll, and when she settled to the floor, she did not move.

Tarrin wilted, almost falling down, as the blinding pain of too many wounds to count suddenly screamed at him all at once. He'd survived by the skin of his teeth, and he looked it. The skin of his teeth was about all he had left. He limped over to her and rolled her over with a foot. She was unconscious, bleeding from her many wounds, wounds that were closing even as he watched. He mused at that; he thought that, since they were both magical creatures, that they would deal real damage to one another. It was a good thing they did not, for he'd have been dead in the first few seconds had that been true. Her face, wet from the pool, was untouched, aside from the three puncture wounds under her jaw, and the blood had been washed from it by their bath. Just looking at her reminded him how beautiful she was, and he knew that he just couldn't kill her. Not now, not ever. Regardless of how she felt about him, he didn't hate her. And he wouldn't kill her.

He knelt by her, checking her pulse to make sure it was strong, then he smoothed the wet red hair back from her face. "Why do you have to be so damned stubborn?" he asked her weakly. Then he bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. "If you'd just wait a while, you stubborn witch, I'd go with you." He stood up. "But it's too late for that now, I guess. I hope you're happy with your decison. If you'd have waited, or came here with me, I wouldn't have ran away."

He turned around. "Goodbye, Jesmind. Have a nice life." Then he hobbled away from her.

As soon as he'd gone far enough up the steps, Jesmind opened her eyes. They were lucid, calm, even mischievous, and she smiled a victorious little smile. But then that light look hardened over into one of firm resolve, and she shook her head as if to clear her mind of unwanted thoughts. She waited until the sound of his passage were too faint to detect, then she scrambled to her feet and darted up the steps, making less sound than a ghost.

Tarrin was met in the hallways by three Sorcerers as he hobbled back towards the Novice's quarters, two men he did not know, and the red-haired Ahiriya, who were rushing towards the baths. She was in the forefront, and she took only one look at him with those penetrating eyes. "Did you kill her?" she asked.

"Hardly," Tarrin said a bit weakly. He hadn't completely healed from the grievous injuries he'd suffered at Jesmind's hands. "It was all I could do to get away."

Ahiriya put her hands on his shoulders, and the icy sensation of Sorcerer's Healing rushed through him, putting him up on his toes as his blood seemed to turn to ice. The other two Sorcerers obeyed Ahiriya's short command to search the baths, rushing away quickly. When that icy rush faded, it took the pain along with it. Tarrin staggered back and away from her, his strength, taxed by her healing, flowing back into him. Unlike a Priest's healing, a Sorcerer's healing took some energy away from the person being healed, using it to heal the recipient, and that always left Tarrin feeling slightly drained.

"Your things have been moved to another room," she said. "That boy who rooms with you demanded to be put in the same room with you," she chuckled. "He's got guts, I'll give him that. Let's get you a robe or something to wear, and we'll take you to your new room."

That touched Tarrin. Despite the obvious danger, Dar was going to stay roommates with him.

The room Tarrin was led to was on the second level, not far from the room that Allia held alone, and it was at the very end of a hallway. The fact that there were two mailed guards standing at the entrance to that hall, quite a distance down, was not lost on him. Even though there were a goodly distance away, they defended the only way in or out, and thus stopped anyone from getting so close to him again.

The room was absolutely identical to the room he'd had below. Dar was there, busily putting up his art back on the walls, and the young man gave Tarrin a look of profound relief as he entered. Tarrin put his paws on the Novice's shoulders wordlessly. "Are you alright? Did you kill her? What happened?"

"I'm fine, no, she's not dead, and we fought for a while before I got in a lucky kick," he said with a gentle smile. "I also have a name, Dar. That man gave me a name before the Wraith killed him. That may be why the Wraith killed him."

"What name?"

"Kravon."

Dar gasped slightly. "The Kravon?" he said in shock.

"Who is he?"

"He's a renegade," he said as Tarrin let go of him and took of the too-small robe that had been found for him. His belongings were in the chest-they'd done nothing but move the whole chest. "I heard about him from my parents. He's a Wizard, and he supposedly leads a group of other Wizards who go around stealing magical artifacts. My father said there's more to it than that, though. He said that they're trying to do something."

"Why would he want to kill me?" Tarrin asked himself. "I'm nobody."

"Maybe it's not who you are," Dar said. "Maybe it's what you are."

"No, why kill me because I'm a Were-cat when he sent the Were-cat that changed me?" he countered. "He was at it before that happened anyway." He pulled on a new pair of trousers and pulled out a shirt. The door opened abruptly, and Tarrin and Dar were staring the Keeper right in the face. They both stood and bowed awkwardly, Tarrin hastily throwing his shirt on afterward.

"I see you're alright," she said.

"Well enough, Keeper," he said.

"What happened?"

"Two men tried to kill me in my sleep, then Jesmind took advantage of the confusion and attacked me when I went to the baths to clean up," he told her plainly. "One of the men gave me a name before he died," he told her triumphantly. "He said he works for Kravon."

Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she said nothing about it. Tarrin seemed to understand in that instant that there was an awful lot that the Keeper knew, things that would answer all of the questions that he had, and that she simply was not going to tell him. She knew why they were trying to kill him. She knew who was trying to kill him too, he was certain of it. He also came to understand in that instant that she wanted something from him. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. He was here specifically because they wanted something. And that made him nervous.

"I'll have someone look into it," she said shortly. "We can't find Jesmind, but that won't be like that for long."

"You'll never catch her, Keeper," he told her.

Her eyes seem to flash momentarily. "You have a low opinion of us, boy," she said in a steely tone.

"No ma'am, I just know Jesmind. She could hide in plain sight so well you'd step on her. She hid from all of us from the day after she bit me to the day we met in the forest, and that was no mean feat. Trust me, Keeper, you won't find her. Don't even bother."

"I'll have it done anyway," she said. "It amuses me."

"As you will, Keeper."

"Well, things will get back to normal around here now," she said. "I've put men at the entrance to this hallway to prevent any more midnight guests, so it shouldn't happen again."

"Thank you, Keeper," he said politely.

"You two try to get some sleep," she said, then she turned and walked out without another word.

"That was strange," Dar said.

Tarrin looked at the door with his eyes narrowed. The first stirrings of mistrust were coming to life inside him. Things were not as they appeared here in the Tower. And he meant to find out what was going on.

The next attempt on his life came the very next day, and his wariness from the previous night had been what saved his life. Tarrin and Allia were out on the field, practicing, when the fur on the back of his ears stood up. In that absolute instant, he knew something was wrong. He lunged forward and drove Allia to the ground, even as something buzzed spitefully over his head. There was a cry of pain seconds after than, and the sound of someone falling. Then it was chaos. Tarrin looked up, and saw that one of the students, laying on the ground near them, had a crossbow quarrel through his neck. His eyes were already vacant and glazed. Had that bolt hit him, it would have hit him right between the shoulder blades.

"Spread out and capture anyone with a crossbow!" Valden, one of the Knight instructors, bellowed instantly. One of the attending Sorcerers rushed forward, but he could see that he was too late. So he closed the boy's eyes, then pulled out the quarrel.

It was tipped with silver.

"That was meant for you," Allia said grimly.

"I know," Tarrin replied quietly. This young man was totally innocent, a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was one more thing he was going to flay from the hide of whoever ordered the attack. His eyes went flat, and his ears laid back. "And I'm going to find who shot it."

"I'll come with you," she said, and they got up and darted away.

It took a bit of doing to get them to let Tarrin have the crossbow. It was found between two buildings, in a narrow alley, and Tarrin more or less threatened to maim anyone that wouldn't let him hold it. Tarrin put the stock near his nose, ignoring the scents all around him as he locked in on the scent of the man that had held it, and had shot it at him. Once he had it, he checked in the alley and found the scent trail. Five Knights, including Valden and Faalken, hurried along after Tarrin and Allia as Tarrin followed the man's trail. It played out, though, when it got onto the road that led to the main gate of the compound, and then outside.

"You there!" Faalken boomed at the gate guards. "Who's gone through here in the last hour?"

"Two wagons, five troops of guards, and ten visitors, sir," the gate sentry replied immediately.

"Anyone looking like they were nervous about something?"

"No sir," he replied.

"It had to be someone walking," Tarrin said. "I can still smell his scent. He walked through the gate."

"Who's walked out of here?"

"Just two troops of guards and one visitor," the man said. "It was a woman and her two bodyguards."

They looked at Tarrin, who shrugged. "Don't look at me," he said. "I just know it was a human man."

"It could have been any of them," Allia said. "Even one of the guards, or perhaps a man in a guard's uniform."

"Maybe," Faalken grunted.

"This isn't the place to discuss it," Valden said. "This place is in crossbow range of any of those buildings across the street."

Tarrin swept his eyes across the area beyond the fence. "Good point," Faalken agreed. "Let's get Tarrin back to the barracks."

Valden was one of the older knights, a gruff, no-nonsense kind of man that seemed to have absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever. He was held in very high regard among the Knights, though, because he was extraordinarily good at the small details that made a successful campaign, and he was a fearsome fighter. He was the most practical, sober man Tarrin had ever seen. Valden led them as the five Knights formed a defenseive perimeter around Tarrin, putting their steel armor in the way of another quarrel. Tarrin watched with an alert wariness, taking in and analyzing every sight and sound and smell for possible threat. They reached the barracks that served as the cadets' quarters. "We've got to tell the Keeper about this," Faalken said. "Someone is going to an awful lot of trouble to kill you, Tarrin. They've been trying since the day we left Aldreth, and they're not afraid to come into the Tower to do it, either."

"What can she do?" one of the other Knights, a hulking man named Umber, asked.

"We'll seal the compound if that's what it takes," Valden said in his no-nonsense voice. "These people have to be coming in from the outside. If they can't get in, they can't try to kill anyone."

"You can't get in here without-" Umber said, then he blanched a bit.

"That's possible," Valden said grimly.

"What?" Allia asked.

"That someone from the inside is bringing them in," Valden explained. "Nobody can come onto the Tower grounds without an invitation or a summons. For them to get in, someone has to be inviting them in."

"Maybe they just snuck in," Tarrin said. "I've done it. This place isn't as secure as you may think."

"You have certain racial advantages, Tarrin," Valden. "It'd take a man pole-vaulting to get over the fence without touching it. Not many people know how to do that. And you can't touch the fence, else you're stuck fast to it until a Sorcerer weaves a spell to release you."

"They must get tired of going out there to release the birds," Tarrin noted.

"It doesn't trap animals," Valden said absently. "It only-" He swore. "Garen, go find out if the fence works on Wikuni."

Faalken's eyes widened, then narrowed.

"But it was a human scent I smelled," Tarrin told them.

"Yes, but let's close that door before they find it open," Valden said. "I don't know how the fence works exactly. Since it doesn't trap animals, it may only trap humans. And that means that anyone else can climb it as they please." He pursed his lips. "There's really not much we can do at this point but alert the Keeper and have her take steps," he said. "There's no way to find out who brought the assassin onto the grounds."

"Well, until we talk to the Keeper, not much else can be done," Valden said. "Tarrin, go back to the Tower, and stay indoors. I suggest you stay in a public area as well. Try to keep people around you."

"Alright," he said. Tarrin was starting to get annoyed. That he had a name seemed to be something a step in the right direction, but he had nowhere to take it, and so long as he was in the Tower, he had no means to search it out. Tarrin didn't like being the target of someone's homicidal tendencies; at least someone he didn't know. Jesmind, he could understand, and he had hopes that the two of them could settle their differences peacefully. But this mystery man Kravon was an unknown, a stranger, and he had no idea how to make him stop other than to kill him. But he didn't know who he was. That was the problem.

If he only knew why they were after him, at least then he'd have some idea of what to do, how to make them stop. He was floundering around in a sea of possibilities, and it was a long way to shore. He couldn't think of anything he'd done to offend someone to the point where they would have him killed. It was maddening.

He sat in his room for quite a while pondering it, then finally gave up in disgust. Allia was meditating in her room, a private time that she needed to herself, so he decided to read a book until she came for him.

The door opened, and the Keeper entered his room. Tarrin stood hastily and bowed to her.

"I was told what happened," she said. "It won't happen again, I can assure you of that," she said in a flinty voice. "I'm having the compound searched at this very moment, and no visitor may enter armed from this day forward."

"That's all well and good, but that doesn't tell me anything," he said pointedly. "Why are they trying to kill me, Keeper? They've been trying for a very long time now. They must have a reason."

She looked him in the eye, but said nothing. "Don't concern yourself with it, Tarrin. You're under our protection, and we're going to protect you. Oh, I've received word that your parents and your sister are on the way here," she said.

That managed to sidetrack his anger. "They're coming here?" he said, his heart both leaping in his chest and sinking into his gut at the same time. He so desperately wanted to see them, but an irrational fear of how they would react to his new shape almost gave him the panics. If they rejected him, it may be more than he could bear. He knew his parents; he doubted they would do such a thing, but a part of his mind simply wouldn't stop thinking about it.

She nodded. "I got word yesterday that they were at Marta's Ford. By now, they are halfway to Ultern. They should be here by the Midsummer Festival."

"I can't wait to see them," he blurted.

"You'll have to wait until they arrive," she said with a smile and a wink. "The teachers tell me that you're doing well," she said, changing the subject. "Keep up the good work, Tarrin. Now, I must be off. Take care of yourself."

And then she left, leaving him somewhat giddy at the thought of his family coming to see him.

The door opened again. "Was that the Keeper I just saw?" Allia asked.

"It was," he replied. "My family is coming to the Tower to visit me," he told her.

"That is good news," she smiled.

"I hope so," he said. "If they see me like this and scream and run away, I think I'll kill myself."

"Do not get worked up over it," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "You are their son, and they love you for who you are, not how you look."

"I hope so," he sighed.

"Come, let us go someplace quiet, so that you may practice."

"Not the garden," he said. "There are people watching me right now, I think. If I disappear in there, they may send people in to find us."

"Then we will not practice the hand-language today," she said. "Let us simply talk. You need to work the edge off of your accent."

"I can speak the language almost as well as you can," he said tartly, in Selani.

"Maybe, but if you're going to do something, do it right," she shrugged, speaking in Selani as well. "You don't sound Selani, and that's what matters."

"Whatever," he said. "We need to talk anyway. Let's go out and walk around the outer garden a while. I have some things to tell you."

"Alright."

Outside, they walked the paved paths along the gardens, and Tarrin noticed that they were a bit busier than usual. More than one Sorcerer, and more than one guard, walked along the paths. At least two kept him in sight at all times. He was definitely right about that. "Allia, they want something from me," he told her in Selani.

"What?"

"I don't know, yet," he said. "I looked into the Keeper's eyes today, and I could see things there. She knows who's trying to kill me, and why. But she won't tell me who it is or why they're doing it. And they want something."

"Well, since you're not dead, they obviously don't want your body," she said. "They're going to teach you magic, and they've been having me train you to fight. That means that it's not you they want. Perhaps they want something that you can do for them."

"You said a Sorcerer came and asked for you, right?" She nodded. "Well, it seems I'm not the only one they want."

"Maybe they asked for me because of what I could teach you," she said.

"They had to do that long before they ever knew of me," he protested. "You know how long it takes to get to the desert from Suld?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," she said primly. "And you're right. They had to send that Sorcerer months before I left my people, and we've been here only about three months."

"And I was still human at that time," he added. "Maybe they wanted you," he said, "and since I'm here, they decided I'd do a better job of it. Whatever it is."

"It's all just sand blowing in the wind," she sighed, bending down to look at a particularly lovely rose. "We can't prove anything."

"Maybe not, but I can start looking for answers," he said.

"How so?"

"I'm a Were-cat, dear one," he said with a smile. "I can go places that humans wouldn't even dream about."

Her look sobered instantly. "What you're thinking about is one step from suicide," she warned. "The Keeper is a Sorcerer. I'll guarantee that she and her office have magical protection."

"Hmm," he said, rubbing his chin with the side of a finger. "You're right. But Tiella cleans the Keeper's office. I think I'll ask her to start remembering any scrap notes she happens to see. Maybe we'll get lucky."

"Just be careful, deshida," she warned.

"I will," he promised.

It was a large problem, but the thought of his family coming quickly drowned out such heavy thoughts, and replaced them with a mixture of joy and terror that put him on edge for several days, and put him so out of sorts he did not one thing to start unraveling the veil of mystery surrounding his place in the Tower. He wanted desperately to see his parents, his sister, to put himself in the arms of his mother and father and know that they would accept him as he was. But the very thought that they would reject him made his heart lurch. He'd had a nightmare that made him sleepless for three days, a nightmare that his mother looked on him for the first time, and a look of horror overwhelmed her. Mere words or actions could hold nothing on that one dream, that one image, that had shaken him to the very core. It seemed the embodiment of all the gnawing fears, the self doubts. He'd thought he'd achieved an equilibrium with his animal instincts, but the fight with Jesmind showed him how pitifully wrong he was. They only seemed abated because he was in a very controlled, safe environment. He knew, then, that every time his life was in danger, or he was angry, that he would fight that same fight, a fight for control. And he knew that he could lose.

Of Jesmind, there was no sign. She had simply vanished again, most likely waiting for another chance. Tarrin still had mixed feelings about the fight, and about her. She wanted to kill him, but he knew he could not kill her. It just seemed wrong. When they were apart, the Jesmind he remembered was the incisive, light-hearted woman whom he'd met in that treetop, who had a quirky sense of humor and those glorious green eyes. But it was like she was another person now. He saw it in her eyes right before that fight. She absolutely despised him, hated him with every fiber of her being. In a way, that hurt him, because he didn't feel the same way. She had cared about him in some way before he left her, that he knew. Be it compassion, or responsibility, or even the beginnings of friendship, he wasn't sure. But not anymore. He could see the lust for revenge in her eyes.

It was a hot summer day, and Tarrin sat panting on the sand-pit practice field, nursing a broken tail. Allia stood calmly in front of him, hand on her hip, with a distant expression he knew only too well. Allia was nearly sadistic when she was training. She'd told him that a respect for pain was one of the lessons learned. It was the way she had been taught. She had the scars to prove it. "Don't lead with your foot like that again," she told him absently, checking her fingernails for any sign of damage as Tarrin took his broken tail in his paws. There was a visible kink it in, and he winced as he pulled the bones apart and gently let them come back together in the right way, so they could heal. Despite a month of training, he'd yet to even lay a paw on her. He was starting to get frustrated. No matter how well he thought he was doing, she would simply seem to grow an extra arm or leg, and that phantom limb would hit him in some very sensitive area. The Troll-skin gloves she wore gave her strength proportional to his, and without that strength advantage, it was clear who the better fighter was.

"I'll try not to," Tarrin grunted as he got to his feet. he spread his legs wide, in a ready stance, and waited for her. She didn't disappoint him, wading back into the fray confidently. What amazed him about her was her fluid suppleness. She seemed to be capable of moving in ways even a rope wouldn't dream of. She was like a candle flame, contorting in the wind, bending herself in almost impossible angles to avoid blows, and then springing back to the attack. That agility coupled with her speed made her almost impossible to hit. Tarrin was no novice, but even his own training couldn't find a hole in her defenses. He gritted his teeth as she flowed around several more darting attacks, then she kicked him right in the backside with the inside of her foot. He stumbled forward as she laughed lightly, and that just seemed to set off something inside him. He was going to get her, no matter what it took. He'd give her a reason to laugh.

He set his feet wide again, putting his clawed paws out over his feet, spreading his weight. She'd warned him against doing just that, because it would slow him down. And when she saw him do it again, she rushed in to chastise him. She feinted a jab, then spun around, bringing her foot up, performing one of her circle-kicks. Her foot whistled through the air as it sped towards its target, his cheek.

And passed through empty air.

She almost spun to the ground, and had to wildly catch herself before falling down. She'd been counting on hitting him to stop her momentum, and he'd simply disappeared. All she saw were his pants laying on the ground. She gasped as the significance of that hit her.

Just as the pad of his paw struck her right on the back of the head. She catapulted forward, head first, and her face dug a furrow in the sand as she hit the ground.

Tarrin pulled his hand back, enormously pleased with himself. She'd preached and preached about the advantage of surprise in combat. She never even dreamed that he would change form on her. That put him right out of harm's way, and after slipping out of his clothes, he changed back right behind her and literally slapped her on the back of the head.

Allia turned over and sat down, spitting sand out of her mouth. Her sweat had made the sand stick to her face, and it looked like she painted her face. Tarrin took one look at her and started laughing. "I believe you made your point," she said icily, as the instructors and cadets stopped to look at them. The fact that Tarrin had no clothes on didn't catch everyone's eye nearly as much as the sight of the nigh-invincible Allia with her backside on the ground and her face caked with sand.

Faalken and Valden walked over from where they and their six cadets had been watching the two spar. They always watched them, because there was much to learn from watching two such as them. From time to time, Allia and Tarrin sparred with the cadets, to give them some exposure to fighting against Non-humans. Tarrin and Allia both used tactics that relied on their natural abilities; Allia's speed, and Tarrin's strength and natural weaponry. In that way, Tarrin and Allia were more cadets than Novitiates. They were even more involved with the Knights than most cadets were, since they too sparred with the Knights. To give the Knights some basics of unarmed combat, and too to fight against unconventional foes to broaden their experience. Allia had approached the idea with trepidation at first, but the tremendous respect the Knights had for her had worn away that reluctance. She often called to them by their names, which was amazing, considering she would not so much as speak to a Novice, and wasn't quite cordial to Sorcerers that talked to her.

Allia gave him a wry smile, and offered her hand. "Very well done," she complemented. "You changed form on me. I didn't think of that."

"I hope you're not talking about me," Faalken said dryly. Tarrin blinked. She spoke in Selani. Tarrin often forgot that he was the only one who could understand her when she did.

"No, Faalken," she said as Tarrin helped her to her feet. She pulled up the tail of her shirt and started wiping off the sand. "I was telling Tarrin that he did very well."

"That was a pretty clever move," Faalken agreed. "Uh, Tarrin, you can put your pants back on now," he said pointedly.

Tarrin chuckled. "The clothes don't change with me, Faalken," he said, reaching down and collecting his pants, and then putting them back on. "Why do you think I didn't do that before? I'd be losing clothes left and right."

Valden laughed. "True enough," he said. "I'd feel a bit out of place bare as a newborn in the middle of a battle."

"At least people would say you had courage," Faalken noted slyly.

"They'd say I had something," Valden returned. "I doubt it would be courage."

"Do not get too much of an opinion of yourself, Valden," Allia said calmly. "I have seen you in the baths. They would say you have something, but it would not be what fills your codpiece."

Valden gave her a strangled look, and then turned beet red. Faalken almost fell over in a sudden gale of uncontrollable laughter. Allia gave Valin a very calm, sober look, then one of those sea-blue eyes winked slyly, and a corner of her lip quirked up into a near-smile.

"Ye Gods!" Valden gasped mockingly. "Allia has a sense of humor! Great Karas, call me home, for the end is here!"

"It's a rather base one, at that," Faalken managed to gasp. He was wheezing audibly, and was bent over.

"You humans are so amusing," she said with a light smile, then she put her four-fingered hand on Valden's cheek, bent down and kissed the shorter man's other cheek like his daughter, and then turned her back to him. "I think that is enough today, Tarrin. A day of practice is always better when the student can walk away with a sense of accomplishment. And you have done very well today. Very well indeed."

"Well thank you," he said with a smile.

"Come, let us bathe. I need to get the training field off of my face and out of my hair."

Tarrin chuckled, picking up his shirt from the post where he'd left it hang. They left Faalken, who was still in a state of near-paralysis, now on his knees, laughing uncontrollably, pounding his hand on the ground.

"All kidding aside, Tarrin, you're coming along very well," she told him as they walked back to the Tower. "I know I didn't do half as well after only a month and some days."

"I had prior training," he shrugged, then he wrinkled his nose. "Goodness, Allia, put those gloves somewhere else," he said.

"I left them with Valden," she objected.

"What?"

"Valden has them," she affirmed.

"Then why do I smell Troll?" They both looked around, and there was nothing. Just grass, the Tower, and a few of the surrounding buildings that they could see.

"Maybe Valden is upwind of us," Allia shrugged.

"Maybe you're right," he agreed.

He felt a tiny shudder under his feet, conducted up through the pads on his foor. That was the only warning. But it was enough. A paw on Allia's shoulder sent her careening to the side as he lunged the other way.

As a club almost as large as Tarrin smashed the air between them and crushed into the ground, sending dirt and grass in all directions. Both Tarrin and Allia rolled to their feet.

And found themselves surrounded by four Trolls. Twelve spans tall, nearly twice as tall as their opponents, their wide-featured, brutish faces were alight with the prospect of the kill. Each one had nothing but a fur loinclout cinched with a leather belt, and all four were carrying clubs as big as Allia. Tarrin understood the nature of that selection immediately. His magical defense did not carry over to the raw physical force that the Trolls would put into those clubs. They would kill him just as fast as any human should they hit him

They wasted no time. Allia gave a ear-splitting undulating cry, the cry of alarm among her people, as her hands flashed to the daggers she kept in her boots. Tarrin was a bit more direct, as the Cat flowed into and through him. Instinct and thought were one, and they caused him to explode into action. He ducked under the massive swing of another Troll, and then kicked it in the side of the knee before it could recover. Tarrin's strength caved in the side of its knee, and it sagged to the ground with a bass-deep rumble of pain, rolling around on its back holding its knee. Allia simply stepped aside as the Troll behind her gave a vast overhanded swing, spraying dirt in every direction, then she danced lightly around it and sank one of her daggers into the back of its knee. It too sagged to the ground. Tarrin ducked under one swing, then dove forward to evade the other Troll's swing. He danced around so that one Troll shielded him from the other, a Troll that had turned to meet Allia. He saw his chance. "High and low!" he shouted to Allia in Selani. "I'll go low!"

"Go!" she barked, backpedalling out of reach of a huge swing.

Tarrin lunged forward just as the Troll in front of him started after him, which surprised it. The Troll obviously wasn't used to such small creatures attacking it. It tried to step back a bit, but Tarrin dove right between its legs, rolled, and came up sprinting. The other Troll had set its feet to deliver another overhand blow; Tarrin could see the club come up over its head. Tarrin ducked down a bit and ran between its legs.

With both paws up, and his claws out.

The Troll shrieked in abject agony, bending over as Tarrin's claws literally ripped out everything that was under its fur clout. Allia dashed forward as Tarrin knelt down, and she put a boot on his shoulder and leapt, then sprang off the head of the doubled Troll, high in the air. The other Troll, which had just turned around to see where Tarrin went, got a perfect view of Allia rear back both hands, and then throw her daggers with precise and deadly accuracy. They drove into each of the Troll's eyes, the tips and more finding the monster's brain, putting it forever into darkness.

As the Troll Allia felled hit the ground, Tarrin absently reached up and ripped the throat out of the doubled Troll, ending its hideous wailing.

A small formation of armored Knights and cadets came around one of the storebuildings about that time, quickly surrounding the two lamed Trolls and convincing them that sudden pacifism would lead to a longer life. Tarrin was panting as he wiped the flesh and blood off his claws in the grass, trying not to vomit at the overpowering stench of Trolls and Troll blood, which was the core of their awful smell.

"Four Trolls that fast?" Faalken said appreciatively.

"It was almost much shorter," Allia said grimly as she pulled her daggers free of the Troll corpse. "It was like they appeared from the thin air."

"They did," Tarrin said, putting the back of his paw to his face, letting his own scent drown out the stench. "I didn't see or hear them, not even when they attacked."

"Magic," Valden growled. "It had to be. They'd never have gotten onto the grounds any other way."

Tarrin looked up at him. "Someone went to alot of trouble to arrange this," he said tersely, getting his instincts back under control.

A red-robed Sorcerer walked around the building, coming up short at the display. He was a young man, not long a Sorcerer, with sandy colored hair and a rather handsome, full-cheeked face. "My," he said. "Trolls, here? However did they manage to get onto the grounds?"

"We don't know yet," Valden told the man.

"Tarrin, you and Allia go on," Valden said. "We'll take care of this."

"Yes, Master Valden," they said in unison. "I have got to get this Troll-stench off of me," Tarrin told Allia fervently.

Tarrin almost scrubbed off his fur in the baths, then they went for the afternoon meal. Afterwards, Allia went to her room for her private meditation. Tarrin caught up with Dar, and they went out into the garden to talk.

"Trolls?" Dar said, taking the apple Tarrin offered.

Tarrin nodded. "I felt one of them put his foot down. That was the only warning I got." He looked out over the gardens, to the hedge maze. He was still feeling a bit unsettled after the attack, and he desperately wanted to go to the central courtyard, but there were too many people watching him. "We got very lucky. If hadn't have moved, both of us would probably be dead now."

"This is getting serious, Tarrin," Dar said. "Whoever is doing this is starting to bring in harder things to kill. He may pull a Dragon out of his hat next."

Tarrin scoffed. "No," he said. "It probably took them a very long time to get those Trolls here. I seriously doubt that they could do it again. Not any time soon, anyway. If they stay on their little pattern, I have at least a ten-day before they try again."

"I don't see how you can be so calm about it," he said.

"I'm not," he said flatly. "But there's nothing else I can do, so it's best for me not to get myself worked up about it."

"Just be careful, Tarrin," Dar said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I intend to, Dar," he assured him. "I, I want to go out tonight," he said. "Can you leave the door open for me?"

"I guess," he said. "Want me to stay up?"

"No, just don't lock the door if you wake up," he replied. "I just want to get out a while without so many people watching me. It's almost creepy."

"I can understand that," he sighed. "Oh, they're giving me the Test next ten-day," he said.

"We already know how it's going to turn out," Tarrin said with a grin.

Dar grinned back. "I know, but it still has to be done," he said.

"Like it matters."

"They give it to you gifted ones too," he said.

"I've already taken it."

"This is a different test," he replied. "It gauges what spheres of Sorcery you're strong in. That way they know how and where to teach you."

"I didn't know that," Tarrin said, sweeping a fly off his back with his tail.

"I didn't until yesterday," he replied. "I managed to get an Initiate to explain it to me."

Tarrin shrugged. "It's still nothing to worry about," he said.

"I know," Dar replied.

The Keeper was walking towards them. "Uh oh," Tarrin said in a low voice. "Trouble off the port bow."

"Man the catapults," Dar quipped. Tarrin had to stifle a laugh. They stood respectfully as she approached, and it was quickly obvious that she meant to talk to them. They bowed as she stepped up before them. Tarrin noticed that the Keeper was only slightly taller than the fifteen year old Dar.

"Tarrin," she said.

"Keeper."

"I have a gift for you," she said tersely. "It was something that we didn't want to give to you until you reached the Initiate, but it seems that you can use it now." She reached into a pocket of her cream colored dress, and withdrew a shaeram, one made of some kind of black metal, but it wasn't steel. Tarrin knew the scent of steel. This was some other kind of metal, one he'd never smelled before. "It's been enchanted," she explained. "It'll let you change form without losing your clothes or anything in your hands. They'll go to some other place when you change, and come back when you change back. The shaeram itself will turn into a little metal collar when you're in your cat shape."

"Uh, thank you, Keeper," he said uncertainly, accepting the black metal amulet. It was surprisingly light, and the metal seemed both cold and warm at the same time.

"Let me help you put it on," she said, motioning for him to turn around.

He really couldn't deny her her request. He turned around and knelt so she could reach his neck easily, and she fastened the black metal chain of the amulet around his neck. He had the most peculiar feeling the instant she fastened it, but it faded so quickly that he doubted he felt anything at all. "Now let's have a look at it," she said, patting him on the side. He turned around and let her inspect the amulet, and then she smiled. "It looks nice on you," she said.

"Uh, thank you, Keeper," he said.

"Let's test it, make sure the weave was made right. Change shape, and then change back."

"Alright." He stepped away from them and willed himself into his other form. There was the customary blurring of vision, then he had a new point of view at the level of their shins. He sat down as the Keeper knelt beside him and put her hands on the delicate black metal collar now around his neck, a collar so close to the color of his fur that it was almost invisible. "No clothes," she told him. "The amulet did that part of its job. Alright, change back." When she moved away, he did so. And he was fully clothed, with the amulet around his neck.

"Excellent," she said, smiling. "The weave is working just fine."

Tarrin looked down, smiling. That solved the one problem he constantly had about changing his shape. It opened entire new levels of sneaking around for him. "Thank you, Keeper," he said sincerely. "This is an excellent gift." He already had plans. Little did the Keeper know, she'd just given him the opportunity he needed to do a little snooping. There were many, many cats on the Tower grounds, there to chase down the rats, or the cats that were personal pets. One more wouldn't attract much attention.

"I'm glad you like it," she said with a smile. "Oh, by the way, don't worry about what happened today. I'm going to see to it that it doesn't happen again," she said with a bit of steel in her voice.

"I won't," he replied civilly.

"Well, I won't keep you any longer," she said. "Enjoy the rest of your day." She looked up at the late afternoon sun. "What's left of it, anyway."

"That was nice of them," Dar said as the Keeper disappeared from view.

Tarrin held the amulet in his paw, looking down at it. It seemed…warm. "It's a welcome gift," he said sincerely. "I don't change form because I'll lose my clothes. This solves that problem. I'm going to have to start wandering around as a cat from now on. That way I won't attract as much attention."

"Probably not," he agreed. "There are cats all over the grounds."

"It'll also let them get used to not seeing me," he said with a wink.

"Oh," he said, winking back. "That could come in handy too."

"Just a bit."

Tarrin's "gift" had an unforseen side effect, one that very nearly caused him to go into a rage.

It wouldn't come off.

It was held on by magic, about that much he was positive. Though the chain was long enough to slip over his head, it would not. And there wasn't a clasp anymore anywhere on the chain; it was a continuous chain all the way around. He'd ripped off a good amount of his own skin struggling to remove the amulet, and he'd worked himself up into such a frenzy that both Allia and Dar had to work together to calm him down.

Like the rest of his kind, Tarrin had a nearly phobic fear of being trapped or captured. The fastest way to set him off was to put him in a cage, where the Cat was imprisoned, and its desperate need to be free caused it to all but overwhelm the human half. It was that instinctive reaction that had caused Jesmind to go berzerk in Torrian and kill so many people during her escape. The amulet necklace was no cage, but it was a collar, a symbol of his imprisonment. They may have well put a leash on him. To be subject to the will of another was so against the very nature of the Cat that it seemed alien to Tarrin's human half as well. They were fiercely independent creatures, and the amulet represented a limitation, a stricture on that freedom that he couldn't deny. Just thinking about it got his blood seething, and he felt the almost overpowering need to break things.

He stalked about in a white-faced fury for the entire day, and people avoided him like Death herself. He had an entire bench to himself during breakfast. Even Allia and Dar were afraid to get too close to him. The setting for the day was when he woke up, and the door latch stuck as he was trying to get out. Without hesitating, Tarrin ripped the door off the hinges and threw it into the hall, nearly startling Dar out of his wits and sending two Novices running for cover. Elsa had tried to confront him about the door after breakfast, but one look at his face made her blanch and back away. Nothing was taught in his classes that day, since the instructors were too busy jumping every time Tarrin so much as twitched. A guard tried to stop him from leaving the Tower after lunch, and Tarrin left the man groaning with both arms and legs broken and his pike tied in a knot around his waist. He spent the whole afternoon pacing through the city, heedless of the fact that Novices weren't allowed off the Tower grounds, wandering aimlessly and not paying attention to anything. The gate guards had tried to stop him too, but after Tarrin had nailed one of them to the gatehouse with a dagger through each forearm, and hurled another into the magical fence, the others wisely got out of his way. They seemed to realize that he was keeping himself from killing anyone, but he had absolutely no reservations over hurting them. He walked right over more pedestrians than could be easily counted, and had overturned three carts and killed two horses that refused to get out of his way. Eventually a contingent of the city guard was dispatched. Not to detain him, but to clear the path in front of him. The fact that he wandered with absolutely no set pattern or goal made it very hard for them.

And Tarrin never noticed them.

After he'd walked himself into exhaustion, he returned to the Tower grounds, mainly because he had nowhere else to go. He was allowed in unchallenged, and when he was halfway there, Allia and Dar approached him together, a bit wary, and started the task of settling him. It took both of them, and it took them nearly two hours just to get him to sit down. And that took Allia pushing him down and literally sitting in his lap, straddling his legs and holding him down with both hands. "Tarrin!" she snapped in a harsh voice. "You dishonor yourself acting this way!"

He gave her a flat, deadly look, and his ears laid back on his head.

"Don't lay your ears back at me, boy," she challenged hotly. "You won't hurt me, and you know it. Now stop acting like a sun-baked shivat and talk to me!"

Tarrin stood up, picking her up with him. Then he set her gently on her feet and walked away. She moved to follow, but Dar put a hand out. "No," he told her.

"He will hurt someone like this," she told him.

"No, I don't think so," he replied. "I know where he's going."

"This is something he needs to work out for himself, Allia," Dar told her. "We calmed him down, but that was just putting the lid on the boiling pot. He needs more than we can do for him."

She looked at where they were on the grounds. "Yes, that is the only place he would go, is it not?" She sighed. "I think you are right. When he is ready to talk, he will seek us out."

It wasn't until he was standing at the base of the fountain in the courtyard, gazing up at the incredibly beautiful face of the marble statue, that some semblance of rationality returned to him. He sank to his knees in front of it, putting his face in his paws, as he realized just how close to madness he'd went. He'd terrorized people, destroyed things, even killed animals. That rage was replaced with self doubt, loathing, and fear of himself, at what he had almost done. If someone other than Allia had gotten in his face, he wasn't sure if he would have killed him or not. If it had been the Keeper, then he had no doubt what would have happened. She would have died.

It just seemed so complicated, even though it was so simple. He knew how the Cat thought. He even knew what it was going to do most of the time, but it was as if he was a spectator in his own body. Even knowing what it would do, he felt powerless to stop it. The Cat was so much stronger inside him than he ever dreamed, capable of throwing him aside like a forgotten toy whenever the mood suited it. All day it had not been a struggle for control, but a struggle for containment, to keep the Cat from doing something that Tarrin would regret for the rest of his life.

And yet, staring up at that beautiful face, it was as if everything he'd done that day was washed from his soul, and he felt at peace with himself.

And that peace allowed him to think, for the first time in nearly a day. Yes, the amulet would not come off, but it did not control him. He controlled it. And it was not a symbol of his slavery. The shaeram was the symbol of the katzh-dashi, an amulet just like any other. It was up to him to use it to his own advantage. It took him a fairly long time to reach those conclusions, and it was well after dark the next time he bothered to move his eyes off the statue.

He had to control it. If he didn't, it would drive him mad. All his training was about control, all his experiences of life were about control. He had to start using them in his fight with the Cat, or the Cat would overwhelm him, and Tarrin Kael would be no more.

Tarrin had thought he'd reached a balance inside himself. He knew at that moment that he could not have been more wrong. The real battle for himself had just begun.

Sniffling a bit, Tarrin stood up again, looking at the soft light of the Skybands casting multihued radiance over the statue on the fountain, and it all but took his breath away. Such loveliness seemed impossible for the human hand to carve with such perfection. Without quite knowing why, he waded into the fountain and climbed up onto the base, standing in front of the statue. He put his paws on its shoulders, and leaned in and rested his forehead against the shoulder of the statue. "I don't know if I can do it," he admitted out loud, confiding in the statue, voicing the truths he felt in his heart. "I never would have done what I did just a month ago. I'm losing myself, piece by piece, bit by bit. I don't know if I'm strong enough. I never dreamed the Cat could be so strong. I just feel so, so lost. And I'm scared, and I don't know what to do. I'm, changing," he said with a shudder in his voice. "And I can't stop it."

Faith.

The word just seemed to echo through the courtyard, though he knew that he had heard no sound.

You must have faith.

Tarrin looked around, quite mystified at the strange voice he heard. It was sweet, melodic, but it had an odd choral quality to it, as if it carried a power inside it that was more than what a single voice could hold. "Who are you?" he called.

Faith, my kitten, it repeated. Faith.

Tarrin looked around in confusion. "What do you mean? I don't understand."

But there was no reply.

Tarrin started to wonder if he really was going mad. He backed away from the statue quickly, almost falling off the ledge of the statue's base. He hesitated only a moment, drinking in the calming beauty of the statue and the fountain, and then he turned and left.

The events of that day were more or less forgotten; that was, Tarrin wasn't punished for it. Not a word was mentioned of it, but it had its own effects. The most obvious was that the Novices now would have absolutely nothing to do with him. They stayed as far away from him as they could. Before, where he got nervous looks, now they refused to even look at him. Novices would turn around and walk in the other direction, or duck into doors or side passages, when he walked the hallways. At dinner, the only time they were forced to be near him, the people who sat at his table finished in moments and hurried away.

Their rejection of him hurt, and it hurt deeply. He could understand their fear, but that didn't make it any easier. He had lost control of himself, and shown them the monster that lurked underneath. And now they were treating him like that monster. He became moody and out of sorts the next few days. Not even Allia and Dar could get him back to his usual self for any extended amount of time.

It wasn't the only shock he received, however. Three days after his rampage, he and Allia were visiting the baths for their after-practice bathing, and Tarrin saw Jesmind in the baths, soaping her red hair vigorously. The sight of her made him grit his teeth together, and he extended his claws almost out of impulse. Allia put a hand on his shoulder quickly. "She is not here to fight," she warned, soothing him. "Do not dishonor yourself by attacking one who has no desire to fight."

"Alright," he said stiffly. She looked up, catching his scent, and those green eyes locked with his for a few moments. Then she just looked away, dunking herself underwater to rinse her hair.

The Novices that tended the baths took one look at the impending disaster, and then fled, leaving the three of them alone.

Tarrin stood at the edge of the bathing pool and squatted down, his eyes flat. "What are you doing here, Jesmind?" he asked in a stiff voice.

"I'm bathing," she said with infuriating calm, pulling her hair behind her.

"Don't state the obvious," he grated. "It makes you look like a fool."

Her eyes flashed, and her light expression turned steely. "I'm not the fool here," she said, her voice carrying an edge. Then she turned her back on him pointedly. "I made a deal with the Keeper," she told him. "I promised not to fight with you, and in exchange, they allow me to stay on the grounds."

"You, making deals?" he scoffed.

"Why not?" she said. "I'd never get away from here if I killed you. They'd kill me. I'm not stupid," she told him. "So count your blessings, cub. So long as you're inside the fence, you're safe from me. But be warned. The minute you step outside the fence, your life is mine."

"I'm not afraid of you anymore," he said in a hissing voice. "Any time you want a piece of me, you just ask. I'll bring everything you can handle." That even startled him.

"My, the cub grows teeth, and he thinks he's an adult," she chuckled. "Since we're going to be stuck here together, there's no reason to be so nasty. I'm almost ashamed for you."

"Get over it," he said in an ominous voice.

She stopped, then turned partially and looked at him. And then she flinched visibly. "I, see," she said quietly. Her tone surprised him. It was one of regret, not anger. "Goodbye, Tarrin," she said quietly. "I'll think fondly of you."

That confused him. He gave Allia a strange look, then stalked away.

"Allia," Jesmind called.

"What do you want of me, kissash?" she demanded flatly.

Jesmind winced. "Watch him," she said in a civil tone. "He doesn't have much more time."

"Time?" Allia said. "Time until what?"

"Until he is gone." She wrung her hair out with her paws, looking up at the Selani woman. Her face was sober. "It may come down to you. A knife thrust to the base of the skull will kill, even one of us. Just make sure you sever the spine, and leave the knife in until he's dead."

"What talk is this?" she demanded hotly.

"He trusts you," she sniffed. "When there's no more hope for him, you're the only one that will be able to get close enough."

Tarrin and Allia were in practice the next day when the news reached him. A nervous Novice handed him a message, and then bolted. Tarrin broke the seal on it and unfolded it.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," he replied. Then his eyes widened, and the first smile in a ten-day graced his handsome face. "My family is here!" he exclaimed. He laughed, and then picked up Allia and spun her around a few times. Then his face took a stricken look.

"Just go to them, my brother," she said softly to him. "They are your blood. It is not how you look that will matter to them."

"I hope so," he said fervently.

"Go bathe first," she noted critically. "You have sand all over you."

"You're right," he agreed.

"Well, Faalken," Allia said, dismissing Tarrin with a slap on the rump. "What can I teach you today?"

Tarrin flew through his bath, all but jumping in and jumping out, then he ran to his room and put on his Novice clothes. The note said to meet them in the room that was the third door on the left coming off the hallway that led from the Grand Stairwell, on the third level, along the outermost ring. That was only one floor up, but was in a different section of the Tower.

He ran up there, but then stood in silent dread by the door for nearly ten minutes. His desire to see his family was balanced by the fear that they would reject him, and it left his mind a confusing chaos of conflicting thoughts and impulses. He stood there, eyes closed, hand on the door handle, until a voice from behind startled him out of his indecision.

"Tarrin," called the warm voice.

Tarrin turned and looked. It was Jula, the Sorceress who had braided his hair. She smiled at him and approached, putting her hand on his forearm. "Are you unwell?"

"No, Madam Jula," he said quietly. He heard sudden commotion in the other room. They knew he was here. "I'm alright."

"Good," she said with a smile, patting his arm. "Have a good day."

Tarrin watched her leave, then he took a deep cleansing breath, and turned the handle.

They were all there, as was the Keeper. Seated around a polished oak table that was the main facet of the room, surrouned by many plush chairs. A single window stood on the far wall. But it was the faces of his family that captured his attention, mainly his mother. He watched that face blink once, and then a look of profound relief and joy swept over her features. "Tarrin!" she called, coming around the table.

Tarrin met her half way and buried her in his arms, lifting her up off the ground, all the relief in the world flooding over him. "Mother," he said quietly, in a voice that communicated all the fear and anxiety he had felt at meeting her.

"I need my ribs, my son," she gasped. He let go of her and hugged his father in almost exactly the same way, then he picked up Jenna and whirled her around a few times, as she held onto his neck. He cradled his beloved little sister up in his arms, laughing delightedly. She reached up and touched his cat ear delicately, then started feeling along its ridge-backed length. "It's soft," she remarked.

"It's sensitive," he warned, though he didn't stop her.

"I think it's cute," she said with a grin.

"Well thank you," he grinned, setting her down. "You have no idea how frightened I was-"

"I know, Tarrin, I know," Eron told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But no matter how you look, or what happens, you'll always be our son, and we will always love you."

Tarrin put his paw over his father's hand, his eyes grateful and warm.

"Well, I think you need time," the Keeper said. "Show them around, Tarrin." And then she took her leave.

"How did it happen, Tarrin?" Elke asked calmly. "They only told us that you'd been changed. They didn't give us details."

They sat down, each paw holding a hand of a parent and Jenna in his lap, playing with his tail idly, and he recanted the events that had led him up to that point. "I don't really blame Jesmind," he said, looking down a bit. "I just wish she'd give up on this and just wait. She doesn't understand."

"She's only doing what she thinks best," Elke said.

"Well, it's not best for me," he replied calmly. "Jenna hon, don't pick at the fur. That hurts."

"Sorry," she apologized. He pulled his tail free of her hand, and then rapped the end against her forehead, making her giggle. Then he let her grab it again and continue her inspection.

"You seem to have taken to the tail," Eron remarked.

"It's not easy to ignore," he chuckled. "It has its uses."

"I'm sure," Elke said. She turned his paw over and ran her finger along the large pad on the palm, then over the smaller pads on the fingers. Then she pinched his fingertip gently, coaxing a long, sharp, wickedly curved claw to come out. "Formidable," she noted. "It's too long. Where does it go?"

"The bones in the end of my fingers are hollow," he told her. "The claw stays inside it. When its retracted, you can feel the base of it up by the knuckle. Just at the end of the pad on my fingertip." He did so, feeling her fingertip put pressure on that very small bump that was the base of his claw.

"Clever."

"Don't congratulate me," he told her. "I didn't do it."

She chuckled. "Guess not. What's it like?"

"It's not all that bad," he told her. "But I have the Cat inside my head too. He kinda came with the body. Sometimes, sometimes I have trouble controlling it. When I get mad, or I'm in a fight." He cut himself off. "Let me show you around," he said. "The gardens here are very pretty."

He took them on a tour of the grounds, introducing them to Faalken and the Knights, then showing the the huge garden behind the north Tower, where the hedge maze was. Tarrin enjoyed it immensely, feeling the worries of the last month flow away at the touch of his parents' hands, or the bright laughter of his sister. They walked around the garden five times, then sat down on one of the marble benches. "We've decided to stay here, Tarrin," Eron told him.

"Stay?" he repeated. "But the farm-"

"Tarrin," Eron said. "Don't worry about the farm."

"But it's our home, father," he said.

"It's not anymore," Elke said quietly.

"What happened?"

"Not long after the Sorcerer arrived to train Jenna, the village was attacked by Dargu," she told him. "We were all in the village that day. Emiris, the man sent by the Tower, gave his life to defend the village. He managed to make them turn and run, even with two arrows sticking out of his chest. He died with honor," she said with respect in her voice. "When we got back to the farm, there wasn't much left. They missed the underground rooms, but everything else was burned to the ground. Instead of rebuilding, we decided to bring Jenna closer to the tower, and we thought that with us close by, it may make you feel more at home here." She patted his paw. "So we packed up everything we could and came here. When you leave the Tower, we'll go back home and rebuild. Maybe," she said. "I rather like it here, and Eron's starting to get a bit restless out there in the forest. I think a couple of years in the city will be good for him. And the Sorcerers said they'd see if they couldn't fix his limp," she added with a smile.

"I'm used to it now," he said mildly.

"True, but you'd be more fun to chase around the bedroom if you weren't so easy to catch."

Tarrin laughed, and Eron flushed a bit. He figured that it was his exposure to his mother that made him relate so well with Allia, and at one time, with Jesmind. They all three were very much alike.

"I'll miss the old farmhouse," Tarrin sighed, "but I guess it's not all that important."

"No, not really," Elke replied. "What matters is that we're still a family, no matter where we are."

"Amen," Eron said.

They ate dinner that night in the same private room where he'd met them, and they all sat around the table and talked for quite a while. The Dargu attack had been sudden, but only a very few houses were damaged, and though there were casualties, they had been light. Only three men had been killed, all of them men Tarrin didn't know very well, who lived to the northeast of the village. The Kael farm, the Sain farm, and the Ubara farm had been burned down, and a few fires in the village itself from burning arrows were just about it. Tarrin marveled at the change in his home village, how it had always been so peaceful and quiet. Now, two attacks in so many months. It was as if the entire world were starting to get unsettled.

But the villagers would cope. Elke respected them a great deal, though she didn't show it, because they were strong. It took a special kind of people to live in a frontier village, where danger could show itself at any moment. The fact that Aldreth saw alot of Dals come down from the mountains, and even the occasional Forest Folk wander in from the Frontier, made them a bit more cosmopolitan than normal backwater villages, and it gave them a tolerance for things that weren't "home". They were a rugged people.

"What have you seen so far, Tarrin?" Eron asked.

"Not much," he chuckled. "I've been in the Tower almost all the time I've been here. I came in the middle of the night like a thief, and sight-seeing wasn't on my mind. I-" he stopped abruptly, turning in his seat. Jesmind's scent was touching him, and it made his ears instantly go back. He had no doubt that she was listening, and in an instant, he realized that if she could use his family to draw him off the Tower grounds. That filled him with a sudden icy rage, so sudden that the Cat roared up from the dark place in his mind and very nearly seized control.

"What's the matter?" Elke asked.

He put up his paw to hush her, and he reached out with his formidable senses. Her scent was her cat-scent, and it was wafting in from the window. He stood up, oblivious to the strange looks his family was giving him, padding on silent feet towards the window.

He had no choice now. To protect his family, Jesmind had to die.

"Get out of the room," he said in a cold, tightly controlled voice.

"What?"

"Get out!" he shouted, as his hand lashed through the window and closed over fur. He drew his hand in, and whipped the white cat across the room. Jesmind yowled in shock and surprise as she sailed through the air, which turned into a screech when she slammed into the far wall with enough impact to chip the stones. Jesmind changed form, blurring into her human-like shape on her hands and knees, her eyes wide, and sudden fear glowing in them.

Utter, total rage boiled through Tarrin's mind as he charged forward, picking up the table and sending his family tumbling in every direction. Jesmind seemed frozen in place, then she suddenly tried to spring out of the way as Tarrin levelled the table at her, but it was too late. He slammed the table into her, as it shattered from the impact, and for a moment she was pinned between the remains of the table and the wall, crying out in pain, until she got a leg up and put a foot on the table, then pushed it away. "Tarrin!" she gasped hurriedly, "I'm not here to fight! Tarrin!"

But Tarrin was beyond any mere words, and one look into his eyes told her that. There was nothing rational left in his eyes. She ducked under when he swung the table pedestal at her, her claws ripping the muscles in his arm and making him drop it. But instead of pressing, Jesmind backed away, quickly, backing straight towards the window.

She never saw it coming.

Eron stepped up behind her and smashed a table fragment into the back of her head, and she crumpled like a rag doll.

Yet that wasn't enough. Tarrin was on top of her in the span of a heartbeat, kneeling over her with one paw on her chest to hold her down, the other rising with claws out to finish her off. She put both her paws on his wrist, weakly trying to push him away, but her eyes were unfocused and she had no strength in her arms.

"Tarrin!" Elke gasped in shock. She grabbed his wrist with both hands. "You can't! She's defenseless!"

Tarrin yanked suddenly, sending Elke reeling, but she would not let go. "No!" she barked at him. "Tarrin!"

He rose up off of Jesmind and smashed Elke against the wall, her feet dangling half a span off the floor, holding her up by the paw she held in her grip, as the other paw reared back, claws out. Her stunned look of terror did not register to him. At that instant, she was not his mother, she was an enemy, someone trying to stop him.

He didn't know what would have happened, had Eron not smashed him in the back of the neck with the table leg. The blow made him let go as he gasped in pain, staggering back. The blow knocked some sense back into him. Jenna was crying hysterically. Elke Kael was wheezing for breath, and Eron was just beside him, ready to hit him again should do anything untowards.

Tarrin looked up, and he realized what had almost happened. He had very nearly killed one of the most important people in his life. "What have I done?" he said in a voice filled with self loathing.

He had almost killed his mother.

He stepped back, putting his paws to his face, bending over to hide from the shame and agony of it.

He had almost killed his mother.

Everything he had ever feared had come to pass. He was losing control of himself, becoming the monster that he appeared to be. Not even his own family was safe around him any more. He would have killed Jesmind, and he would have killed Elke, had his father not stopped him.

He had almost killed his mother.

He stood up and wailed, a sound of such loss and despair that it made the hair on the back of Elke Kael's neck stand up, a wail filled with such self-loathing and guilt that it nearly broke her heart. He looked at her then, and in his eyes she could see his blame, his guilt, his apology, and she could see his horror. It was such a look of pleading, of terror, of guilt…it was the look of a man who had lost all hope for himself. He had almost killed her, and Elke understood with that look that it was the one thing that he could not bear, the one horror against which he could not stand.

He had almost killed his mother, and it was the one crime for which there was no forgiveness.

Tarrin flinched away from his mother's gaze, turned, and jumped from the open window.

The Cat-woman groaned a bit and pushed herself up on her hands, looking out the open window. Blood was oozing from the corner of her mouth. "Did you have to hit me so hard?" she complained, rubbing the back of her head.

"I don't think I hit you hard enough," Eron said in a cold voice, one that made her flinch.

"That fool," she spat, sitting up. "I warned him about this, but he wouldn't listen to me." She got to her feet, wobbling a bit, as Elke comforted the nearly-hysterical Jenna. "Tell the Keeper that I'll take care of it."

"How, by killing him?"

Jesmind looked at the blocky man, her eyes grim. "No, he'll do that for himself if someone doesn't stop him," she said. "I didn't come here to fight, but he thought that I was. I didn't know that you people were his family. He was fighting to protect you from me. I'm responsible for this," she said, sighing, "and I have to put things right. Tell the Keeper I'll bring him back, alive, no matter how long it takes."

She pushed her red hair out of her face. "Unless I'm too late. Right now, he's looking for somewhere to die. I hope I find him before he finds a good spot."

In the morning, all that was found of him were his clothes, ripped from his body, then folded as neatly as shredded clothes could be folded.

To: Title EoF