He knew before he even woke up.
It had been so long… so long. The presence of the Cat within him was all he needed to tell him what had happened. It could not be there any other way, even if the potion did restore his memory. Without the magic, the mind of the Cat could not exist. He could feel that too, the subtle magical power of Were infused into him once more, linked into the All by delicate threads. As he rose up from the blackness, he knew. He knew what had happened, because he knew that he was once again not alone within his own mind.
He had been turned once again.
The memory of it was blurred. It had happened when he drank the potion, that much he could remember clearly. He could remember it so clearly because he had understood what was going on, and had sensed the truth of it. The potion hadn't turned him, something in the potion had done it. Someone had put something in the potion, blood or spit, and it had turned him. He remembered the absolute outrage he'd felt when he realized that, when he realized that someone had stolen from him the one thing he had left to him with his amnesia, the only thing that had given him any sense of control over his own life. The right to choose his own path.
Someone had chosen it for him, and even now he was absolutely furious about it. It was not the rage of the Cat, however, it was the cold, ruthless kind of anger that came from the human in him. The human Tarrin had coveted that right, the right to be whatever he chose to be, and it was taken away from him. There weren't enough words in existence to describe how that made him feel. Shock, outrage, indignation, they were paltry attempts to gauge the depths of his emotion over what had been done to him. That towering resentment had been the first thing to awaken in his mind as he climbed from the black void, and it was joined by his icy anger, his absolute hatred of whoever had done it to him.
But such a thing had trouble competing against the sense of reawakening he began to feel. Senses long throttled by human inadequacy were again restored to him, and he could smell absolutely everything in the room. The ears that were now on top of his head could hear the silence in the room, but could also hear the breathing of the two humans who were standing outside his door, with the occasional clink or shifting of metal armor. Knights. He could feel every finger of the soft linen sheets against his skin, as well as the soft leather of the trousers that were still on him. The room had lingering traces of his own scent, but the scent was different to him, seemed unusual. It was the scent of him as a human.
Opening his eyes slowly, seeing the intensity of the colors, the brightness of the glowglobe hanging in the center of the room, he knew that he was alone. A body that felt light, agile, powerful, responded to his commands as he rose up from the pillow, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and set them down where not that morning the human Tarrin would have needed a stepstool to set his feet on something solid while sitting in the bed. He focused on his arm and paw, mystified over seeing the black fur once again, turning his paw over and looking at the dark pads. He clenched his fist, feeling every muscle and tendon shift as his body obeyed his commands, feeling once more the power in that act.
There was more than that. The Weave was much more present to his eyes now than it had been before. The strands were more than ghostly, almost solid to his eyes, but he found that he could sort of ignore them and make them disappear from his sight when he needed to see behind them. The sense of the Weave was much stronger as well, and he could feel it out there, almost aching to have him wield it, its power gathering around him in preparation for any task he set it to do. He was used to that effect from before, but it was much stronger now than it had been, as the strands not only pulled towards him, but saturated with the floating energy of the Weave that wasn't tied to the currents of the strands. He attracted both the Weave and the extra power within it, and he could feel the flows almost pulling free of the strands of their own volition, as if he were some kind of powerful magnet drawing iron filings across a table.
It was the strangest feeling. The human Tarrin had been afraid of losing his identity with the return of the memories, but it had turned out to be a false fear. That part of him was still there, merged once more with the collective whole of human, Cat, memories, fears, and mental impulses that formed the core of his personality. He had not become another person, he had merely been restored to the person he had once been. All the memories of his time as a human were there, neatly arranged with the older memories that had been denied to him. The newness of things was gone now, though, and in a way he regretted that. The human Tarrin had been trusting, almost naive, and had had a youthful innocence about the world that made everything seem interesting and good. But that was gone now, educated by the dark experiences of memory, and he knew things would never seem so fresh or new to him again.
Putting his face in his paws for a moment, he tried to mull through the fresh chaos in his mind, as the last traces of the potion were still trying to affect him. What they did, curiously enough, was open the entirety of his own memory to him, and he realized sitting there that he could remember absolutely everything that had happened to him since before his own birth. The images and fear of being born were as clear as they had happened yesterday. Hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year, the accumulated events of his entire life were fresh in his mind, rekindled from the darkest recesses of himself by the magical power of the potion Phandebrass had crafted for him. The good and the bad, the proud accomplishments and the humiliating mistakes, the moments of boredom and the moments of abject terror, they were all there, arranged for him within his mind, able to be called forth whenever he wished. He found it curious that he could literally see within his mind's eye every page of every book he had ever read, even ones he had but paged through absently. Every building in every city, every face that met his eyes, every sound, every smell, every thought that had crossed his mind, all of it was there. It didn't cause him any pain or discomfort; truth be told, it was more a curiosity than anything else to him.
There were other things there as well. He distinctly remembered the potion getting swept up in the power of both the Weave and the All as they reconnected with him, and it had caused the potion's power to rise up into the Weave. The entirety of the Weave's drifting echoes of memory were called to him, and he could remember them filling him with thousands and thousands of years of memory, using him to complete themselves. He also remembered the Goddess reaching into his mind and wiping away those things no mortal was ever meant to see, those things that would have destroyed his mind were he given any chance to reflect on them. She had been very selective, very careful in her pruning of that lore, though. She had not touched much of it, like the history of the order, the Sorcerers who had lived before him, the things they had accomplished.
It was all there. Ten thousands years of history, the complete history of the katzh-dashi. It was all there, and he was amazed. The katzh-dashi had originally been created to do just what he was doing. They were the guardians of the Firestaff, using their power to protect the artifact from misuse. They had been formed in the first days of the Urzani dynasty, just after the Urzani completed their conquest of the Known World, and but days after the Firestaff was very nearly used by someone. They had been formed by the Goddess, formed from the only Sorcerers at that time, the Urzani themselves, formed to take possession of the Firestaff and keep it out of the hands of those who would misuse its power. At that time, there was no Wizard magic, only Sorcerers, Priests, and Druids, and only Sorcerers had the numbers and the detachment necessary to undertake such a mission. They set their roots in Suld, which at that time was nothing but a plain by the sea, where the first of the majestic towers had been constructed to take advantage of the Conduit that rested there. They hid the Firestaff in the Tower, and settled in to strengthen their powers of Sorcery to better defend the artifact from those who would dare try to use its power.
Tarrin knew that Suld had literally built up around the Tower, but he hadn't known that it was the Urzani that had originally founded Suld. And it made him realize that Suld was probably the oldest city in the entire world. Not even Dala Yar Arak had been in existence as long as Suld had.
That exploration of their powers was what caused the foundations of what they knew now to come to pass. A special Sorcerer was born, one with powers far greater than any other, and this Sorcerer survived being Consumed. She crossed over into a new realm of magical power, and she became the first of what were now known as the sui'kun. That woman was Spyder, and her power had caused her to become the Empress of the Urzani Empire, the absolute ruler of the entire Known World. But she disappeared not long after being put on the throne, and Tarrin knew that she had given up the duties of the empire to answer the call of the Goddess to become the Guardian of Haven, the only place in the world where magical gateways that led into the world from others existed.
The Goddess was the soul of the order, but to Tarrin's surprise, Spyder was its mother. It was she who showed the others the path into the realm of the Weavespinners, and it was her footsteps in which everyone else walked. Spyder was the first sui'kun, the first of the seven to be born, and the only one to survive to this day.
The destruction of the Urzani empire thousands of years later had caused them to lose the staff, having it stolen by someone who had fallen under the spell of its corrupting influence, and over time their self-imposed mission changed from protecting the staff to exploring the limits of the power of Sorcery as the realities of their situation changed drastically. It was those Urzani that had been among the first to approach the other races after losing their homes, beseeching the humans how had taken over the ancient city of Suld -ancient even then!!- to allow them to return to their beloved Tower and exist among them in peace. The humans agreed, and that started the slow and harmonious integration of the Urzani back into the lands of civilization, their long exile finally ended.
Then came the Blood War. The katzh-dashi rose up from their study to try to repair the damage done by Val and the Firestaff, and ended up forming a pivotal role in the defense of the world against the Demons. The vast majority of the katzh-dashi, tempered by their thousands of years of peaceful study, had come to reject war and devoted themselves to peace, but also devoted themselves to protecting the world from another Demon incursion. They were the ones that became the Sha'Kar, and it caused the order's focus to shift once more, from quiet study to both defending the Firestaff and protecting the world from Demonspawn. The Firestaff, they decided, was best handled by completely removing it from all possible temptation, so it was placed in the care of a mighty dragon and sent off to a lone island, thousands of longspans from any shore, where it would be well protected, and also where its power to corrupt could do no harm.
They continued to grow in power and learning, spreading to other Towers, and establishing themselves as the most powerful magical force in the world. Not even the introduction of Wizard magic by strange visitors from beyond the boundaries of the fabric of the universe, strange men from other dimensions of reality, weakened the might of the katzh-dashi. It was they who caused the Age of Power to come to be, as the learning of the Sorcerers and the growth of their numbers and influence quite literally affected the entire world. The Weave grew strong, rich, and it touched all the people of the world, giving the most mundane soul at least a minor amount of magical capability.
But the Age of Power ended in the Breaking. Not even the memory of that time he had gained from the Weave told him much about it, only that some group attacked two of the Towers and managed to kill two of the sui'kun. The Weave, which depended on the sui'kun, faltered, and then it tore. That caused the Breaking, which killed uncountable numbers of Sorcerers, Wizards, and Priests and sent the entire world spiralling down into a black century of war, famine, pestilence, and upheaval. The Sha'Kar vanished, thought to be extinct, and all the rich history and lore of the order, all their magical accomplishments, were lost as well, locked away in books that the descendants of the Ancients could no longer read.
It was a rich history, and Tarrin felt honored to be a recipient of that lore. He knew that what he knew was what Jenna had learned from Spyder, or at least parts of it. Spyder had been alive through almost all of the history of the katzh-dashi. She was the very first of the sui'kun, and in many ways, she was the icon of the order, the literal handmaiden of the Goddess. He felt even more honored that she had personally trained him.
Knowing where the order came from and where it was going was imporant, he could see that now. The katzh-dashi had lacked direction after the Breaking, lost its history, and finally things were getting back in the direction they were supposed to go. It would be thousands of years before the number of Sorcerers were enough to cause another Age of Power. Perhaps next time there was one, they'd have the wisdom of experience to not cause another Breaking.
It was a very strange thing to wake up with memories that weren't there when one went to sleep. That meant the lore of the Weave as much as it did regaining all the memory he had lost to the curse placed on the Firestaff. But his memory was whole again, beyond whole, and it was senseless to dwell on it for very long. It was over, it was done, he had been graced with knowledge beyond the scope of his awareness, and what was more important, he was Were once more.
He looked at his paws again, looking at the fetlocks on his wrists. Now that he had his memory back, now that he could look into his own feelings, he had to admit it to himself. Miranda was right. Given what he knew now, were he still human, he would have chosen to be turned again. The memory of himself as a human seemed strange, bizarre, almost frightening. He had been so weak. So dependent on others, so limited. He would never have been happy like that, not so long as the memory of what he had once been was with him. Despite the pain he had suffered, despite the terrible things he had done as a Were-cat, he knew that the change had been absolute. He was a Were-cat, and always would be, in mind and sprit if not in body.
But that did not justify what had been done to him. Despite the fact that he would have chosen to be Were, it did not make this alright. He had been denied the one thing the Goddess herself wanted for him, the right to choose his own future, his own fate, for good or ill. He had been violated at the core of his being, in the most intimate manner possible, and he meant to find out who did this to him and unleash his wrath. Someone had changed him back, had done it against his will, and what was most outrageous, had done it in the most cowardly way imaginable. The culprit didn't even have the guts to look him in the eye and bite him. No, this person had put Were-cat blood in the potion or had spat in it, not wanting him to know who had done it.
The possibilities were rather obvious. Of everyone involved, Jesmind and Kimmie had the most at stake. But that didn't mean that one of them did it. It could have been any of the females, even Jula, though he had the feeling that it wasn't her. Jula would never deprive him of the one thing she herself probably wished was hers. The right to choose. Jesmind certainly was capable of it, and so was Kimmie. Spiking the potion would be more Kimmie's approach than Jesmind, since she'd probably just bite him if she meant to change him back.
Whoever it was, she was going to be very sorry she did it. He didn't care who it was who did it. First he was going to beat her to within an finger's breadth of her life, then he probably wouldn't speak to her again for a very long time. As angry as he was, he was more than capable of even thrashing Kimmie, who was pregnant with his child. Not even that would protect her from his vengeance if it turned out that she was the one who did this to him. He wouldn't kill whoever did it, but she'd be on his bad side for the next few hundred years. It may take that long for her to heal from the thrashing he intended to lay down on her.
Standing up, feeling the lightness and total freedom that was his once again, the freedom to jump incredibly high, to run faster than a horse, feeling his unnatural Were-cat strength flow through him, he padded over to the chest and pulled out one of the shirts that the tailor Cassiter had made for him. It was too small for him now, but that was easily fixed. As if the time as a human had never happened, Tarrin wove a quick spell to enlarge the garment, feeling full and complete control over the Weave once again.
Strange. The Goddess said he wouldn't have the height, but she was wrong. He was just as he'd been before the Firestaff stripped him of his Were nature, eye to eye with Triana. And he felt exactly the same as he had before that happened to him, as if being a human had never happened. All he had was the memory of it, and the influences of that time on his outlook now.
Whatever became of this, he knew it had to be fast. The return of his memory meant that the weight of the mission was again heavy on him, and he knew that the Tower was not a safe place. He could spend no more than three days here. That was all. Three days to make sure there were no lingering side-effects of the turning and the potion, and three days to track down the culprit and punish her in the most brutal manner possible without killing her. After those three days, whether he found her or not, he had to leave. It was only two months before the Firestaff activated, and summer would soon be winding down into fall. If he wanted to travel, it would be best to get out there and get a jump on the autumn storms, and give him as much time as possible to lose any pursuers and disappear with the Firestaff. Time was of the essence now, both for him and for anyone who intended to try to take the Firestaff away from him. He needed time to escape, and they needed the time to find him.
He already knew exactly where he was going to go. The one place in all of Sennadar no man, no matter how desperate or insane he was, would dare set foot. The Desert of Swirling Sands. It was also one of the few places on Sennadar where a man could hide from an army with a reasonable chance of getting away with it. The brutal heat and rugged terrain would work to his advantage, and his magical abilities would allow him to draw those pursuers deeper and deeper into the Holy Mother's deadly embrace and let the desert do the killing for him. And then there were the Selani. Even without them, the desert was the ideal place to hide, but not even the most fanatical army was going to risk a confrontation with the Selani in their homeland. They'd get annihilated, and they knew it. With the Selani and the desert itself to protect him, he knew that he could do what the Goddess needed of him, and that was keep the Firestaff away from everyone else.
It wouldn't take him long to get there, and it would be a very short trip if he could get Ianelle to teach him how to Teleport. If he could learn how to do that, protecting the Firestaff was going to be a very simple affair. If he found himself threatened, he could jump halfway across the Known World in the blink of an eye. He'd like to see them follow him after he did that.
No, wait… he already did know how to Teleport. That was right there with the memories, and with calm surprise, he realized that the vast majority of the spells that had been lost to the human katzh-dashi lived on within him now. He had absorbed them when the magic potion sucked in all the memory of the Weave, and the Goddess had not bothered to erase them from his memory. He knew how to Teleport, he knew every spell that Auli had used in her rampages of troublemaking through the Tower, he knew the spells that Syllis and the old Council had used to control the Sha'Kar. He even knew spells that they did not know, such as how to safely Transmute into certain known forms. Shapeshifting. Shapeshifting through Sorcery, an art lost since before the Breaking, before the Sha'Kar, an art lost with the Blood War.
Touching a finger to his temple, he sorted through this new knowledge quickly yet thoroughly, understanding each new spell and how it worked, and how it could be altered to conform to a given situation. There were hundreds of them, myriads of possible alterations of those weaves
Those spells, added to the ones he had figured out on his own and the ones Spyder taught him, gave him a truly vast command of the Weave, and tremendous versatility. It helped that he was sui'kun, that a great many of them required High Sorcery in order to be used, and that he could use them by himself when he needed them.
Teleporting. Tarrin snorted in mild amusement when he realized that his idea wouldn't work. A Sorcerer could only Teleport to a place he knew intimately. Not a place he had seen, not even a place he had visited, but a place where he had spent time and had come to know the area. He knew that he could Teleport easily to Aldreth, his home, and to the Tower. He could Teleport to Dala Yar Arak, or Shoran's Fork, places where he had spent much time and had come to know specific places very well. He could Teleport back to the deck of the Star of Jerod or the Dancer, two ships where he had spent much time, even if the ships weren't where he last remembered them to be. He thought he could Teleport back to Amyr Dimeon, for though he hadn't spent very long there, he had certainly made sure to know the place. And he knew he could Teleport to Keritanima's palace in Wikuna, or Iselde's house back on Sha'Kari. It wasn't the power to jump all over the world, but he could certainly go from one side to the other in a big hurry if he needed to do so.
Strange to wake up with such an expanded memory. It was almost confusing, but the memories didn't seem jumbled or hard to comprehend. They were just there, just like all his other memories, and they only stood out when he skimmed through them looking for something specific. Both the ones that were his and the ones that were not, the ones that were normal and the ones that had been resurrected by the magical potion, which had faded from his memory. Or at least he'd thought that they had. He knew, even though he wasn't sure how, that the effect was over. He wouldn't remember absolutely everything for the rest of his life, because the potion's power wouldn't be there forever. It was already almost gone, and though its magic wouldn't give him a perfect eidectic memory, he wasn't sure if the memories he regained from its magical power would remain as they were, or slowly fade over time. Only time would answer that question, he was sure of it.
But this was not the time to be pondering such trivial matters. He didn't have much time, and he had alot to do. He walked over to the mirror, feeling his tail act to counter-balance him, and he felt oddly whole once more, rather relieved to be free of the debilitating constraints of the human form, to be himself once more. He had enjoyed the time as a human, but now that his mind was once again whole, it would never have been content to remain in that confining body. He leaned down and looked into it and found the reflection staring back at him exactly as he remembered it to be, the maturity that had been put into his features by Shiika's aging kiss, the height, the fetlocks. He wondered why he had regained his height, when even the Goddess said he wouldn't have it if he was turned again. She said it was a measure of age, and that age was stripped when the Were magic was torn from him. But he was his tall self once more, the age taken from him replaced when the Were nature was imparted to him again. He touched his cheek, then his jaw, then reached up and delicately pinched the tip of his cat ear, feeling it both in his fingers and in the ear, which flicked irritably from the pressure. Yes, everything seemed the way it was supposed to be.
He was whole.
Conjuring a new vest-he was rather fond of vests now-he put it on over the shirt, and then realized what he'd just done. Obviously, his Druidic powers hadn't been damaged by the trauma of losing and then regaining his Were nature. Then again, he didn't remember thinking about Conjuring it either. It had just happened. He remembered Jenna's gifts, and went over to the night table and picked up the Cat's Claws. They were too small for his wrists now, but that was no problem. Picking through the weaving of their magic, he worked out how to enlarge the bracers without disrupting the impressively complicated spells that Jenna had woven into them. He tended to that little task, and after taking on human hands to let him get them on without making the bracers grotesquely large, he slid them into place.
That was an idea. It had been a month or more since he'd talked to the Goddess, and he felt that she may tell him some of the things he wanted to know. Besides, a month in human form meant a month without talking to him-though why she stayed away was beyond him-meant that there were things going on out there that she may need him to know.
"Mother," he called in a grim tone.
And then she was there. It was not the voice, it was not an image or projection of her, it was her. His new memory told him that this was her material form, and using it brought along very real danger. It was her icon, the very one that usually stood out in the hedge maze, animated and breathed into life. It was still stone, but it was living stone, and a stone made to feel and act as flesh. Infused with the power of the Goddess, it acted as her direct agent in the material world while the rest of her power remained out wherever it was gods were. Even his newfound knowledge didn't contain that information. She looked exactly as he remembered from the two times he'd seen this before, the tall, stately, breathtakingly beautiful woman with glowing white eyes and hair striped in the seven colors of the rainbow, the seven colors that represented the Spheres of Sorcery. She wore that same dress that looked to be made out of captured starlight, shimmering with her every movement, and now he understood why the Sha'Kar wore those shimmering fabric gowns. Not to be ostentatious, but to honor the Godess by wearing clothes similar to those she preferred to give to her icon. Many of the things the Sha'Kar did were honors to the Goddess, even the smallest trivial customs. He had never realized how devout they were.
"Mother," he said with calm devotion, reaching out his paws to her. She stepped up and took them, looking fondly up into his eyes, then she took one of his paws between her hands and stroked the black fur gently.
"My sweet kitten," she said in her choral voice, as if so much power lay within it that no one voice could contain it. He had to fight the urge to kneel before her; he knew she hated that.
"Who did it?"
"I'm not going to tell you," she said bluntly. "If you want to find out, then you're on your own."
That was a disappointment, but he bit back a waspish retort. She wanted him to treat her like a friend but he still knew there was a line that he would not cross.
"Why did I get back my height?"
"Because the person used your own blood," she answered. "That changed things considerably. When you changed back, you changed into what you wanted to be, not what the transformation would force upon you. Probably for the first time ever, a Were-kin had total control over his own transformation. Had it been another female's blood, even Jesmind's blood, your turning would have been as if it happened the first time. Your physical abilities may have been different, your Druidic aptitude would certainly have been different, and you may even have had different color fur. That's not set, you know. It depends on the one that turns you."
"I didn't know that."
"Since it only happens once, it's not the kind of thing even the Were-cats ever managed to find out," she said with an impish smile.
Tarrin realized what she'd said. "They used my blood?" he asked in surprise. "How could they get that?"
"From the stores of it the Tower still holds," she answered simply.
"Then it could have been anyone!" he said with a groan.
"That's right. It could have been anyone," she said calmly. "So you don't have to be nasty to the females. I'm not saying one of them didn't do it, but you shouldn't blame them all before finding out for yourself."
"I guess, but Jesmind is really going to hear it from me," he warned. "I'm still mad about how she treated me when I was human. It's not all just going to be alright now that I'm Were again."
"That's your choice, kitten," she said evenly, betraying no hint of her personal feelings in the matter.
"You've given me a place to start, at least," he grunted. "Not everyone knows about that blood, and it shouldn't be too hard to find out who's been there in the last few days."
"Just don't let it consume you, kitten. You have other things to do."
"I know, Mother," he said, leading her over to the bed and helping her sit down. He, on the other hand, remained standing before her, still with his paws between her hands. "I'm giving myself three days, then I'm leaving. Whether I find my answers or not."
"I don't object to that," she smiled. "I know you know where you're going to go." He nodded, but she cut him off before he could speak. "I know where it is," she said in a cautioning tone, shifting her gaze to the door, and the two Knights that stood beyond it.
"It was the best place I could think of," he explained.
"I agree with you," she smiled.
"Mother, what happened to me when I was turned again?" he asked. "With the potion and all. I feel a little different now than I did before."
"That's to be expected," she said calmly. "Your Druidic powers are stronger now than they were before, because of the irregularity of your turning. You may be a warrior, but your soul is that of a magic-user, and that caused you to strengthen your ties to the All with the second turning. Since you knew it was there, you reached out for it this time much more willingly than the last, and it responded to you. You've reached a level of ability that's going to make it a little more complicated to use. You'll need Triana's instruction, and I suggest you don't use your Druidic talents unless absolutely necessary."
He nodded in understanding, a little surprised. He had managed to strengthen his own Druidic ability? He wondered how that happened, because he certainly didn't remember reaching out to the All… and he could remember every excruciating moment of the process of being turned. Maybe it happened on a level beyone his senses, or maybe the pain had blinded him to what was going on. Either was a reasonable explanation.
"I think I told you once before, kitten, that the Weave and the All are connected. I won't bore you with an exhaustive explanation of what happened, so I'll sum it up for you. Part of what makes you so powerful is that fact that you're both a Druid and a Sorcerer. Each feeds off the other in a way that you can't understand, and your ability to use both forms of magic makes both of them stronger. Without your Sorcery, your Druidic powers would have been only slightly stronger than Thean's, and without your Druidic ability, you would have been only marginally stronger than Jenna in Sorcery. When your Drudic abilities increased, it caused a proportional increase in your powers of Sorcery."
"The Weave is part of the All," he reasoned immediately. "A body attuned to Sorcery would be more receptive to the power of the All, and a person capable of touching the All would have more power to use against the Weave."
"Very well done, my kitten," she said with sincere delight, smiling gloriously at him.
"That's why Jasana is so much stronger than I am," he concluded with a slap of his tail against the floor. "She's a strong Druid!"
"She's strong in both," the Goddess nodded. "But she's not too much stronger than you now. You could easily handle her, because of your experience."
"I could do that before."
"No, you could have handled her before, but only with great difficulty and considerable risk. You never faced her when she used her full power against you, kitten. Even you are going to be very surprised when you finally see it. Now it will be much easier for you to contain her if it's needful."
Tarrin nodded grimly. That was something he'd long worried about, but it was a worry for another day.
"Am I going to lose all this memory?"
"Some," she nodded. "The memory of your lifetime will fade over time until your memory will be as it was before, but the memories you gained from the Weave are branded into you. You couldn't forget them if you tried."
"I wouldn't want to. Is this what Jenna learned from Spyder?"
"Most of it," she answered. "You learned considerably more than Jenna did, mostly things pertaining to Sorcery itself."
"I noticed that. I can do almost any spell any Sorcerer has ever used," he said without any boasting in his voice.
"Jenna is the repository of the order's history and culture. You are now the repository of its magical lore. I want you to teach Jenna absolutely every spell you know that she doesn't, Tarrin," she said, using his name to drive her order home. "I want it done by tomorrow night."
"It will be done, Mother," he said solemny.
She took a hand off his paw and reached over, touching his cheek. He closed his eyes and submitted to that touch, leaning his face against her hand. "I have missed you so much, my kitten," she said lovingly. "I stayed away from you while you were human because I didn't want to interfere. I know how you felt, and I knew my involvement would only overwhelm you. That Tarrin wasn't prepared to handle someone like me."
"I think it would have," he agreed. "I don't think that other me could have managed to be very rational when he realized just who he was talking to." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "You said you wouldn't let anyone interfere with my choice," he told her, his voice just reaching the edges of accusation.
"I said I'd be extremely cross with them if they did," she said. "I never said I'd directly intefere."
"I hate it when you have an answer for everything," he growled.
"I wouldn't be much of a god if I didn't," she teased with a bright smile. "Don't worry, kitten. I am rather cross with the culprit. The extent of my irritation will become apparent to the offending party very soon."
"Then maybe the wrathful bolts of lightning will guide me in the right direction," he mused.
She laughed lightly, a cascade of choral bells, and patted him on the cheek. "I see you're back to your old self," she winked.
"Would you have expected anything less, Mother?"
She grinned. "No, probably not," she admitted. "So, what are you going to do now? There are several people who are very anxious to see you."
"I can imagine," he grunted. "I guess I'll let Triana know I'm alright. I'm not sure I want to see anyone else at the moment."
"Don't be nasty, kitten," she said. "Jesmind and Kimmie are both very worried about you. They love you."
"I know they do, Mother, and I love them," he said in an annoyed voice, "but sometimes love isn't enough. Jesmind was inexcusable in the way she acted, and I'll bet Kimmie would have been the same way if she hadn't been so busy helping Phandebrass with the potion." He did feel a sudden twang. "I hope all that work wasn't hard on the baby," he said in concern.
"The baby is fine," she said. "Kimmie knows her limits. She's also getting noticably thick around the middle. She'll pop in a couple of months."
"So soon?" he said with a sigh. "And I missed so much already. I guess I'm going to miss the baby's birth, too."
"I'm just asking you not to be like them," she said. "You know what I mean."
He sighed. Of course he knew what she meant. To be unforgiving and hold a grudge. "I'll probably settle down once my temper cools off, but it's still too new," he told her, flexing his fingers in an ominous manner. "I intend to remind Jesmind just where she stands," he warned.
"That's all I can ask for, kitten," she smiled gently. "Now, I've held you here long enough," she announced, standing up. "You have a few things to do, and so do I. Oh, kitten, I think an old friend is waiting to hear from you. You should let her know what's going on… and that you might need her."
Tarrin looked at her. The only old friend that wasn't here now, and one that was that much of an asset, was Sarraya. "Is it safe for her to come back?"
"She's been in her colony a good couple of months," she nodded. "That's enough time for her to rest and recover. She's good for as long as you may need her."
"I'll have Triana contact her," he assured. "Knowing Sarraya, she'll be here before Triana says goodbye."
"Not that soon. Triana's going to have to go get her, but she can be here before you leave in three days' time."
That was as obvious as a hint as the Goddess ever gave. Whatever Tarrin did and wherever he went, the Goddess wanted Sarraya to be with him. He actually looked forward to it… it would be like old times. And he missed his Faerie companion more than he was willing to admit. Her obnoxious manner and her irreverent, combative personality was actually rather entertaining from time to time.
"One other thing," she said, finally letting go of his paw. "I want you to reign in Sapphire."
"What's the matter with her?"
"She's been stalking around the Tower looking for who did this to you, and she fully intends to kill the offender when the tracks the party down. I don't think that would be a very good idea, and she's being very disruptive in her search. You're the only person in the Tower that can talk to her when she's like this, kitten. Everyone else is nothing but a biped to her, but you are clan. That gives you a voice she won't ignore."
"I'll pull her leash," he said. "She won't like it, but then again, neither will I."
"Carefully, kitten. She loves you, but she is a dragon."
"I understand the danger. She can't be much harder to manage than Jesmind or Triana."
The Goddess laughed. "Yes she is, but I'll leave that fun little surprise untouched," she winked. "Now then, I have to go. Don't be a stranger, kitten."
"I won't, Mother," he promised, stepping away from her and bowing his head. She reached out and touched his cheek one more time, and then she stepped back and vanished like smoke.
His obedient demeanor evaporated as fast as she did. He would be respectful and compliant to the Goddess, but not to anyone else. That ancient Were-cat drive was just as primal in him as it was in everyone else. He was the king of the hill, the biggest child in the sandbox, and he knew it. Only Sapphire could challenge him, and he knew that she would not. He would not cow under to the others, and it was about time to re-establish some of the dominancy that certain others seemed to have forgotten was his during his convalescence.
Clenching a fist tightly enough to crack all the knuckles, he looked to the door. He did have alot to do today. Calm Sapphire down, have Triana go get Sarraya and bring her back, punish Jesmind for her behavior, and start teaching Jenna the spells he'd gained through the ordeal. That he'd let everyone know that he was well never really crossed his mind. After all, they'd find out once he was out and about. He was sure that as soon as he stepped out that door, they would find him. They'd have to move pretty quickly, but they would eventually track him down.
First things first, however. The top of the list was Jenna, to let her know he was well and to have her show him where they'd stored his blood. He also wanted to let his sisters and friends know he was alright, and when he was calmer, he'd go see Triana and the other females. And he also needed to calm Sapphire down. He'd ensure that she let him take care of it. The punishment laid down for what was done to him would come from him, not from her. After all, as the injured party, it was his every right to control what happened to the guilty party.
Standing fully erect, his tail slashing behind him a few times before calming down, he looked to the door. It was an old life, the life he'd once had, but he had to admit, there was a strange kind of newness to it now. Not everyone had a chance to relive the comforting times of youth, to see the world as a place both strange and exciting, to feel the kind of trust that only someone that naive could feel. Those were gone now, but the sense of them was still inside, only tempered by the history that made him so careful. It was an old life, old customs, old ways, an old duty, but the time as a human had cast them in a new light. Things did seem curiously fresh, curiously new, as if stepping out that door would most certainly be just like the same old Tarrin.
Reaching out and taking hold of the doorknob, feeling how small and fragile it seemed to him now, he turned it and opened the door.
He wasn't entirely surprised to see Jenna running, all dignity cast aside, down the passageway towards his door. Obviously someone had told her that he'd woke up, and now she was coming to see him. Her run didn't falter when she saw him, but she did call out his name breathlessly as the two Knights guarding his door stepped aside respectfully for him. He lowered down as she approached and let her literally jump into his arms, wrapping his around her as she called his name over and over again with a mixture of joy, relief, and worry, hugging him tightly. He felt how tiny she was now, how fragile and delicate, and he hugged her with the practiced exquisite care he had come to learn when adjusting to his Were nature the first time.
"Thank the Goddess!" she said in a heavy sigh, then she gave a sobbing kind of laugh. "I'm glad to see you!"
"I notice that there wasn't anyone waiting this time," he noted with a sardonic little smile as she pulled away to look at him.
"Everyone wanted to, but Triana-" she bit her lip. "She wasn't sure how you'd react."
"That was wise of her," he murmured.
"Oh, brother, I'm so sorry," she suddenly blurted. "I-"
"Calmly," he told her, setting her back on her feet. "It's not really a problem, sister. I know what happened. I don't like it, but I'm not entirely displeased with the result."
She looked up at him. "You mean-"
He nodded. "It's what I would have chosen." Then his eyes hardened. "But that doesn't excuse whoever decided to make my mind up for me. When I find out who did it, I'm going to show them just how upset I am."
"Sapphire's already working on it," she said quickly. "She's turning my Tower on its ear," she said with a frown.
"Mother told me about that. She wants me to pull on Sapphire's leash a little."
"Tarrin! You can't do that to a dragon!" she gasped.
"I can," he said grimly, flexing his paw in an unwholesome manner. "I'm probably the only one in the Tower who can."
She gave him a speculative look. "Maybe you can. I'll find out where she is, so we can head her off."
"Where are the others?"
"Hiding from Sapphire," Jenna replied as she led him down the hall. "She got hold of Mist very early on. It was very ugly. Mist isn't the kind to back down from anything, and they came to blows."
Tarrin frowned. "Is Mist alright?"
"She will be," Jenna said. "Triana is with her. Mist tore her up pretty thoroughly. For a little while I didn't know if Mist was going to survive, but she's alot tougher than she looks."
That concerned Tarrin. He was a little peeved at most of the Were-cats, but not Mist. She and Jula were the only ones that had backed off and given him room to breathe, room to be himself. Mist's devotion to him, while not quite love, was still very powerful, and it allowed her to put faith in him that even Jesmind couldn't quite match. It was very much unlike Mist-for that matter, it was very much unlike a Were-cat-for her to exhibit such a trusting display. But Tarrin was probably the only Were-cat she trusted, and it made her trust him with a kind of blind faith and absolute certainty that overcompensated for her lack of trust in others. Mist trusted him out of blind devotion, but Jula had given him the space he needed because she was probably the only one-except for Kimmie-that could possibly understand what he was going through. Kimmie was usually a very insightful Were-cat, but her love for him and probably blinded her. He really didn't know… she'd been very scarce over the last month. She'd been spending almost all her time helping Phandebrass, but Tarrin had the feeling that it was more than just her work. He had the sneaking suspicion that she'd been avoiding him. He wasn't sure why, and it never really occured to him while he was human, but maybe seeing him like he was, and his attitude towards the females, may have put her off a little bit. Kimmie loved him, but she had tremendous competition from Jesmind, and he had the feeling that she was trying to withdraw from him because of her. It wouldn't be beyond Jesmind to push Kimmie out of the picture, make her feel uncomfortable, and Kimmie's weak status in Were-cat society meant that she would have no choice but to submit. Jesmind had shown a very shocking and extremely ruthless kind of selfish possessiveness towards him that startled him even now, especially now that he could see the situation through the eyes of his Were nature. Jesmind didn't care about how anyone else felt, not even him. In her eyes, he absolutely and irrevocably belonged to her, and she wasn't going to relinquish her claim, no matter what. He had the feeling that if he'd chosen to be human, she would have broken virtually every law in Fae-da'Nar and bitten him against his wishes, even though she would know beyond any doubt that it would make him hate her for the rest of time. She just couldn't see that, couldn't see anything beyond her nearly obsessive need to keep him, and keep him for her and her alone.
That was going to stop. Jesmind was going to learn a very, very hard lesson this day.
"I need to put a muzzle on Sapphire before she gets out of control," Tarrin said grimly.
"She's already out of control," Jenna warned him. "But nobody dares cross her, not even me. I know I'm no match for her, and right now she'll kill anyone she thinks is standing in her way."
"Come on," he said, starting down the hallway, holding Jenna's hand and half-dragging her behind him. It was no trouble for him to find Sapphire, for her impression on the Weave was very unique. He could sense her from a league away. Right now she was on the upper levels, not far from where Jesmind's apartment was, on the floors where the higher-ranking Sorcerers resided. "Mother told me how it was done. It could be anyone," he said grimly.
"How was it done?" Jenna asked.
"You don't know?" he asked in surprise, looking back at her.
"I've been busy trying to keep that maniacal dragon from knocking down my Tower!" she said indignantly.
"That's what she's doing?" he asked. "Hunting down the other females?"
"Yes," Jenna replied. "After what happened to Mist, the others starting hiding. Triana has them gathered up, and she's protecting from the dragon's seeking magic with her Druidic power. That's why Sapphire's trying to track them down. How did they do it?"
"They used my blood, from stores Mother said they have in the Tower," he told her. "That means it could be anyone, Jenna. Anyone that knows about that blood could have done it, not just the females."
" What?" she gasped. "They kept it?"
"Didn't you know about it?"
"Well, yes, but I didn't think they'd keep something that dangerous laying around! Myriam said they'd saved it, but I never paid it much mind to it."
"Well, someone did," he said, starting up one of the main spiral staircases.
"Who would want to do this to you, Tarrin? If it wasn't one of the females, that is."
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," he growled.
It didn't take him long to track down Sapphire. She was storming down a passageway towards the landing on which he had just stepped, in her human form. She was furious, that was apparent from the look on her face, a kind of stark, determined, cold fury, but it was the lightning dancing around her body in numerous arcs, snapping along her form and occasionally striking out to touch the walls of the passageway, leaving burn marks on the polished wood panelling, that made it abundantly clear just how furious she really was. Her blue eyes widened when she saw him, and the lightning slowed to a stop as she stopped in her tracks and looked at him. Then she rushed forwards without much dignity and when she reached him, she slowed to a stately stop and grabbed his paws in her hands. "My little one!" she said with sincere relief. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Sapphire," he said calmly. "I heard what you did to Mist. You have to stop this."
"No," she seethed. "One of them turned you against your wishes, when you made it abundantly clear how much you cherished the opportunity to choose for yourself. I will find her, and I will punish her," she declared, her eyes blazing with outrage.
"It may not have been one of the females," he told her immediatley, then he told her what the Goddess told him. "Anyone that knows about that blood could have done it, my friend. It's still most likely it was one of the females, but we can't put this on their heads until we've narrowed the field a bit."
Sapphire looked a little dubious, but her hard look didn't waver. "No one else has the motivation to do it," she declared.
"I was turned against my will by humans once," he reminded her. "Someone may have decided to take matters into his own hands again. Running around hunting down the females isn't going to solve anything, Sapphire. And I think it's only fair that I get to punish him-or her-when they're found. It was done to me, after all. I appreciate the concern, my friend, and it pleases me that you think so much of me. But for now, please, you have to calm down. I could use your mind much more than your temper right now. Someone as old and wise as you should be able to find the guilty one very quickly." He knew that was abject flattery, but when one was trying to talk a dragon out of a furor, one did it with exceptional care.
Sapphire's eyes were still blazing. He could see that he wasn't getting through to her. He reached out and put his paws on her shoulders, holding her firmly yet gently in his grip. "Calm down," he said with steely resolve. "I'm not going to let you hurt any of the other females, Sapphire. If I have to, I'll stop you. I really don't want to do that, but if I have to, I will."
She looked at him, then the fury in her eyes wavered. Then she actually laughed. "You must be serious to make such an outrageous statement," she said without any hint of teasing or insult. She was merely stating fact. Tarrin doubted that he could stop her. Not even he was a match for a dragon. At least not one as old and powerful as Sapphire.
"You know me, old friend. I can find a way," he said dryly. "Accomplishing the impossible is what I do for a living."
"It would bring the Tower down on us," she said with a slight smile.
"So? As long as it stops you, what difference does that make?"
She laughed again, a fond laugh, and patted his forearms with her hands. "I see you are once again yourself, my little one. Only the Tarrin I remember would say such a thing."
"Maybe," he conceded. "Are you going to keep frothing at the mouth?"
She seemed a bit offended by his choice of terms, but that flickered through her expression quickly. "I am calm now, at least calm enough," she said in a bristling manner. "I will never forgive who did this to you, but I won't continue hunting the females. Not if it's not given that one of them did it."
"We don't know yet. Give me a little time to go deal with the females, and meet me in my room in about an hour. You and me and Jenna are going to go find out who did this."
"You can find them?"
"I know what to look for," he told her calmly.
"I'll go with you."
"No, you won't," he said sternly. "I'm not taking the fox into the chicken coop, my friend. Not until you calm down."
"I'll do as you ask, this time. But don't get comfortable with it," she warned. "I'm not in the habit of acceding to the demands of bipeds."
"I'm not used to browbeating a dragon. We can both admit we're not comfortable with the situation, and hopefully it'll never happen again."
She looked at him, then laughed helplessly.
"Keep her out of trouble, Jenna," Tarrin told his sister. "And don't let her follow me."
" Me?" Jenna said incredulously.
"You're my sister, so that makes you related to clan," he told her evenly. "Sapphire may get pecky with you, but she won't hurt you, if only because killing you would annoy me."
"I'm so glad," she said weakly, putting a hand to her stomach.
Sapphire gave Tarrin an amused smile, then fixed Jenna with a steady predatory kind of gaze that made the young Keeper flinch.
He was confident that Jenna could keep Sapphire out of any major trouble for an hour. Sapphire would probably play with her a little, see how brave the girl was, but he could tell that she would do as he asked this time. When they met again in an hour, he could explain everything to her in detaill, and they could combine their rather formidable resources to track down his assailant. Until then, he wanted to get to the females while his temper was somewhat muted by what the Goddess told him. If he left it, it was going to fester, and he'd be in a much more furious mindset when he finally dealt with them.
Finding Triana and the females was significantly more challenging than finding Sapphire. Triana was actively protecting the females from location with her magic, and Druidic magic was exceptionally powerful, especially when wielded by one with as much power and experience as Triana. He couldn't rely on the easy ways, sensing their location through the Weave, tracking scents, even using the trick of sweep-location with pulses of Mind. He had to get a little creative to puzzle out where Triana was hiding the other females. He knew how Triana thought, and that meant that the magical defense she had erected would be both powerful and very thorough. Triana would think of just about any way they could be located and protect themselves from it. She knew who was looking for her, and more to the point, what , so it meant that she would take no chances. Not even the rather clever idea of looking for the protective shield itself would work, because Triana would be very careful to hide it.
It took him nearly ten minutes to finally puzzle out a means to track them down, and he was forced to fall back on the one thing that Triana could not stop, and that was their purely non-magical, mundane presences. Among the myriad spells that Tarrin had learned in his turning was a rather clever little weave that allowed one to use their senses though stone. It was meant primarily for a Sorcerer to see and hear through stone, but the weave would work for any sense, and Tarrin had other senses just as keen as his eyes and ears. Triana would actively block any kind of sound from giving them away, so trying to listen for them would be pointless. She would also prevent prying eyes and seeking noses; she was more than aware of the formidable senses of the dragon, so those too were dead ends. But the one thing she probably did not stop, probably had not conceived of as a danger, was the feel of Were-cats on stone. So long as they weren't standing on a carpet, he knew that the spell could find them. Were-cat feet were very unusual, and he knew he'd have no trouble discerning the feel of them on the stone floors of the Tower.
Putting a paw on the bare stone of the passageway, he released the quickly woven spell into the stone and let it do its work. He sent his awareness into the stone, and became aware of the pattering of countless feet all over him, like little ants crawling over his skin. It took him some time to puzzle through those strange sensations, but it took him but a moment to sort through the feet touching the stone once he had a sense of which sensation belonged to what kind of material. He first discounted all the leather and cloth, knowing that the ones that moved were shoes. Then he discarded the ones that were skin, since Were-cats had no bare skin on the bottoms of their feet. Only fur and thick pads, as well as the clawtips from the claws on the feet that never fully retracted. After putting those aside, it left a very few sensations behind, and it took him little time to discern the three sets of scaly feet belonging to the Vendari and a reptillian Wikuni on the grounds-one of Keritanima's Marines, probably-and the three sets of unique feet he could feel that could only belong to a Were-cat. There had to be a carpet where they were, but not one that covered the entire floor.
Tarrin was surprised and a little amused when he found them. Triana was very clever. She had hidden them in the first place Sapphire had looked, and the last place she would check twice.
The apartment right down the hall from Jesmind's apartment.
After all, after the dragon checked the first time, what reason would there be for her to return? The likelihood that they would think to go there, so close to a hotspot like Jesmind's apartment, was remote. But Triana was a devilishly crafty old Were-cat, as clever as a fox, and she understood that the place would be very safe after Sapphire checked it over.
He wasn't very far from there, so it took him only a few minutes to stalk down to the door. That close to Triana, he could feel her power even behind her shield, a curiously sharp sense of her that he hadn't noticed before. Now that he could feel it, now that he understood what he was feeling, he realized he could have easily found her without having to use Sorcery. And that, he realized, was what Sapphire was trying to do to find them. Just wander around and try to get close enough to Triana to sense her formidable presence.
His emotions turned rather flat once he reached that door. He knew what had to be done. He wasn't going to necessarily enjoy it, but he knew what he had to do.
Putting a paw on the door, he pushed until the latch broke, and then shoved it out of the way.
Inside were all the Were-cats. Mist was laying on a couch, unconscious but looking otherwise unwounded, and Kimmie was sitting on a chair by the couch, worry stamped on her face as she held Mist's paw in her own. Eron sat on the end of the couch, by Mist's feet, quiet and very subdued. Triana was standing in the center of the room, her eyes closed and a look of intense concentration on her face, as Jesmind paced back and forth between Kimmie's chair and the door on the far wall beyond. Jula and Jasana were sitting on a second couch by the fireplace, and Tarrin realized that the apartment was of similar design as Jesmind's, with only different furniture. They all looked at him in almost perfect unison, except Triana, and they all started in shock when he boldly stepped into the room.
"You can stop that now, mother," he said grimly. "Sapphire's been muzzled."
"Tarrin!" three seperate cries issued at once, from Jula, Kimmie, and Jesmind. Jasana called out "Papa!" but Triana only opened her eyes and gave him a strange, worried look. Only she seemed to sense his aggravation. Jesmind rushed past her mother, rushed towards him, and seeing her filled him with a sudden seething anger that he simply couldn't control.
Ears suddenly laying back and his eyes exploding into the unholy greenish radiance that marked his anger, he reared his paw back, and then he lashed out with it as she blindly rushed up to him. His paw slammed into her face, striking her a massive backhanded blow. The power in it sent her flying, crashing to the floor by Triana and rolling to a stop, completely stunned. Had Tarrin struck a human with that much power, it would have been instantly fatal. It very well may have ripped a human in half.
Jesmind laid very still, and Jula and Kimmie looked at him in startled horror. Triana gave him a narrow-eyed, steely look, but did not move.
"If I find out that one of you did this to me," he hissed in a savage manner, with a look of unmitigated hatred on his face, "you'll wish I'd killed you here and now." He locked his baleful gaze on each of the three staring females in turn, making all of them, even Triana, flinch from the power of his stare and look away.
It was primal, but he couldn't control it. He showed them his fangs, a dangerous snarl, crouching somewhat in a very aggressive posture, his claws out as he pointed at Triana. "Do you know who did this?" he demanded in a voice that would brook no hedging in the matter.
"No," she answered levelly. "But are you sorry for it?"
"I'm sorry I never got the chance to decide," he said in a hissing tone.
"That's not saying it wasn't your choice."
"It was my choice, but taking that choice away is as good as turning me against my will!" he said in a furious tone, almost shouting.
Triana lifted her chin, a nearly challenging act, staring him in the eyes. "Then you chose to be what you were meant to be."
"I was satisfied with it after it was made for me," he said in a hot manner. "It's not the same."
"The end justifies the means. You say so yourself. Don't get hypocritical on me now, cub."
Unable to reply to that, trapped by his own words, he could only glare at her coldly, but his anger had lost its bite in her eyes. He knew that. He may be able to intimidate the others, but Triana wouldn't be patently afraid of him. Then again, little he could do would put Triana off for long. She was too old and too wise and grizzled to be afraid of him for long.
Jesmind finally stirred, and her moving seemed to break Jasana of some kind of paralysis. She ran over to her mother and knelt by her as she sat up woozily, her eyes glassy and blood flowing liberally from both corners of her mouth and her nose. Tarrin's blow probably crushed every bone in her face, and it probably poured a great deal of blood into her mouth and nasal cavity before the damage was repaired. She looked up at him in confusion, and not a little bit of hurt.
"Don't cow eyes at me, witch," Tarrin said brutally. "I'm furious with you over how you treated me when I was human. I'm not going to forgive you any time soon."
"I did what I had to do to keep you," she declared, but her voice was a bit slurred.
"What you did was drive me away!" he shouted at her.
"You'll get over it. If I have to wait a few hundred years, that's fine. I'm patient."
"Now you're patient," he said with barely disguised contempt.
"I got what I wanted," she said shamelessly, looking up at him. "Now that I know you're Were again, I can rest easy. That's all that mattered to me."
Tarrin was a bit outraged by her declaration, but it fit in with what he knew of her, and he knew her very well. Jesmind could be rather patient when she needed to be. After all, she'd moved to Aldreth and waited there for him for nearly two years, knowing he would come back eventually. But the fear and uncertainty of what happened to him, the prospect of losing him as a mate forever, had affected her judgement very greatly. She had acted with great rashness, despite knowing that she was only making him angry and pushing him away from her, but in her rather precarious position, it was all she could think to do, and her need to do something made her do whatever seemed most able to achieve her desired goal in the quickest manner, despite how it may damage their relationship. She was more than willing to accept him being furious with her, as long as he was Were. She knew, as he did, that no amount of fury would hold in him forever, and even if it did, all she had to do was bait him into a fight to make him release his anger on her. After that, the matter would be settled, and it would be forgotten. It was ever that way between Were-cats. The fight settled all, and after the fight was done, it was as if it never happened. She'd done it to him before, and she knew how to go about it. She knew him almost as well as he knew her.
It took having his Were nature back to see that, to finally understand Jesmind's actions. She did everything she did with only the goal of making him Were again, because she knew that no matter how mad she made him, she could fix that with a little time and a willingness to get beaten up when the time came. It all made perfect sense now, and he had to admire her audacity. Then again, being able to again think like a Were-cat made everything clear.
But it still didn't excuse it. Just because he could understand her actions didn't mean that he was going to forgive her for them. And unlike the last time, when she baited in into a fight that made him lose his anger against her, he had no intention of making it nearly so easy for her this time. He wanted her to feel like he did, like she was being overwhelmed by the will of someone else. She had overwhelmed him with her obsessive need to control his life, and now he was going to repay her by not giving her any chance to let her work back into his good graces.
"Papa, why are you being mean to Mama?" Jasana asked in a tiny little voice, not even looking at him.
"Because she had it coming," he said in a furious hiss. "You'd better be patient, Jesmind," he said with seething disgust, "because it's going to be years before I can look you in the face without wanting to rip your head off. So just stay clear of me." He turned his back on her. "And may every god there is help you if I find out you turned me, Jesmind. I'll come after you, and there's nowhere in this entire world you can go to hide from me."
Tarrin stalked away, towards the door, but Kimmie jumped to her feet and called his name. "What about us?" she asked plaintively. "Are you going to shut us out too?"
"Until I know who did this, none of you come anywhere near me," he said over his shoulder. "I'll kill you. As far as I'm concerned, you're all guilty, even if you didn't do it."
"Not even the children?" Kimmie gasped.
"Not even the children," he growled. "I won't be good company until I find out who did it. I won't punish them for my own temper."
"Cub!" Triana said quickly as Tarrin reached the door, ducked under it absently. She took a step forward, but a withering glare from the male stopped her dead in her tracks.
"I said none of you come near me, and I meant it," he said with an evil look, then he remembered what he came here to do in the first place, or at least one of them. "If you want to be of any use to me, Triana, you'll do as I ask."
"What do you want?" she asked cautiously.
"The Goddess wants Sarraya here. I know you can bring her quickly."
"I can have her here by tomorrow morning."
"Then do it."
"I will, but only if you agree to one thing."
He turned and looked at her, a single eyebrow rising in curiosity while his face showed his irritation, almost anger, that she would dare bargain with him right now.
"I can feel it in you, cub. You're stronger, alot stronger. Things are different for you now, and you're going to have trouble with it unless you get some serious instruction. You need to be taught."
"The Goddess warned me about it," he said bluntly. "Until I calm down, I don't think I could stand to be in the room with you, Triana."
"This goes beyond spats of temper, cub. This is important. Unless you get some training, you're going to hurt yourself, or even worse, someone else. We can agree to meet and not kill each other, because if we don't, you're going to have an accident." She looked at him. "Have you done anything yet?"
"I Conjured this," he said, touching the vest.
"Did you mean to do it?"
The question took him off guard, and caused a little of his anger to bleed off. "Now that you mention it, no," he admitted.
"That's what you have to be careful of, cub," she said with intensity, almost desperation, in her voice. "When you're at the level you're at now, the power comes to you even when you don't want it to. You have to keep a tight rein on your emotions, and don't let your mind wander too often, or you'll miss the telltale signs that warns you that it's reaching for you. You could slip, and it's going to act on whatever it finds in your mind, no matter how outrageous or disastrous it may be." She put her arm out, reaching towards him. "I know you're ticked, cub, but be careful. Keep an eye on the All, and be watchful for the sense of it. If it seems to be getting close to you, that's the sign that you need to get your mind under control, and do it fast. You can't stop it from touching you until I show you how it's done, so you have to make sure that it doesn't do anything you don't want it to do when it does. So please, for everyone's sake, be careful of that."
Tarrin could appreciate the frankness of that warning. Druidic magic had no limitations. The only limits came with the Druid using the power, and if he tried to do something that required more magical power than his body could withstand, it would destroy him. Tarrin understood that danger, but it was the thought of Druidic magic running wild that frightened him more. He'd had experiences where Druidic magic unleashed through him with no control, and the results had been nearly disastrous. The All was notoriously fickle and unpredictable, and any time a Druid lost control of a spell, just about anything could happen. Very rarely were those wild misfires beneficial to the Druid, or anything in his general vicinity. He saw her warning for what it was. It was no ploy or attempt to get into his good graces, it was a very serious, very sober warning from a master Druid to an acolyte Druid about the very real dangers of the demanding magic they commanded.
He nodded once, eloquently. "I will. After you bring back Sarraya, we'll meet so you can teach me what I need to know," he said in a neutral tone.
"I can live with that. Just please, be careful."
"I'll be careful," he promised, then he turned and stalked back through the door, slamming it behind him.
He didn't have much time to think about what Triana said, but what time he had made him appreciate her warning that much more. He did feel much closer to the All now, and it didn't seem much of a stretch for it to reach into him rather than him reaching into it. The Weave did things like that itself sometimes, as it was an active, dynamic force, where the All was also very dynamic and, in its own way, nearly alive. The All had a kind of animating force in it, the part of it that allowed it to interpret what it found in the mind of a Druid and decide on the manner in which the task would be accomplished. It was why Druids had to be extraordinarily careful, for that awareness within the All had no concept of human limitation, and it often took wild liberty if the Druid didn't envision the spell exactly as he wanted it to function. Triana's warning was a very serious one, and Tarrin was serious about heeding it. From the moment he left the females, he kept one part of his mind on his outrage and anger, and another part kept steadfast vigil over the All, ready to warn him should it seem to come closer to him.
That suitably done to his satisfaction, he bent to the task at hand, and that was finding out who turned him. He was so consumed by it that even going to greet his sisters and friends seemed hollow in comparison that burning need. Only his desire to have it out with Jesmind and his duty to carry out the will of his Goddess superseded that singular compulsion.
That didn't prevent them from coming to him, and that was exactly what happened. The first to find him was Keritanima and Allia, guided by Keritanima's magic. They rounded a corner almost on top of him and gave out cries of delight, and even his anger was brushed away by the sight of them. He embraced his two sisters tenderly, lovingly, having their scents fill his nose with the rightness of them, the perfection that he seemed to feel whenever they were together. It took him a moment to calm them down to where he could speak rationally to them, and they spoke Selani, as was always their habit when conversing privately amongst themselves.
"Brother, they told us what happened!" Allia said as Keritanima blurted "they wouldn't let us sit with you!"
"I'm alright," he told them gently, putting a paw on each shoulder. They were so different from one another, and a thousand forgotten memories of them, of the tediums of everday life in the Tower and on the road, their every expressions and moods, it all came back to him and made him love them that much more. Both weren't without their thorns, but his love for them was stronger for their faults than it was for their perfection.
"Who did it?" Keritanima asked immediately.
"That's what I'm going to find out," he said grimly. "It's why I didn't come running to you as soon as I woke up. I have to start while the trail is freshest."
"Did they tell you what Sapphire did to Mist?" Allia asked.
He nodded. "Mist is alright, or at least I think she was," he said. "All the females were in her company, so I wasn't very sociable when I saw her."
"I can imagine," Keritanima snorted. "Which of them do you think did it? I think it was Jesmind, myself."
"I'm not sure, but it may not have been any of them," he said grimly. He told them about his talk with the Goddess, and when he was done, Keritanima whistled sharply through her muzzle.
"That certainly complicates things, but we'll be looking for someone with a motive, brother. Just anyone that knows about the blood is a suspect, but we can do things to narrow down the field some."
"That's what I'm on my way to do. Me and Sapphire and Jenna are going to where the blood is so we can see what we can find out."
"Well, you're not doing this without me," Keritanima said flatly. "I'm much more devious than you, brother. I think in ways you don't, and I can be a real use to you."
"Both of you can," he said. "Just being here is enough. I have to keep a tight rein on my temper, and you two always did have a calming effect on me."
Keritanima looked at him in a strange tilt-headed manner. "You're… different, brother," she said hesitantly. "I didn't sense it before. I guess I was too excited. But I can feel it now."
Allia looked at him carefully. Then her eyes turned sober. "Even I can sense it," she agreed. "He is like a lodestone within the Weave, drawing its light to him."
"That's part of why I have to keep my temper in check," he said ruefully, then he explained what Triana and the Goddess had told him as they moved towards his room, where he was to meet Sapphire. "I'm not sure I understand all of it, but I do know that my increased Druidic ability is dangerous," he told them. "Triana warned me, and I believe her. She had no reason to lie, not about something like that ."
"At least some part of your brain is working," Keritanima chided with a toothy grin.
He let that pass. "She told me what I need to do to make sure nothing bad happens until she can teach me what I need to know, so I should be alright, at least for a short time. But I can feel it there, Kerri. It's just like Triana said. The All seems to be lurking out there, just the same way High Sorcery did back before I could control it. It's just waiting for a chance to connect with me, and I have to be very careful to make sure not to have anything go wrong if that happens."
"Can we do anything to help?" Allia asked.
"Just stay near me," he said. "I need a level head, and you two always were able to cool my temper."
"That's no great chore," Allia said with a loving smile.
"I hope not."
"Brother, I must ask. Are you happy?" Allia asked in a voice powerful with emotion.
"I'm content," he told her simply. "Had I had the choice that was stolen from me, I would have chosen this. But it's the theft of it that makes me so angry. Nobody had the right to steal it from me, and I mean to punish whoever did it. Thoroughly," he added in an ominous tone, his eyes narrowing.
"It can't be thorough unless we get our licks in too," Keritanima told him, rubbing her hands together. "I have quite a few little ideas brewing. I'm pretty sure that they're not much nicer than yours."
"I guess we'd better start drawing numbers. Sapphire intends to kill whoever did it. I'm going to have to talk her out of that, because whoever it is won't fully appreciate how furious I am if they're dead."
"He is angry," Allia mused to Keritanima.
"Was it ever in doubt?" she replied impishly.
"I win, sister," Allia added.
"You did not. Someone else turned him, so it's invalid."
"What is this?" Tarrin asked.
"When you went nuts on us about us fighting over what you should do, me and Allia made a little wager," Keritanima explained. "I bet you'd stay human, she bet you'd want to be Were again."
"I won," Allia said stubbornly.
"It wasn't his choice," the Wikuni fenced. "It's an invalid conclusion, so it's a draw."
"What was the wager?" Tarrin asked curiously.
"Oh, nothing serious," Keritanima said. "Just ownership of Sha'Kari."
" What?" he gasped.
"Well, nobody lives there anymore, do they?" Keritanima said defensively. "All the Sha'Kar left. And it's a perfectly good place. Lots of nice empty buildings, and someone has to keep up the maintenance on them, don't they?"
"Don't you realize that the Sha'Kar own all that?" he said.
"I asked Ianelle. She said when they abandoned it, it became nobody's property. That means it's there for whoever wants to claim it."
Tarrin had a sneaking suspicion. "When do they get there?" he asked bluntly.
The fur on Keritanima's cheeks ruffled, her version of a blush. "They should be there already," she admitted. "I haven't gotten any recent reports."
"Who got where?" Allia demanded.
"Kerri's fleet," Tarrin said. "I'll bet she sent them out to claim Sha'Kari about two seconds after Ianelle told her it was up for grabs."
"It was more like ten minutes," she said modestly.
"And you wagered possession of it against me?" Allia asked, her eyes flaring slightly.
"I knew you wouldn't do anything with it, Allia," Keritanima said smoothly. "In the end, it was going to be mine anyway, so why are we fighting about it?"
"Get out your purse, sister," Allia said cooly. "You are about to pay me rent."
"But you didn't win the bet," Keritanima said stubbornly. "When Tarrin was turned before he made a choice, it invalidated the whole thing. We don't know what he really would have decided, since he never got the chance to think without the Cat influencing him, do we?"
"That's nothing but a flimsy excuse for you to weasel out of your word," Allia accused.
"What would you do with a place like that, Allia?" Keritanima asked.
"I thought it might be a nice place for me and Allyn to spend our honeymoon," she said simply. "I have some very pleasant memories of some places there," she added with a wicked little smile.
"You proposed?" Tarrin asked in surprise.
"Not yet," she admitted with a slow smile. "And don't you dare warn him. I don't want to give him any chance to run away."
"We wouldn't dream of it, but why Allyn?" Tarrin asked. "He's not even remotely Selani."
"You and Kerri have shown me that there is strength in diversity," she said simply. "With the Selani strength and the Sha'Kar magic in their blood, our children will be powerful. And I like Allyn, brother. He's very attentive to me, he makes me laugh, and I know I can depend on him when I need him. He'll make a fine husband, even someone my clan can accept after I've suitably trained him."
"He's a bit soft for the Selani life, sister."
"Don't let Allyn's demeanor fool you, brother. He has steel in him. His is a Sha'Kar upbringing, but he has the soul of a Selani inside. There's more to him than you realize. Even I'm surprised by him from time to time."
"As long as you're not thinking with something a little south of your brain," he told her bluntly.
"That had a say in it," she said with a smirk.
"It would," he accused.
"We knew this would happen," Keritanima told her.
"What?"
"That you'd whip him into shape," she said with a grin. "I knew you were too much man for him."
Allia looked at her, then laughed brightly. "I'm too much woman for him, you mean," she corrected.
"Humans call it henpecked," Tarrin said dryly.
"We call it sensible," Allia said. "He'll learn that my way is the only way. If he doesn't, he'll have a very unpleasant marriage."
"No wonder she doesn't want to give him the chance to run away," Keritanima teased, giving Tarrin a bright, mischievious smile.
"Allyn won't be easy to tame," Allia admitted. "But I'll enjoy the challenge of it."
"Well, we forgot to say congratulations, so congratulations, sister," Tarrin told her.
"Yes, congratulations, sister. Now we're all married," Keritanima said with a smile. "Or at least something approaching it. Now we can sit up all night and gossip wickedly about our spouses."
"We do that already," Tarrin shrugged.
"But at least now some of us aren't left out," Keritanima said with a bright smile.
"That was your fault. We couldn't help it if you were a virgin," Allia told her frankly. "We could have fixed that for you any number of times, you know. There were any number of suitable men handy, but you were stubborn about keeping your royal chastity. So don't complain if you missed out."
Keritanima's face poofed out as all the fur on her face stood on end, then she laughed helplessly. "And I thought I was dirty-minded!" she admitted. "I submit to your even dirtier mind, fair sister," she said with a mocking smile. "I'm yours to train in all those kinds of things."
"If you want training, talk to Miranda," Tarrin told her bluntly. "She's more corrupt than all three of us put together."
"That's certainly saying something," Keritanima chuckled. "I'm not sure it's a good thing, but it's certainly something."
Bantering with his sisters had done much to leech off the majority of his blinding anger, but it didn't totally vent it. He was still plenty angry, but it was again the cold, calculating anger of the human in him, the anger that would allow him think rationally without losing his ire. Vengeful anger, his father Eron would call it. A kind of anger he'd always warned Tarrin not to cultivate in himself, for good things rarely came of it. It allowed him to approach the problem before them with more than a driving need to hunt down and chastise someone-anyone-in the most vicious manner possible. Now he could follow leads, think calmly, and then let that blind fury go when he was sure of who did it.
They met Sapphire and Jenna as soon as he returned to his room, where the two Knights still stood silent vigil. They came out as soon as he approached the two armored men, and Jenna was swept up in the arms of Keritanima and Allia both when she reached them. Tarrin had his memory back, and he knew intimately well now just how close Jenna was to his his adopted sisters. Allia had become close to her before they left the Tower, and Keritanima had done so after they had returned to the Tower while Tarrin was in the desert, after Keritanima herself had returned from Wikuna. Keritanima and Allia were accepted by his parents as an intimate part of his immediate family, and his mother often absently called them both daughter. Sapphire still looked incensed, but at least lightning wasn't flying all over the place.
"Are you ready, little one?" she asked in a tightly controlled voice.
"Let's go," he said. "Allia and Kerri are going with us. Both of them are very observant. They may catch things we miss."
Sapphire looked profoundly skeptical of that notion, but sniffed indifferently and swept in the direction that Jenna pointed.
Where they kept that blood turned out to be the destination of a very long trip. It took them nearly a half an hour to get there, a cellar in a part of the lowest basement as remote as one could get in the Tower. It was a hallway he hadn't even known was there, and that was saying a great deal, because he and Dar and Auli had explored what they thought was absolutely everything. He was surprised that they'd missed something, but they obviously had. It was a large room filled with a very thick layer of dust, and under the dust was contained boxes upon boxes upon boxes. They were stacked on the floor. They were stacked on old, old tables. They were stacked on heavy stone shelves carved directly out of the rock of the walls themselves. They were piled to the very top of the low ceiling in the far corner. And every single box had not a single mark on it to discern it from any other box. All the boxes were uniform, made of wood slats nailed together, and all their dimensions were proportional. Some were larger, some were smaller, but they all appeared identical to one another in that all of them looked to be perfect cubes or long rectangular boxes.
Tarrin stared in dismay, Keritanima sneezed, and Sapphire glared at the room as if it was the room's fault that it looked that they were going to have to undergo a rather exhaustive search just to find out in which box the blood was stored.
"Hold," Sapphire said quickly, holding an arm out to stop Jenna from entering the room. "The dust itself is a clue."
"It is uniform," Allia announced. "Whoever came was careful to upset the dust so it would resettle and hide evidence of their visit."
Tarrin's eyes scanned the thick dust, and he had to agree. It was of an even thickness on the floor and on the boxes, giving no hint as to where the culprit had looked, or where the culprit had gone in the large storeroom. Without giving it much thought, Tarrin wove a quick spell of Earth, Water, and Divine, a spell that lifted up faded scents and made them glow with a ruddy light. To his surprise, not only did the spell fail to locate any recent scents, it failed to find any scent at all except dust, stone, and wood.
Tarrin's ears laid back slightly, and his eyes narrowed. Whoever had done it knew that someone was going to try to find out who they were, and more to the point, had known a Were-cat would be involved. Whoever it was had absolutely erased every trace of scent in the room, scouring it completely clean, making it as if the room had never been entered by anything larger than an insect.
"What's the matter?" Keritanima asked him.
"The room's been purged of scent," he replied. "Totally. There's not even any old traces of the workers who cut the stones."
"So whoever came along before us knew someone was going to be looking," Keritanima concluded grimly. "And they were familiar enough with your kind to take steps."
Tarrin turned the spell into the hallway, turning as he moved it, and again he was set back. The only scents laid into the passage were their own. But Tarrin realized that the purging only went in one direction in the continuing passageway, as if the culprit hadn't thought to do both sides to cover his passing, or perhaps didn't bother to think that purging in both directions would make a difference. It did make a difference, however, because now Tarrin had a trail to follow, a trail of anti-trail, for the purging itself marked the passing of the guilty party indirectly.
"I'm going to follow this a little," Tarrin told them.
"Follow what?" Allia asked.
"The purging only goes in one direction," he told Allia, pointing the way they themselves had come. "Maybe whoever did it messed up, and we'll be able to get something where it ends."
"A reasonable idea," Sapphire nodded. "You follow that, little one, while we try to find clues in here."
"I will come with you, brother," Allia offered, and Tarrin nodded in agreement.
"Keep us posted," Keritanima said, tapping her amulet meaningfully.
"I'll Whisper if I find something," he answered, then he and Allia started down the hall.
Moving with good speed, for Tarrin could sense the purging as easily as he could smell Allia, the pair traced it along the meandering, confusing passages of the cellars of the Tower. Tarrin realized quickly that whoever had done it had gotten lost more than once, for the purging would go off in two directions at intersections, and one of those trails would end abruptly, as if the culprit had realized that he was going in the wrong direction. They went up another level, up a tiny, narrow, dank staircase that Tarrin hadn't known was there, and probably hadn't seen the passage of anyone other than the two of them and the culprit in hundreds of years. He realized that the culprit had become lost, and was meandering around looking for something he could identify. He could only follow behind that trail, which led him in a roundabout manner.
The trail did, after about a half an hour, come to an end, and much to his chagrin, it came to an end just down the passage from the staircase that led down to the baths, probabably the single-most heavily trafficked passageway in the entire Tower. The culprit had been very clever in making sure that his trail ended in the one place where it would be absolutely impossible for anyone to pick it up, for in a matter of hours any trail left behind would be destroyed by the passing of so many others. Tarrin knelt in the middle of the passage, making two curious Sorcerers, a dark-haired woman and a Sha'Kar, go around him and look at him curiously as they passed on their way to the baths. He put two thick fingers on the floor and realized that though the purging robbed him of the ability to identify the culprit, the purging itself may give him some information. He sank himself into the remnants of that spell. The ghostly vestiges of the spell may still be lingering in the rock, for here in the Tower, spells had a habit of leaving behind traces of themselves. It was because of the very rich magical atmoshphere… flows and spells could often linger long after the Sorcerer stopped concentrating on it. And if it were Wizardry or Priest magic, even Druidic magic, there may be some lingering trace of it he could identify.
From the feel of it, it was rather old, maybe two rides or so, but that was all he could really tell. The magical power of the Tower had infused whatever was left and drowned it in the ambient magical energy that thrived here, an environment just like Sha'Kari, where he had trouble sensing the more delicate things because of all the interference. The only thing he could sense was the age of the magic, but the texture of its remnants gave no hint as to the kind of magician that created it. It was one of the few times when he couldn't be sure about what kind of magic he was confronting. But even if he could tell which order did it, the magic itself told him some things. It told him that whoever did it had done it well before he intended to carry out his plan, and it showed that his target had had both the time to think things over, and more than enough time to get everything ready to keep himself hidden. His target had had two rides to make sure that every trace of his activities had been destroyed. The person also was either a magician or had a confidante that was one, for them to use magic to cover their tracks. They may be looking for a single person or a pair or trio, but someone in the guilty party was definitely a magic-user.
He realized, without much enthusiasm, that this was not going to be as easy as he thought. They were chasing someone that obviously knew what they were doing. Even a fool with a little magical assistance and two rides to prepare could do a good job in destroying the trail that led back to him.
Raising his awareness partially up into the Weave, he became immediately aware of the many conversations taking place among the Sha'Kar. He'd never noticed that before-at least not here-and he had to make a few adjustments just as the Sha'Kar did to speak to Jenna and Keritanima without disturbing other conversations, and also without letting anyone else currently bridging into the weave eavesdrop on what they were saying.
"Sisters," he called.
"Any luck?" Jenna's voice responded immediately.
"It peters out in front of the stairs leading to the baths," he said sourly. "I checked the spell itself, and it's about twenty days old. It was made by a Sorcerer."
"I've found some traces of that here too," Jenna told him, and Tarrin quickly adjusted what he was receiving to make it audible from his amulet so Allia could hear what was being said. "Whoever stole the blood was very careful. One of the crates, the one with your blood in it, was moved by Sorcery, and it's the only crate that seems to have been touched. The culprit knew exactly where the blood was."
"That's not a damning fact, Jenna," he said. "My blood would be easy to detect with magic. It's not exactly normal."
"Kerri mentioned that. She said she could make up a spell on the spot to find it."
"I know. So could either of us, for that matter."
"Sapphire tried to use a couple of spells herself, but that purging effect has destroyed everything they could find, even Druidic and Wizard spells can't get any information. That's a strong spell, brother. I don't think any Sorcerer would be capable of it, not as powerful as its effect is. I'm not even sure what spell it is."
"I can't tell either," he admitted. "I can only tell that it was made about twenty days ago."
"That's something, at least. We can always grill everyone in the Tower and find out where they were that day. But we do know now that it has to be a strong Sorcerer that did it."
"No, we just know that a magician had a hand in covering it up," Tarrin told her. "We're coming back, Jenna."
"We'll be waiting."
Tarrin mulled it over as they went back, following a more direct route. A magician had a hand in things, so that more or less excused all the females except Kimmie at least directly. None of them were magicians, and more to the point, none of them would probably trust a human magician with that kind of a secret. Mist certainly wouldn't, and as far as the collusion theory went, that left only Jesmind. If Jesmind did it, then she had help. He'd never get anything out of her, but if he could find whoever helped her-if it was really her-then he'd get the truth. So, if it was an individual, it was Kimmie, but if it was a group effort, it was Jesmind. At least right now. He knew things would change in his mind as he got more information, and he told himself several times, over and over, not to get his mind set in stone about who he thought did it. It could have been anyone, even one of the original Council taking steps to put him back the way they'd put him the first time. It simply came down to the fact that they had to get more information before they could start eliminating possible suspects.
Once they got back to the storeroom, they found that all the dust had been carefully pushed up against the walls, not removed, and Sapphire, Keritanima, and Jenna were carefully inspecting a single small wooden crate. He looked over them-an advanatage of height-and found that inside it, laying on a pillow and with shredded straw strewn around it, were six small vials of dark, reddish liquid. The array of the vials made it abundantly clear that there were two of them missing.
"Those are it?" Tarrin asked over them, making Keritanima jump.
"Don't do that!" she said with a nervous laugh, putting her hand to her chest. "You scared me out of my pelt!" She touched her face. "If I start shedding, it's going to be all your fault!"
"These are," Jenna answered. "Two missing. The one Jula used, and the one whoever it was used on you."
Tarrin reached down and picked up one of the tiny vials, inspecting it. It had a mark of warning on it-the mark of death, actually-telling anyone who picked it up that what was held within was a substance of incredible danger. He could sense the magic of the blood within, his blood, blood he had shed fighting the Wraith. They had picked up his frozen fingers and other pieces of him lost to the icy touch of the Wraith and milked the blood out of them. Why they did such a thing, why they found the need to keep something so dangerous, was completely beyond him.
"Any clues?" he asked.
"Only one," Sapphire said, reaching down and picking up the lid, then turning it over and showing him the underside, where the nails stuck out from it. She pointed to the edge of the lid, and Tarrin peered there.
He could see them. Four small depressions in the wood, small lines, looking like where a tool of some kind had been used to pry the lid free of the crate. They were straight and rather close together, but they had caused some very minor flaking of the wood. Whatever it was that they used had had some force behind it.
"That rules out the females," he said grimly. "They'd just use their claws."
"If they wanted to be found, sure they would," Keritanima said dismissively. "Whoever did this used a tool. Look, here's where they put in a crowbar," she said, pointing to a depression on the lip of the crate. The depression was strangely narrow, and was deeper along the edges than it was in the middle. "See how they rocked it back and forth to pry the lid up?"
"I doubt any of the females would have done that," Allia mused. "As strong as they are, it would have been nothing for them to pry the lid with a crowbar. Rocking would have been pointless." Allia looked down at the crate, then her eyes seemed to focus on the floor by it. She knelt quickly and pushed Keritanima out of the way, then put her finger on the flagstone of the floor delicately. "There is a scratch here," she said. "It is fairly fresh, but not made today."
They all peered at the scratch. It was visible, but it was very faint. It was about a finger long, deeper at one end than the other, as if something had been pushed along the floor that had dug into it and slowed the object to a stop. Allia's eyes peered in scrutiny at the floor. "There's another here, much lighter, and another here," she said, tapping the floor to the left of that scratch, but Tarrin's eyes could barely make those out. Only Allia's exceptional vision, that would let her read a book from across an open field, could make out such minute details. Allia put a finger on each scratch, and Tarrin saw immediately that they were roughly the same distance apart, about half a finger, and the scratches were deeper towards one side of the trio. That really didn't mean anything, but it did jump out at him.
"Your eyes are very sharp, Selani," Sapphire said intently. "Tell me, what else do you see that we cannot?" She motioned them away. "Step back, let her inspect without interference."
That was a good idea. Allia's vision would pick out things all of them would miss, and giving her unrestricted access to the crime scene would let her study things carefully. They all stepped back and let her do her work, and Allia bent to the task quickly and quietly. She looked at the outside of the box, then the inside. She reached in and adjusted the six remaining bottles carefully, fingering them and looking at the cushion upon which they rested. "Did any of you disturb anything within the box other than Tarrin?" she asked.
"We pushed the packing material out of the way," Keritanima replied.
Allia nodded and started rifling through the packing material, a kind of shredded plant-like material that looked like straw, smelled like flax, and was quite curly and springy. She pulled it out of the box and searched through it meticulously, and they all watched on in uncertainty, not sure what she was looking for. Keritanima finally broke the silence. "What are you looking for?" she asked.
"Hair," she answered. "We all lose hair, sister. It falls out all the time, and I am forever seeing it on the floor. I was going to look for it on this floor, but you swept the dust away, and now I will have to pick through the dust piles. This is much cleaner, much faster, and we know that any hair we find within had to come from whoever did it. It is the only way it could get inside the box."
"That's damn clever," Keritanima said appreciatively.
"Most people do not think about hair," Allia said. "Only when it falls out over one's eyes or they find it on their clothes does one really consider it. Whoever did this was very careful to cover his tracks, but I do not think that even he considered that such a thing may be traced back to him. If we can find but one hair, we have a solid lead on our target, and maybe magic can supply us the identity of its owner."
"I am impressed," Sapphire said honestly. "You are a formidable woman, Selani."
"I am but my father's daughter," she said modestly, continuing to carefully sort through the packing matieral.
Allia had struck on idea that was marvellous in its elegant simplicity. Tarrin was certain that she was right, that whoever had done it had never thought to check the box to make sure his hair hadn't fallen inside. He, like Keritanima, and even Sapphire, put a paw to his head and patted it. All his hair was bound up his his braid except for his bangs, which hung over his face, so it would be hard for him to leave any hair behind that didn't come from that one place. But not everyone wore a braid, and besides, his arms and legs were absolutely covered with hair. Fur, actually, but it was hair. He pinched his bangs and pulled very, very gently, feeling the hair slide between the pads on his fingers, and when they came free, a single blond hair had come away with them. He looked at it intently for a moment, seeing the little root at the end, then he reached aside and dropped it to the floor deliberately.
They watched on in breathless silence for what seemed to be half of forever, as Allia methodically and painstakingly sorted through the flaxen-seeming packing material, shredded plant material that had dried out to be springy and voluminous. She stopped, and then tensed, and that made all three of them take an impulsive step forward. "Ah, here we are," she announced in a delicate, quiet voice, pulling her hand out of the box.
She came out with a single hair. It was quite short, rather thick, and looked rather tough and resilient. Tarrin looked at it for a long moment, and a growing horror began to sink into the pit of his stomach.
The hair was white.
Looking down, he set his foot against the floor and dragged it. It left behind a quartet of deep scratches in the floor, the scratch made by his big toe respectably deep while the the one made by his smallest was barely more than a skim on the gray slate. They were set at regular intervals apart, and those intervals were more than five times wider than the scratches Allia had found.
Tarrin felt his knees weaken, and he staggered back until a tall stack of crates kept him from falling over. He stared at that little hair in absolute horror, his heart pounding. It all fit. It fit! The purging spell, the scratches, and that was the key, that one little hair.
Not hair. Fur.
With a dreadful click of things, things in the present, things in the past, it all fell together, and it all fell together neatly and perfectly. His expanded memory let him go back over every moment of it again and again, read the inflections within the words, the set of shoulders, the hidden meaning behinds questions and statements. It made his mind whirl, and he nearly felt like he was going to black out for a moment. Shock, outrage, and fury clashed with other feelings, feelings of protectiveness, of love, of gentleness. They warred in him openly as his outrage contended against one of the few things within him that could stand up to it.
His protective instincts.
Staring at the little hair like it was a Demon, he put his paws to his head and literally howled in his confusion and conflicting desires.
"Tarrin!" Sapphire said in sudden concern, "are you alright?"
Allia, however, had narrowed her eyes on the little hair, and the truth opened itself to her. "May the Holy Mother forgive her," she said in a trembling voice.
"Who is it?" Keritanima asked, then she too seemed to understand. "Oh, Goddess!" she wailed, putting her hands to her muzzle.
"Who?" Sapphire asked in a voice that would brook no opposition. "Who has done this?" Jenna looked at the little hair, and she put a hand to her stomach as her expression turned a bit sickly. Sapphire put a hand on her and made her look into her eyes. "Who did this?" she demanded. "It is white, and it looks like fur. Was it Jesmind?"
"No," Jenna replied in a weak tone. "It was Jasana."
To: Title EoF