"There are, advantages to what has happened," Dolanna said quietly. "You are now a Were-kin, a Were-cat. The Were-kin share several distinct advantages over humans. Most have great strength," she told him, and he nodded. That woman had thrown him across the room with one arm. If that wasn't "great strength" he had no idea what was. "Were-kin can be hurt by weapons, but they cannot cause permanent injury unless they are weapons of magic or weapons of silver. I saw that you stabbed her with your knife. That probably did nothing but make her angrier."
"It did," he said. "That's when she bit me."
"You may have sharper senses now, but that I cannot tell you. I have never read nor talked to anyone that had a knowledge of the Were-cats. They are a very rare and seclusive breed." She leaned back a bit. "You are now linked to the cat, physically and mentally, so I would surmise that you share its traits. Strength, speed, and agility. The senses of a hunter."
"I can smell you right now," Tarrin told her quietly. "And there are, other smells, smells I can't identify."
"You will, with practice," she said. "And that is what matters right now. If you can gain a familiarity with your physical form, it will help you understand and deal with the instincts that are part of you."
"How do you mean?" he asked.
"Look at your hand," she said. He did so. "There are claws recessed into your fingers. Make them come out."
Tarrin gave her a look, then looked at his hand. He tried to flex his hands to get them to come out, but all they did was shift inside their sheaths. Clawing his hands did make them come out a little, but they didn't actually extend. There was a muscle in there, he realized, muscles that he had to learn how to move. Kind of like people who could wiggle their ears, they always said it was a matter of knowing which muscles to flex. It was the same with this, but the problem was, these were muscles he didn't even have when he'd went to sleep. He furrowed his brow in concentration, relying on his enhanced sense of touch, and a strange, new feeling of just knowing his body. He could feel the claws in there. He seemed to sense that they were worked by certain muscles attached to the bases. He clenched his oversized hand into a fist, and then opened it and tried again, flexing inside rather than outside.
Silently, five claws, each one as long as Dolanna's little finger, slid out from the tips of his fingers. They were vicious, formidable looking weapons. He looked at them and wondered how that creature had managed not to kill him. They were hooked, like a cat's claws, sharp along the inside edges and at the tip. "Very good," she complemented, as he relaxed his hands, and the claws slid back up inside his fingers.
Tarrin's belly growled. "Think I could get something to eat?" he asked.
"Yes, I will have something sent up to you," she said, scrubbing her eyes with her hands. "Now that you are awake and seem to be well, I can get some sleep," she said.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Three days," she replied wearily. "The wounds you took in the fight were dreadful, and on top of that, this happened to you. Your body exhausted almost all of its energy in the transformation, which healed you as a side effect. You may not have survived had I not been here. And I wanted to be here when you awoke, to help calm the shock and fear of finding this waiting for you when you awoke."
"Three days," he said in wonder. It didn't feel like he'd been asleep for three days. "Do, do the others know?"
"Faalken does," she said. "I told Duke Arren what happened as well. Walten and Tiella only know that you were severely injured, but they do not know you have been changed. I will tell them now, so that they can adjust to it."
He couldn't help but ask. "What happened to her?" he asked.
"She escaped," she said grimly. "She killed twelve men while doing it. My spell wore off much faster than it should have, and she ripped the cell door off the hinges. She killed the cell guards, two other guards, a servant, and a stablehand. Arren tried to trap her inside the castle by raising the drawbridge, but she simply climbed up the wall and jumped off the top. If she would have simply waited, none of that would have been necessary."
"What do you mean?"
"She was wearing a collar," Dolanna said.
"I remember it," he interrupted, an image of her coming to his mind.
"It was controlling her," she continued. "She was being compelled by magic into doing what she was doing. It was not really her fault. She was being used. I think she was fighting the collar the entire time."
"She should have been able to kill me easily," Tarrin mused to himself, remembering more images of the fight between them. There was any number of places where she could have just put her hand across his neck and slit his throat. She had the speed to do it. If she'd been fighting the collar, it explained much. Why he was able to outmove her, and do the things he was doing. She was distracted. His mother had said many times, "in a fight, the man with his mind on two things usually ends up with his mind in two places." Mother's sayings were usually graphic, but they were very true.
Mother. How were his parents going to react to, to this? He was fairly certain that, after the initial shock, that they would adjust to it, even as he would. But it would be painful. His parents were intelligent, open-minded people. But if they rejected him, he didn't know if he could live through that.
He pushed it out of his mind for the moment. He wasn't even ready to start dwelling on things like that yet. His mind was tickled by something Dolanna has said, about the collar. About the Were-cat woman being controlled. Then someone had to be controlling her, and they ordered her to come up here and kill him.
"Who would go through all that trouble?" he mused.
"Excuse me?" Dolanna asked.
"Why would they send that woman to kill me?" he asked. "I'm not worth that much attention."
"It may not have been you," she said. "Her target may have been someone else, and she simply came into your room by mistake."
Tarrin looked at her, her smell filling his nose. "I don't know," he said simply, leaning back against the headboard. "If she can smell the same way I can, then if she knew my scent, she'd know who to come after. But maybe not. I guess we'll never know."
She stood and stretched, then leaned over the bed and put her hand on his cheek gently. "I must get used to those eyes," she said gently, "but in a way, looking like this, you are very handsome, Tarrin," she told him. "Almost as if this was what you were always meant to be."
"My eyes?"
"They are green," she said. "The same color as the woman's. They are a cat's eyes, with the vertically slitted pupils. They are very striking."
"Huh," he said in wonder.
"Well, you are hungry, and I need to sleep," she said. "I will bring you a meal and some books to read. For your own safety, I do not advise you to leave this room. After the deaths of their comrades, the castle's guards may not take kindly to you. You should take this time to get familiar with yourself. Learn how to move your tail, for example. I will have Faalken check in with you about once an hour, so that if you need something, there will be someone about to see that you get it."
"Alright," he said.
After she left, Tarrin tentatively threw back the covers, and looked down at himself. He was nude, and his tail was coming out from under him. His tail wasn't very thick, more for ornament than use, and covered with black fur. His legs looked mostly like they did, except they looked more muscled, and of course they had the fur on them that started at a ragged line just above his knees. He reached down and put his hand on the fur, feeling that it was both soft and rather thick, but not very long. He reckoned that from a distance it would almost look like black breeches. His feet were similarly oversized, wider through the ball of his foot, almost like a paw, with long, thick toes that were tipped with those nasty claws. There wasn't a pair of shoes out there that would fit those feet. He sat up and pulled a leg up, then grabbed the oversized foot in his hands and turned it so he could look at the bottom. He was surprised at how easily his foot rotated like that, and he saw that the bott
om of his feet were covered with two thick pads, much like his hands were. One was at the ball of his foot, and the other at the heel, with smaller pads on the bottom of each toe. The claws on his feet were even larger than the ones on his fingers.
Swinging his legs over the bed, he shakily stood up on his new legs. He was very weak still from what had happened, but he could actually feel the muscles shift and play under his skin as they worked to put him on his feet. Despite the weakness, he realized at that moment that he had every bit of the inhuman strength and power that the woman had. Despite his weakness, he felt light as a feather, and it required almost no effort to move his own weight. On standing, his tail seemed to come to life of its own volition, and that was when he realized that it wasn't just for show. He nearly overbalanced forwards, but his tail swished deeply behind him and recentered himself on a stable balance. It began to move on its own, swishing back and forth in a rhythmic motion, and it had to be the oddest sensation he'd ever felt in his life. He almost instinctively stood only on the balls of his feet, heels off the floor, understanding why they were so wide. Stability. There was one other thing that got his attention, and that was the hair. His hair was extremely long, falling well down his back, and very, very thick. It was the same blond color it had been before. He wasn't used to the weight of it, nor the way it swayed and swished whenever he moved. It was an extremely disconcerting sensation.
He saw his clothes neatly folded at the foot of the bed, and he sat down again and picked up his trousers. He saw that they'd been modified, with a small hole in the back and a slit leading to it, with a pair of buttons. Dolanna had already made clothing for him to take his tail into account. He sat down and carefully put his leg inside, then curled his toes to keep the claws from snagging. He repeated it with the other leg, then stood up and buttoned them in the front. It wasn't easy, because his fingers were so large now, but he somehow managed. The back buttons, however, were another story. Tarrin managed to twist himself in such a way that he could actually see behind himself; Tarrin had never been able to twist like that before, and he realized that his entire back and spine were built differently than his human one had been. He worked for a very long time to get the small buttons through the holes, but the small things eluded even his best attempts. Growling a bit in frustration, he popped out the claws on his hand and pinched the little button between then, then managed to jam it through the slit. He repeated the process with the other button, managing it on the fifth try.
She'd left him a white wool shirt, with laces at the front, and long, wide sleeves. It was much easier to get into that, but the laces were quite beyond him. These large hands had obvious drawbacks. They were very dextrous, but their size made manipulating very small things extremely difficult. He figured that he'd be able to do it with practice, but he didn't much feel like fooling with it.
Dolanna opened the door, holding a tray so filled with food that she had trouble holding it up. She gave him a cursory glance as she entered the room, closing the door with a foot, and set the tray down. Tarrin looked at her. Something was....wrong. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, either. She looked the same as she always had, but somehow, she didn't. As she got closer, he had to look down at her more and more, and then he understood. She was shorter.
That meant that he had to be taller.
He looked up at the ceiling. If this ceiling was the same height as the one in the other room, then he was taller. It was noticably lower than it had been.
"Is it just me, or are you shorter?" he asked her.
"You grew by half a span," she told him simply. "As if you were not tall enough. You are taller than most Ungardt now." She opened the door again and picked something up off the floor, and then came back in. They were books. "How does it feel?"
"Strange," he said, looking down at himself. "But in a way, it doesn't. It's like it's always been like this."
"Those are your instincts," she told him. "Do not ignore them, Tarrin. They may try to guide your actions, but they also will give you important information. You must learn to listen to them without letting them control you. It is a balance you must strike within yourself, a balance between man and animal, with the man guiding."
He nodded. There was no way he could ignore something that just came to him unbidden. But, as she said, he couldn't let it control what he did.
"Faalken will be along in a while," she told him. "He told me that he thought you would not mind company, so he is bringing a stones board."
"I think he's right," he said. "I won't mind someone to talk to at all."
"Go ahead and eat, and Faalken should be along," she said. "He is going to the city market to buy something, and will come visit you when he returns. That should give you time to eat in peace."
"Alright." He reached out and took Dolanna's hand gently, feeling how warm her skin was, and how fragile that she seemed to be. "Dolanna, I want to thank you," he said. "I know you couldn't have stopped it, but at least you've given me a chance. Thank you."
"Oh, dear one," she sighed, giving him a smile, "it is I who should thank you. I cannot help feeling responsible for this. And I want you to know, that if you never need anything, anything at all, I will always be about to help you. It is the least I can do for you after bringing you here, where this could happen."
"Would, would you send a letter to my parents?" he asked. "They need to know about this."
"I already have," she told him. "They should have it by now. I made sure to tell them not to come, Tarrin. I felt that you would need time to grow accustomed to it before you could face them."
"Thank you," he said, because she was right. If he saw his mother right now, looking like he did, and she rejected him, it would destroy him. Better to face it himself than run the risk of that.
"I will return after I have rested, bathed, and eaten," she told him. "Then we will talk of what is to come."
"Eating is a good idea," Tarrin said, the wonderfully sharp smells of the tray drawing his attention to it.
"Enjoy," she told him, leaving.
Tarrin never knew food could taste that way. Everything seemed fifty times what it had been before, and he found that the tastes of some foods had changed somewhat. Mutton had always been bland to him, but now it had a texture and a subtle flavor that he enjoyed immensely. The tray was filled with dishes of meat, and nothing else, with a mug of plain water. There was mutton, pork, beef, venison, rabbit, and even goose and chicken. He found that they all had tastes related to their scents, so much so that the taste of it was the base of the scent it gave off. He figured that if he didn't like the smell of something, odds were that he wouldn't like the taste of it either. He sampled each of them, testing the new taste of it and comparing it to what he remembered, then he attacked the entire tray and devoured it. When he was done, he marvelled that he was capable of eating so much. But he was wonderfully full, and the contentment of that simple condition amazed him. No doubt that it stemmed from the instincts that were inside his mind now.
It was all so strange. By all rights, he should be having a complete panic attack. But he was not. It was as if the instincts in his mind had forced him to accept the change that had been wrought on him. Yes, he was upset, and very frightened about what had happened to him, but even now it felt...right. Just as Dolanna said, he felt as if this was the way that he was supposed to be, that he had been incomplete before this. It was probably the instincts doing it to him...and in a way, he was glad of that. At least this feeling of normalcy was somewhat comforting.
He stood at the window, looking down into the courtyard, wondering if he'd have the courage to walk across it. It was painfully obvious that he didn't belong in the human world anymore. In a place like Aldreth, things were different. The proximity to the Frontier made the villagers receptive to non-humans. But this wasn't Aldreth. This was Torrian, where non-humans walking down the street were quite an event. They would either ignore him, stare at him, or run from him. There were non-humans in port cit
ies, the sea-faring animal people, the Wikuni, but Torrian was far from the sea. Maybe in Suld, where there were many Wikuni, he would be able to walk down the street. But here, he wasn't so sure.
The door opened. Tarrin looked over his shoulder, and saw Faalken coming into the room. Faalken's rough, outdoor-like scent touched Tarrin's nose, and he filed it away in his mind for future reference. Faalken had a stones board in his hands, as well as a couple of mugs and a leather pouch.
"You look, impressive," Faalken told him.
Tarrin looked down at his hand, flexing out the claws and watching in mused wonder. "Something like that," he replied quietly. "I'm getting used to it, though."
"How does it feel?"
"I can't describe it, Faalken. There are sounds and smells and sights I see and hear and smell, that I just can't describe. You have milk and ale in those mugs," he told him. "I think you were either in a rush or working out. You've been sweating, and your heart's still a bit fast. And you were eating a meat pie."
Faalken blinked, then chuckled ruefully. "Right on all counts," he admitted. "I think I understand what you mean then. Feel better?" he asked as he put the stones board on the small table.
"Much," he replied. "Just eating did wonders."
"Did Dolanna tell you what's happened? With the other one and all?"
Tarrin nodded.
"Well, as soon as she's sure you're alright, we'll be moving out," he said. "Dolanna wants to get you to the Tower immediately. If there are any side effects or complications over what happened to you, there isn't a better place to be."
"She didn't tell me that," he said.
"She probably didn't want to worry you," he said, sitting down and pushing the mug of milk towards him. Then he opened the pouch and poured the stones out onto the board. "She probably want you to only think of one thing at a time. I can't argue with it, but I prefer a more direct method of doing things. You want white or black?"
"I'll take black," he said as he moved away from the window. He looked at the chair a moment, then managed to figure out how to sit down in it without pinching his tail behind him. He did it by turning the chair around and straddling it, crossing his arms over the back, which was now in front of him.
The Tower of Sorcery Page 10
