Weavespinner

by James Galloway

  "Drink it quickly," Phandebrass warned him, holding the black stone cup out to him. "Just to warn you, it's going to taste absolutely vile, it will. You have to drink it all, Tarrin. I say, you can't spill a single drop. Do you understand?"

  "I understand," he nodded, reaching out for the cup with shaking hands. Jenna reached out and put her hand over one of his, and she gave him a reassuring smile. He felt a little better with her display of compassion, and his hands didn't shake quite as badly as they had just a moment before.

  The stone cup was hot, strangely hot, and the blackish liquid inside it smelled acrid and unpleasant. This was it. All his worries and fears would either be dismissed or justified in just a moment. All his almost neurotic fear over losing his identiy would either be confirmed or denied, in just a moment. No matter what, things were about to be settled, and the moment had already passed.

  It was time.

  He couldn't let himself dwell on it anymore. With a gulp of air, he raised the cup to his lips and let the potion pour in. Phandebrass was not lying about how terrible it tasted, but almost as quickly as he drank it, it seemed to numb his tongue, and then his throat. He felt it wash down into his stomach, like hot, acidic water, burning his belly just before that strange numbness began to creep in. His mouth and tongue felt weird from where they had touched the potion.

  "How long will it take to affect him?" Jenna asked.

  "I say, there's no definite timeframe," he answered. "It depends on how well the potion was made for him and how accepting his mind is to the magical effect. It could be seconds, or hours, but it will work. The time is the only variable, it is."

  "How do you feel, Tarrin?" Jenna asked in concern.

  "Strange," he answered. "I don't feel any memory coming back yet, but the potion is making my mouth and stomach feel weird."

  "That should pass," Phandebrass told him with calm assurance.

  The numbness took full hold of his stomach, and seemed to run its course in his mouth and on his tongue. Then, the strangest sensation replaced it. It was a strange kind of hot buzzing sensation, like pins and needles in his mouth, and it travelled down his throat and gullet and started taking hold in his stomach.

  "I feel pins and needles now," he said with a slightly slurred voice. "It's almost tickling."

  "What was that?" Phandebrass asked with sudden, intense attention.

  "It's tingling," he repeated, then there a very real sense of pain in his mouth. He put his hands over his mouth and winced. "It's burning me!" he said in sudden fear, as that burning sensation seemed to sweep down his throat, following the path of the potion.

  "It shouldn't do that," Phandebrass said with sudden worry, looking at Sapphire. "The formula neer mentioned anything about it causing pain!"

  "Sometimes formulae leave out the unpleasant side effects," the dragon said calmly.

  The burning sensation turned out to be a pittance. All the sudden, Tarrin felt like someone had stabbed him in the stomach with a knife. He doubled over and let out a cry of pain, snapping his jaws shut so tightly that he felt like his teeth were going to shatter. But even they hurt from inside, by whatever it was the potion did to him, filling him from the inside with a burning pain that swept through his body like wildfire. Red haze filled his vision as he struggled to figure out what was happening, what had gone wrong, but conscious thought was scoured away as a pain unlike anything he had ever experience all but consumed him. It roared through him like a flood raging down a canyon, infusing itself into every tiny bit of him inside and out, suffusing him with its searing, burning agony and tearing a scream from him so mindless, so elemental in its conveyance of his pain that it made the two humans cringe and step back.

  There was only one thing that touched his mind in that eternal moment, as the vestiges of the potion actually did manage to perform its task.

  That he had experienced this once before.

  Sliding off the bench, scrabbling at the clean, neatly arrayed white walkway stones, Tarrin tried to writhe, tried to think, tried to stop what was happening, but he knew that it could not be stopped. He cried out once more, but it was not a cry of pain, it was a cry of outrage, of indignation, of fury, before the pain of it descended his cry into a mindless shriek of absolute mindless agony.

  His right of choice had been denied to him.

  Lost in the completeness of the internal fire, the pain of the changes did not touch him. Lost in the unending scream torn from him, he could not stop what was happening. The bones in his back split, grew in number and grew smaller, and every bone within him shifted, grew longer, became more dense. The bones in his hands split, cracked, thickened and then reset, enlarging his hands. The comfortable boots on his feet stretched grotesquely, then were split asunder as the same process took hold in his feet, lengthening and enlarging them as the balls of his feet widened unnaturally. Skin split and then resealed as the bones continued to expand, longer and longer and longer, blasting shockwaves of pain through him as the flesh was torn and the organs violently displaced.

  But the changes to body were not the only ones. The Cat was released from its prison within as the first sweeping wave of the change took hold, as the body began to become accommodating to the mind. With it came the memories, two years of memories, a lifetime of memories. The bad and the good, the horror and the joy, the pain and the pleasure, it swept over his pain-maddened mind like pouring salt into an open wound, assaulting him from within as the pain shattered his body. The memory was there, all of it, every bit of it trying to sweep the others and the pain aside and take hold inside him all at once, augmented by the memory-kindling potion that was still in him, whose magic had not lost its potency despite the betraying extra addition to it.

  Memory and change suddenly competed with lost power as the lost connection to the core of his power was restored. Tarrin's hands, still in the process of transforming back into paws, suddenly erupted with Magelight as the pain-maddened soul, caught between human and Were, found within memory and body forgotten capabilities, fought against the inevitable with all the righteous indignation it could muster. The shriek of pain became a powerful cry of fury, as rage overcame the agony, rage at this most shocking, most horrific of betrayals. The power surrounded him, infused him even as the magic of the Were-cat and the magic of the potion stormed through him. The power picked him up from the ground as his hands became paws, his feet set into their permanent hybrid form, and his body continued to grow taller and taller. The back of his pants split as his spine extended out from its place, separated from his pelvis and tore through his skin, snaking out like a sailor lowering a rope flailing in a gale as the spine formed a tail, and that tail quickly fleshed out and began to grow black fur.

  The Magelight around his body coalesced, then shimmered into the brilliance of the four-pointed star around him as the totality of the Weave sought to flow into him, through him, become part of him, make him a part of it. The Conduit that flowed through the Tower behind him suddenly erupted into blazing brilliance, shimmered with an audible ringing sound, responding to his pain, and the entire Weave around Suld shuddered and writhed as every major strand, every feeder strand, every wisp of every flow suddenly glowed with bright white light and sang out in the choral shimmering from the Conduit and through them, showing the mundane citizens of Suld for that one brief moment what had always surrounded them, the power the katzh-dashi utilized, revealing what had once been hidden before becoming hidden once more. The Weave was caught up in the throes of his pain, reacting to him in a way that it would not for any other, shuddering and shifting as the pain roared through him. His mind, with the memory-restoring potion taking hold inside him, was reaching up into the Weave, trying to find solace, find refuge there to protect itself from the eternal firestorm of the pain caused by the transformation. That pain was easing as the greatest of the physical alterations were complete, as the human ears vanished and cat's ears poked up through his hair, as fur quickly grew in on his arms and legs, along his
tail, on his new ears, and his teeth shifted in their shape, shifted by the power of the magic that changed him, his incisors growing out into impressive fangs. He finally opened his eyes, but instead of the Were-cat's vertically slitted green, they were a blazing, incadescent white as the power of the Weave surrounded him.

  The change was done, and it could not be undone. The pain eased, but the chaos within his mind did not stop. The magical potion that was still coursing through his body sought to restore memory, but found that memory already restored. The magic of the potion was touched by the power of the Weave, altered, and it reached into the Weave, through him, seeking to restore memory. As was its function.

  Tarrin sucked his breath in when something inconceivable happened. The echoes of the Weave, the fluttering remnants of lost information, of memory, reacted to the powerful mingled magic within him. It called out to the echoes, and the echoes responded, flooding into him with a speed that nearly drove him mad. A nightmarish jumble of images, sounds, impressions, things and places and feelings and memories flowed into his mind. The magic of the potion, still powerful, augmented by the power of the Weave, drew in all the memory of the Weave and showed it to him in one great moment of utter lucidity. In the blink of an eye, the entirety of the memory of the Weave was laid out before him, like some vast, unfathomably huge tapestry that was both too massive to understand yet arrayed in a manner that made it make sense. In that fleeting moment, with the entirety of the Weave's stored memory open to him, he knew that he had touched the mind of the Goddess. He had seen what no mortal was ever meant to see, the answers to everything, the totality of existence, and it was more than his mortal mind could comprehend.

  This is not for you, my kitten, her voice seemed to flutter to him from some great distance. This will only drive you mad. Forget what must be forgotten, and find peace once more.

  Her power reached back through the Weave, touched him, and undid the magic of the potion. Her hand passed through his mind, sweeping away that which would drive him mad, but not touching many of the other things his mind had learned during that moment of utter communion with her. What Jenna had learned from Spyder, now Tarrin had learned from the Goddess.

  The touch of the Goddess disrupted the power of the Weave flowing into him, through him. The four-pointed star which formed the heart of the symbol of the Goddess wavered around him, then winked out. The power holding him off the ground was disrupted, and he fell back to the earth.

  The Tarrin that touched the ground, fell limply and blissfully unconscious to the soft, welcoming earth, was once again a Were-cat.

  Jenna and Phandebrass could only stare in shock. Sapphire landed by his limp form, nudging him worriedly with her snout.

  She couldn't believe it. The potion hadn't restored his memory, it had changed him back into a Were-cat! He looked exactly as he did the last time she'd seen him! He was just as tall, as tall as Triana, and he had the fetlocks and the drawn sense about his face that made him look more mature. His face was calmly reposed, a welcome sight given that but a moment ago, the mindless agony of the change had contorted his handsome features.

  What had just happened? How did it happen? How could the potion change him back? That was impossible!

  And Goddess, what had he done to the Weave? She thought it was going to rip itself apart! He must have regained his ability to use it in the middle of his transformation, and it was that raw, elemental creature, half human, half cat, and totally consumed by the pain, that had managed to make the connection. She had never sensed anything like that before, and it was a shivering display of the tremendous power her brother possessed, a power far greater than her own, despite the fact that they were both sui'kun.

  She knelt by Tarrin, put her hands on him, feeling the hardness under his skin, knowing that the change was complete and thorough. He was a Were-cat once more.

  "By the holy circles of Denthar!" Phandebrass finally managed to exclaim.

  "Phandebrass!" Sapphire said in a suddenly furious tone, snapping her head around and up to glare dangerously at the Wizard. "What in the blazes did you do!?!"

  "B-By my honor, Sapphire, it should never have done that!" he said in flabbergasted confusion. "It couldn't have! The power to change humans Were is a function of magic, and it's not Wizard magic. It's Druidic by nature, and you know we can't duplicate that!"

  "Perhaps there was some part of it left in him," Sapphire said, but Jenna reached down and picked up the cup. Phandebrass was right. There was no way the potion should have done that. Only a Were-cat could change him back into a Were-cat. She sent searching flows down into the cup, searching the traces of liquid still clinging to its interior as a light film, knowing what she would find, but dreading the enormity of the consequences if she did.

  It was there. Goddess, it was the worst thing that could have been. She shook her head and groaned audibly.

  "What is it?" Sapphire demanded of her.

  "The potion didn't do it," she said in a trembling voice. "There's Were-cat blood in the cup."

  She held the cup in trembling hands, her gaze down on her brother. "Someone put Were-cat blood in the cup," she said, tears actually coming into his eyes. "Someone--" She couldn't finish, breaking down into wracking sobs. Phandebrass knelt beside her and comforted her, and she cried into his robe unashamedly.

  "Someone changed him against his will," Sapphire said in a voice of doom. "And the list of suspects is a very short one." She hissed, and lightning crackled around her body, a display of her growing fury. "I will find out who did this and make them wish they were never born!" she vowed in a voice that cracked like a whip.

  Someone had changed him against his will, and Jenna knew that more than blood was going to be spilled over it. Someone was going to pay, and from the fury in Sapphire's voice, they were going to pay dearly.

  Goddess help her, whoever she is, Jenna thought, knowing that it had to be one of the females. Jesmind, Kimmie, Jula, Triana, or Mist. One of them had to do it. Nobody else could. The only question was which one.

  Which one would die because of their impatience.

  Chapter 7

  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 h
e 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.