Sarraya landed just in front of him, on the edge of the log. She was wearing a new dress, seemingly spun out of spiderwebs, and her new wings glistened in the cool morning air. They looked just as the old ones did, chitinous wings mottled with a riot of rainbow colors, each of the four nearly as long as her body was tall, tapered to a smooth rounding end. Just like a dragonfly's wings. Her auburn hair shuffled slightly as the wind picked up, which was normal during the morning and evening as the sun warmed the air, or the setting sun's heat stopped warming it.
He was tired. Goddess, he was tired. Tired and thin, dirty and bedraggled. Looking down at his paws, he barely recognized his own forelegs. He was nothing but fur and bones. How long had he gone without any conscious reasoning? It was impossible to tell time as a cat, but judging by his condition, it had to be a long time. Rides? Maybe a month? The past was a jumbled blur, where only the sense of empty pain, of loss, was strong enough to be relived. Despite what dangers it posed, he had to change form. He just had to. He needed time in his humanoid body, he needed time with his rational mind to make sense of how strongly his need to be with his sisters had obviously affected him. He just needed a break from the emptiness. A few hours in humanoid form wouldn't be that dangerous, and he realized that he had to face the danger, for his sanity if anything else.
Jumping down off the log, Tarrin dredged the depths of his mind for a long moment, recalling just exactly what was required when he shapeshifted. After he found what he was looking for, he willed it to be.
The realignment of his thinking was profound, and the yearning for his sisters and friends immediately eased inside, now that his human mind could rationalize the feeling, and know that he would see them again. He felt...weak. Tired. Exhausted. He looked down at his paw...
And realized that the ground looked further away.
And the back of his head was very, very heavy.
Sarraya turned and looked at him, then looked up at him with an expression of surprise and happiness. "Does this mean you're going to talk to me again?" she asked with a broad grin.
"I...I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think the Cat was ready to deal with how homesick I am." He looked down at his paws. They seemed just a little bit bigger, and those fetlocks that Sarraya had described had indeed grown onto his wrists. They filled up the space between his wrists and the manacles, and they pinched a bit whenever he moved his paws as the hair of the fetlocks caught on the metal cuffs. The fetlocks weren't very long, but they were just bushy enough to be noticed. They ran from just above his wrist to about a quarter of the way up his forearm, and they grew primarily on the palm side and outside edge of his forearms.
"I could feel the edges of it. By the trees, cub, you're as tall as Triana. And your face is different. More austere. And you're thin!"
"What?"
"Remember what I told you before we started out? That the Demon's touch caused your body to age?" He nodded. "Well, it seems that you didn't stop growing just because you were in cat form. No wonder you were getting so thin. Not eating much, running all night, and you also were burning food to grow."
That little revelation seemed laughable to him, but...the ground did seem further away, and Tarrin was a being very much grounded in his senses. He had an intimate understanding of where the ground should be, and it was further away than that. The wind pulled at his hair, and he realized that almost a quarter of it wasn't braided. Even his hair grew during that time, making the braid hang nearly to his knees.
"I see my hair kept pace," he said with a grimace, reaching behind and pulling the braid over his shoulder. "It's so heavy it hurts."
"Then cut it off."
"When I do that, it just grows back."
"Foolish cub, didn't Triana teach you anything?" Sarraya chided. "Were-cats are shapeshifters, Tarrin! When you change form, you change into what you envision yourself to be, and your body responds to that image. Were-cats have long hair because they want long hair. If you want short hair, just want short hair. Look at Mist, her hair is shorter than most human men's. Cut it off, and it won't grow back."
"I never really liked the braid before," he objected. "It gets in the way."
"Then you wanted something that you didn't like," she replied. "Then again, you're Ungardt, aren't you? Doesn't everyone in Ungardt have a braid?"
"My father was Sulasian."
"Who do you identify more with?"
Tarrin looked at her, then he snorted with a smile. "Well, I guess my mother," he replied. "You mean I saw my mother's braid, and something under my conscious decided that I should have one too?"
"That's the way it looks, isn't it?" she replied.
"It seems pretty farfetched."
"If you were a human, probably," she told him. "You're not."
"Point taken," he said. He looked at the braid, then focused on his paw. It looked a little bigger. "How, how tall am I now?"
"Eye to eye with Triana," she replied with a grin. "And you don't look like a boy anymore. You look like a man. Boy, will be she surprised to see you."
"I'll be surprised to see me," he told her. "How long has it been?"
"You mean you don't remember?"
"Sarraya, I couldn't tell you what year it is."
"Well, guess you regressed into your instincts just about as far as you could go," she snorted. "It's been nearly two months since we saw the Zakkites. Right now, we're just over the border into Saranam. We're out of Yar Arak."
"Huh," he said absently, surveying the land. "It doesn't look any different."
"Why were you so quiet?"
"I don't think my instincts were ready to deal with my human emotions," he replied after a moment of reflection. "All it could understand was the feeling of something missing. Something it couldn't bury or translate into some feeling it could understand." He shuddered. "It's not something I want to discuss."
"I think I understand," she said compassionately. "Aren't you taking a risk by shifting back?"
"I had to," he grunted, sitting down on the ground. Sarraya flitted up and landed on his knee, looking up at him calmly. "I just needed some time to sort things out without the Cat interfering. As far ahead as we are, we should be alright. I...I don't remember seeing anybody chasing us."
"There were a few, but they passed us up during the day. They're probably nearly to the desert by now."
Tarrin sat down on the log, head in his paw, sifting through the pain inside. He'd never felt anything like it, even when he had been with Janette. But that had been a different kind of pain, caused by a different reason. With her, he had felt the security that he so desperately wanted, where out here there was no such comfort. Sarraya was a dear friend, but she wasn't enough to fill the void inside, not in the way his mind wanted. He wanted to be protected, to be loved, to be kept safe. They were things the immature child in him wanted, things the Cat demanded. They were things that Sarraya couldn't provide. He looked on her as his responsibility, his child to protect. She could not give him the same feeling of security as he tried to provide to her.
Nonsense. He was craving security. He was acting like a child. The rational part of him understood that, but even it couldn't hold against so powerful an impulse. He was an adult--his trials had made him older than most people three times his age--but beneath it all was still the vulnerable little cub that wanted to be held and protected. There was no room for such frivolity out here. He had half of the Known World looking to take what he had. That was a little fact that overrode whatever childish desires he had inside.
He was not a child. Anything even close to childhood was lost in the instant that Jesmind's fangs sank into his arm. He didn't blame her for it, but that was just the way it was. Being turned Were had taken away his innocence bit by bit, and his position had robbed him of any right to feel the need to be protected like a cub. There were people out there that needed his protection, and he couldn't protect them if he was wrapped up in feeling sorry for himself. Allia and Keritanima were counting on hi
m to keep the eyes of the enemy away from them. Jenna and his parents were counting on him getting back to Suld, to find out if the Dals really had invaded his homeland, and if they had, to do something about it. Janette was counting on him to protect her world, the world that would be hers, the only world that mattered in his eyes. He couldn't do any of those things if he sat sulking on a dead log in Saranam.
But the feelings weren't going to go away. Even he had to admit that. So that meant that staying in his cat form all the time wasn't going to work. The emptiness was going to come back, and it would send him back into a depression. He had to spend time in his humanoid form so his emotional state couldn't imbalance him again, and that meant that he was allowing his enemies to know where he was. He would move faster, but he'd pay for every day gained with blood. It would be much riskier, but he really had no choice.
That seemed to have become the slogan of his life. He had no choice.
"Maybe talking to Allia would help," Sarraya said quietly, landing on the log beside him.
"No," he said after a long moment. "Talking to Allia would make it worse." And it would. It would only intensify all the negative feelings inside him. Hearing her voice may make her seem closer to him, but the harsh reality of knowing she was out of his reach would hit him that much harder. No. He was alone, and that was how he had to remain. Only if he had to talk to her would he call to her. Not until then.
"Maybe Triana?"
"Triana? I can't talk to Triana without talking to Allia."
"Cub, don't be silly," Sarraya winked. "I can talk to her any time I want. I can fix it so you can talk to her too."
"I forgot," he said. Maybe talking to Triana would help. He trusted her, loved her, felt she was one of his parents. She was, actually. She was as much his mother as Elke Kael was, in his heart and his mind.
"I need to talk to Triana anyway," Sarraya added. "She's been demanding a monthly report, and it's about that time." She looked at him. "Maybe I can let her see you. Boy, will she be surprised."
"Druidic magic can do that?"
Sarraya laughed. "Tarrin, Druidic magic can do anything," she said with a bright smile. "It's only the weakness of the user that limits it."
"What do you mean?"
"I shouldn't really tell you this, but you'll have to learn eventually," she said, flitting up onto his knee and sitting down, then looking up at him. "Druidic magic isn't really magic, Tarrin. Well, it is, but it's not the same as Sorcery, Wizardry, or Priest magic. It's entirely different. All those reach out to some energy supply that exists somewhere else, a power that is just that, power. Druidic magic taps into the living energy of the land, the soul of the world. We draw on a power that makes even Sorcery look like a candle held up to the sun. The power of Druidic magic is absolutely limitless, Tarrin. Nothing is impossible with Druidic magic." She looked right into his eyes. "It's like having the power of a God, but without the rules and limitations they live with."
"There has to be a catch somewhere," Tarrin said.
She nodded solemnly. "A very big catch. The power is limited by the person using it. A Druid can do absolutely anything, but only if he can handle the amount of power it'll take to do what he wants it to do. Overstep yourself, try to do something that requires more magic than you can control--" she snapped her fingers-- "and it's over. That's why you can't ever make a mistake, Tarrin. Druidic power is limitless, and it's also merciless. Make just one mistake, and it'll kill you."
"That's pretty harsh."
"Nature is not very merciful," she told him. "Some of the things we all do are the things that are the easiest to do. Conjuring, summoning, healing, influencing the growth of plants, they're very easy, because Druidic magic is the magic born of nature, so anything that operates within the constraints of nature doesn't take much power. But try to do something unnatural, and the amount of power it requires shoots to the moons. A Druid could literally resurrect a dead man, but the amount of power it would take would kill him."
"Conjuring doesn't sound very natural to me."
"That's because you don't understand how it works," she replied. "Conjuring isn't literally making something out of nothing. Everything I conjure exists, it's just not here. The magic finds it and brings it to me. The berries I eat were literally picked off some bramblethorn somewhere by my magic. The only unnatural part of the process is having it appear here. Summoning is just conjuring a specific object. The more attuned you are to it and the closer it is, the easier it is to summon. That's why your summoning the sword worked. It was yours, you were familiar with it, and it was only a few spans away. So it required very little power to accomplish."
"And if had been too much?"
"Then you wouldn't be here," she replied calmly.
"Then how do new Druids learn?"
"Very carefully," Sarraya said emphatically. "Usually they spend years studying with an experienced Druid, who evaluates the neophyte's capability. Before they ever try to use their magic, they already know exactly how much talent they have, and what they can and cannot do. Then the Druid teaching them teaches them what they can do, and lets them go. Smart Druids never try anything other than what they were taught. Those that don't usually end up dead within a year."
"Well, if that's true, how do Druids learn new things? I mean, isn't it possible that you could learn new tricks?"
"It is, but I'm not willing to risk death to find out," Sarraya said calmly. "There are a few Druids that do gamble, but I'm not one of them. Triana does from time to time, but she's alot stronger than me. When she finds something new I can learn, she teaches it to me."
What she said seemed to make sense to him. When he used Druidic magic, he felt a connection to something greater, something so immense that he couldn't fathom the edges of it. That had to be this living soul Sarraya had mentioned. If Druidic magic was indeed a magic born of the life of the world, then it made sense that its power was directly proportional to the amount of life in the world. Counting plants and animals, that was a huge amount of life. It also made sense that a single mistake could kill. When trying to draw from such a boundless energy source, a single mistake opened the victim up to the full might of all that power. It was only logical that it would kill.
"So, cutting off other magic is easy, because that magic exists in nature."
"No, only the Weave exists in nature. We don't affect the magic, we affect the Weave. Actually, Wizard and Priest magic are unnatural in origin, so it would take more power to affect it than a Druid could manage. Let's not even talk about a Demon or some otherworldly creature. But that power has to get here through the Weave, and that's where we attack it."
"You can control the Weave?"
"Not like a Sorcerer," she explained. "We can simply do nothing more than restrict it or release it. Anything else gets into that instant death area I mentioned before. I use my power to choke you off, but if you were very weak, I could use my power to bring the Weave closer to you, to make it easier for you to draw magic."
"That makes sense. So, in a nutshell, Druids are limited. No matter how much the magic can do, it's only as good as the person who uses it."
"Well, that's a minimalist way to look at it," she snorted.
"Minimalist works. It keeps things in perspective. What could I do with Druidic magic?"
"I have no idea," she replied. "I'd have to study you and take you through some basic exercises, and we don't have the time to do that. Just please, don't get creative on me. I'd hate to wake up one morning and find you laying dead on the ground. It would ruin my day."
"I won't experiment, I promise," he told her.
"Alright, let me contact Triana," she said. Tarrin could feel her using her power, felt the edges of her connection to this living soul, and then she made a little gesture with her hand. "Triana, are you alone?" she asked immediately.
"Where in the bloody hell on this ship could I go to be alone?" Triana's voice seemed to come from midair, a very irritated voice. "Where have you be
en, you little pain? I've been waiting days to hear from you!" Despite the anger in her voice, Tarrin's heart soared just a little at the sound of that voice, the voice of his deeply loved foster mother.
"I've been busy," Sarraya said curtly. "Tarrin's here. He wants to see you, and I want you to see him," she added in a wicked little tone. "Do you think you could find someplace close to private?"
"Give me a minute. I'll kick Renoit out of his cabin," she said in a brutally practical voice.
Tarrin laughed. "That's Triana, all right," he said.
A wavering image appeared in front of them, inside a glowing oval of swirling mist. It was an image of Renoit's private cabin, a very messy cabin, and of Triana. She was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt with ragged sleeves, dyed blue. Her tawny hair and fur were clean and neat, and her handsome, powerful face stared back at him intently. Her face was that same stony mask as always, but hints of the affection she held for him cracked her unwavering facade.
Tarrin stood up immediately, displacing Sarraya, and almost tried to reach through the image to touch her, but he caught himself in time. "Mother," he said urgently, lovingly.
Triana looked him up and down. "Tarrin! What in the furies happened to you!" she immediately demanded. "You look like you grew a thousand years in three months! Sarraya, is he, taller?"
"As tall as you," Sarraya said smugly. "A side effect of his little exercise in Yar Arak."
"Well, cub, it's good to see you, even if it's not exactly what I expected to see. You're a mess."
Tarrin laughed nervously. "Well, it's been pretty hard on us, mother. I'll clean myself up, I promise. How is everyone else?"
"Oh, fine. Your bond-child and that Selani are at each other's throats most of the time, Phandebrass keeps trying to document my training of the girl, and those little drakes are driving me crazy. They must think I'm you. They keep trying to sleep with me." She looked into his eyes. "Are you alright, Tarrin?"
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