And there were rumors. Rumors of war in Sulasia, of occupation by Daltochan, that Dal armies were marching on Suld. The rumors said that they were doing it because they believed that the Firestaff was being held in the Tower of Sorcery, and they meant to take it by force if needs be. They didn't know the vailidy of those rumors, but their Wikuni allies had told them that there were Dal armies in Sulasia. There was indeed war.
The idea that they may be sailing into a harbor besieged by enemy forces was a very real possibility, and that was something for which the others were also planning. Dolanna seemed confident that no army could take Suld, but Allia was a warrior. She knew that no defensive position was impregnable. If the Dals threw enough men into it, they could swarm over the walls of Suld. But she had to admit that Suld was a very large city, with a large standing army within its walls, and those walls and the city's defensive fortifications were kept in good repair. Given enough of a defending force, and the Sorcerers and Knights to back them up, the city could be held against an army many times its size.
There were many things that unsettled her, unsettled them all, but nothing would give them answers but time. They wouldn't find out until they arrived, and until then there was nothing to do but plan for eventualities and prepare for the trials ahead.
Putting her hands on the rail, she looked out past the ships, out over the endless blue water. It used to frighten her, but so long aboard a ship had eased her fear of the water. Beyond that endless sea, in a land beyond her imagination, her dear sister sat on a gilded throne and ruled her people. Separated from her by need, she labored to return to them. How she missed Keritanima. She was one of the few that could make Allia and Tarrin laugh, truly understood both of them. It had been too long since she had been with them.
"What about Jula?" she heard Dolanna say. Allia always paid attention when that hated name was uttered. Allia did not trust Jula, did not like her, and only her vow not to harm her to Tarrin kept her alive. They had crossed swords several times on the journey, and the fledgeling Were-cat had learned the hard way that her rage and power meant nothing to the lightning-fast Selani warrior. Allia knew how to kill a Were-cat, and only the dishonor of breaking a vow stayed her hand on more than one occasion. The repeated humiliation had had an effect on Jula as well, and she could see the fire in the Were-cat's eyes every time she looked in Allia's direction. Jula wanted to pay her back for her embarassment, but she knew that against Allia, she had no chance of surviving, let alone winning. She knew that if she took it over the line, the Selani would rise up and destroy her without a second thought or reservation. Jula knew better than that, no matter how much it rankled her.
"What about her?" Triana asked in her commanding voice. Nobody on the ship, even the Wikuni, could deny that Triana was the one that ruled them all. Her power and authority were palpable things, like an aura of utter control that surrounded her at all times, and nobody on the ship dared even give her a crosswise look. That stare of hers was enough to cow even a rampaging kajat. "She's not ready to be taken off her leash, but I think the exposure to humans will be good for her. At least not these humans."
"But she was once ki'zadun."
"I'm through with them," Jula said in a shuddering voice. That, at least, Allia believed. Jula had suffered horribly at the hands of her former employers, and in that Allia did not doubt the Were-cat's sincerity. Allia still felt her to be dishonorable and conniving, but her eventual betrayal of them would be for personal reasons rather than loyalty to her old organization. "I already told you I'd help you find anyone I know in the Tower. At least anyone still left."
"I do not doubt that, but it is what your presence may foster that worries me," Dolanna explained. "The Tower knows of your past betrayal. You will not find open arms among them."
"I, I don't belong there anymore," she said in a small voice. "I can't go back to what I was."
"I have little doubt that the Keeper will blame you for her losing Tarrin," Dolanna pressed.
"Then she'd be right," Jula flared. "It was my fault. I already admitted to that. Everything that happened to Tarrin is my fault. Does that make you feel better? Are you happy now?"
"Cub!" Triana snapped, in a tone that no living being would dare disobey.
Allia turned to look, and saw Jula looking at the deck, keeping her eyes averted from Triana's withering glare.
"You forget yourself, little girl," Triana said to her in a hot tone. "Now sit there and be silent. If I hear a word from you until I give you leave to speak, you'll be swimming to Suld. Do you understand me?"
Triana did not make idle threats. If Jula disobeyed, Triana would literally throw her over the rail. The changeling Were-cat probably understood that intimately by now, having suffered many humiliating punishments from her demanding mentor, so she simply nodded emphatically while keeping her eyes on the deck. Jula knew to "show throat" to Triana, as Tarrin would put it. For that matter, everyone on the ship did.
"I don't worry very much about them, it's that army that worries me," Triana told the small Sorceress. "From what you told me, whoever's left probably can't stir up trouble. But a Dal army is another matter. Are you sure that Suld can hold?"
"The katzh-dashi will defend the city if it becomes threatened, Triana," Dolanna said respectfully. "That is a power that cannot be easily dismissed. No army could breach the walls when the katzh-dashi do not wish it to be so."
"I'm glad you're confident about it," Triana grunted.
"In this matter, I am," she replied. "Even if they could somehow breach the city, no army could get onto the Tower grounds. The katzh-dashi would seal the grounds, and no force the Dals could bring to bear could penetrate it. The Tower will persevere, as will any within it."
"I don't much like the idea of being held prisoner in the Tower, so let's hope your friends can hold the walls," Triana snorted.
"I have every confidence in them."
"Good. Now, let's move onto something much more important. Lunch."
Allia let her attention drift away, fingering the amulet around her neck. It was an alien symbol, the holy symbol of the Goddess of the Sorcerers. It felt strange to her to know that another god watched over her, staked a claim on her, but it was the truth. She and Keritanima and Tarrin all were owned by two goddesses, by virtue of the amulets about their necks and the brands on their shoulders. But she and Keritanima were outside the hands of the Holy Mother, where Tarrin now rested within her protective embrace.
At least she hoped it was so. The Holy Mother was a strict and sometimes harsh goddess, seeking to improve her people through strife and hardship, nurturing them with a strong hand and making them proud and strong for their survival. She had little doubt that the Holy Mother was testing her brother, seeking to place hardship in his path, assessing him in her own way to see if he was deserving of her love and protection. In the eyes of the Holy Mother, the children had to first prove themselves before she granted them her gifts.
This worried her. Tarrin's physical ability was beyond reproach, but his character was not. She loved him, and always would, but she was not so blind as to not understand him. He was not the same young man who had received the brands so long ago. His trials and tribulations had changed him, had shut him away from the world, had made him very much the object of fear some made him to be. He was different now. Harder, colder, more ruthless, maybe even a little evil, and those were traits of which the Holy Mother would not approve. She would not grant him her gifts until he proved himself to her, and that meant that she would not accept him until he faced that part of himself, and conquered it.
Tarrin faced a trial of fire in the lands of the Holy Mother, a trial he would not understand, an ordeal he would not realize was being thrust upon him. The ways of the Holy Mother were subtle, even insidious, and she would come after him in every way she could to try to break him, to force him to struggle on, to make him grow and become better. Not until he proved to her that he was deserving of her respect would she relent,
and he would not be deserving of her respect until he faced and conquered the monster within.
Allia looked out over the ocean, an ocean she no longer feared, silently praying to both the Holy Mother and the Goddess of the Sorcerers that her dear brother be safe and well, that they watch over him and help him to be what they wished him to be. But for her, no matter who he was or what he became, he would always be her brother, and come what may, she would always love him.
Chapter 8
"Face what you have become," the words rushed over him, through him, strking him in the soul, forcing him to face the wrong he had done in his life.
"No, not again," Tarrin raged within the confines of the dream, raging against the thousands of eyeless shades placed there to torment him. "Not again! I will not fear a dream! You can't harm me, shadow!" he snapped at the face that had become burned into his memory, the pretty young girl with the chalky skin and black pits where her eyes had once been. The dream would not stop, it would not leave him in peace, it was the same thing over and over, night after night, day after day, whenever he went to sleep. Not again! Not again!
"We are yours," she said in that haunting voice, reaching out for him.
He started awake before those killing hands could reach him, gasping for air and sitting straight up, claws out and ready to repel the attack. Then he flopped back down on the leather floor of the tent, laid over sand, breathing heavily. It wouldn't leave him alone! Night after night, day after day, any time he closed his eyes and went to sleep, the dream came to him. It haunted him, infused him even while awake, had begun to consume him. The eyeless face was burned behind his eyes now, haunting him both in dreams and awake, giving him no peace.
He had to get out, to walk around. He left the tent Sarraya had made that evening and walked out into the frigid night air, breath misting before him as the sweat on his body threatened to freeze before it evaporated. The cold air was better than a slap in the face, causing his mind to sharpen from its bleary haze and focus on reality. Fifteen days now. Fifteen days without any real sleep, fifteen days of repetitive torture from the beautiful face with no eyes. He rubbed his face with his large paw, feeling the rough/smooth pad of his palm slide along his cheek, felt the clawtips digging into his scalp just below his ears. Fifteen days without good sleep. He felt so tired, so unfocused, but there was very little he could do. Sleep always ended in the dream. Attempts to meditate, as Allia taught him, ended just as quickly because of the face that stared back at him from the darkness of his mind.
Why? Why now? Why did the dreams have to come now? He needed to seek out this new way to use Sorcery, but the plague of the dream would not allow him to concentrate, would not give him the peace he needed to search himself for the answer. It was always there, always, never giving him peace, never leaving him alone, a constant burning gaze of accusation that made him shudder away from it. It had been making him edgier and edgier since the battle with the little kajat, fraying his nerves, making him even more short tempered. And in his position, being even more testy was not a good thing.
His fear angered him, and that anger festered inside. Why should he fear a dream? It was a shade, a phantom, something with voice and no substance, something that could not do him harm. The Cat did not understand this Human preoccupation, nearly obsession with the image of the girl, and it began to grow impatient, even agitated. The face was unbalancing his Human mind, and that put stress on the delicate balance between his Human and Cat parts, threatened the balance of his very sanity. The Cat took that anger and fed off of it, nurtured it, turned it into an ember bed of seething discontent.
He began growling low in his throat, and it turned into a furious roar. He snapped his paws down to his sides and stared up into the sky, up at all four moons, seeing the ghostly image of the girl reflected back in all of them.
"We are yours," he chiming voice rang in his ears, taunting him from within the ethereal mists of the dream, burning him with its accusation. "Face what you have become."
That had come from outside of him.
Whirling, claws out and eyes blazing from within with their greenish radiance, he turned on that voice, fully prepared to destroy it, to get rid of the face haunting him, to be free of the torture.
The face was there, taunting him, but it faded before him and left behind Sarraya, a very frightened Sarraya, who had backed up in the air and was making ready to flee from him. "T-Tarrin? Are you sleepwalking?"
Blinking, coming out of his threatening posture almost immediately, he stood up to his normal height and blew out his breath. It was Sarraya. Had he mistaken her voice for the dream?
He looked away from her. "No, I'm alright," he replied quietly.
"Are you sure? Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," he told her. "I, I can't sit here any more. I have to move."
"It's the middle of the night!"
"Then stay here," he told her in a curt tone. "I can't rest any more. I'm going on."
"Tarrin, you're not being reasonable."
"Like that matters to me," he growled, walking past her hovering form.
He retreived his sword and belt and put them on, then gave her only a single look before turning his back on her and starting to run to the northwest. He meant it. If she didn't want to come, she could stay there and sleep. She could catch up to him later. He wouldn't sit there and endure the dream, the face any more. It was better to move, to engage his mind and give it something else to do.
For almost the entire night he ran, running to keep himself occupied, running because he dreaded what would come when he stopped. He ran beyond hunger and thirst, ran in an almost perfect straight line, even stepping on a deadly imuni and never knowing it, the lethal reptile too stunned that a desert creature had the audacity to tread on it to retaliate before the offending foot was out of its reach. He ran on, running in a kind of mindless daze, running both towards and away from the object that drove his flight.
A beautiful face that had no eyes, whose gaze burned with towering accusation, revealed the dark blight within and forced him to face what he had become.
It was a revelation he could not accept, and so he fled from it. But there was no fleeing from a dream, no escape from that which came from within.
Pushed beyond his endurance, Tarrin tripped on a rock and tumbled to the ground, body exhausted from lack of sleep and the night's efforts. He lay there for a long moment, panting heavily, then he rolled over on his back. He could still see the face before him, but he was too tired to care now, worn out by his hard running. Panting, he lay there and let the cold air cool the sweat on his body, let the sensation of it drown out the pain inside, let physical feeling overwhelm internal emotion.
Didn't they understand that it wasn't his fault? When he killed, it was almost always because he was in a rage, and he had no control over himself then! It was a Were-cat's nature to suffer the rages, Triana herself had told him that! No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, he would never overcome that simple truth. It was a part of what defined his existence.
But even that wasn't an excuse. When he destroyed a portion of the gladitorial arena in Dala Yar Arak, that had been a conscious choice. He had deliberately done that, had intentionally destroyed it knowing full well that innocents were going to die. He had killed hundreds in order to simply irritate Shiika, to pin her down and give him time to get to her Palace unhindered. Those deaths were the ones that blighted him, had darkened his soul, had sent him beyond the point of redemption. It had been an act of evil, and it made him no better than the men he hated for the same behavior.
No matter what affected him, no matter how feral he was or how little others mattered, that simple blaring truth could never be forgiven. He hadn't been able to even forgive himself, though he had buried it inside, drowned it in the gravity and importance of his mission. But now, out here in the desert, there was nothing to stop it from returning, to rise up and remind him of his evil, to show him what he was now.
But it didn't have to paralyze him! He knew what he'd done, and he did feel remorse, but it couldn't matter now. Nothing mattered but the mission! The safety of Janette depended on him, the future of that little girl was now firmly in his paws, and he would let nothing stand in his way, not even himself.
In this instance, the ends justified the means.
That didn't make him feel much better, but it was a truth. It was a powerful truth. The deaths of a few thousand by his paw meant little in the face of the countless hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, who would die if he failed. But they mattered very little to him, even now, so he had to rationalize his devotion to the mission by seeing it in the terms of one life, one future, a life and future that he very much intended to protect. The rest of the world could sink into the Pit for all cared, it was Janette that mattered to him. After everything that had been done against him, to him, he had no more compassion for the world that had destroyed his future.
He sat up, seeing that the first hints of dawn had begun to appear on the eastern horizon, causing the Skybands at the horizon to take on that pinkish cast they showed just before the sun came up. He couldn't go on with the dreams. They were starting to affect him in very bad ways, even had started making him hallucinate. He simply couldn't face what he had done, could not bear the merciless eyeless gaze that haunted him. There was no hiding from the dream, but there was a way to draw its fangs.
But the price of that may be more than his humanity, maybe even more than his soul. To take the bite out of the dream, he would have to completely reject his humanity, to totally eradicate any feeling of pity or guilt inside. He could do it easily, all it would take would be to find a new balance between him and the Cat, where its survivalist outlook on life would overwhelm his human emotions. That would make him everything he did not want to be, a brutal reactionary being that existed for its own survival, at the cost of anything around it. There would be no mercy in that being, and what was worse, there would be no constraint. It would kill without reservation, without consideration, without hesitation.
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