Honor and Blood

by James Galloway

  "Aye, Keeper," he replied in a gravelly voice. "Her Majesty can't go about without proper escort."

  "You don't need to inflate her ego any more than it already is, Admiral," Camara Tal scoffed. "She's been strutting around here like she owns the place."

  "Give me two years, and I will," Keritanima teased.

  "And it'll be a cold day in all nine hells when that happens," the Keeper retorted. "When will you be leaving?"

  "We should be leaving now, the tide is about to turn," the admiral announced. "But the tides will be going out for another three hours. We have until then."

  "That should be enough time," Keritanima assured him.

  "It's going to take them that long to move your things," Dar teased.

  "I hope they have enough room for us," Allia mused.

  "Will all of you stop picking on me?" Keritanima snapped waspishly. "So I'm a materialistic little spoiled monarch! There, are you happy now?"

  "Are we happy, Dar?" Allia asked mildly.

  "Yes, I do believe we are," he replied with a straight face.

  Tarrin smiled. It wasn't often that Allia participated in humor. Most thought her cold, but they didn't understand her. She had a rich sense of humor, but her honor told her when it was alright to enjoy humor, and when it was not. That made her seem aloof to most, for it was unseemly to laugh in front of strangers. Among Selani, that was disrespectful. But here, now, she was among friends, so it was perfectly acceptable for her to pick on her sister a little bit.

  "If you do only have three hours, then it would be best if you left as soon as we're done," the Keeper prompted.

  "Are you trying to get rid of us, Keeper?" Keritanima challenged.

  "Yes," Triana said flatly. "You have serious business to attend to, Wikuni. Don't treat it like a game. Alot rides on this, and the Keeper is more than right to be pushing you. She understands the penalty if you fail."

  That took the wind right out of Keritanima. She knew better than to argue with Triana. Everyone knew better.

  "When we finish eating, you leave," she announced. "Anyone who wants to argue about it can come to me."

  "Uh, no thanks, Triana," Keritanima said blandly. "I'd like to keep my tail on my butt, where it belongs."

  Her tone made Janette snort, and then burst out into helpless laughter, spewing a mouthful of wine all over her plate.

  "She strikes as such an eloquent queen, doesn't she?" Miranda said with a cheeky grin.

  "If anything, that was a good metaphor," Thean chuckled in reply.

  Though Tarrin enjoyed the meal, he sighed quite a bit. Now their departure was set in stone. Anything Triana said was set in stone. He knew he had to go, but he was leaving behind too much to make him look forward to it. He'd talk to his mate and daughters, and even see them, but it wouldn't be the same. Not without him being there, to have Jasana in his lap, hold Jesmind in his arms, be there with an understanding shoulder for Jula.

  The time went by much too quickly to suit him, until Triana stood up and said in no uncertain terms that the meal was over. She told all of them to go back to their rooms and make sure they didn't leave anything behind, then meet by the west gate of the fence in ten minutes. She was very graphic about how unhappy she'd be if she had to come looking for anyone, so they were all quite motivated to go look and then meet at the gate as quickly as they could. When that was done, when Phandebrass, who was the last to arrive, ran to the gate holding his robes up to keep them from tangling his legs, exposing a pair of bony knees, they filed down to the harbor in a series of carriages. Tarrin held Jesmind's paw the entire time, enjoying what little time they had left, had Jasana on his lap and Jula on his other side. It seemed likt they no sooner than got into the carriage than it stopped, and they piled out onto a wooden wharf, with a very large, grand Wikuni clipper moored to it. They seemed to be loading the last of the supplies, securing barrels on deck with ropes, and the gangplank was immediately lowered when Keritanima appeared stepping out of a carriage.

  They stood on the dock beside the clipper and said their goodbyes. Sarraya was all weepy when she hugged Tarrin's neck, demanding that he find some way to talk to her. He told her to go find a shaeram, and he promised to talk to her when he could. He hugged his little mother goodbye, and accepted warm farewells from Tomas and Janette. He kissed his mother on the cheek and shook his father's hand, then hugged Jenna and told her to take good care of Jula. He didn't shake the Keeper's hand, but he didn't glare at her, either. He was still angry with her, but he could be civil in this situation. He gave his bond-mother a strong hug and a kiss, and endured a long moment of suggestions and direct threats of what she'd do to him if he got himself killed. He then said goodbye to all the other Were-cats one at a time, but thought there was going to be a fight when Rahnee slapped aside his paw, grabbed him by the neck, then gave him a very passionate kiss right on the lips. He pulled away from her in surprise, ready to pull Jesmind off of her, but Jesmind did nothing but watch on with a mysterious look on her face.

  Then, as he knew he must, he turned and faced Jesmind. She had tears in her eyes, and she hugged him fiercely, drawing blood from his back with her claws. "I want you to talk to me every day," she whispered fiercely, then she kissed him with all the emotion she was feeling at that moment. "Every day. I'll go crazy if I don't know you're alright."

  "Every day," he promised. Then he reached down and picked up Jasana, hugging her tightly. "I want you to be good for your mother," he told her. "Don't give her any more gray hair."

  "I'll try not to, Papa," she said diplomatically, sniffling. "Come home soon, alright?"

  "As soon as I can," he promised, handing her to Jesmind. Then he turned to Jula, and to her surprise, embraced her. "Listen to Jenna, daughter," he commanded. "And listen to Jesmind. While I'm gone, she speaks with my voice. Obey her like she was your mother."

  "I will," she said with a sad smile. "Come home soon. Father."

  He smiled and gave her a kiss on the cheek, then looked at the ship. It was grand, clean, luxuriant, everything a ship had to be to carry the monarch of Wikuna. It woudl be his home for the next month, and then on another ship for the journey to find the Firestaff. Try as he might, he couldn't deny that the time had come. It was time to go.

  Strange, how things turned out. Before reaching Aldreth, he wouldn't have cared to go, but now he did. Now he had a mate and two daughters waiting for him to come back. Now, he had a family. So much had changed in his life. He had conquered his ferality. He had discovered a daughter he never knew he had, and rediscovered a mate he thought he'd lost. He'd found newfound strength inside him, found new friends, and protected his Goddess from great harm. Too much.

  He looked back at them. They were all there, but there were some missing faces. Ariana, for one. And Var and Denai. He hadn't so much as seen them during the whole time at Suld, and he hoped for a moment that they were alright. Then again, odds were, Denai was already pregnant, the way those two carried on, and had had to return home. A Selani would not fight pregnant, and the woman's husband also would not fight to protect the interests of the child. Three of the five Cambisi weren't there, and Ulger hadn't come down to see them off.

  And there was no Faalken.

  Sighing, he kissed his mate goodbye one more time, then turned to follow Keritanima and Allia as they started for the gangplank.

  One more thing, kitten, the voice of the Goddess reached him. I want you to give the Book of Ages to Jenna. It belongs to her now.

  Without batting an eye, he paced back over to his sister and parents. "Jenna, you take this," he said, taking the book out of the elsewhere and then handing it to her. "Guard it, sister. It holds many secrets we don't want falling into the wrong hands."

  Jenna looked reverently at the book, then cradled it to her breast. "With my life, brother," she assured him with a serious look. "With my life."

  "Then it's in good hands," he smiled. "Be good," he told his parents, kissing his mother on the cheek one more time
, then hugging his father. "I'll keep Jenna up to date on what's going on," he told them. "So you won't be out of touch."

  "Be careful, my son," Eron said seriously.

  "Come back to us, Tarrin," Elke pleaded.

  "If I have to swim back," he assured her. Keritanima shouted at him that he was keeping them at the dock, so he turned and padded away from friends, family, and people he did not want to leave. Jesmind made sure to pull away, step back so she wouldn't try to stop him, and part of him wanted her to do it. He stepped onto the gangplank, and it was pulled as soon as his feet were off of it, on the deck. Wikuni sailors moved quickly and efficiently, slipping the hawsers, and the grand ship immediately began to be pulled away from the quay, pulled out in the direction of the open sea.

  Tarrin stood on the sterncastle with his companions, and they all looked back to their friends on the dock, waving to them and hearing them wish them safe journey. But Tarrin's eyes saw no one but his mate and his daughters, standing at the back of the group, his mate having trouble looking in his direction. When she did, he saw her tears, and that almost made him jump over the rail and swim back to her. But he couldn't do that, and he knew he couldn't.

  Rewards, the Goddess said. There would be rewards. He knew of his reward now, and it stood on that dock watching him leave. All the reward he ever wanted was his mate and his daughters. His family. There could be no greater reward than that.

  But they were behind him now. He turned slowly, deliberately, and looked over the length of the ship, out over the open ocean. It was all going to happen out there. Everything that he'd been doing for the last two years was upon him, and the end of his quest now had a solid, definable conclusion. Now he wasn't chasing after some misty dream, he was pursuing the very object the Goddess needed him to find. He would find it, he would find it and defend it, keep it out of reach of those who wanted it until the appointed day came and gone, and it posed no more threat. He would not fail the Goddess.

  He would get his reward.

  Epilogue

  The icy plains of the tundra generated its own weather, but that day was almost warm, blowing winds not carrying the bite of the arctic ice upon them as they whipped across the rolling terrain of moss, lichen, and in some patches, sturdy grass. Caribou and wolves and white-furred foxes skulked about the landscape, as did lemmings and small biting insects, eking out a meager existence in the remote, barren, harsh landscape.

  But they had all fled from one particular area, an area now inhabited by man. Many humans, as well as many Goblinoids, all gathered around a strange thing that all the wildlife avoided, a thing that radiated a comforting heat, but also a sense of darkness, of evil, that distressed the wildlife enough to avoid it despite its comforting warmth. It was a pyramid made of black stone, a strange building nearly five hundred spans high and a longspan long at any one side's base. It had been there for thousands of years, a forgotten monument built in a barren tundra that had not known the footstep of man in a thousand years.

  But now they had returned, preying on the caribou and scaring the wolves away, forcing the wildlife to flee from the region. They had began to arrive during the harsh winter, a winter that was eight months of the year's ten, bundled in layers of fur to protect against the lethal cold. More and more arrived as the winter thawed into spring, and now as summer had begun to set into the land, the men and Goblinoids had stopped coming. They did nothing, only camped around the pyramid, as if they were waiting for something.

  Within the pyramid, there was nothing but darkness. A single corridor led from the north face into its depths, a bleak passage that swallowed the light of the torches lining the walls, making each torch seem as a small star in the endless black sky. At the center of the pyramid was a massive chamber whose dimensions were concealed by the blackness within, with only a dais and several writing tables upon it really easy to make out.

  Those, and the statue.

  It stood at the center of the platform, which had steps on all four sides leading to the floor some thirty spans down, a statue made of basalt or some other black rock, a statue of a human-like figure in robes, its arms crossed before it and a stern look on its face. It was all inky blackness, except for its eyes. Eyes that glowed with a pulsating white radiance.

  They have failed me, a voice emanated from the statue, directed to a tall, thin woman standing before it, a woman with black hair and dark, glittering eyes. But it is of no moment. Only the failure of Shaz'beka disappoints me. I expected more from her.

  "She nearly won for you, Master," the woman replied in a very respectful manner. "If not for the Were-cat, she would have broken them."

  Always the Were-cat, the voice spat. He is a thorn in my side. A thorn it now falls upon you to remove for me, Lyselle.

  "As you command, my Master," the woman said with a bow of her head. "I have a plan."

  Explain.

  "Yes, my Master. The Were-cat is sui'kun. I researched them, and you must agree that we have nothing that can fight one such as that directly.

  I will grant that.

  "Thank you, my Master. But despite his power, he does have weaknesses.

  You believe to be able to exploit them?

  "Yes, my Master. They didn't find all our spies when they found out Amelyn. I have eyes in the Tower, and they tell me much."

  She looked up at the statue. "Master, the Were-cat may have the power, but he will not use it against us if it threatens his own."

  His ties do run deeply, but his family is as fearsome as he. Do you believe you can get to them where others have failed? The ones sent to eliminate Jula failed miserably.

  "I believe we can this time, Master. If things go as I plan, the Were-cat will recover the Firestaff, and then he will hand it over to us, and do it willingly."

  Her dark eyes glittered momentarily. "One like that, he would pay anything to get back his children."

  Indeed. You may proceed with your plan, Lyselle. Do not fail me.

  "I will not, my Master," the woman said, bowing her head once again, and then leaving the statue, going down one of the sets of steps. Leaving the statue to its own, so it could ponder, plan, plot, and dream of a bright future.

  A future of dominance.