by Fel
Tarrin digested that during the dark hours, wondering at the why of it. Why could Sorcerers block a Wizard's attempt to cast a spell? And why didn't Dolanna do that to the Wizard when they were fighting? How did Priests call on the Gods for their magic? Could anyone? The book didn't say. What other place did Wizards get their magic, and how did they learn of the creatures from beyond that they could summon up into the world? And just what did the Druids do? Why could only Sorcerers create Illusions? Why could Wizards only summon creatures from beyond? Just what magic did the Druids draw on for their power?
Many questions, questions that he doubted the book was going to answer.
The wiry man, Jarax, came out of a tent and sat near him by the fire. He was a thin man, seemingly too thin to wear the heavy armor, with wiry muscles and a long, narrow face. His black hair was short and slicked back off his face, and he had a scraggly beard and moustache. "I see I'm not the only one that can't sleep," he said.
Tarrin had not talked to any of these men, and he was a bit afraid to do so. They knew what he was, and it was their companions, their friends, that the female killed in her escape. He was almost certain that most of them probably blamed him in some way for what had happened. Besides, he was a bit nervous about talking to strangers. He couldn't see past his own transformation in order to communicate with people he didn't know, so self-conscious was he about what had happened to himself. Tarrin just nodded vaguely, hoping the man would just sit down and be quiet. He wasn't sure if the man was talking out of simple courtesy, or friendliness, or out of fear of him. All in all, he rather preferred it if there was no talk at all.
"What are you reading?" he asked politely.
"A book on magic," Tarrin replied quietly.
"Don't think I ever read that," he mused, leaning back against a log. "I prefer stories and poetry myself." Tarrin went back to his book, and after a few moments, the man spoke again. "Is that what you always read?" he asked curiously.
"Do you mind?" he asked. "I'm trying to understand this."
"Sorry," he said a bit tartly, leaning back against the log again. Tarrin looked at the book, not really reading it, turning a page every few minutes. It was worth it to avoid talking. "Could I interest you in a game of stones?" the man asked.
Tarrin snarled at him, his ears laying back slightly. The man gave him a startled look, then hastily stood up. "I think you'd rather be alone," he said, stating the obvious. Then he turned and walked away.
Tarrin put the book down, putting his palm to his forehead. Where did that come from? It wasn't like him to react like that, but the man had irritated him. What scared him was that it came without thought, and he reacted on it just as mindlessly. Were the instincts changing him so much? Like what had happened earlier, with the mage. He'd torn the man apart, literally, and he had reveled in it for one horrifying moment. It wasn't a perverse joy, it more like a deep satisfaction that came with killing an enemy. But it frightened him just the same. He was changing, he knew it, he could feel it. And there was nothing he could do about it. He could only hope that he could temper it. So that there would be some part of Tarrin left once the mental alterations were complete.
"Would you like to talk about it?" asked a voice. It was Tiella. She sat down beside him on the log, fearlessly taking his hand-paw into her hand and stroking it reassuringly. That simple act was devastating in its simplicity, and he was about to surrender completely to her and let her scratch him behind the ears. Tiella turned his hand up and looked at his palm, with its large, tough pad and the smaller pads on his fingertips, marvelling at the paw-like qualities of his hand, which truly made it a hybrid of the two, and not one or the other.
"I'm...doing things, Tiella," he said uncertainly. "I'm not thinking about them...it's like I can't think about them. They just happen, and I'm afraid of it."
"Why?" she asked.
Tarrin blinked and looked at her. "Why? Because it's not what I would do," he told her.
"That's to be expected, Tarrin. This," she said, holding up his hand-paw, "this is not what you were a few days ago. It's different now. You have to let yourself get used to it, but that doesn't have to mean that you have to be afraid of it."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when something like that happens, ask yourself why it happened," she told him. "What happened?"
"That man kept talking to me, and I wanted to be left alone," he said, shuddering a bit. "So I snarled at him."
"Alright, now why did it happen?" she asked.
"I don't know, because he was irritating me, I guess," he said.
"No," she said. "That's what you think happened," she said. "What about the other mind in there? Why did it do it?"
"To make him leave me alone," he floundered.
"No," she said again. "Because you wouldn't do anything about it," she told him. "It let you try first. When you either gave up or failed, it decided to do something about it. And it worked."
Tarrin stared at her for quite a while. It was a bit crazy, but in its own way, it was perfectly logical. The Cat in him had its own way of doing things, that was true...but it was also true that that didn't happen until after then man repeatedly bothered him. Had the Cat sensed his human desires, and acted upon them? If that were so, then didn't that put the Cat under his control as much as it put him under its control?
"You're going to have to start asking yourself why you do the things you do," she told him. "There has to be reasons for every single thing. And if you can understand those reasons, well, then maybe it won't be so scary. So the next time it happens, don't be afraid of it. Explore it, try to understand it. Experience it. If you try to just ignore it, then you'll never be able to stop it."
He chuckled ruefully. "Tiella, I don't think you know how much better I feel now," he said sincerely. "I think you may be right. Dolanna told me not to ignore what I was feeling and the instincts in my head, but if she'd have said it the same way you just did, I don't think I'd have been afraid. Well, I'm still going to be afraid, but I'll try to understand the why of what I do as well as the what. There has to be reasons the Cat does the things it does. It's not a creature of whim."
"That's where you're messing up, Tarrin," she told him. "Don't keep thinking about it as it and you. There is no it and you. It's just you. What you have in here," she said, tapping his forehead, "it's a part of you. If you treat it like something that's not, then it's going to seem like it's not, and that's not good for you. You may call it the Cat, or the instincts, or the other mind, but it's not. It's just a different part of you, of your own mind. It's not what the Cat does, it's what you do."
He gave her a steady look, and he could see her blush slightly. Tiella was usually a quiet girl, headstrong, but talking wasn't her way. He knew she was smart, but she'd just laid out what he was feeling, and solutions to those problems, like it was something that even a child would have realized. He looked at her with a budding new respect. He reached up and put his paw on her cheek, his huge paw swallowing up half her face, and she smiled at him and put her hand against his paw. "That tickles," she giggled. "That pad is soft and rough at the same time, and the fur on your fingers is smooth. Now, it's my turn," she said, holding out a hand imperiously. Tarrin seemed to understand what she wanted. Without much thought, he brought his tail around and placed it into her waiting hand. She grabbed hold of it, feeling the thickness of it, then probed the fur with her fingers meticulously. He felt her fingertip touch the skin under the fur, then she grabbed it both hands and bent it. She bent it until it was touching itself, and kept doing it until he sucked in his breath. "Sorry," she apologized. "Is the fur hot?"
"I don't think so," he replied. "It just seems normal."
"What's it like, having the tail?"
"Different. Interesting," he replied. "It does its own thing most of the time, but it does help with balance, and it helps me run faster. It's longer than my legs, so I have to keep it off the ground, but that's not too hard. The muscles that move it
are pretty strong."
"How does it help you run?"
"It's like a counterbalance," he told her. "I can lean farther down, and that lets me run faster. I don't fall over because of the weight pushing out behind me. It seems to just know when and where to move to keep me balanced too. It's almost eerie."
She yawned. "I think I'll go back to bed," she told him. "Think about what I said, Tarrin. And try to get some sleep. You're starting to get circles under your eyes."
She slipped back into the tent she shared with Dolanna, leaving Tarrin to his own thoughts. She had come very, very close to the mark, he realized. He did tend to think of the Cat as an invader, an alien, something that was not him taking up residence in his mind. That wasn't true. Though it hadn't been there before, it was there now, and it was as much a part of him as his right arm. Perhaps the Cat considered him to be much the same, an usurper out to overthrow it. It did things, things that happend without his rational thought, but that was only logical. They were instinctive reactions, response to stimulus, reflexes. They happened first because he didn't have to think about them. Analyzing his actions also was very sensible. If he could identify what was making him do things, and why they were happening, he would come into a greater understanding about himself, and that would make it easier when it was necessary for him to prevent that particular thing from happening again, or to minimize its effect if it was something either unavoidable or uncontrollable.
It wouldn't be easy. He knew that. It may be instincts and impulses, but it carried with it a greater intelligence that made what he called the Cat a very complex creature. But it was a start. And that was something that he hadn't had when they left Torrian yesterday. It did make him afraid, but at least now he felt that there was something that he could do in order to make peace inside himself.
After a suitable gawk at Skeleton Rock and a hot breakfast, the group was off again, riding hard in the cloudy morning. Captain Daran kept two men in the lead at all times, scouting out the conditions ahead as two men drifted behind them to ensure there were no followers. They passed one caravan train in the morning, and a brief stop to talk to them told them that the way ahead was all but deserted, and that they were making better time than they thought. At the pace they were going, they would reach Marta's Ford before noon tomorrow.
Tarrin spent the riding thinking about what Tiella had said to him, and thinking about Dolanna's instruction that morning, in concentration exercises. They were a bit like the aiming exercise that his father taught him, about emptying the mind of all thought and concentrating all of your attention onto a single thing, ignoring everything else. In archery, that one thing was the target. Dolanna was teaching him to center himself on himself. She told him that that was the first step to using Sorcery, to look within, and then without, then draw what was out within, then use what was within to change what was without. It sounded a bit confusing, but he was certain that it would make sense eventually. He couldn't do it riding the horse as hard as he was, but he could think about how what Dolanna had told him would fit in with the insights that Tiella had revealed to him early that morning.
They stopped for lunch near a small river which they had just forded. Lunch was going to be a simple affair of bread and cheese and some dried fruit, but Tarrin was more thankful for the time out of the saddle. His back didn't agree with all the bouncing around. He put his paws on his back and stretched it, bending backwards so deeply that his head nearly brushed the ground. His backbone was different now, he knew, with more bones in it that were a bit smaller, which let him bend like that. Playing around, he put one paw on the ground and walked over himself, bringing his legs up and over until he was balanced on that one paw perfectly. He'd never considered that he would inherit the cat's agility as well as the fur. Such a move was no strain on him at all to maintain. He bent his elbow and brought his nose down to tickle the grass, then pushed himself back out, then swung down into a hunched, all-fours position much akin to a cat sitting. "Having fun?" Walten asked him as he walked by.
"Just testing something," he replied. He sprang straight up, high into the air, then tucked in and began to roll backwards. The sky and ground traded places wildly, but Tarrin just knew exactly where the ground was, and he also just knew precisely how he was oriented to the ground at all times. He snapped out his arms, and his paws made perfect contact with the grass. He arched back and pushed off with his arms, coming to a perfect stop, bent like a bow, at a very shallow angle to the ground, using raw strength to keep from toppling over. It was incredible, and he wondered at it for long moments as he generally just jumped around, performing acrobatic feats that would had made the most grizzled veteran performer gawk.
"Impressive," Dolanna remarked. "Now, if you are done playing, we need to eat and move on."
"Sorry," he said, sitting down beside the Sorceress as Faalken grinned at him. "What?"
"You should tour," he said with a laugh. "Tarrin Kael, acrobat extraordinaire. I can see you pack them in."
"Oh, please," Tarrin scoffed.
"We can get you one of those tight-fitting costumes," he went on.
Jarax laughed, and Tarrin scowled at the knight.
"Dolanna can open for you, doing a magic act with things stuffed up her sleeves and ribbons hidden in her hair."
"That will do," Dolanna said frostily.
Faalken gave Dolanna an imupdent grin, then took a drink of water innocently.
"You can be the strongman," Tarrin told him with a calm voice. "Faalken, the half-brained strongman, so muscular because his body didn't want to waste the effort on his mind, so dumb we don't even pay him. I figure that should attract the baser audience."
Faalken gave him a look, then laughed jovially. "I guess I deserved that," he chuckled.
"You deserved worse," Dolanna said in an icy voice.
"Your dinner is getting warm," Faalken told her with a wink.
They camped that night in a clearing well off the road, and it was another sleepless night for Tarrin as the dreams invaded his mind. He awoke the next morning sandy-eyed and feeling like his head was stuffed in wool. Dolanna put them out on a pace even harder than the day before, and it wasn't long until the first farms surrounding Marta's Ford were laid out to the sides of the Skeleton Road
. Dolanna slowed them to a walk, and as Walten and Tiella listened to the wiry Jarax tell some old tale, Tarrin rode up to Dolanna and listened as she talked with the captain of Arren's men and Faalken.
"We intend to take ship here, Daran, and there are too many of your men to make it feasible," she told the captain.
"I intend to see you to Suld, Mistress Dolanna," he said adamantly. "Arren ordered me to escort you through the front door of the Tower, and I mean to do just that. I'll bring five men with you."
"That is still too many. We have to board the horses."
"Four."
"Three," Faalken said. "That's about all the room that we'll have."
"Three then," he said. "Jarax and Orgal."
"Good choices," Faalken agreed.
"Jarax?" Tarrin asked. "Why?"
"There's more to worth than a man's arm, Tarrin," Daran told him. "Jarax is a good fighter, but he's also a talkative man that keeps the villagers entertained, and keeps their mind off what's going on. That makes him more than worth it."
Tarrin hadn't considered that. And it made sense.
"Orgal is the monster of a man that usually rides rear guard," Daran told Dolanna. "He's quiet and seems slower than he is, and he's got a good eye. Not much gets past him."
"Then arrange your packs so that your gear is with us," she said. "But I do not want any more than one extra pack animal in our train. Space is becoming a problem."
"I'll see to it, Mistress Dolanna," Daran said.
"Tarrin, go back to Tiella and Walten for a time," Dolanna told him. "And pull up your hood."
"Yes ma'am," he said, pulling back and letting the knight and Sorceress speak privately. He didn't even try to ea
vesdrop on them, which would have been easy because of his keen hearing. He settled the hood over his ears carefully, patting on it to feel if they were bulging, then joined the trio in the middle of the column.
Jarax was spinning a tale about history, about the civil war that had raged between Draconia and Tykarthia for the last seven hundred years. They were the two kingdoms north of Sulasia, which had once been one kingdom, and had fought a war so bloody for so long that victory wasn't even a goal any more. They lived only to completely eradicate the other off the face of Sennadar. "So," Jarax was saying, "the western nobles of Draconia were getting more and more displeased with King Dawon. They considered the weighted tithe system the king used to be unfair, seeing as how the western nobles were paying nearly four times as much as the eastern ones. The nobles of the east, led by the crafty Earl Winold, kept flattering the king with gifts and very carefully arranged plots to continue to discredit the western nobles and keep them out of the king's favor. Winold, you see, hated Duke Tykan with a passion, and he considered the more moderate practices going on in the western parts of the kingdom to be almost sacreligious. Winold was a man that would have banned the use of fire if the thought he could get away with it. Some men are like that.
