The Questing Game

by James Galloway

  That idea had made him step back from her and take a walk, paw to his head. Had he really sunk that low? Actually, that was a question that he'd already answered. He had really become little better than a wild animal, because no matter how intelligent he was, it simply came down the to fact that he was ruled by his instincts. No matter how much he understood them, no matter how much trouble they caused, he could not go against them. He had become a slave to himself, a slave of his own bestial half. It was such a depressing thought. Every time he thought about it, he had always neatly evaded the simple truth, but he just couldn't do that anymore. He leaned on the rail and looked out over the sea, wind in his face, his eyes distant as he pondered what he had become.

  A hand on his shoulder made him jump. It was a strong hand, yet the pressure it applied was gentle and reassuring. Camara Tal's bronzed scent touched him quickly after that, and she leaned in close to him and looked at his profile. "Are you alright?" she asked with sincerity in her voice.

  "I guess so," he sighed after a moment. "I just wish sometimes things were different."

  "Dolanna told me about you, Tarrin. You've had a rough time of it. You have the right to be a little bitter. Just don't let it poison you."

  "It's more than that. All I ever wanted out of life after this happened to me was to be free. But I guess I never will be. Even if I am free, I'll never be free of myself. I'm a prisoner, Camara Tal, just as much a prisoner as I was when there was chain between my wrists. It's just that my prison doesn't have walls."

  "You hold your own key, Tarrin," she told him gently. "The only one that can free you is you."

  "I wish it was that easy," he said quietly.

  "Things we value should never be easy," she said. "Something gained easily isn't appreciated as it should be." She leaned closer to him. "Until then, at least you have a few good dependable people to help keep you company, until you can be free. I've been working to be part of those people, but I can go only so far. You have to meet me half way, Tarrin."

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head. Why wouldn't he do that? Mist had conquered her fear and had reached out to him, something she had never been able to do before. Camara Tal had gone out of her way to reach him, had put herself in personal danger just to make him feel more secure. She even had the personal approval of the Goddess, who had personally selected her to travel with him. He trusted in the Goddess, he did what she said, so why couldn't he accept the Amazon? He had faith in the Goddess, he should have trusted Camara Tal without question, yet he had not. He could not. Even now, part of him yearned to accept the Amazon, but he still couldn't bring himself to accept her trust. He couldn't feel her warmth or sincerity. All he could feel was the cold steel of the manacles on his wrists.

  "I'm sorry," he said abruptly, shaking her off and stepping back from her. "I, I can't. I trusted a human once before, and it nearly destroyed me. Not again. Never again."

  He retreated from her, quickly shifting into cat form and bounding away, confused and not a little frightened of what he was feeling.

  "Never is a long time, Tarrin Kael," Camara Tal said quietly in her own language, watching the cat race away. "A very long time indeed."

  Tarrin avoided Camara Tal for nearly two days after that, and to her credit, the Amazon had backed off to give him time to come to grips with what he'd discovered inside himself. It was a truth he'd known, something that he convinced himself was untrue, but knew in his heart that it was. Seeing Mist, seeing the awful condition of being truly feral could bring on someone, had frightened and saddened him. What sobered him now was that he saw the very same things he saw in Mist inside himself. Mist was more violent than he was, but in reality they were no different. They both had had their resistance to their instincts shattered by the actions of others, and now both of them were too weak-willed to overcome them. Tarrin had more control than Mist, was not quite so paranoid as she was, but they were sides of the same coin. Everything he pitied about Mist made him dejected with himself, because he felt powerless to change.

  He had tried before. He just couldn't do that to himself again. Trying made him short-tempered and out of sorts, heightened his feral fear to a fever pitch and made him an exceptionally unpleasant person to be around. He wasn't trying with Camara Tal, but her attempts to win his trust were even worse, because they were making him look inside himself. Trying to muster courage was much different than having dark truths bared for him to see.

  Sometimes it just all felt so hopeless. He was feral. He accepted that, understood it, because he couldn't change it. He wouldn't if he could. He'd lost more than his innocence to Jula and her collar, he had lost his security, his sense of personal freedom to her. That had caused him to harden to outsiders, to turn feral, that and the destruction he had wrought beneath the Cathedral of Karas so long ago. Triana was right. It was so easy to lose himself in the suspicious fear of ferality, to turn his back on struggling to retain his humanity and allow his instincts to govern his actions. It was a condition of comfortable apathy, where nobody mattered other than himself and those few people he trusted, where everyone else was conveniently grouped together into a large assortment of enemies and strangers. Triana had said that being feral was living in a world of them and us. In Mist's case, it was just her. She was so right. There was Tarrin and his small tight circle of friends, and then there was the rest of the world, which was out to get them. Being feral protected him. It protected both his sanity and his life, because in their dangerous quest they had no shortage of enemies and competitors. But when a new person came into his life, a person that Tarrin actually liked, it rose up and prevented him from accepting that person as a new friend. No matter how much he liked Phandebrass, Sarraya, and Camara Tal, they were still strangers, and he couldn't bring himself to drop his guard around them.

  The night was a surprisingly cool one for midsummer. The ocean breeze made the ship, which was anchored near a small island for the night, rock lazily in the small chop created by the breeze. Everyone but himself and two sentries were asleep, and Tarrin stood near the bow, staring at the small island in the light of four crescent moons and the sliver of light that was the Skybands. It was little more than a large rock jutting up from the sea, a rock with no vegetation that towered nearly a hundred spans into the air. They called it the Spire, and it was a nautical landmark for ships travelling towards Arak. It marked the boundary of Arkis and the desert, and it was a signpost for danger. The seas ahead were peppered with a series of rugged islands called the Sandshield's Tears, the tops of mountains that had been submerged into the sea to form islands. They weren't very dense, but those islands were refuges for pirates, concentrated living habitat for the deadly Sahaugin, the evil fish-men of the sea, and more than one wide ocean channel was mined with the submerged clefts and pinnacles of underwater mountains that were just below the surface, deadly reefs and obstacles that could kill an unwary ship. Pirates were known to lay in ambush in the safe sea lanes, as were many a school of Sahaugin, because ships had very few options when navigating the Sandshield's Tears. Most ships went around, but Dolanna had said that it was no longer an option. They had lost too much time, and passing through the Tears was the fastest way to get to Dala Yar Arak.

  His tail swishing back and forth, Tarrin leaned against the rail and looked out on the calm ocean. If only he could be so calm. Camara Tal's attempts to win over his trust still had him badly agitated, and about all he could do was worry at it. She frightened him, forced him to face himself when he'd rather not. He liked her and wanted to get to know her, but as soon as he found himself thinking of her, part of him objected violently to getting any closer to the Amazon than what was necessary. He wanted to be her friend, but he was afraid of her, afraid of her betraying him, afraid of letting her get too close.

  He was simply afraid.

  He'd spent all his young life learning how to deal with fear. His mother and father had taught him how to manage it in battle, to let it balance his courage so that he'd not
do something foolish and get himself killed. A wise warrior respected fear, knew when it was good to ignore his fear, and when it was good to obey it. A man without fear was a man already dead, his mother would say all the time. But now he had no more control over his fear. He was afraid of so many things now, things that seemed completely irrational to him, yet things that he couldn't deny made him very afraid. So afraid that he couldn't overcome his fear and do things the way he wanted to do them.

  Life is a battle of wills, kitten, the voice of the Goddess echoed its power through his mind. Just the sensation of her took hold of his soul and lifted it, allowing him to bask in the gentle warmth and power of her presence inside his mind. He reacted to that gentle touch immediately, standing up straight and closing his eyes to more strongly come into touch with it. Fear is but an aspect of your own will. It's the part of you that wants to keep you alive, and if you didn't notice, your will to live is powerful. So it makes your fear that much stronger.

  "It frightens me, Goddess," he complained. "I never thought I'd be afraid of being afraid. It seems silly."

  It's not silly, my kitten, she replied. Everyone lives in fear. Even when you were human, your mind was dominated with worries and anxieties, but they were drowned out by your chores and your training. You don't have anything to do to take your mind off of it, and it sits there and stares at you day after day. All you can do is reflect on it, and that makes it even worse.

  "I know. I tried to overcome it, but I, I can't. I'm too weak," he admitted guiltily.

  You're much stronger than you think, my dear kitten, she said lovingly. No weakling could have shouldered the burden of being turned Were, then taken on the extra weight of dealing with an out-of-control power, then discovered that half the world wants to kill you. You have tremendous strength, but most often the burdens carried within are heavier than any burden that can be placed on your shoulders. You have looked in the mirror, and the reflection staring back at you frightens you.

  Tarrin bowed his head.

  You have thought the same thing many times, my kitten, and every time you have found the answers you seek. This is no different. The strength to overcome your fear is there. All you have to do is call on it.

  "I've already tried, Goddess."

  There are many kinds of strength, sweet one, she told him in a cryptic manner that told him immediately she was giving him some kind of hint. Just as there are many kinds of power.

  "What does that mean?"

  When the time comes, you will know, she answered. You will know.

  And then the sense of her departed, feeling like it took a piece of soul with it as it left him.

  Leaving behind more questions than answers.

  The ship started through the dangerous passages through the Tears the next day. Everyone was tense and alert, and Renoit had posted double sentries in the crow's nest and through the rigging and deck, watching in ever direction. The islands of the Tears weren't packed together, but Tarrin could look in any direction and see a brownish protrusion rising up from the water. Renoit went slowly and carefully, for Dolanna had told him that he didn't usually go through the dangerous passages. He usually went south and around, which was considered the safest way to avoid the dangers. But they had to be in Dala Yar Arak in just a little over a month, when it would take them nearly twenty days to get there. It would have taken an extra ten to fifteen days to go around the Tears, so Renoit was left with no choice. If they were late, the Arakites would turn them away, and that would leave Tarrin and his group exposed in the city.

  Tarrin stood with Allia near the bow, searching the waters ahead of them cautiously. Camara Tal was standing on the steering deck, he could feel her eyes on his back. He made it his business to know where she was at all times. Because he was confused and out of sorts, that put him in the hands of his sister. She could soothe him in ways nobody else on the ship could, not even Dolanna, and it was her gentle, reassuring presence that helped him keep a focus on things. Her calming effect was nothing like the total sense of peace he felt when he was around Janette, but it was enough for him.

  They watched an island slide by to their right in relative silence. The stone of the island was brownish and very rugged, as if the rock was subjected to powerful surf that stopped any vegetation from growing. Sea birds flocked around the islands, circling them and using them for nests, occasionally filling the sky with wings as the birds flocked around a school of fish in the water. Tarrin shielded his eyes from the bright sun, feeling the heat that blew in from the north, a heat that carried a sandy dry quality that told him it came off the desert. The wind was hotter than the sun, but Tarrin didn't much mind heat. It was an extension of his cat half, for cats were well built to tolerate heat. Not even his black fur made him feel very uncomfortable in the summer sun.

  "What about that right there?" Tarrin asked, pointing out a white blotch past the island. They were looking for sails, and most sails were light colored. Because canvas and sailcloth were too expensive to dye.

  "It's not a wind-cloth," she replied in Selani. Since there was no Selani word for sail, she had to dance a bit with the language to come up with a good description. "It's a white patch of stone in the side of an island. There is a ship over there, but it's got its back to us, and its wind-cloths are rolled up," she noted, pointing a little left of the white stone Tarrin saw.

  "Ship ho!" the lookout above cried. "Ship five points off the port bow!"

  Both of them turned and moved to the port side, and Allia shaded her eyes and peered towards another island. "It's got a hole in its side," she reported. "It's wrecked. The wind-cloths are intact. It couldn't have happened very long ago."

  "What do you see, desert flower?" Renoit's voice boomed over the deck.

  "It is a wreck, Renoit. The ship has a hole in its side, and it rests against a rock wall," Allia shouted back. "It still has sails. It could not have been wrecked very long."

  "Can you see a flag?"

  "A hawk in front of a sun," she answered after a moment.

  "A Torian ship," Tarrin identified it.

  "Any movement?"

  "No, it is derelict," she shouted back. "And we should leave it be!"

  "Why is that, desert flower?"

  "A common trick of a hunter is to distract the prey," she told him. "If that ship were truly abandoned, someone would have come and stripped it by now. There are barrels and other things still lashed to the deck."

  "Wise, my desert flower, yes! In these dangerous waters, we must look after ourselves, yes! We will give the ship a wide berth!"

  Renoit ordered the sails furled, and they sat dead in the water for nearly an hour as Renoit pored over the charts he had of the Tears to find a path around the potential danger. Dolanna joined them at the bow, taking Tarrin's hand and looking out over the water with them. "You should be in lesson, Allia," she chided, "but I can understand your need to be on deck."

  "How long will it take us to get through here?" Tarrin asked.

  "Two or three days," she replied. "You know, Tarrin, Camara Tal is getting irritated with you."

  "Let her," he grunted.

  "She wishes to continue your instruction in Amazon."

  "She can wait."

  "I should feel slighted, dear one," she said with a slight smile. "You never asked to learn my language."

  "I've never heard you even use it before, Dolanna. I don't think I even know what language it is."

  She chuckled wryly. "Then I guess the fault is my own. I am from Sharadar, and we speak Sharadi. Because of the size and importance of Sharadar on the southern continent, it is a common language among all the southern kingdoms. If you can speak Sharadi, you can communicate with nearly anyone south of the equator."

  "Are you offering?" he asked.

  "I will do nearly anything to get you into lessons, my dear one," she said with a light smile.

  "Don't you know enough languages, brother?" Allia asked in Selani.

  "Not until there are non
e left to learn," he replied in Sulasian. "How long do you think it will take?"

  "I have seen you learn language, dear one," Dolanna smiled. "It will not take you very long. I do not understand how you can forget things you learn, yet when it involves a language, you show the same mental faculties as Keritanima. Probably even more so."

  "I guess it's a knack," he shrugged.

  "It is quite a knack," she smiled. "You are the only person I have ever seen to learn two languages in a matter of months rather than years."

  "It wasn't that hard," he replied. "I learned Selani, then we found out that the other language was very similar to it. That made it easier for all of us."

  "Keritanima will kill you if you do not tell her how you taught yourself the other language with magic, Dolanna," Allia told her. "We all thought that it was impossible."

  "I did not teach myself the language," she smiled. "I merely used magic to ensure I did not forget the meaning of the words."

  "But Sorcerers cannot use magic on themselves."

  "A Sorcerer cannot. A katzh-dashi can, because we can use minor abilities granted to us by the Goddess. What I used was a priest spell, not a weave. A very simple spell of retention that any neonate katzh-dashi is taught after the Initiate."

  Tarrin gaped at her. "I thought katzh-dashi could only use ceremonial priest magic!"

  "That is what you were told. In truth, a katzh-dashi can utilize any priest prayer that a priest can perform without a medallion. That is the limit of our access. Because of the sensitive position of the katzh-dashi, we do not advertise the fact that we can use priest magic. It would raise certain uncomfortable questions from the more learned. Lest you forget, young one, katzh-dashi are the priests of the Goddess. She cannot grant us true priest powers, but she can bestow on us the same basic minor powers that any starting acolyte receives from his god. If you would come to the lessons, dear one, you would know that already."