The Questing Game

by James Galloway

  There was no hiding anything now.

  Tarrin stepped into Renoit's personal tent with Jula thrown over his shoulder. He had walked through most of the city to get there, and everyone had stopped to look at him. Some of the more adventurous had followed him a while, and a few had followed him all the way to the circus. He didn't pay them all that much attention. They were harmless, and there was nothing he could do about them. They could tell by looking at him that he'd been in a fight, and the expression on his face was enough to get everyone out of his way.

  The walk had been good for him. The relative silence allowed him to think, to think about what the Goddess said to him, and what he felt afterward. He had become so angry with what he was, and he hadn't even noticed it. But now his eyes were open, open to the truth. It wouldn't be easy to change, but if he could forgive Jula, then just about anything was possible. He just had to start over again, to learn how to control himself. That was the key. If he could just control his impulses, take his life back from the Cat and its instincts, which dominated him, then everything would be alright. He even felt that maybe he could become more open with strangers. It certainly wouldn't happen overnight, but if taking Jula had taught him anything, it was that nothing was as set in stone as he first believed. It wasn't going to be easy. Even now, he had to surpress the urge to throttle the woman. He was still very angry with her. He could forgive the past, but he wasn't about to forget it, and what had happened in the past was still enough to make him angry. He forgave, but the Cat did not.

  Dolanna and Camara Tal were in the tent when he entered. They looked at him in surprise, staring at the obvious Were-cat that was draped over his shoulder with shock, noting his emotionless expression. When he threw her down, not gently, onto the canvas floor of the tent, Dolanna immediately stood up and gasped. "Goddess! Tarrin, where did you find her? And what in the moons happened? Did you bite her?"

  "I didn't bite her," Tarrin replied.

  "Who is this woman, cub?" Camara Tal asked.

  "Jula."

  "Jula? She's still alive? Why didn't you kill her?"

  "I very nearly did," he replied in a low growl, then he related to them the tale of his tracking her down, and the fight. He didn't say anything about the Goddess. That seemed too personal to share with them. "But at the end, I realized that I didn't have to kill her. I couldn't punish her any more than she's already been punished. Besides, she was one of them. If I can set her mind straight, she can tell us everything about the Black Network we need to know to neutralize them."

  "And what stops her from turning on us the first chance?" Camara Tal asked.

  "This," he replied levelly, holding up his paw. "I have no idea how it happened, but she's Were now. That makes her my daughter, since I was the one who found her. I have to teach her the laws of Fae-da'Nar."

  "Tarrin, that's not going to keep her from betraying us."

  "It will when she realizes that turning her back on me is going to kill her," he said bluntly. "I took her bond. She can't hide from me. And she won't be stupid enough to think that she'll be safe if she tries to run." He looked at Dolanna. "That's why I brought her here, Dolanna. I need you to show me how to cure her insanity."

  Dolanna laughed ruefully. "Dear one, do not confuse me with a miracle worker," she begged off. "I am no expert in Mind weaves, and unravelling insanity caused by Lycanthropy would even make Amelyn fret. I would not know where to begin."

  "Then show me how you supressed my instincts when I first turned Were," he asked. "If I can separate her instincts from her conscious mind, it may make her rational."

  "That I can show you, but not without Sarraya," she said. "You cannot use your Sorcery without her to control you."

  "Then someone had better find her. If Jula wakes up before we start, I'll have to knock her out again. I don't think this tent would survive that."

  "You certainly look like you slugged it out with her," Camara Tal said with a sly grin. "Looks like she gave back what she got."

  "At first," he admitted. "Then I stopped being an idiot and used my training. After that, she didn't have a chance."

  "That's my boy," Camara Tal smiled. "I'll go find the bug. You two keep an eye on that. And find some way to clean her up. She stinks," she said, wrinkling her nose.

  "No argument from me," Dolanna said, touching the Weave. Tarrin watched as Dolanna used weaves of Water and Air to clean the filth from Jula's body, scrub her hair clean, and remove the detritus from her fur. Looking at her when she was clean was like looking at an entirely different Were-cat. She was just as pale as he remembered. She was taller, and her Were-cat body was leaner and more muscular than she had been before, but it didn't alter her basic body shape. She was still slim and pretty. Her blond hair was much longer now, another side effect of being turned, very long and thick, but tangled and unkempt. A very long session with a brush would return it to its past glory. Tarrin knelt by her and rolled her over on her back, putting a finger to her neck to check her pulse. Still very slow and regular. She was still out cold. Even her regeneration was having trouble getting her back awake.

  "Tarrin, you didn't, did you?" Sarraya demanded even as she flitted into the tent. She had her hands on her hips and glared at him, not a span from his nose.

  "I didn't bite her," he assured her. "I found her like this. Believe me, I really want to know what happened to her."

  "So this is Jula," Sarraya mused. "She doesn't look all that dangerous."

  "Wait til she wakes up," Tarrin grunted. "She's totally mad. Dolanna's going to show me how to try to supress her instincts. Hopefully, that'll restore her rational mind."

  "That's a good idea," Sarraya agreed. "It should. It's the instincts that cause the madness. Take those away, and the insanity should fade."

  "Alright, Dolanna, show me what to do," Tarrin said, turning to his instructor.

  The weave was unbelievably complicated. It was no wonder it had taken Dolanna so long to put it together. It was only steps below High Sorcery in its complexity, and Tarrin's respect for his mentor and friend was raised several notches as she demonstrated the weave he had to use. "That is what I used on you, dear one," she told him. "There are going to be differences, because you are the same race as she is. I have seen you improvise before, so I have confidence that you will feel out the changes you will need to make."

  "Alright," Tarrin nodded to her. "Let's do this."

  It was a marvelously simple combination. Sarraya used her Druidic power to keep his Sorcery in check, and he reached through her restrictive shield on him and touched the Weave. The result was that the Weave didn't try to flood him as it usually did. The power flowed into him slowly, allowing him to completely control it as he had been able to do before High Sorcery had overwhelmed his ability to weave spells. That awesome power was isolated from him, kept on the other side of Sarraya's Druidic barrier. It was kept a little too well. "Loosen it a little, Sarraya. It'll take me hours to weave the spell at this rate."

  "Just tell me when to stop," she replied, and he felt the Weave's energy flowing into him faster. It continued to increase, until he reached a level where he felt he was comfortable. It was fast enough to grant him the power he needed to weave the spell, but not so much that he couldn't resist its flowing into him when he was done.

  "Right there. Alright, Dolanna, tell me if I weave this wrong," he said, and he began. It took him nearly ten minutes to weave the spell, from all the flows except Confluence, a massive ball of crisscrossing flows. He wove them together slowly and carefully, sweating from the effort and straining to keep the loose tangle of flows from interacting with one another prematurely. He literally wove it flow by flow, twist by twist, following Dolanna's guiding advice as the weave took shape inside Jula's body. When he felt it was done, he snapped it down and released it, sensing its operation and adjusting it as it took effect as best he could. Since he had never done it before, he had no idea how best to tweak the weave for maximum effect. He could only guess at
it, going on what he knew of his own instincts and the way they felt when they took over.

  Leaning back on his heels, Tarrin blew out his breath when the weave was finished. He cut it off, letting it evaporate, but it left behind a magical effect inside Jula's mind much like a Ward, a magical effect that would separate and supress her Were instincts. It wouldn't last forever, however. Just as Dolanna's weave had unravelled within him, his spell would eventually wear off. Jula had that long to learn how to stave off the madness, better this time than her first attempt to do so. Her instincts would be felt behind that curtain of magical protection, and they would progressively grow stronger and stronger as the weave weakened. Hopefully, as it had done for him, that separation would give her the critical time she would need to learn how to control the madness.

  Putting a paw on her forehead, Tarrin wove together a healing weave and released it into her, which made her body shudder slightly at the icy cold sensation. He'd given her a concussion when he was hitting her in the face, that was why she was still unconscious. His own regenerative powers were rather slow when it came to healing damage to the brain. Probably because of the complexities involved in it. Jula tried to roll on her side, but a paw on her shoulder held her down. She groaned incoherently, reaching up and grabbing his wrist in a weak grip, her tail wrapping around his ankle reflexively when it made contact with him. Then her restless movements eased, and she relaxed back to the floor of the tent.

  Her eyes opened, slowly. She blinked a few times against the light, and he could see from her eyes that she was coherent. The burning quality that had been inside them, induced by her madness, was gone. She looked up at him in dumbfounded shock for a long moment, then she shuddered when his paw shifted against her.

  "So this is it," she said calmly, submitting to his hold on her. "Did you wake me up just so I could be ready for it?"

  "I see you remember," he said, a bit coldly.

  "I remember everything," she said, shuddering and closing her eyes sharply. "Everything. Sometimes memory is a curse. Why am I not insane now?"

  "Tarrin supressed your instincts," Dolanna said flatly.

  "Did you want me to be rational for this? I'm impressed, Tarrin. Your brutality goes quite beyond anything I could ever manage."

  "You'll believe that in a few rides," he said stiffly, taking his hand off her shoulder.

  She stared at him. "You're not going to kill me, are you?" She rose up on her paw, looking up at the four of them in surprise. "You want what I know, don't you? You resisted the urge to kill me, just so you could make me talk? You even cured my madness, just to get at my knowledge. Goodness, you're nothing like what Kravon believes of you, Tarrin."

  "That's part of the reason," Tarrin told her gruffly. "This is the other." He reached down and grabbed the end of her tail, and pulled it away from his ankle.

  "Surprised to see me like this?" she asked with a slight little smile. "You don't give a girl many options, Tarrin. After you so effortlessly ripped out my spine, I had a choice of either dying, or drinking some of your blood that they stored for study. I always plan for eventualities. I could see that facing your wrath was a definite possibility. I was proved right in that."

  "It backfired on you, did it not, Jula?" Dolanna asked. "You felt that you could control it as easily as Tarrin seemed to control it. Reality is a harsh mistress."

  She sighed, and a little shudder ran through her. "I should have let myself die," she said with utter sincerity. "Just do me one favor, Tarrin. When I'm done talking, when whatever you did to me wears off, kill me. I'd rather be dead than be like that again."

  "You give up too quickly," Sarraya said with a grin. "We don't turn our backs on children, girl."

  "Children? Me?"

  "Tarrin found you, so that makes you his bond-child. Say hello to your new daddy."

  Jula gaped at him.

  "I'll teach you what you need to know," he said bluntly. "I'll help you keep your sanity. All you have to do is be honest with me. When I'm satisfied you're going to obey our laws and you won't go mad again, I'll release you. But don't ever think that I'm going to enjoy doing it," he hissed. "I still hate you, Jula. I'm only doing this because it's my duty, not because I want to." He glared down at her. "And one more thing. If you even think of betraying me, or going back to Kravon, I'll kill you. You know you don't stand a chance against me, and now that I have your bond, there's nowhere you can run. I'll track you down, and I'll finish you. Don't forget that."

  "That, that's not going to be a problem," she said, lowering her eyes. "Kravon chained me up and kept me like a pet. He used me for his own entertainment. When I was no more use to him as an agent, I became his experimental rat." She sat up slowly. "They sent me here and let me loose, hoping that I'd cause you trouble. Just to slow you down. Or that we'd meet, and I'd kill you. They didn't care about what happened to me afterward. They never cared about what happened to me. I was just an animal to them. They never tried to help me keep my mind. Kravon studied me as I went mad, just so he could learn about the process." To his surprise, Jula began to cry, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "It was terrible. I was trapped in a living nightmare, and they made it even worse."

  "Now you know how it feels to be betrayed," Tarrin told her. She looked up at him, and her eyes fixated on the scarred manacles locked around Tarrin's wrists. Manacles she had seen placed there. "I won't offer you pleasantries or an easy life, woman. You may find me as harsh as Kravon, but at least you'll know where you stand with me. And that I'll do what's best for you, even if I don't like it. That's my burden to bear."

  "I, believe you," she said hesitantly, looking up at him. "So, if you'll let me off the floor and give me something to eat, I'll tell you anything you want to know." She looked down and blushed slightly. "And could I impose on someone for a robe?"

  Sarraya conjured forth a plain robe, and Camara Tal poked her head out of the tent and barked at someone to bring food. Jula put on the simple, undyed wool robe, then took a seat at the small table Renoit kept in his tent. Just looking at her caused a storm of conflicting emotions inside him. Anger, fury, but also duty and a strange protectiveness. He had taken her as his own child, and he felt the need to nurture her, to raise her properly, just as he felt the need to wring her neck for what she did to him in the past. She was very meek and submissive any time she looked at him. She could smell his seething emotions, he knew she could. She knew better than to do anything to make him mad. "I appreciate this, Faerie," Jula said, picking at the robe. "It's a bit itchy, but I was starting to feel a noticable draft."

  "I could have made it out of itchweed," Sarraya teased.

  "These two, who are they? I don't remember any reports about them," Jula asked, pointing at Camara Tal.

  "Friends," Tarrin replied shortly. "Camara Tal, and that one is Sarraya."

  "An Amazon and a Faerie. You have exotic friends."

  "I'm not normal. Neither are you anymore. Don't forget that."

  "It's not something I forget easily," she said quietly, holding up her black-furred paw and looking at it. "It was the worst mistake I ever made."

  "That's a negative attitude," Sarraya chided her. "If you're not going to accept help, then don't waste our time."

  "I'm not a quitter, Faerie. I'm a survivor. If I have to go on like this, then I'll learn how to go on. But I'm not going to go mad again," she declared adamantly. "I'll kill myself first."

  "That's more like it," Sarraya smiled, landing on the table.

  A bowl of stew arrived, and Jula attacked it before someone could hand her a spoon. She dribbled stew on her chin as she drank greedily from the bowl, nearly choking as she gorged on the thick ham stew Deward had made for breakfast. Tarrin and the others watched on quietly as she ate ravenously. After most of it was gone, she lowered the bowl and wiped her chin with the back of her furred paw. "I never thought I'd eat something cooked again," she sighed. "Now then, where do you want to start?"

  "Let us start simply
," Dolanna replied. "What is ki'zadun, and what is its goal?"

  "That's simple enough, Dolanna," Jula said. "They're a group of people who intend to take over the world. That's the ultimate objective."

  "Who leads them?"

  "It's changed over the years," she replied. "At first, it was Val. After he was imprisoned by Spyder, the leadership has traded hands between the Witch-Kings of Stygia and the Zakkite Imperium several times. But about five hundred years ago, they found the prison holding Val, and he's been commanding the organization since then. That's why they're after you, Tarrin. The Firestaff can restore his powers and free him from his prison. That's why they want it. Kravon commands the network's operations here in the West. He answers directly to Val."

  "Val? The Fallen God?" Camara Tal asked sharply.

  Jula nodded. "Val's lost his power, but not his worshippers. They still worship him, working for the day when he'll reward them for their loyalty." She took another long drink from the bowl, reaching in and plucking out a large chunk of ham. "Everything they do is aimed around taking over the entire world. The plan is three-pronged. One part is to restore Val to power. Another is to raise an army for him to command, and the third is to plant agents throughout the governments of the Known World to upset things when Val moves to conquer the world."

  "A strange plan, since the Gods will simply cast him down again, if he returns to his power," Dolanna noted.

  "We--They," she corrected, "don't think that's an issue. To do that would create a war between the gods, and it's doubtful that the Elder Gods would permit the destruction of the world."

  "They will," Tarrin said grimly. "I've already been told that. If someone uses the Firestaff, the Elder Gods will directly intervene. I was told that the result would be the destruction of most of Sennadar."

  "That's been considered, but even that's not a serious drawback. The thinking is that the Black Network would be in the best position to pick up the pieces after such a catastrophe, because they have many secret lairs well away from civilization, people and equipment that would survive the cataclysm. Either way, they win. It just changes the number of people they'll control."