Chapter 5

      Tarrin had suffered through another sleepless night.  He was desperately tired, but every time he settled into slumber, the dreams would rise up again and shock him awake.  And he could never remember what they were about.  In its own way, that was even more frustrating and frightening, because the things that scared him so remained nameless, shapeless phantasms, things that he could not identify.  He ended up on the deck of the ship well before dawn, standing at the rail and simply waiting for the sun to come up.  He was completely exhausted, but he was so terrified of sleeping that even the thought of it made his blood go cold.

      He had no idea how long he stayed at the rail, wilted over it like a dying flower, until the first rays of the sun touched his face.  With the rising light came voices, and sounds, and the smells of the humans as they rose from their sleep and went about the work of a new day.  He watched them all with a detached curiosity, as RenneË came from his cabin and the officers and the crew started readying the ship for departure.  His exhaustion made it seem like he was watching everything through a filmy gauze over his eyes, and it took him moments to think even the simplest things through.

      The ship lurched, and Tarrin sank his claws into the deck and railing.  The ship's bow anchor had raised, and the ship was starting to get pushed by the current.  The ship had been stopped for the night with the bow facing the current to minimize the effect of it on the ship, and now the vessel was swinging around to put her stern to the current, to face downriver, using the stern anchor as a pivot to keep the vessel stable.  The stern anchor was raised, and the ship pushed ahead with the current.  The wind was very faint, the air calm and the sky clear, so the sails were very slack as the ship pushed downriver.  Dolanna's clean scent touched his nose, but it took him a moment to recognize it.  "It is time for breakfast," she said.

      "I'm not hungry," he replied.

      She put her hand on his shoulder, and he flinched away from it.  The grip hardened, and she made him turn and face her.  She gave him a look of concern.  "How long has it been since you slept?" she asked.

      "I don't know," he replied.  "I sleep a little at night, but not for long."

      "Dreams?" she asked, and he nodded.  "There are some medicines I can give you that will let you sleep without dreams, but I do not want you to have to rely upon them.  Tonight I will give you a dose of it, and we will see how it helps you."  She put a hand to his cheek, feeling his temperature.  "Why did you not tell me of this?" she demanded.  "Tarrin, if I am to help you, you cannot hide things from me."

      "I didn't think that you could do anything," he told her quietly.

      She gave him another look.  "Would you prefer to try to sleep now?" she asked.

      "No, I can wait," he assured her.

      "Tell me about these dreams," she said.

      Tarrin closed his eyes.  "I don't remember them when I wake up," he told her, "but whatever they are, they scare me so bad that I'm stone cold sober and awake when I do wake up.  It's strange...the dreams just vanish like mist the instant I wake up, as if they'd never been.  All it leaves me is the memory of being afraid."

      "Interesting," she said.  "You remember nothing at all?  Not even a flash, an impression?"

      "No," he replied.  "I think I remembered them on that first night, but since then, nothing."

      "We cannot let you go on like this," she said.  "Lack of sleep has different effects on people, but a common one is increased aggression.  That is something that you can definitely do without.  If the medicines do not work, I will have to resort to magic."

      "Why not use magic in the first place?"

      "Tarrin, it is very complicated," she told him.  "To put it very briefly, I have an exceptionally difficult time using magic on you that affects the mind.  You are not human, Tarrin, and the alien nature of your mind does not allow me to use mind-affecting weaves as I could use them on humans.  You do not think the same way that I do, and I must have an idea of how a target thinks in order to weave together a spell that can affect those thoughts.  When I wove the spell that holds the instinctual side of your mind in check, it nearly killed me.  I had to rely on raw power to overcome my unfamiliarity with your mind.  And look at the results.  I think the spell totally unravelled at least two days ago.  Such a short respite for so much effort."

      "It did?"

      She nodded.  "I am surprised that you did not notice."

      "Maybe I did," he said.  "They've been....loud lately.  I've started doing things without thinking, things I think that the Cat is making me do."

      "What things?"

      "Little things," he admitted.  "Like smelling before I open a door, or checking my room before I rest.  I think the Cat can hear my own thoughts, because sometimes it acts on what I'm thinking or feeling.  Like what happened with Jarax."

      "He told me about that," she said.

      "I wanted him to be quiet, but he wouldn't shut up...so I growled at him."

      "Are you sure that you are not hungry?" she asked.

      "I'm sure," he said.

      "I will have the cook keep something for you, just in case."

      Tarrin heard a faint sound, almost like the fluttering of a sheet in the wind.  He looked up, but the sails were rather slack in the still air; the sailors were not even tending them, they were standing around on the deck waiting for a wind to come along.  "What is it, Tarrin?" Dolanna asked.  He put a paw up to quell any further questions.

      But after a few moments, he gave up on it.  He had no idea where it had come from...it could have been a branch slapping into another.  "I don't know, maybe I'm hearing things," he told her.  "You should--"

      He heard it again, closer this time, and from another direction.  He looked up towards the bow of the ship--

      --then he was diving to the side, carrying Dolanna with him, as a loud crash shook the ship, and large pieces of the rigging and mast slammed into the deck.  Tarrin was up in an instant, as a huge reptillian-like bird writhed in the rigging, shrieking a loud, high-pitched scream and thrashing at the sails and ropes.  "It's a Wyvern!" Dolanna shouted in sudden fear and anger as the creature systematically destroyed the sails, and broke off another piece of the mast.  It gave another keening cry as chaos erupted on the deck, sailors scrambling every which way to avoid whipping ropes and falling spars.  The creature was nearly twenty spans long, not counting its tail, and its large wings beat heavily at the air with every stroke as it used its huge, wickedly clawed feet to rip at the rigging.  Its tail had a noticable barbed tip, and its black scales gleamed in the morning light.  Its red eyes glared balefully as it screeched, thrashing apart the intricate rigging and working its way to the deck.  Sailors started to scramble towards the gangways, getting away from the huge monstrosity.  Tarrin watched helplessly as that barbed tail shot down like a javelin and impaled one hapless man in the back.  He stiffened instantly, then fell limply to the deck when the sharp point was pulled away, his skin already beginning to turn black from the venom.

      He had to do something.  It was too large for the sailors to fight, and with it up there and them down here, there was nothing that they could do except for get stung by that tail.  Unthinkingly, Tarrin popped out his claws, laid back his ears, and growled at the creature menacingly, his eyes flaring up from within with an unholy greenish aura.  Those two slits of evil glared right into the creature's reddish eyes without fear, challenging it without words.  More sailors scrambled safely away as Tarrin held its attention, and Dolanna groggily got back to her feet.

      The monster crashed to the deck with enough force to make the entire ship tremble, smashing planking under its feet as it dropped from its perch in the ruined rigging.  It towered over Tarrin, barely able to fit on the deck, but Tarrin just growled at it menacingly, hunching down and putting his paws out wide in an instinctive, reflexive battle stance.  "Tarrin, have you lost your mind!?" Dolanna shouted at him angrily, even as she raised her hands at the creature and started weaving a spell.

      The creature lunged its head at him, faster than a striking snake, but Tarrin was even faster.  He slipped just aside of those wicked jaws and raked it right across the snout, almost getting its eye.  He got in another good rake on the end of its nose as it snapped back, howling in pain, shaking its head as blood flew in all directions.  Tarrin hunkered down and grabbed a barrel, then lifted it as the expected tail-stinger lanced in at him with blazing speed.  He put the barrel in its path, and was pushed back as the stinger slammed into the full barrel.  Digging his claws into the deck, he stopped the momentum of the stinger, amazingly with the barrel intact, then threw the barrel and tail aside.  The barrel was stuck on the end of the Wyvern's tail, regardless of the creature's whipping attempts to free its venemous stinger of the obstructing object.

      A sheet of pure fire flashed out and up, right into the monster's face, as Dolanna's spell was fully formed and unleashed.  The Wyvern howled in agony as the curtain of fire continued to sear at its scales and crisp the flesh of the open wounds Tarrin had put in its face.  It desperately lunged forward, making Dolanna break the spell to literally dive over the edge of the rail to escape the creature's snapping maw.  Tarrin tried to slash it, but the creature's great weight, put on only one side of the narrow-beamed vessel, was making the whole ship list dangerously to that side.  The rail was almost in the water as the Wyvern started skidding forward, and that low level allowed Tarrin to reach into the river and pluck Dolanna out of the current by the back of her dress.  Sinking his claws into the deck, he carried the wet woman up the steeply angled decking, out of the thrashing Wyvern's reach.  The Wyvern had too much weight on one side, and as it tried to turn around to get back into the middle of the ship, the railing broke against its leg and it tumbled into the water.

      The ship rocked wildly, catapulting Tarrin all the way across the ship as many sailors, and Walten, were hurled over the sides, as well as the horses and what wasn't nailed down that was on the deck.  Tarrin had to wildly throw out one paw and snag his claws into the rail to keep from going over the other side.  He managed to keep hold of Dolanna, but that grip tightened as the Wyvern hooked its wing over the railing and pulled, dragging the ship's starboard rail under the water's surface as it tried to clamber back onto the ship.  Many of the people below, who were eating breakfast, were just now getting to the doors, among them Faalken, who were armed to the teeth to repel the monstrous invader.  But at that moment, they were all grasping onto anything that would not slide across the deck.  The ship listed higher and higher, until the deck was almost vertical to the water, as the Wyvern tried to drag itself back onto the ship.  The horses were swimming frantically towards the far bank, just putting distance between them and the Wyvern.

      "Goddess, it is going to capsize the ship!" Dolanna screamed in fright.

      "Everyone over the rail!" Tarrin heard RenneË's terrified voice scream over the din, then he shouted it again in the language of his own people.  He looked down, right into the Wyvern's face, seeing that one of its eyes had been burned away, and smoke was wafting from the charred flesh of the wounds he had given it.  It was mad from pain, and it did not realize that capsizing the ship would most likely kill it as the ship's weight rolled over it and pinned it underneath.  Sailors were diving off the ship in every direction, even right past the Wyvern, but the creature's eyes were fixed balefully on Tarrin and Tarrin alone.

      Grabbing Dolanna by the waist, he set his feet into the deck with his claws and grabbed her with both paws.  "What are you doing?" she demanded as he hefted her over his head.

      "I'm saving your life!" he answered.  Then he threw her, with every ounce of strength in him.  She sailed far downstream, a good thirty spans, and crashed noisily into the water well clear of the Wyvern.

      Tarrin grabbed onto the rail and pulled himself over it as the Wyvern's wing hooked around the mast, and it hefted to drag its weight back out of the water.  The ship lurched violently, rolling up even higher as it was pulled down by the monster's weight.  Tarrin saw Faalken and Tiella jump over the side, as RenneË tried to keep hold of the railing, then lost his grip and dropped out of view.  Tarrin glanced away for a moment, back towards shore.  He thought that he may be able to jump to one of the branches overhanging the river.  He turned his back to the Wyvern, set himself in a sitting crouch, and then sprang.

      He extended fully in the air, his paws reaching for anything to which they could grab hold.  He just barely reached the foliage with his spring, but he got paws full of twigs and leaves, the branches to which they were attached supporting the sudden increase in weight.  The tip of Tarrin's tail brushed the water as he bobbed down, then he hauled himself up and onto a sturdy branch, then he turned and looked.

      The Wyvern had pulled the ship about as far as it could go without rolling.  Tarrin could see half of the ship's keel and the rudder.  Then the ship shimmied to one side, and it rolled over on the Wyvern with a thunderous crash that sent white spray high into the air.  The Wyvern screeched once before the ship rolled over onto it, then the ship rocked upside down several times.  Then it began to move.

      The Wyvern was pushing the ship from underneath.

      Tarrin looked at Dolanna, who had managed to swim upstream somewhat.  The sailors were all swimming for the opposite bank, the bank farther from the Wyvern, the bank where RenneË was standing and calling to his crew.  Tarrin was about to say something, but the hideous stench of Trolls struck his nose like a hammer.

      He looked down, and saw three of them, approaching the tree where he was.  All of them were armed with spears, and he could hear more of them over the shouts of sailors and the rocking swish of the ship.

      He couldn't jump into the water, not with that Wyvern between him and the other shore.  And he couldn't fight so many Trolls alone.  That left only one recourse.  Flight.  But if he fled, he doubted that he could rejoin Dolanna and the others.  With the ship capsized, they would most likely flee in every direction, and they were all soaked, which would make it impossible for him to track by scent.

      Dolanna had seen the Trolls, he was certain, for it explained what she shouted to him.  "The Tower!" she called.  "Go to the Tower!  Go west to the coast, and then south to Suld!  I will see you there!"

      Tarrin nodded, even as the first spear arced in.  Tarrin ducked under it frantically.  It had been an elaborate trap, and an effective one.  If it didn't kill him, it did separate him from the others, leaving him to survive on his own.  He vaulted higher into the tree, scrambling into the high branches with the grace of a squirrel, using his claws and strength and agility to get out of sight of those spears.  They chased him up the tree, several missing him only by a whisker.  Then he felt the whole tree shudder.  He looked down, and saw five Trolls working the tree back and forth, trying to uproot it.  He'd have scoffed at such a notion, for the tree was old and it was huge, but the tree was already swaying alarmingly.  He had no doubt that they could do it.  He looked around frantically, and noticed that the branches of another tree were rather close by.

      High over the ground, Tarrin vaulted from one tree to the next with surprising ease, landing on all fours on a sturdy branch.  The Trolls below all shouted and pointed at him, and it occurred to Tarrin that, as old as this forest was and how thick and large the trees were, he could go quite a distance before having to touch the ground.  And if he could get a few minutes out of sight of the Trolls, he could lose them.  But travelling in the trees wasn't as fast as moving on the ground, he discovered quickly, and Trolls had outstanding eyesight.

      For two long hours, Tarrin scrambled through the branches, trying to get far enough ahead of the Trolls to hide, or come down onto the ground and run at a faster speed without getting a spear in his back.  But there were a lot of Trolls; the air was literally befouled by the stench of so many.  There had to be a hundred of them, and most of them were following him with their surprisingly fast lumbering gait, and they tried to knock down any tree he stopped in for any amount of time.  They couldn't get him down, and he couldn't get away from them.  He moved in totally random directions, often going in circles.  Once he stopped to rest, but a spear had blasted in and came about two fingers' width from his nose.  It had almost startled him out of the tree.

      Tarrin was almost exhausted, feeling the effects of lack of sleep, running on pure adrenalin and depending on the Cat's skills of the forest.  It helped him know which branches weren't safe to jump to, it kept him from going in a predictable direction and letting them get ahead of him.  He saw daylight in front of him, too low to be anything but a break in the woods.  He kept moving towards it, planning to cut in one direction or another when he reached the edge, but he stopped once he got there.

      It was either the same river or another one.  He had no idea.  It didn't look quite like the other river, though, for the water was not as muddy on this river.  What made him stop was that the river was deep, very deep, and it was at least fifty spans across.  Just like the other river, the branches of the trees overhung the river a goodly ways, a good ten spans over the bank, on both sides.  That left thirty spans of open air...and if he went high, he could come down and grab a lower branch, which would give him at least five more spans of distance....

      It was insane, but he was getting tired, and if he stopped, they would kill him.  He was hopelessly lost, and there was nobody to help him this time.  If he didn't separate himself from them enough to where he could really get away from them, he was going to die.

      Tarrin climbed higher and higher into the tree.  He'd already chosen his branch, a long, heavy one that would take his weight almost to the very end, one that had several prime candidates for grabbing almost directly across from it.  He could hear the Trolls rumbling towards him, a few of them almost under him; as soon as they had enough, they'd try to topple the tree.  He reached the branch and squatted for a moment, preparing himself.  If he missed, and fell into the river, he'd be speared before he could reach the other bank.  He had to wait for the Trolls to get involved with knocking down the tree, so that he'd have enough time to recover from the jump and get out of sight before they could throw spears at him, or figure out a way to get across the river and chase him.  They would get across the river.  If they were smart, they'd find a long enough tree and knock it over the water.  But that would take time, and all he needed was enough time to get onto the ground and away without taking a spear in his spine.  He was much too fast for them to chase him down once he got a lead on them.  At least he fervently hoped so.

      The tree shuddered violently.  That was Tarrin's cue.  Taking a deep breath, Tarrin swallowed his panic and sprinted over the uneven branch, running along it as surely as if it were solid ground.  He spaced his strides carefully so that he'd hit the very end and be able to jump.  He felt his heart go into his throat as his foot hit the jump mark he'd mentally made, and he pushed off from the branch with every bit of power and desparation that his tired body could muster, giving out a cry of effort as he hurled himself into the air.

      Stretching out in the arc of his jump, his paws led the way as he sailed over the bubbling waters of the river, some fifty spans underneath him.  Even from there, he could tell that it was going to be close.  Had he been fresher, he could have put his feet on his target branch with such a run at it.  But his exhaustion had removed that advantage.  Even his inhuman strength had its limitations.  He started descending, and for an instant he panicked, thinking that he wasn't going to make it.  He missed his target branch by nearly two spans, but his forward momentum lined him up to grab one of the ones underneath it.  He stretched out as much as he could, even his claws reaching out, reaching out for that branch.

      He snagged it in his claws, and instantly his hand closed around it.  He came flying down, then was snapped back by his hold on the branch.  The limb cracked and splintered under his sudden impact on it, bowing it down deeply, but it had served its purpose.  It had kept him from going into the river.  He swung wildly on the branch for several moments, grabbing it in both paws.  He caught a glimpse of something as he started slowing down, and just barely managed to identify it as a spear.  He twisted his entire body around that arcing weapon, shocked and impressed that a Troll could throw such a huge spear so far.  Natural invulnerability or no, if he was hit by something like that, the shock alone would probably kill him, if it didn't slow him down with him trying to pull it out.  He pulled his body up and out of the trajectory of another spear, then physically curled his body up and around the limb above him.  He hooked his waist around it, swung over, then hauled himself up, then jumped straight up reflexivey an instant before yet another spear tore him in half at the belly.  The spear slammed into the trunk with a loud thok, and Tarrin's feet came down to land on the haft of it.  It was embedded so deeply into the tree that it supported his weight.

      Tarrin used it as a springboard to get him to the branch higher up, the branch he'd targeted, then scampered around and behind the tree trunk, safely out of the Trolls' line of sight.  He peeked back around the other side, lower down, seeing them standing at the bank of the river, howling curses and screaming, stamping their bare feet in frustration.  They were too busy being mad to think of finding a way across the river, but that wouldn't last for long.  He had to move, and he had to move now.

      He hesitated an instant, weighing his options.  He could try to find Dolanna again, but he had no idea where he was, and he certainly didn't want to lead a hundred Trolls right to her.  He thought about following the river down to the original one--he was certain that the two joined somewhere--but he had no idea if Dolanna would be there once he evaded the Trolls with his roundabout route and tried to find her.  She told him to go to the Tower.  She expected him to go to the Tower.  He seriously doubted that he would be able to find her, for she would obviously take another ship downriver, and he couldn't keep up with it.  She would meet him at the Tower.

      So that was where he decided he had to go.

      Looking up, he got his bearings using the Skybands.  Since they crossed the sky from east to west, and he could see from the morning sun which of those two directions was which, he knew which way to go.  Go west to the coast, and then south to Suld.

      Turning away from the morning sun, Tarrin left the howling Trolls behind, dropped to the ground, and ran south, with every intention of doubling back on a good bit of his trail and then going into the trees to give the Trolls fits when they got across the river.  They knew that he could go in any direction...and he'd have too much of a lead on them for them to seriously give chase to him.

      He did just that, doubling back on almost two miles of trail, then going into the trees and moving west.  He did that all morning and well into the afternoon, past the point where his muscles burned and his breath came in hard, short pants.  Every moment he kept moving was more time he could safely rest.  That one thought, that goal, dominated his mind, kept him moving.  Get out of danger, and then rest.  Resting too soon will leave them too close.  His whole thought process centered around the next branch.  Find the next branch, jump to the next branch, walk across the next branch, climb up the next branch.  He was afraid to stop, even a moment, fearing that that moment would become longer, and they'd be surrounding the tree he was sleeping in when he woke up, shaking him out of it.

      It was a hazy, totally exhausted Tarrin who looked up a moment and realized that it was sunset.  He moved the entire day, on a course that was as due west as he could manage in the trees.  He was famished, thirsty, and totally drained, but hunger and thirst couldn't hold a candle to the bone-weariness that threatened to topple him out of the tree.  Tarrin dropped to his knees on the wide branch, a branch even wider than he was, connected to a tree that had to be a thousand years old, laid out on its length right where he was, and fell into an instant deep slumber.

      There had been no dreams.  None that he could remember, anyway, and if there were, they were incapable of rousing him from his comatose sleep.  Tarrin's eyes fluttered open, aware of the rosy light that was painting the green foliage in front of him, hearing and smelling the life of the forest that he had all but ignored in his mad flight the day before.  It was quiet, peaceful, and there was no sound of Troll feet and no stench of Troll bodies.

      He'd not moved an inch from where he had fallen to the branch, and he was sore in more places than he could count.  His belly growled dangerously at him, and his throat felt like someone had stuffed wool against it.  But he was alive, and he'd evaded the Trolls, and that made it tolerable.  Even being lost and alone in the wilderness was more than preferable to his head hanging around some Troll's neck, as it jokingly exagerrated the difficulty of the spear cast that had killed him.  Getting up onto his paws and knees, he yawned loudly and stretched, feeling his back crackle and pop from the long hours in an uncomfortable position, his claws digging furrows out of the bark.

      His head snapped up.  There was another smell, almost right on top of him, but it had been there so long he'd dismissed it, even in sleep.  It was a smell very much like his own.

      "Good morning," came an amused voice.

      Tarrin looked behind him, and she was standing there.  She was wearing clothes now, a white shirt and a pair of canvas breeches, but she was just as beautiful and terrifying as he remembered.  The nightmarish memories of that chaotic battle washed over him, and his arm throbbed and burned in memory of her bite, the bite that had changed him.  Her shirt was stained in many places, and the breeches were tattered about the ankles, but her skin and fiery red hair and white fur were clean, and her crystalline green eyes looked down at him with a guarded expression.  He could tell that she was tense, as if expecting him to attack.

      The thought did occur to him, but he was in no position nor condition to start a fight.  He was still very weak from the long flight and lack of food or water, and he knew it.  An indignant "you!" escaped his lips, carrying with it all the hatred and enmity he felt for her, a hatred that had flared up inside him like a bonfire.  She had done this to him, had changed him.  That it was not her conscious choice did not matter.

      "I see you remember me," she said, a bit ruefully.

      "What did you expect?" he demanded hotly, managing to get to his feet.  He couldn't hide how much of an effort it was just to stand.  "You have alot of nerve, woman.  If I wasn't so tired, I'd kill you."

      "You would try," she said flatly.  "You don't bring enough to the table to kill me, cub, especially not right now.  Be thankful I like you.  I've killed others for less than what you just said to me."  She crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts and leaned back against the tree trunk.  "I'm not here to fight, anyway," she told him.  "I'm here to meet you."

      "We've met," he growled at her.

      "Mind your manners," she snapped at him.  "I'm not going to be able to do anything with you if you can't be civil."  She pointed at him.  "You are Tarrin," she said.  "My name is Jesmind. "

      "How did you find me?"

      "Oh, come now, cub," she said in a flat voice.  "Give me some credit.  I've been watching you since the day you left Torrian."

      "I didn't see you, or smell you."

      "That's because I didn't want to be found," she told him simply.  "You did very well getting away from the Trolls.  I was about to put a paw in, but you got away on your own.  I'm impressed."

      "What do you want?" he asked bluntly.

      "I want to teach you," she said.  "Well, there's no 'want' involved  in that.  It's a matter of 'must'.  For the time being, consider me to be your mother."

      "Mother?" he said in a strangled voice.

      "There are things that you have to know," she told him with a challenging, cool look.  "It's my responsibility to teach them to you.  Until you're old enough, or experienced enough, to be out on your own, you are my responsiblity.  What you do will come back to me, because I'm the one that is responsible for you being what you are."  She gave him a moment to let that sink in.  "There's no choice in the matter, Tarrin.  You must know these things.  But as soon as I'm confident that you understand them, and I'm sure you won't go mad, then you'll be free to do as you will.  You'll never have to see me again.  Unless you want to, that is."

      Tarrin steadied himself, considering her words.  He hated her, but there were things that he wanted to know.  "I don't mind, not all that much," he said in a quiet voice, "but I'm travelling west.  If you're going that way too, then we can travel together."

      "Is that so?" she said, raising an eyebrow.  "My home lies to the east, cub.  That's where we need to go."

      "I can't," he said.  "I have to go to the Tower.  The reason I left home was because I can do Sorcery.  They were taking me to the Tower.  If I don't go there, I'll do magic and hurt someone without knowing what I'm doing.  Besides, someone out there doesn't want me to get to the Tower," he told her wearily.  "Those Trolls were after me, and it's not the first attack.  You should know that," he said.  "The only place I'll be safe is in the Tower."

      "I'll worry about keeping you safe," she told him.  "Once we get out of human lands, nobody will ever find you."

      "Didn't you listen at all?" he demanded.  "I don't have a choice.  I have to go to the Tower.  That's more set in stone than anything that has anything to do with you.  Now if you're willing to travel in that direction, then we can travel together, and I'll learn what you have to teach me.  If you're not, then we'll just part ways here and now and hopefully never see each other again."

      "Don't dictate terms to me, boy," she said in a dangerous tone.  "You'll go where and when I say you'll go."

      "Then you'd best either let me go or try to kill me now," he shot back, standing straight and tall before her.  He realized how tall she was as he faced off against her.  Her eyes were on the same level as his, and she was only on very slightly higher ground.  He hadn't noticed that before; his memories of her didn't include any where she was standing up straight, or very many that included her by herself or without pain involved.  In his memory, she was twice as big as he was.  It was reassuring that she was his own size.

      She gave him a dark look, then she laughed ruefully.  "Oh, my, this is going to be interesting," she said.  "Mother always wished for me to have a child as stubborn as I was.  Well, I think she got her wish.  Both of us have to travel south," she said.   "Let's travel south for now.  When the time comes when we'd have to part, let's take this up when we get there."

      "I don't object to that," he said, after a moment of weighing her offer carefully.  "Just answer me one question.  Who sent you after me?"

      "I don't really know," she sighed.  "I was careless, and someone managed to use magic against me to hold me still while someone put the collar on me from behind.  It was on a deserted street in Goram."

      "That's in Tor," Tarrin objected.  Tor was a small kingdom on the southern coast, not far from Arkis.  It was also almost a thousand leagues to the south and east.

      "I know," she said.  "I don't have any memory of much after that.  Just little images.  I remembered you, though, because the Sorceress took off that thrice-damned collar with you in the room.  If she'd have left it on, I probably would never have known you existed."

      "A pity," he grunted.

      "No, lucky for you," she snapped back.  "You seem to be dealing with the dual nature of our kind, but there are things about us that you need to know.  There are rules that we live by, rules imposed on us by the Fae-da'Nar.  If I wasn't here to teach you, then you wouldn't know these things, and that would hurt you later on."

      "Fae-what?"

      "Fae-da'Nar," she repeated.  "Think of it as an association of intelligent beings of the forest," she told him.  "Centaurs, the other Were-kin, Faeries, Pixies, Dryads, Sylphs, and many others.  We all live with a very loose communal government, so there's very little friction and we can all live in peace, and we don't irritate the humans and cause trouble that way.  Look, there's a great deal I have to teach you, and it's not going to happen right here, right now.  You're about to fall over, and I'm tired from tracking you down over the last night and day.  Let's get something to eat, get some water, and we'll start south."

      "Alright," he said.

      They climbed down out of the trees, and Jesmind led him towards the smell of water.  It was a large stream with large rocks littering the shores.  "Ah, water, and it looks like we have breakfast too," she said.

      "Where?"

      "Don't you know how to fish?"

      "Of course, but I don't have a hook."

      "Humans," she sighed.  "You have to make tools for everything.  Come on, I'll teach you how to really fish."

      Tarrin watched as Jesmind laid down on a rock by a large, deep pool, then slithered up to the edge.  He stood just behind her, watching as she watched the water.  Tarrin could see several silvery shapes moving about under the water.  Jesmind lifted up one paw, watched intently for a second, then her hand shot into the water so fast it sounded like the surface of the water was ripped.  She snatched her paw back just as quickly, and a rather large fish sailed over his head, then hit the bank and started to flop around.

      "That's all there is to it," she said.  "Just make sure that you aim below where you see the fish.  The surface of the water bends what you see, making the fish look like it's somewhere else.  Here, you try."

      Tarrin traded places with her, watching the darting shapes, a bit nervous now, with tail-twitching interest.  His first few attempts were badly off the mark, but he swallowed his frustration and concentrated on the task at hand, analyzing how much he had missed with the different attack angles he'd used.  He got a pretty good idea how much he was off from his past attempts, so he adjusted his trajectory, waited for the right moment, then struck like a viper.  His paw slammed into the water, his claws hooked into something that gave, then he yanked it out.  Tarrin looked back to where it was falling, and saw a rather large silver-backed fish flopping around next to the one that Jesmind had caught, which was already starting to go still.

      "Not bad," she praised.  "Catch us a few more, and then we'll eat."

      "Alright," he said, turning his attention back to the pool.

      After about ten minutes, Tarrin had six trout laying on the bank.  Jesmind used her claws to gut and clean each fish as it bounced onto the bank, her claws like knives as she cut off the heads and tails and fileted the remainder with precise skill.  Tarrin stopped to drink deeply from the pool after fishing, then returned to her where she was sitting on a rock at closer to the trees.  "I usually don't eat it raw," she admitted, "but it's well enough in a pinch."

      "Raw?" he said with a shudder.

      "Don't knock it til you try it," she said, holding out a fileted strip of fish.

      Tarrin was surprised.  He expected to gag the instant it his his mouth, but it actually wasn't that bad.  He wolfed down his meal quickly as Jesmind watched him, his ravenous hunger coming back in a rush.  "It's not like we live in the woods and act like animals," she told him as they ate.  "I live in a nice cottage in about the center of the Sylvan lands.  What you Sulasians call the Frontier.  I hunt, and fish, and just live, and when the urge hits me, I wander around the Twelve Kingdoms and see what's going on with the humans.  I built the cottage myself," she added with a bit of pride.

      "Why doesn't anyone know about you--us?" he asked.

      "Because there aren't very many of us," she said.  "We're the rarest of all the Were-kin.  And because of this," she said, holding out her arms, "we're often mistaken as exotic Wikuni."

      He looked at her face, closely.  Take away the ears, and she was the twin of the sailor that was on the ship.  She was even wearing the same clothes.  "You were the sailor on the ship," he accused.

      "Yes, I was wondering when you would figure that out," she said with a smirk.

      "How did you--"

      "It's not easy," she cut him off.  "So don't even think about trying.  The human shape, it's not natural to us anymore.  At one time it was, but that was long ago.  We've changed since then.  We can take the human shape, but it's very painful, and it's also very exhausting.  I seem to have a knack for it," she shrugged.  "I can hold the human shape for over four days, but it leaves me sore and aching for a week.  My mother can't hold the human shape for more than six hours, and she's been practicing for over six hundred years."

      "Six hundred years?" he said in consternation.

      "Oh, that," she said.  "We don't age like humans do, Tarrin.  How old do you think I am?"

      He looked at her.  She had a youthful glow about her, even though her features were obviously mature.  It made it hard to put an age on her.  "I don't know," he said.  "About twenty-five, I think."

      She laughed.  "You're trying to be sweet on me," she accused.  "I honestly don't know how old I am.  I think I'm somewhere around five hundred.  Maybe more."

      He gaped at her.

      "I lost track," she shrugged.  "The next time I see the Red Comet, I'll know.  I was born two years before it passed, and it passes every fifty-nine years.  I've seen it eight times, and it's going to be coming around again fairly soon."

      "In two years," he said absently, doing the math.  "That makes you five hundred and thirty-one years old," he said soberly.

      "Something like that," she shrugged.  "My mother is over a thousand.  She's the oldest of us."

      "How?" he asked.

      "It's just our nature," she replied simply.  "Once we reach a certain age, we just stop aging.  We live until something kills us."

      He continued to eat, wondering over that information.  That meant that he was the same.  He would live until he was killed.  But the way things had gone lately, that could be at any time.

      "Any other questions come to mind?" she asked calmly.

      "No, not at the moment," he said, chewing on another strip of fish.  He was still in a bit of shock over the concept that Were-cats didn't grow old, or die of age.

      "I think you understand the basics," she said absently.  "I have the feeling that that Sorceress managed to give you a little instruction.  You certainly understand your physical gifts," she noted.  "We'll start with shape-shifting.  It's not that hard, and you should be old enough.  You look it."

      "You don't know?"

      "I've never worked with a Changeling before," she said with a small frown.  "Kimmie was a Changeling, but Mist was the one that acted as her mother.  Mist is like that sometimes," she mused.  "There are things we can and can't do that depend on our age," she told him.  "We can't shapeshift until puberty, and taking the human shape isn't possible for a couple of hundred years afterward.  I don't know about you, because you weren't born into it.  And I can't remember just when Kimmie had managed the human shape."  She finished off her strip of fish, and leaned back against a rock.  "We'll try this evening," she decided.  "You need to understand what all goes into it, and it's easier to do it when we're stopped."

      "Why?"

      "So you don't lose your clothes," she replied.

      He gave her a blank look.

      "The clothes don't change with us, Tarrin," she warned him.  "You have to take them off."

      He blushed furiously.

      She laughed richly.  "You're one of them," she said with a grin.  "I've never understood the human hang-up about clothes.  Really, they don't have anything I haven't seen a thousand times over, and besides, I'm not going to go into heat at the sight of a man's bare backside."

      He didn't dignify that with a response.

      Tarrin had discovered one thing about Jesmind over the course of the day, as they walked south at a very leisurely pace.  She was blunt.  She tended to say exactly what she thought or felt, and had no reservations of making observations that wouldn't go over well with him.  She also had the unnerving habit of speaking almost graphically about things Tarrin wouldn't even think about.  And it never occured to her that she was making him uncomfortable.  He felt he would die when she started inquiring, very bluntly and thoroughly, about his past love life.

      "Why do you want to know that?" he finally demanded.

      "Because I need to know," she shrugged.  "If you've never slept with a woman, I need to know.  But, judging by your reaction, I'd bet that you haven't," she grunted.

      She missed his murderous glare.  "That's not what I'm talking about," he said flintily.

      "You're so touchy," she snorted.  "Didn't you do anything when you were a human?  It must have been unbelievably boring."

      "I guess humans have different customs and standards than you do," he said frostily, leaving out the implication that she had no morals or standards.

      "Yes, I've noticed that myself from time to time.  You know, once I was ran out of a town because I took my shirt off to wash at a stream?  Humans are the strangest creatures."

      "Didn't it occur to you that maybe the town had standards of modesty?"

      "You mean it's wrong to take off your shirt?"

      "In public, in some places, yes, it is," he told her.

      She snorted.  "I'm amazed humans manage to breed," she said.  "I wouldn't be surprised if women had to keep their legs closed in bed, or men have to keep their pants on."

      He blushed furiously, right up to the base of his ears.  "Are you alright?" she asked.

      "I will be, as soon as you shut up," he grated.

      She gave him a look, and laughed delightedly.  "Tarrin, in that respect, you were right.  My people, my kind, what we consider 'right' and 'wrong', it's much different than what the humans believe.  Because we are shapeshifters, we spend some amount of time without clothes...so I guess we're used to it.  I could look at you naked and not even get a stir.  Because I don't associate being naked with sex the way humans do.  To me, clothes are for utility, not for concealment.  It wouldn't make me bat an eyelash to walk down the busiest street in the world nude."  She chuckled.  "I'll admit, I was teasing you a bit there.  I've been around long enough to understand the human customs.  It's just fun to make you blush," she said with a wink and a grin.  "But you should start getting used to the idea of being nude in company," she said.  "You'll have to be nude when you shapeshift, and I'll be nude as well.  So you'd best resign yourself to the idea of being in close proximity to me without clothes on either of us."  She wrinkled her nose slightly.  "And you are definitely taking them off at night," she said.  "They need to be washed, and I'm not sleeping with that smell under my nose."

      "What do you mean?" he asked warily.

      "If you think I'm sleeping alone, you've got another thing coming," she told him flatly.  "It's cozier with another."  She gave him a strange look, as he gaped at her.  "Oh, come on now," she said accusingly.  "If I wanted to bed you, I certainly wouldn't be playing at it like a love-sick human.  When I want you, I'll let you know in no uncertain terms.  It's not the custom of my kind to play games about it, and we don't assign the same significance to it that the humans do.  It's simply something that is very enjoyable, and if you keep making me talk about it, I may change my mind."

      That effectively cowed him.  "I'm sorry, but you're moving a bit too fast for me," he said carefully.

      "Obviously.  Don't assume something just because you think you know what I'm thinking, cub," she told him gruffly.  "What I consider important is much different than what you do.  The faster you understand that, the quicker you'll learn."  She gave him a look.  "Actually, just shapeshifting a while will show you that.  The cat in us, it's stronger when we're in the cat shape," she told him.  "Alot of things I'm talking about will make more sense when you see them through eyes closer to my own."

      "I have a question," he said.

      "What is it?"

      "Are you always this cross?"

      She gave him a look, then laughed.  "Not usually," she said.  "To be honest, I'm a bit nervous about you, and a bit worried for you."

      That broke a small chip off the big block of animosity he felt for her.

      "Worried?"

      "Tarrin, I didn't wish this on you, but we can't change the past," she told him with a sigh.  "What matters to me now is helping you learn how to live with it.  I didn't do it by choice, but I was still the one that changed you.  I have to take responsibility for that.  And that means that I have to help make it as painless for you as I can."

      Now he was mad at her.  He'd built up a perfectly acceptable reason to hate her, and she'd managed to destroy it with that one eloquent sentence.

      They travelled for the rest of the day moving in a southerly direction, through virgin forest that had probably never known the footsteps of man.  Tarrin listened to Jesmind during those times that she spoke, describing the trick of willing the change into cat-shape, and warning him in advance about how the change would affect his body and mind.  When he wasn't listening to her, he was watching her.  He had to admit that he was fascinated by her.  He was used to dealing with strong women, but his mother was nothing like this.  Every move she made was like a demonstration of her power, and she carried herself as if she owned the world.  Every little move she made was a clear symbol of her dominion.  She was strong, wise, authoritative, and she knew it.  But on the other hand, her movements and some of the looks she gave him were not overbearing, but interested, curious, compassionate.  She was a woman of strength, but she didn't beat him over the head with it.  She was content with herself and her life, and that fact was obvious in her demeanor.

      "I'm starting to think I have a hole in my shirt," she said bluntly after a time.

      "What?"

      "You're staring at me," she told him.   "If you didn't notice, that makes our kind a bit uncomfortable."

      "Sorry, just seeing what it looks like from the outside," he told her.

      "The same as it does on me," she said.  "Except for certain differences," she added as an afterthought, motioning at her breasts.

      Tarrin looked away from her, wondering at the wild changes of attitude he'd felt towards this woman just since the morning.  From hate, to distrust, to suspicion...and now to the first inklings of respect, and even a bit of trust.  He trusted this woman, he discovered.  In very many ways, he was a child, and almost instinctively, he was reaching out to someone that he thought could make everything better, someone to quiet the fears, someone to put an arm around him and guide him.  Jesmind represented that person, he realized.  She was that person, the only person, that could help him make sense out of the chaos that had become his life.  Her sincere regret and resolve to help him had helped break down the anger he'd felt for her just that morning, allowing him to look on her with new eyes.

      And look at her with new eyes.  She was beautiful.  There was no doubt about that.  And he was starting to dread having to disrobe in front of her.

      "The cat is strong when we carry its form," she told him later that day, after his long contemplation of her and his situation.  "The longer we stay a cat, the stronger it gets.  Expect to have to take a lesser role concerning some of the instincts when in that shape.  But for you, I think it will help, because those things that try to affect your mind now will be much clearer to you when you allow them to express themselves, instead of bottling them in."

      "I hope so," he said sincerely.

      "Have you been having dreams?"

      "Yes, but I can't remember them," he replied.

      "They do go away, in time," she assured him.  "They're your mind getting used to the instincts.  As you settle in with them, the dreams will get weaker and weaker, until they go away."  They stopped for a moment next to a huge oak tree, that was on the edge of a small clearing that was dominated by a fallen log and a large carpet of moss.  The light was starting to dwindle.  They had walked all day.  "This looks like a good place to stop," she said.  Then she pulled the strings of the laces on her white shirt.

      "What are you doing?" Tarrin asked.

      "I'm taking off my clothes," she told him with a steady look.  "You do the same.  Chop-chop, I want to get you through this at least once before sunset."  And with that, she pulled the shirt over her head.

      Tarrin made himself look.  In just a moment, there wasn't going to be anywhere on her that would be safe to put his eyes, and he wasn't about to fuel her amusement.  She stared right at him as she pulled her long, thick red hair out of the neck of the shirt, and he returned her gaze with the same calm.  He did well, right up until she unbuttoned her trousers.  He looked away right as she pushed them over her hips, working on the laces of his own shirt.

      "Look at me," she commanded.  "It won't do you any good not to look.  You're going to see me, no matter how hard you try not to."

      He met her gaze shyly, and she smiled at him.  It wasn't an amused or malicious smile, it was one of compassion.  "I know it makes you uncomfortable, but the quickest way to get over that is to meet it head on," she told him.  "Don't look at my face.  Look at me, all of me.  I'm not embarassed, so you don't have to be either."

      She stood there calmly as he did as she said.  He looked at her.  From toes to the top of her hair, he looked at the muscular form of her body.  He noticed that her muscles were very defined, but not overly developed.  She did have a washboard stomach, but it gave her a very slender waist compared to her full hips, and the muscles in her back heightened the seeming smallness of her middle.  She even turned around slowly for him, allowing him the full view.  He noticed how shapely her backside was, even with the white-furred tail sticking out of the top of it.  Just like his own tail, the fur on her tail stopped right at the base of it, with no fur anywhere else.  "Just one thing, Tarrin," she said.  "Looking is one thing.  Touching is altogether different."

      "I didn't even think of it," he said sincerely.

      "I didn't say it was bad," she said huffily.  "I just said it was different."

      "It sounded like you meant it was bad," he grumbled.

      "Then I'm sorry," she said.  "But touching is the same for us as what looking at a naked woman does for a human male," she warned him.  "It goes for you as much as it does for me.  Believe it or not, I think you'll find that standing there with no clothes on isn't half as bad as you think.  Even with me standing here.  But the instant I touched you in a place you considered to be intimate, well, let's just say that it would give you a different reason to blush."

      He blushed anyway, pulling off his shirt.

      "The same goes for me," she said.  "I don't recommend you putting your paws on my more sensitive parts, unless you want to fend me off with a stick."

      "I find it hard to believe that," he said with a sniff, unbuttoning his trousers and steeling himself for the act of disrobing in front of her.

      "It's been a long time since I've had a man," she warned bluntly.  "Believe it or not, human women get the same urges as human men.  Well, among my kind, females get that urge even more often than human men, and we're not afraid to go after what we want."  She crossed her arms, waiting deliberately.  "I'm being nice to you because you're still unfamiliar with what's happened to you, but if you'd have been any other male, we'd be--"

      "I thought you didn't want to talk about it," he said through gritted teeth.  In one fast, jerky move, he whisked off his trousers, and stood there, self-consciously, under Jesmind's appraising eye.  "And why is that?"

      "Is what?"

      "Why do the women, um--"

      "Oh, that," she said.  "Because there are seven women for every man."

      "What?"

      "There are seven females for every male," she repeated.  "So we have to share."  She put a finger to her chin, staring at him in a way that made him feel distinctly uncomfortable.  "Turn around," she ordered.  he did so, gritting his teeth.  "My," she said.  "My, my, my."

      "What?"

      "You've got a very handsome body, Tarrin," she complemented.

      "Can we get on with this?" he asked plaintively.

      "You're ruining my fun, do you know that?" she said with an evil little smile.

      "I'm glad one of us in enjoying this," he growled.

      "Just give it time," she told him.  "The best way to get used to it is to just do it.  And it gives me something nice to look at."

      "Do you mind?" he demanded.

      "Not at all," she said, looking him up and down in such a way that he blushed to the roots of his hair.  She laughed then, and then motioned at him with her paw.  "Alright, I guess I am being mean," she admitted.  "Watch what happens.  After you see it, I think you'll be able to do it easily enough."

      He watched as she hunkered down in a squat, her arms lowering to the ground in front of her, and then she simply shrunk, so fast it happened in the blink of an eye.  A rather large white cat was sitting on the ground where she'd been standing.  There was another flash, this one of expansion, and she was again standing before him.  "That's all there is to it," she told him.  "To make it happen, you have to want it to happen, and you have to will it to happen.  You already know how to do it.  It's in your blood.  You just have to make it do it."

      "Alright," he said.  He thought about what she did, how she changed.  He wanted to do the same thing, so he kept telling himself to change in his mind, over and over again.  But nothing was happening.

      "Don't just think it," she said.  "Want it.  Will it."

      Clenching his paws into fists, he closed his eyes and willed it to happen, using all the concentration skills taught to him by his parents.  he felt the oddest sensation, a cool sensation, as if his body had been changed into a liquid.  He felt it actually flow into that other shape, the liquid filling the new vessel.  There was no pain, just that flowing sensation.  And then it was over.

      He opened his eyes, and he was given a new point of view of the world.  One much closer to the ground.  Everything was in vibrant color, and the world opened up to his senses as his instincts seem to advance from the corner of his mind where they usually sat.  He was closer to them that way, and he could feel them in a way that he'd never felt them before.  And after a few seconds of that intimate contact with them, he didn't feel quite so afraid of them.  He looked down at his paws, seeing a pair of cat's legs underneath him.  He looked at himself, this way and that, getting an idea of how it felt to have four legs instead of two, getting used to having fur all over his body.  "You're a handsome cat, Tarrin," Jesmind said appreciatively, then she hunkered down and shifted into her cat form.  She was slightly smaller than he was, he noticed, and her smell was the smell of a cat, not the smell of a Were-cat.

      "How does it feel?"

      Tarrin was a bit surprised.  She had not used sounds or words or movements, but he just seemed to understand perfectly what she was saying to him.  And he found it instinctively easy to reply to her in the exact same manner.  "Strange," he told her in that unspoken manner.  "How are we talking?"

      "I've never understood the specifics of it," she said.  "We just know what other cats have to say.  It works with normal cats too, from housecats to lions."

      "Odd," he remarked, sitting down sedately.  He felt the urge to start cleaning his fur.  Though the idea of licking himself seemed a bit unusual, nonetheless he felt perfectly at ease with the concept.  That was definitely the instincts of the cat impressing themselves on his consciousness, as she said they would.

      "What do you think?" she asked, walking up to him and sitting down in front of him.

   &n