Chapter 6

      Tarrin had no idea what to do now.

      It was midday, and they were still inside the den.  Tarrin was gathered up into Jesmind's arms, and as she slept contentedly, he brooded.

      This was not what he wanted to happen.

      It was, but it wasn't, and in that respect, it had been more than he ever dreamed.  Jesmind had been an infinitely tender lover, and that expression of her warmth and feeling for him had touched him to his soul.  He knew that he'd never think of her in the same way again.  He felt a feeling of trust in her that defied explanation, grounded in the incredible intimacy that they had shared, and he would tell her anything she wanted to know, and he would trust that it would go no farther.  He'd come to know her every line, her every curve, and her scent was imprinted forever into his mind.  He didn't know if it was love, but there was certainly something between them now, some sort of bond that could not be broken.

      What he had feared would happen had happened, though...he didn't want to leave her.  He wanted to stay with her and learn what she had to teach, but more than that, he just wanted to be with her.  And he knew that, unless she agreed to go with him to the Tower, that it wouldn't come to pass.  The problem was, he couldn't just come out and ask her to go to the Tower with him.  If she knew that it was his intent, then she'd watch him so closely that he'd have no chance to get away from her.  He knew that he'd have to approach the subject very delicately, try to urge her into it, convince her that teaching him at the Tower was just as good as back at her home.  And he also had to impress upon her how important it was that he learn how to control the untouched talent of Sorcery that was deep inside him, control it before he hurt someone, or hurt her.

      It was very heavy thoughts, and he worried at them fretfully, almost as much as he worried at who was trying to kill him.  He had no doubt about that now.  They had been trying since he'd left home, and they weren't about to stop.  They were probably even behind the fire in Watch Hill's inn.  And they had caused this to him, the change that had forever altered his life.  He didn't really blame Jesmind.  She was a pawn, and whatever he'd thought at first, she had no direct responsiblity for what had happened.  She was just a tool used by another.  There is an old saying in the army; don't kill the messenger when he brings bad tidings.  Jesmind had been the messenger.  Whoever they were, they had access to some very exotic creatures, like Jesmind, they had mages like the one he'd killed, and they could make the Goblinoids do what they wanted them to do.  That was considerable power, because Trolls didn't like to talk to their dinners before eating them.  Those Trolls had to be afraid of the ones that told them to chase him to do what they wanted.  Trolls were like that.  And it was very disturbing, because from what his father had said often, the Goblinoids weren't much of a threat because of their infighting.  Tribes fought tribes with just as much enthusiasm as race fought race.  Well, he more or less had concluded that those Dargu had been working for the same people.  If these people could command all the different Goblinoids and prevent them from killing each other, then they had an extremely powerful army at their disposal.

      It was a puzzle, and it was like trying to put one together with a blindfold on, and he wasn't allowed to touch the pieces either.  But until he knew who and what was behind it, there was nothing that he could do but keep one step ahead of them.  They seemed fanatically intent on keeping him from reaching to Tower of Sorcery.  He was just as determined to do it just to spite them.  Tarrin thought about that as he absently played with Jesmind's hair, studying the white-backed cat ear that was poking up out of that brilliant red mass, noticing how it was large, but not too large, and how it moved even in her sleep towards any sound.  He ran the back of his finger along her cheek, then over the smooth skin where a human ear would have been.  It looked odd to him, even now, not to see an ear there.

      "Mmmmm," Jesmind sounded, stretching under him.  Her arms wrapped back around him almost immediately, and she gazed up into his eyes with a bemused, content expression on her face.  "Good morning," she sounded, bringing a paw around and tapping him on the tip of his nose.  "Such a serious face," she chided.  "Don't I get a smile?"

      "Not right now," he told her.

      "Well," she said, ignoring him, "I'd say that that was definitely worth stopping for."

      "I'm glad you enjoyed it," he said dryly.

      "Cub, I don't think you want to hear how much I enjoyed it," she said with a grin.  "Unless you'd like a rather detailed account of the parts I found most pleasurable?"

      "Ah, no," he replied urbanely.

      "Good," she said.  "Talking about it with you right here will just give me ideas, and as much fun as this is, we have to move.  Where are our clothes?"

      "I have no idea," he replied.

      She laughed richly.  "Then we really must have enjoyed it," she observed.  "I hope I didn't tear them."

      She waited a moment.  "Tarrin."

      "What?"

      "To get up, you have to get up," she told him.  "I can't move with you on top of me."

      After finding their clothes, Tarrin crawled out of the den.  He had dirt caked to him in many places, and there were streaks of brown on him.  "That's what happens when you sweat in a dirt-floored den," she told him with a wink.  She looked much the same as he did.  "There's a stream somewhere nearby.  We can wash off there."

      The smell of water led them to a very small little brook, and they found an area of relative depth to wash off the dirt, then let the sun and wind dry them before they dressed.  As they sat by the stream, basking in the warmth of the sun, Tarrin decided to start trying to convince her to come with him.  "Where will we go from here?" he asked.

      "We'll have to turn northwest for a while," she told him, smoothing out the fur on her arms, then using her claws as a comb to brush her thick hair.  "I think going on to Darsa is the best thing to do, whether they follow us or not.  After we lose ourselves in the people there, we can get back to my range easily."

      "Why turn northwest?"

      "Because of the Scar," she told him.  "It's a big ravine that runs almost to the coast.  Once we get to it, we'll run beside it.  Darsa is at the end of it."

      "If you're worried about that, then we can just go to Suld," he said.  "It's a large place, full of people, and we'll be allowed to stay in the Tower.  I think that we'd be safer there than running around out here."

      "No," she said firmly.  "I'm not going anywhere near those spellweavers.  It was one of them that collared me."

      "Really?" he gasped.

      "I know Sorcery when I smell it," she said in a deadly voice.  "I don't know much about Druidic magic, but I've got enough of it to sense a Sorcerer's weaving, and I felt that right before I lost my memory."

      "Not all people who can use Sorcery are Sorcerers," he told her.  "Many of them don't want to be in the order.  Maybe it was one of those freelancers."

      "I don't care," she grated.  "I'm still not going anywhere near them.  And neither are you."

      "I have to," he said.  "Jesmind, I am one of those people.  Before I left home, I saw my sister nearly kill someone with Sorcery.  It was an accident, but it was no less deadly.  If I don't go somewhere and find someone to teach me how to control it, that may happen to me.  And I may kill somebody.  I don't want to hurt anyone, Jesmind, least of all you."

      She gave him a hot look, but he pressed on regardless.  "I don't see why you can't teach me what I need to know there," he said in a reasonable tone.  "That way I learn what I need to know about being what I am, and I'm in a place where I won't accidentally kill someone with Sorcery."

      "I'm not going there," she told him in a steely tone.  "And since I'm not, you're not.  And that's the end of it."

      "Gods, woman, do I have to burn your hair off to make you understand?" he said hotly.  "I don't want to hurt anyone, and if I hurt you, I think I'd kill myself.  There's only one place that I can go to keep that from happening.  Why are you being so stubborn about this?"

      "Cub, I'm about one step from shutting you up," she growled, balling one oversized hand-paw into a fist.  "I said no.  In case you don't understand what that means, it means no.  I'm not going to Suld, and you go where I go.  That means you are not going to Suld."

      He was getting angry with her, but he knew better than to press it too far, else she'd start getting suspicious.  When the time came, he needed as much a head start on her as he could get.

      After dressing, they started off again at that ground-eating pace that they'd used the day before.  It was amazing that he could run so fast for so long.  At that pace, he knew he could outrun a horse, for while a horse could run faster, it couldn't do it as long as he could at the speed he was running.  The forest became populated by more and more evergreens as the terrain quickly became hilly.  There was less undergrowth as well, which allowed them to run faster when there was no trail to follow.

      The Scar was almost self-descriptive.  It was a huge ravine that simply opened with no warning.  It was about a hundred paces across where they'd encountered it, and it went straight as an arrow due east and west.  Jesmind stood confidently at the very edge of the deep crevice, which had a considerable amount of standing water at the bottom which was at least two hundred spans down, shading her eyes with her paws from the bright sun as she studied the horizon to the east, and then to the west.

      Tarrin stood at the edge, looking down at the narrow lake at the bottom.  "What now?" he asked.

      "There are some bridges across here and there," she said.  "There are enough woodsmen around for them to need them.  We'll cross one and get on the other side, then cut the bridge so the Dargu can't follow."  She grunted.  "Damn, I don't see any," she informed him.  "Let's skirt this thing to the east and see if we can't find one."

      They turned east and followed along the edge of the ravine.  Tarrin noticed that it stayed at almost the exact same width, and the walls of the ravine's sides were smooth, with striated, multi-colored bands of rock that went all the way down to the water's edge some distance below.  "I wonder if there are any fish in there," he mused.

      "There are," she told him.  "I fell in once.  It took me almost an hour to climb out.  That water is cold."

      "How did that happen?"

      "The bridge fell out from under me," she shrugged, "and I was too far away to jump to the edge."

      "I wonder what made it," he said.

      "From what I hear, it was some God," she remarked.  "I guess he was having a hissy fit or something."

      They found a bridge about an hour later.  It was a rotted rope bridge with wooden planks, and it looked like it would collapse if a fly landed on it.  Jesmind frowned a bit after looking at it, but a few tugs on the supporting ropes showed that they were firm.  "We may as well try this one," she said.  "The worst that can happen is that we both get wet."

      "I hate getting wet," Tarrin growled.

      "I do too," she said.  "It's a race thing."

      Jesmind went first, since she weighed less than Tarrin.  But not much.  The planks groaned considerably as she put her weight on them, but they held.  The ropes creaked just as loudly, but they too held.  "Come on," she said after she was about a quarter of the way across.

      "Is that wise?" he asked.

      "The support ropes are strong enough," she said.  "So long as we're far enough apart, it'll be just fine."

      Tarrin put one padded foot on the first plank, and he winced when it creaked ominously as he put weight on it.  He kept both paws on the handrails as he gingerly stepped out onto the bridge, moving with the sure-footed caution for whom that cats were famous.  Tarrin realized that he had absolutely no fear of the height.  It was the fear of the bridge breaking out from under him that made him go so slow.

      After he was about halfway across, Tarrin suddenly stopped.  He realized one simple thing.  That this was the perfect opportunity to separate himself from Jesmind.  With the Scar between them, she would have to find another bridge to get back across, and that would give him enough of a lead on her to get away.

      Tarrin agonized over it for several seconds.  He didn't want to leave her.  He was afraid that she would be angry with him for his treachery.  No, he was sure of that.  But the single thought of Jesmind's skin charred and her hair on fire strengthened his resolve.  It was for her own good as much as his.

      With her back to him, Jesmind didn't see Tarrin flex out his claws, grab the rail rope securely with his other paw, and then shear through the rail with his claws.

      The rail snapped like a broken bowstring, popping back towards the walls of the ravine and breaking guideropes that secured the support ropes to the rope lattice holding the footplanks.  The floor fell out from under both of them, and Jesmind wildly managed to get her paw on the unbroken support rope, which sagged and suddenly groaned loudly from the sudden extra weight.  Tarrin flexed out the claws on his foot, and, holding the support rope with both paws, he set his claws of his foot against it and pushed.  They ripped through the sturdy hemp easily, and then the rope bridge separated into two pieces.

      Tarrin fell with one section, and Jesmind fell with the other, on opposite sides.

      The impact with the wall was bone-numbing.  Tarrin almost lost his grip on the rope as he rebounded away from the wall and his hands stung fiercely.  He scrabbled on the wooden planks with his claws, then found purchase as they sank into the old wood.  Breathing a few deep gasps of air, he put his forehead on the rotting wood and thanks whatever Gods were watching that he didn't take a swim.  "Tarrin!" Jesmind called urgently.  He looked back and up.  She was higher up on her section, hanging on with her paws and footclaws in the same manner as him.  "Are you alright?"

      "I'm alright," he replied soberly, then he started climbing up. The rotted condition of the planks made climbing up them dangerous, so he opted to just hand-walk up the support rope, which was still in good condition.

      "Don't!" she called.

      "What?" he asked, still climbing.

      "You're on the wrong side," she shouted to him.  "You'll have to drop into the water and climb up my side."

      "I'm not getting in that water," he said adamantly, neatly evading giving away his intention for a few precious moments.  He had a good rhythm at that point, and he was climbing up the side of the ravine with surprising speed.  She beat him to the top, but not by very much.  He clambored over the edge of the wall and turned around to face her.

      "Well, we can follow along on either side until we find another bridge," she called.

      "You're safe now, Jesmind," he called calmly.

      "What?"

      "I'm sorry."

      She was quiet a moment, then her ears laid back.  Even from a hundred paces away, he saw her eyes literally flare up from within with an unholy greenish glow.  "You did that!" she accused.  "You little--"

      Tarrin winced at the barrage of sudden graphic curses she threw in his direction.  She was incensed, and he was suddenly glad they were separated by an uncrossable barrier.  "You're going to Suld!" she shrieked.  "You lied to me!" she said with a sudden vehemence that frightened him.

      "I never did any such thing!" he called back.

      "You said you'd stay with me, and now you're running away!" she accused.  "You lied to me, Tarrin!"

      "I said I would learn what you had to teach," he called back.  "I never said when.  You don't understand that I need to go to Suld, Jesmind.  I don't have a choice.  I wanted you to come with me, but you refused.  This is more your fault than mine.  When I'm done at Suld, then I'll be happy to go with you.  But not until then."

      She was totally enraged, and despite the distance between them, he was suddenly very afraid of her.  "You had better run far and fast, rogue," she spat at him.  "Because when I catch up to you, I'm going to kill you!"  Tarrin rocked back on his heels.  She meant it.  "And I know where you're going, so you had best hope to every God you can remember that you get there before I do!"  She snatched a small rock off the ground, and hurled it at him.  Despite the distance between them, Tarrin had to duck to avoid getting his nose flattened by the rock.  "I'm going to kill you, Tarrin!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, then she threw a few more tongue-shrivelling curses at him, even as she threw more rocks.  He hoped she didn't know what some of those words meant, as he evaded the amazingly accurately thrown rocks.

      He gave her a sober, calm look, and she stopped shouting at him.  Her face was screwed up into a mask of utter outrage, and she was panting hard from her anger and exertion at throwing curses and rocks.  "I'm sorry," he told her.  Then he turned and started running south.

      Her howling promise to gut him when she got her claws on him followed him into the trees.

      It had not gone as well as he had hoped, but it had been necessary.  Tarrin sighed at what could have been, then quickened his pace.  Jesmind was now his enemy, and he knew that she would kill him without hesitation when she caught up to him.  So he had to make sure that she didn't.

      It had been a very hard two days.

      Tarrin was huddling in a small hollow bole created by a massive fallen tree, avoiding a heavy rain that was soaking the surrounding forest.  The only reason he stopped was that he needed rest and that it was so heavy it had reduced visibility to almost nothing.  Tarrin had had almost no sleep since leaving Jesmind, pushing himself at a murderous pace that was surely so far ahead of her that his trail would be washed out by the rain.  That had been his intent, for rain was a common occurance in Sulasia at that time of year.  With enough of a lead and the rain washing out his scent, he could now change direction without fear of her following him.

      Then again, he didn't even know if she was.  He'd seen no sign of her since he'd left her fuming at the Scar.  Since she knew where he was going, he saw her making one of three choices.  She would try to track him down, she would get ahead of him on one of the more obvious routes to Suld and head him off, or she would go all the way to Suld and try to catch him there.  Tarrin was guessing that, as mad as she was, she was chasing him.  And now that the rain was so heavy, it would wash away any trace of his passage, and he could make his planned turn with no fear of her following.

      Well, not too much fear.

      He waited for a few moments, then climbed out into the rain, getting onto the fallen tree.  Now it was important not to get on the ground, where his tracks or scent could sink into the mud.  He pulled himself into the trees with a low-laying branch, then turned southeast, away from Suld.

      That was his plan.  Go southeast for a while, turn due south, then cross the High Road to Suld at some point.  Run parallel to that road on the south side, veer away close to the city, and then enter from the south, the opposite direction of what she would think he would come in.

      Two days with very little food and no sleep had taken their toll, however.  Tarrin had already factored in a day of little movement into his plan.  Once he was sure he'd lost her, he'd stop and get a very good sleep, then fish or hunt up a good meal, and then return to his established pattern of eating whatever he could find during a stop of only a short time.  Over the last two days, his father's training in woodlore had kept him alive, letting him find roots and plants that were edible, things that he wouldn't have to hunt down or catch.  He did have one meat meal, stumbling over a rabbit den, then reaching in and grabbing the animal before it could get too far away.  It hadn't expected that.  But raw rabbit left much to be desired, and he wouldn't do that again unless he was hungry enough not to care.

      Tarrin moved in the trees for the rest of the day.  It wasn't as fast as moving on the ground, but with the heavy rain, it was almost undetectable.  Especially since he was being extraordinarily careful about not leaving clawmarks on the trees.  Twice he'd passed over or allowed to pass a band of Goblinoids, one a tribe of small Bruga, the other a small pack of Trolls, which were trudging about in the rain in an obvious attempt to find something.

      Or someone.

      They were still looking for him.  He'd already known that they would.  It was what made his plan risky.  If he had too many fights with them, he'd be leaving bodies and obvious signs of his passage, and that was something that he was certain would doom him to be meeting Jesmind face to face in the immediate future.  He had to get to Suld without getting into a single fight, if he could help it.  And with the number of Goblinoids that were infesting this stretch of forest, that would not be easy.  But, to his advantage, they would slow Jesmind down as well, if she did manage to follow him.

      He kept moving after the sun went down, moving in the pounding rain.  The darkness was much more his ally than the Goblinoids, for his sensitive eyes gathered in the murky light and allowed him to see, while they resorted to torches, ruddy beacons that told him exactly where they were.  He moved on through the night, after the rain tapered off, stopping in utter silence as a sooty torch came in his direction, then moving on after it had gone by.

      He moved on after daybreak, and throughout the entire day, glad of a warm, windy day with heavy overcast that would keep his shadow off the ground, while the sound of the wind through the trees would cover any sound he may accidentally make.  The concentration of Goblinoids was going down, as they concentrated their search in other areas, for he only saw five bands of them as he meandered on a generally southern course.

      By the end of the day, his head felt as if it were stuffed with sand, and he found his mind drifting at the most inconvenient times.  He'd already been awake somewhere around two days, and he'd all but exhausted his reserves.  The rain that had begun to fall was about the only thing keeping him awake, as it pattered on his head and body and dropped into his ears, which was uncomfortable.  He knew that he had to stop, danger or no danger.  He decided to stay in the safety of the trees, though, and he searched around for a suitable sleeping place.  It took him about half an hour to find one, just as the sun was setting in the west, an old hollowed out squirrel's nest that had yet to gain a new tenant.  It was just large enough for him to squeeze in through the opening, and inside it was certainly warm and dry.  Tarrin removed his clothes and pushed them into the opening, then changed form and wriggled in through the entrance.  The inside was indeed dry, and warm.  The past tenant had littered the floor of the hollow with pine needles and shredded leaves, creating a very soft bed on which to sleep.

      He laid down on the soft mat of needles and leaves, considering things in that drowsy half-conscious frame of mind before sleep.  He'd yet to feel real fear at what he was doing...and he hadn't had a single dream since meeting Jesmind.  In the short time that they had been together, the feisty Were-cat female had changed Tarrin, changed him very much.  Because of her, he could strike out on his own, surrounded by enemies, with very little fear, and a great deal of confidence.  He would have been lost out here alone, if it hadn't been for Jesmind.

      He closed his eyes and slept, dropping off literally between one thought and the next.

      It took him nearly fifteen days to reach the High Road.  He'd spent almost all that time moving through the trees, not leaving the Goblinoid patrols even a footprint to follow, coming down only to forage for food and to drink water, and to cross a couple of streams and small rivers.  His ribs were starting to stick out some, but he'd gotten used to the constant hunger that came with meals that couldn't fill his belly.

      The time out in the forest, in a way, had been good for him.  His body was as tough as an old gnarled root now, already strong muscles hardened visibly by some serious physical activity.  The pads on his hand-paws and feet had had been worn down, then grew back several times, until the pads that were now on his feet were about as tough as old leather.  He thought he'd had endurance before, but now he could move all day and half the night at a constant speed that would have put a Goblinioid on the ground panting and heaving.  It had also brought his two elemental sides into a closer symbiotic harmony, as both the human and the Cat cooperated to get him to safety.  The human guiding his path and allowing him to execute his plans, the Cat by keeping him safe and telling him what moves were wise and what moves were stupid.  He drew heavily on the instinctive knowledge of his animal half in those fifteen days, and that along with the woodlore instruction he'd received from his father had been what had fed him over the course of time.  He noticed a change in his basic attitudes as well, for the time in the forest had all but converted him into a creature of the forest.

      But now a sign of the human world stood on the ground underneath the tree in which he was perched.  His tail snaked back and forth reflexively as he stared at it, the single goal that had driven him for half a month, watching a trade caravan wend its way to the west.  He needed information, and here was the perfect opportunity to get it.  It was a large caravan, with some ten or fifteen wagons and nearly forty men on horseback, wearing armor and carrying assorted weaponry, guarding the goods which were stowed on the large wooden conveyances.

      Tarrin dropped down to a lower branch, waiting to see if he could get one man somewhat by himself.  He didn't want to hurt the man, just talk to him, but he didn't want to attract the attention of the entire caravan.  He got his chance, as one of the caravan's rear guard stopped not too far from him and dismounted, then hurried off into the bushes to relieve himself.  The others didn't wait for him.  Tarrin moved into a position relatively close to the horse, approaching it with the horse's scent full in his face so that the horse wouldn't smell him.  The man came out of the bushes and climbed back up onto his horse quickly.

      "Excuse me," Tarrin called from the concealment of the lower branches.

      The man gave a startled oath and drew his sword.

      "Oh, please," Tarrin called.  "Put that away.  I just need to ask you a couple of questions."

      "Who are you?" he called.  "Where are you?"

      "Don't worry about it," he said.  "Where are we?  I'm a bit lost."

      "This is the High Road," he said, a bit confused.

      "I know that," Tarrin retorted.  "Where on the High Road?  Near what city?"

      "How can you not know that?"

      "Are you going to answer me or not?"

      "I may not," he said.

      "Human, if I was a bandit, I would have attacked you when you went into the bushes," Tarrin said in disgust.  "I just want to know where I am so I can get to where I'm going."

      The fact that Tarrin called him "human" was not lost on the man.  "Are you a Faerie?" he asked curiously.  "Is that why I can't see you?"

      "Don't worry about what I am, just answer the question," Tarrin grated.

      "This place is about a day's ride to the west of Ultern," he answered.  "Jerinhold is about a day's ride east of here."

      Tarrin considered that.  "I came too far east," he growled aloud.  "Thank you, human.  That helps me a great deal."

      In an intentional rustle of leaves, Tarrin left the man standing there.

      Tarrin was quickly faced with another problem, one he hadn't considered.  The forest came right down to the road in that stretch that he'd found, but that was not normal.  Farmlands cut into the forest on both sides of the road not even a quarter of a mile from where he'd encountered the guard, and they stretched out too far for him to keep the road in sight and still stay in the woods.  Tarrin couldn't follow the road quickly if he had to detour every quarter of a mile to go around a farm, and time was a definite factor.  It left him with a hard decision to make, but in the end, it wasn't much of a decision.

      Tarrin holed up in a tree top for the rest of the day.  When sunset drained all the light from the sky, leaving only the faint, multihued light of the Skybands as illumination, Tarrin dropped down from the trees and stepped out onto the road.  There was no helping it, but at least on the road he could travel with great speed.  Tarrin set out in that ground-eating lope, and spent the night travelling down the road.  He passed the caravan he'd encountered that day around midnight, and left them far behind.

      What he didn't expect was reaching the city of Jerinhold before dawn.  It was a walled city, surrounded on all sides by farmland, and not a few small villages.  Tarrin wasn't about to set foot inside the city, so he ran along a road that went along the base of the wall, watching the faint light on the eastern horizon warily.  He also didn't want to be caught out in the open at daybreak.  He wasn't sure why he was so concerned with not being seen, but some part of him didn't want the humans to see him, or for them not to see him like that.  In a way, he was afraid of how they would react to seeing a half-human creature, and the thought of being violently rejected was more than he was willing to risk.

      It was almost dawn by the time he'd managed to circumnavigate the walls of Jerinhold, and the High Road stretched out before him with almost no cover available.  He decided to find cover for the day, but he'd get as far as he could before he had to take shelter.  He ran at a very brisk pace right up until the dawning of the sun, then he veered off the road and crossed several farms, and got himself into a small strip of woods that lay between two large farms, serving as a boundary between them.  He hid his clothes in a small bole of a tree, changed form, and crawled into the bole with his clothes.  As the first rays of the sun washed over the floor of the woods, Tarrin fell asleep.

      Tarrin was almost starving when he woke up, some time before sunset.  He dressed with a hollow hole forming in his stomach, and the thought of food was the only motivating factor.  Aside from a few field mice, there really wasn't much in the small strip of woods, and besides, field mouse wasn't the tastiest of meals.  There were farms around, several of them, and he was absolutely positive that he could find something to eat among the buildings of one of them.  Tarrin didn't really like the idea of stealing from honest folk, but there was almost nothing else to eat, and he was afraid to show himself.  He was filthy and bedraggled, and a farmer or innkeeper would probably go for his pitchfork before greeting the Were-cat in a civilized manner.  Aside from that, Tarrin had no money with which to buy a meal, even if he had the courage to walk into an inn.

      Tarrin considered this as he slinked out of the woods furtively, keeping himself relatively well hidden among the rows of knee-high wheat growing out in the fields.  The closest farm was the most logical target, and it was a very large one.  Obviously losing a chicken or two wouldn't really hurt this farming family.  They were evidently very prosperous.  He crept among the wheat as human smells touched his nose, and he crept up on the scents with the stealth of a ghost.  He lay in the field and watched as four men worked with iron rods and wooden dowels to uproot a huge treestump.  The tree which had owned the stump lay on the ground beside the stump, and the stump itself had not been cut.  Rather, the ancient tree which had once rested upon it had simply came down from old age.  There was an older man with a brown beard and a grizzled visage that was obviously in charge, coordinating the heaving attempts of the three young men with him to rock the stump out of the ground.  By their scents, Tarrin could determine that they were all related.  A father and his three sons.  And they all had smells of other humans all over them.  Wives and children, most likely.  This was a family farmstead, where whole generations lived and worked in harmony to manage the large holding and make it productive.

      Tarrin just couldn't steal from them.  He'd been a farmer himself, and he knew how it felt to lose livestock and crops to raiding animals.  But, watching them heave and groan and sweat trying to uproot the stump, he realized that he didn't have to steal from them.

      Steeling himself, Tarrin stood up.  It took them a few moments to notice him, and when they did, the father gave out a startled shout and brandished his iron rod like a staff as his sons hastily yanked out their own tools to defend themselves against the intruder.

      "Please, don't do that," Tarrin said from his heart, raising his paws in supplication.  Tarrin's simple plea must have struck a chord with the brown-bearded patriarch, for he lowered his iron rod a bit and regarded Tarrin curiously.

      "What manner of creature are ye?" he asked.  "And what do ye want?"

      "I'll help you uproot the stump in return for food," Tarrin offered, ignoring the questions he didn't feel like answering.

      "Really now?" the patriarch asked.  "And what makes ye think that we'd be wanting yer help?  Or that we can trust ye?"

      Tarrin hadn't considered that.  Back in Aldreth, trust was a simple matter, and it was abundant through the village and outlying farms.  Nobody locked their doors in Aldreth.  He knew things were a bit different in the rest of the world, but watching the farmers made him look on them as he would have looked on farmers back home.  And it was obvious that they were nothing like his friends back home.  Tarrin caught a glimpse of his hand-paws, and an even greater reality crashed in on him.  They'd trust him even less because of what he was.  "I, I'm sorry I bothered you," he said quietly, turning around and starting to walk away.

      "Hold," the man called.  Tarrin stopped and turned around.  "Yer more dirt than skin, and that shirt's hangin' off ye like there's nothin' under it.  Ye offered work in exchange for food, and I have the feelin' ye could have easily stole what ye wanted.  If ye could get this close to us, then getting that close to the chicken coop woulda' been just as easy.  Come, stranger.  Help us pull this cursed stump, and ye can eat with my family this night."

      The look of grateful appreciation on Tarrin's face made the fatherly man blush a little bit.  The three young men gave their father a wild look, but said nothing.  "Come on then, stranger," the man said, putting his iron rod back under one huge root.  "Well, come on, boys, I'd like to get this done today," he prompted.

      Tarrin put a foot down in a hole dug around the base of the stump, sunk his claws into the side of the stump, and braced his other foot against the ground.  The young men all returned to their places, and the older man put his shoulder under his iron rod.  "Alright now, all together," he said.  "One, two, three!"

      Tarrin felt his blood rush through his body and he put his inhuman strength against the side of the stump.  It creaked, and groaned, and the rods and dowels used by the humans suddenly began to move, helping the main force of the movement, which was Tarrin, drive the stump out of the ground with raw physical force.  The stump moved half a span with that first push.  "Alright, again!" the farmer said, resetting his iron rod as Tarrin got a new hold on the stump.  It groaned, and several smaller roots undergrond snapped from the strain.  They stopped and reset the levering prybars, and Tarrin got a hand-paw up and under the edge of the stump.  He set his shoulder against the stump and waited for the farmer to give the word.  "This time may do it," the man said in his earthy voice.  "Ready now.  One, two, three!"  Tarrin growled from the strain, and his vision blurred over as the blood pounded through his body.  The stump shuddered, then there was a loud, deep snap as the main taproot broke.  After that, the stump rolled out of the hole easily.

      Tarrin sat down heavily on the edge of the hole left by the vacated stump, elbows on his knees and breathing heavily.  That had been all he had in him.  The farmer and the three young sons gave Tarrin sidelong glances, then the aged patriarch offered a hand out to Tarrin.  Tarrin took it hesitantly, but the aged farmer just smiled and helped Tarrin to his feet.  "The name's Kellen," he introduced.  "My boys, Delon, Brint, and Ian."

      "I'm--uh, call me Rin," Tarrin said.  He didn't think it was wise to tell him his name, even though his physical description more than gave him away.  "Why don't you have your horses pulling the stumps?"

      The man's eyes hardened slightly.  "Both my horses died last month," he said.

      "I'm sorry to hear that," Tarrin replied.  "Sickness?"

      "Yah," he replied with a grunt.  "Come on then, let's go see if Mother has dinner on the table."

      The farmhouse was an impressively large affair, some three stories high, and it was teeming with activity.  There were at least four generations of this family living in the house, two generations below Kellen the farmer and one generation above.  The children playing in the farmyard all stopped and looked at Tarrin with undisguised curiosity, and the elderly woman sitting on the house's porch, with her knitting in her lap, eyed Tarrin suspiciously as Kellen brought him up to the front porch.  Tarrin was filthy and matted, and he felt his indisposition keenly as the old woman stared at him with her hard eyes.  "Mother Wynn, this is Rin," Kellen told the aged woman in a calm voice.  "He helped us pull that big stump from the west field."

      "That's nice," she said in a calm voice, continuing with her knitting.  She was a very small woman, Tarrin noted, with silver hair tied back in a loose bun.  Her hands were gnarled from age, but her fingers were still surprisingly nimble as they worked the knitting needles.  She was wearing a plain brown wool country dress, and had slippers on her feet.  Her face was very old, and wise, thin from the sunken cheeks of her advanced age, and she probably only had three teeth left in her mouth.  But her eyes were clear and lucid, a chestnut brown that seemed to see absolutely everything with the most cursory of glances.  "Your wife won't let him through the front door looking like that," she warned.  "You need to clean yourself up, Rin," she told him.

      "I know, ma'am, but I haven't had the time," he said shyly.

      She gave him a calm look.  "Ian, take him out back and show him where the wellpump is.  Brint, he's about your size.  You have a decent shirt and pants he can wear?"

      "I think I have something, Mother Wynn," Brint replied respectfully.

      "I'd appreciate the chance to bathe, but I can't stay long, ma'am," Tarrin told her, "so there's no need for me to get clothes.  Master Kellen offered me a meal for my help.  Once I get the meal, I'll be moving on.  And I can eat on the porch just as easily as inside."

      She gave him a simple look, and grunted in assent.  "Have your mother fix Rin a plate," she told Brint.

      Ian took Tarrin around to the back of the house.  Tarrin was surprised that none of the children followed.  There was a wellpump and a trough of water right behind the house, close to the door opening to the kitchen.  "The water's not that warm, but it should be alright," Ian told him gruffly.

      "Thank you," Tarrin said sincerely, taking off his shirt.

      "Yer ribs are sticking out like branches," Ian noted.

      "I haven't been getting much food lately," Tarrin replied.

      Tarrin washed up as best he could in the trough, dunking his shirt and twisting out most of the smell and dirt, then scrubbing out the mats in his fur.  His hair still had the same braid in it that Jesmind put in it, but he still tried to wash out his hair the best he could with the braid in it.  He couldn't put it back, and it was much too convenient for it to stay in the braid.  After he was done, he walked back around the house.  Everyone else was gone, inside, except for the elderly woman Mother Wynn.  She had a plate with roasted chicken and carrots in her lap.  There was another such plate sitting on the porch by the steps.  She motioned at it.  "Have a seat, boy," she said.

      "Thank you," he said politely.  "You don't have to sit out here with me, ma'am," he said.

      "Maybe not, but I always sit on the porch when I eat," she said.  "An old lady has the right to eat wherever she wants."  Tarrin sat down and attacked the large mound of roasted chicken pieces.  It had been a very long time since he'd had a cooked meal, and even longer since he'd had that much food at one time.  "Try not to swallow the bones," she remarked with a crooked grin.

      "It's been a while," he said between bites.

      "I gathered," she said pointedly.  "Who are you running from?"

      "I offended a large tribe of Dargu that decided that my home range belonged to them," Tarrin lied.  "They decided to press the argument, even after I killed some of them.  I decided to take a little trip into the human lands, since they won't come into the human lands, but I've not had much of a welcome from you humans either," he elaborated.  "I have no money for food, and there's no game worth hunting so deep into the human lands, so I've had nothing to eat.  Master Kellen is the first that's been nice to me."

      "Kellen likes to feed strays," the old woman said with a shrug.

      "I feel like a stray," Tarrin sighed.  "I can't go back to my den til the Dargu aren't expecting me.  Then I'll discuss the living arrangements with them one at a time," he said grimly.

      "Sounds like fun," she remarked.

      "Not for them, it won't be," he growled.

      She cackled evilly.  "I don't mind seeing a few less Dargu in the world," she told him.

      "Try about fifty," Tarrin said.

      "No wonder you decided to leave," she said.

      Tarrin nodded.  "I can handle three or four, but not fifty.  I'm going to let them go back to my range and get comfortable, and then I'm going to start killing them one at a time," he told her.  "Once I have them down to a managable number, then I'll start getting unpleasant.  A few very messy and graphic object lessons should let them know that I'm back."

      She cackled again.  "I like you, strange one," she said.  "You have a flair for the dramatic."

      "Fear is a good motivator with Dargu," Tarrin told her, falling back on his many lessons from his father.  "If I can scare them enough, they'll leave my home range without so much as a fare thee well.  But they're brave in numbers, so I have to get rid of some of those numbers before I can start my little terror rampage."

      "You know the dog-faces pretty well," she said clinically.

      He nodded.  "It's best to understand some of your more unpleasant neighbors," he told her.

      "Smart boy," she complemented.

      "Thank you, ma'am," he said politely, tearing off another chunk of chicken with his sharp teeth.

      "Sounds like you have a good plan there," she told him.

      "I hope so," he replied.  "We'll find out soon."

      "I reckon you will at that."

      They ate in silence for a while.  "How long have you been here?" Tarrin asked.  "If you don't mind my asking."

      "I've been here all my life," she said with a dreamy smile.  "I was born on this farm, in this house, eighty years ago.  And I'll die here."

      "Home is the best place to be," Tarrin agreed calmly.

      "It is indeed."

      Tarrin looked down at the plate, and was surprised that it was clean.  The bones were all stripped totally bare, and he'd even found the time to eat the carrots, although he honestly couldn't remember doing it.  "Well, that's about that," he said, looking at his plate.  "I'd best be moving on.  I don't want to upset your house any more than I already have."

      "Not quite yet," she said.  "Since I'm an old woman and it won't make any difference, why don't you tell me why you're really running?" she said with a mischievious smile.

      Tarrin grimaced ruefully.  "I thought I was a better liar than that," he said.

      "You're a good liar, boy," she admitted with a grin.  "The problem is, I'm better at seeing the truth than you are at lying.  You wouldn't lie to a decrepid old woman, would you?"

      "I thought I already did," he said.

      She cackled loudly, slapping her hand on her knee several times.  "I like you, boy," she repeated.  "Now then, out with it.  Who are you, and what's got you running so hard you don't have time to take a bath?"

      "My name is Tarrin," he told her honestly.  "I am running from Dargu.  And Trolls, and Waern, and Bruga, and whoever else has decided to chase me today.  I have no idea why they're chasing me, though.  I came down into the human lands because they won't follow me.  There are too many humans for them to hide."  He put the plate down.  "I'm supposed to be a student at the Tower of Sorcery.  If I can ever get there, that is," he sighed.

      She pursed her lips.  "Alot of bother for one boy, Sorcerer or no," she said.

      "I know," he said.  "That's why I don't understand it.  What do they want me for, anyway?"

      "That I can't answer, my boy," she said in her gravelly voice.  "But you were right.  It is time for you to move on.  If you have that many people chasing you, Suld is the only place you'll be safe.  Run for the Tower, boy.  They'll protect you well enough."

      "I'm already working on it, ma'am," he assured her with a smile.  "How far am I from Suld, anyway?"

      "It's two days from when you reach the High road," she told him.  "You should steal a horse and just run for it."

      "Steal?" he gasped.

      "What, you've never heard of it?  Well, you find someone with a horse, hit him over the head, and take his horse," she told him with a blunt grin.  "You may as well take his money and his clothes, while you're at it."

      "I know what it is, but I don't like to steal," Tarrin said.  "If I did, I'd have stolen food off this farm."

      "Boy, beggars can't be choosers," she said bluntly.  "If it comes down to you living or dying, better someone loses his horse than you losing your life."

      Tarrin nodded.  That was just pure wisdom, and it would be foolish to ignore it.  Mother Wynn may be old, but Tarrin saw that her mind was sharp, and she had the wisdom of experience.  "I'll think about it," he promised, "but I don't like horses all that much. It's too hard to hide when you have a horse."  Tarrin stood up and approached Mother Wynn, then knelt beside her and took her hand in his paw.  "I appreciate your talk, Mother Wynn," he told her honestly.  "You're a wise woman, and you made me feel much better."

      "Glad someone around here appreciates an old woman's chatter," she said with a totally fake look of suffering.  Tarrin had no doubt that everyone in the house hinged on her every word.

      "Some of us can see past how someone looks," he said pointedly.

      She harumphed, then shook her hand free of his gentle grip.  "You'd best get on with yourself, boy," she ordered.  "You're not getting any closer to Suld standing here, you know.  Now scoot."

      "Yes ma'am," he said with a smile.  "Thank you, Mother Wynn."

      "No need, boy," she told him.  "Now scat."

      "Yes ma'am," he said.  Then he left the old woman sitting on the porch, rocking gently in the darkening evening with a plate of chicken on her lap and a faraway look in her clear brown eyes.

      It was the feeling that he was too close for anything to go wrong that lulled him into a false sense of security, and he paid for it.  It came in the form of something hitting him in the back of the head as he loped down the High Road towards Suld, well into the middle of the night.  Tarrin saw nothing but stars and dropped to the ground like a felled ox, rolling several times before coming to a stop against a tree by the side of the road.  Tarrin swam in a gray haze, as he hovered right on the edge of consciousness, not yet able to move but vaguely aware of what his ears were telling him.  He could literally feel his skull start to mend the fracture created by whatever it was that hit him.

      "Don't get too close," Tarrin heard one voice through the haze.  "I wonder what it is."

      "I don't ask questions," the other one said.  "That man in the inn said anything that even remotely looks Wikuni, and this one is close enough for me.  I just don't want to carry the body back.  It looks heavy."

      "Is it dead?"

      "It will be in a minute," came the ominous response.

      The haze parted like a curtain, but Tarrin didn't immediately move.  He reached out with his keen senses, feeling the air, smelling it, noticing the shifts in air against his skin and fur.  There were two of them, and they were right over him.  Tarrin felt the air brush along the side of his long tail, and he used that as a guide to slowly slither his tail between the feet of one of them.  Once it was in position, he slashed with it as hard as he could.

      Tarrin's tail wasn't anywhere near as strong as the rest of his body.  It was more for balance than for work, but the muscles in his tail had the same proportionate strength as the rest of his body, and that gave the slender limb formidable strength.  That strength swiped the feet out from under one of the two men, who crashed to the ground in a heavy grunt.  Tarrin rolled up on himself and slipped away from the other, springing up to face a smallish, dark-haired man with a narrow jaw and rotting teeth, who was holding a long dagger in his hand and a sling in the other.  The other man was a shade smaller than this man, but maybe a bit heavier.  Both of them wore common peasant clothing.  The standing man gaped at him, and barely had time to gasp before Tarrin was on him.  Tarrin's huge paw closed around his neck in a crushing grip, and Tarrin picked the smallish man off the ground by his neck and held him out at arm's length.

      "The next time you hit a man in the head with a sling," Tarrin growled at him evilly, his eyes glowing from within with an unholy greenish radiance, "make sure he's dead before you get this close."  Then he closed his grip around the man's neck, crushing it.  The man gurgled once, then his head flopped limply to the side as the bones in his neck shattered.

      The other man screamed in terror and scrambled to his feet as Tarrin threw the dead body aside.  That sound snapped Tarrin out of his sudden desire for blood, and he hesitated as the other attacker turned tail and ran, blubbering and whimpering in abject terror.  Tarrin let him go; it had been this man that had tried to kill him, and the fear would be punishment enough for the other.  Tarrin was worried more at how easily he had killed the man, how he had done it without a second thought.  Granted, he argued to himself, the man did try to kill him.  But Tarrin had killed him out of retribution, not out of defense of his own life.  And what scared him was that he had absolutely no remorse.

      Tarrin put it out of his mind as he considered the situation.  Someone somewhere was spreading some kind of story that got men out on the road hunting down anything that looked Wikuni.  Wikuni were also known as the Animal People, so the resemblence to Tarrin was not even remotely a coincidence.  Whoever was after him was trying another tactic to get rid of him, a tactic that had come very close to working.  It made the road unsafe for him.  He rifled through the pockets of the dead man as he considered his original plan to skirt the road from the safety of the forest.  That plan was still workable, but it meant that he would have to go quite a bit out of his way, at least an hour's travel south.

      The man had a few coppers and a silver coin in his purse.  Tarrin took it, and his dagger, and took his leather belt as well.  Tarrin's pants weren't quite so snug on him now that he'd lost weight, and he needed something to help hold them up.  The money would get him a meal in the morning, and the dagger, like any knife, had a multitude of uses, and would save his claws.  As an afterthought, he picked up the body and slung it over his shoulder.  It would be better to leave it somewhere other than on the road.

      He slunk across several farms until he reached the treeline, being careful not to alarm the dogs on many of them, then went back well and far enough so that the body would be eaten by scavengers long before it started smelling bad enough to attract attention, back where the signs of human passage were so old that it didn't matter.  Then he looked up to the Skybands and aligned himself so that he'd be travelling west.  Then he left the body, naked, the clothes neatly folded on a nearby log, and continued on towards Suld.

      Tarrin's encounter with another farming family did not go quite so well the second time.  It took three tries before he would find a farmer or farm member that would even talk to him without running away screaming.  The screams and fear stung Tarrin terribly, but he had to admit that as dirty and bedraggled, and as non-human, as we was, it wasn't much of a surprise.  He finally found a farmer willing to listen to him, a tall, burly man holding a pitchfork who was standing outside his barn.  Tarrin offered to buy his breakfast, and the burly man simply gave him a gruff nod.  He was given a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a few apples in return for the copper coins he'd taken from the assassin.  Tarrin left the farm and the farmer behind, eating his meal in the quiet safety of the forest, then he moved on.  It was important to get as far as he could before stopping, maybe even to within sight of Suld.

      He did manage that, around midday, but it wasn't quite what he had in mind.  The forest simply stopped almost half a day's walk from the city walls, which were clearly visible well in the distance.  The land sloped down gently towards the city walls, and it was covered with nothing but farmland and hedges separating them.  He could see the fabled Tower of Sorcery even from here, its white stone soaring out over the distant walls of the city, and he could just barely make out a few of the six smaller towers that surrounded the main spire.  He was within sight of his goal, and that simple realization swept a wave of relief and reassurance through him.  The only problem was to get to it.  He would have to do it at night.   He had too much owned, organized land to cross to do it at any other time.  Getting over the walls wouldn't be much of a problem.  There wasn't a wall made that his claws couldn't help him climb.  Once he was inside the city, it just became the simple task of reaching the Tower without Jesmind or any other interested party getting in his way.

      Tarrin crept back from the treeline and found a nice crutch between a large limb and a trunk, then hunkered down to sleep out the rest of the day.

      Orisen the guard stood on the high battlements of the impressive walls of the city of Suld.  They were high walls, strong walls, and they had never fallen to an invading force.  The job of guarding those walls fell to men like Orisen, but unlike most wall watchmen of Suld, Orisen took his duties very seriously.  Every night, he prowled the city walls of the south sector like an impatient general, his eyes scanning the dark landscape for the slightest movement.  His ears strained to hear any sound not normal for that sector of the city at that time of the night, since Suld was such a large city that it never truly went completely to sleep.  In his illustrious ten year career on the South wall, he'd witnessed three robberies on the streets below, all of which had been solved and the perpetrator caught and convicted on his testimony.  He'd also been privy to one murder, which was also solved.  He'd even caught personally sixteen men that had tried to sneak either into or out of the city at different times of the night.  Orisen was a good man, and he took his job as seriously as a surgeon did when he cut open a man.  He stood at his favorite battlement, staring out over the farmland and small village outside the south wall, thinking how nice it was that the winter's chill was gone, and the early summer night was much preferable to prowling the walls wearing five cloaks and three pairs of breeches.

      He never saw nor heard the ghostly shape that rose up from the wall not ten paces to his right, darted across the twenty spans that made up the top of the wall, and disappeared quickly over the other side.

      He did perk up and rush to the city side of the wall when the sound of a roof tile hitting the street reached him.  Many thieves liked to run the rooftops, and that sound was one of the most obvious that gave them away.  He looked over the side of the wall.  He could see the tile in the torchlight at the base of the wall, but there was nothing, and nobody, else to be seen.  Longspan Street was deserted.

      Reassured, Orisen the guard went back to his serious duty of defending the city of Suld from any and all threat, be it from inside or outside.

      Tarrin stood in the shadow of a large manor house, near its fence, staring at the massive compound that was the Tower of Sorcery.  He was a bit discouraged at what he saw.  The obvious gates to the compound were guarded by men that frightened Tarrin not a little bit.

      By the time he'd gotten to the huge towers, it dawned on him that the men guarding it would have no idea who he was.  He didn't want to get into a fight with them, and he certainly didn't want them to go crazy at the sight of him, and more than once the thought that one of them would be happier turning him to the people looking for him crossed his mind.  But he absolutely had to get inside.  Jesmind could be behind any building, and the men that were obviously looking for him could be readying to slide a dagger in his back at any moment.  The miasma smell of the large city, which was surprisingly clean for its size, effectively robbed him of his most powerful sense, his sense of smell, and the background noises prevelant in the city made it hard for him to lock in on the faint sounds of someone sneaking up on him.  He had to get in, but he didn't want to risk trying to get in through the front gate.  He wasn't going to feel safe until he was inside that tower, and in the presence of people that he felt he could trust.  And that meant Dolanna, or Faalken, or Walten or Tiella.

      That left doing it the other way.  There was a fence surrounding the tower compound, an elegant structure of iron that rose up and ended in a tapered curl at the top.  It was only about fifteen spans high, and it was much too elegant and showy to be very effective.  It also had not one speck of rust anywhere on it.  A one-eyed man with no legs could get over that fence in a very short amount of time, much faster than the regular patrols Tarrin saw roaming the fence perimeter to get there in time.

      But it couldn't be that easy, and he knew it.  That left only one solution.  That fence had to be magic.  This was the Tower of Sorcery.  There were lots of people inside that could do magic.  So if they were so lax about defending such a flimsy fence, then it only stood to reason that the fence was capable of defending itself.