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Chapter 11

Tarrin had fully expected that his training in Druidic magic was not going to be anything which he would look back upon with much fondness. He knew how difficult Druidic magic could be to use, and he was more than familiar with how stringent and demanding Triana was. He had approached the idea of it with a kind of reluctant expectance, willing to learn what he was going to be taught, but knowing that the learning would not be pleasant.

He was both right and wrong.

At first, he expected a period of “basic training,” where Triana would grind him across the washboard for a while to break down any bad habits he had and prepare him to receive her wisdom and knowledge, and in this, Triana did not disappoint. Triana was the oldest of all the Were-cats, but what most didn’t know was that she was probably the most healthy and one of the strongest. She maintained that peak physical ability with intensive exercise and training, for she had found out long ago that exercise even benefited a Were-cat; it just took longer to show any benefit, and their progression of improvement was much slower than it would be for a human. Were-cats had supernatural strength that was a gift from their bonds to the land, a magical strength that was a Druidic aspect of their beings. Since it was predominately a magical strength, and Were-cats never exercised, Tarrin and most others had assumed that it was a set state for each Were-cat and could not change. A similar assumption was made of endurance, for the Were-cat regeneration gave them tremendous staying power, not only healing wounds but reinvigorating tiring muscles to grant extended periods of heavy activity. But the reality was that those Druidic gifts built upon the base abilities of the body they augmented. By improving the body, those magical gifts also improved by raising the bar from which they operated. Triana had been engaged in an almost tortuous regimen of intense exercise for nearly seven hundred years, and that gave her a physical resilience that far outstripped nearly any other Were-cat. Tarrin had once thought that Mist had to be the strongest of their kind, but he was wrong. Triana was much stronger than Mist, and since she was so much taller, she could apply that strength with far more effective leverage.

This was the first thing that greeted him on that first day, and it was something he was expecting. He just didn’t expect to literally crawl back in through the door that night feeling as if someone had shot needles of salt into every finger of muscle tissue he possessed. Triana had run him for nearly twenty leagues, then made him move boulders that weighed more than two horses around a clearing, then push logs up hillsides, then carry a boulder on his back as he ran another five leagues.

It was more of the same the next day, and the next day, as Triana systematically broke down his ability to regenerate and then physically exhausted him. She broke him down so severely that his regeneration couldn’t completely recover to face the next day, a day that was even more strenuous than the last. She pushed him beyond his physical limits, pushed him so hard that he would collapse on a daily basis, physically incapable of carrying out her tasks, and that was what she had been waiting for. After a ride of this torture, he finally demanded to know why he had to kill himself on a daily basis when she intended to teach him a magical art, which had nothing to do with the body.

“Phaugh,” she had snorted in her typical manner. “I thought you’d know better than to ask such a stupid question. The limits of a Druid are physical limits, how much power your body can handle. You can increase it by being fit. If I wasn’t in such good shape, I wouldn’t be able to do half of what I do.”

“That’s why dragons are so strong in Druidic magic,” Tarrin said in a moment of clarity. “Because they’re so big and powerful.”

“Size has nothing to do with it,” Triana said in a scathing tone, bursting his bubble. “Dragons are strong in all magic because of what they are. If you want to find the most powerful Druids, pound for pound, then don’t look any further than Faeries.”

“Faeries?” Tarrin asked in surprise.

She nodded abruptly. “Despite being so tiny, any Faerie with Druidic talent is much stronger than any other race. Do you know why?”

Tarrin did manage to figure that one out rather quickly. “Because they fly.”

“Exactly. Flying is very demanding work. You’ll never in your life see a fat Faerie.” She glanced at him. “Dragons are the same way. It’s not their size, it’s because they’re so fit. If you think it’s hard for a Faerie to fly, imagine how much work it is for that behemoth Sapphire to drag all that body into the air.”

That was something Tarrin had never really considered, but he had to agree. Sapphire didn’t just have to be strong to fly, she had to be incredibly fit. Just getting her massive body into the air was the first step in the process. Keeping it up there was the other, much more demanding step.

With that answered, Triana must have felt that if was able to talk, he obviously wasn’t working hard enough.

For nearly a month, Triana wore Tarrin down to the bone every single day, with progressively more and more difficult tasks that involved moving more weight further, carrying it longer, and repeating it more times. Tarrin would drag home so tired that he could barely open the front door, so dirty that his footprints left footprints if another stepped upon them, and he was too weary to even care about cleaning up. Eating was more of a chore than a chance to restore some energy to his depleted frame, and he slept absolutely any time he was not eating, training, or traveling to his next destination. The worst part, he felt, was the running. Running in itself wasn’t a strenuous pursuit, but when one carried nearly half a ton of additional weight, and was expected to keep up with an unburdened, harshly critical mentor, it became an extreme exercise in willpower not to dump his heavy burden and attack Triana with the sincere intent to kill. It reminded him of his training under his mother long ago, when she would make him run for longspans wearing a heavy mail shirt. He also recalled similar murderous daydreams when he was doing that. At one point, he had dreamt up one hundred and seventeen distinct and separate ways to murder his mother without getting killed in response, and every day he would go through them one by one in his mind and decide which one was the one that would bring him the most pleasure. That list was considerably shorter where Triana was involved, for the main prerequisite for any technique of murder was that Tarrin survive it.

The purely physical phase of his training ended a few days after that first month, and it ended quite abruptly to Tarrin. Triana had been making him run with his favorite boulder up and down a small but steep hill, but abruptly told him to stop, set the boulder down, and then curtly informed him that it was time for him to learn.

His eagerness at the idea of not carrying that boulder around dissipated quickly when Triana started teaching him Druidic magic, but from the very beginning. She started as if he was a completely untrained novice, going over the five most basic rules of Druidic magic. Tarrin’s mind whirled as she was doing so--though he wasn’t stupid enough to tune her completely out--as he tried to fathom why she was doing it, why she was starting there. Could it be because of Sarraya? She had always been very cross that Sarraya had been the one to train him in Druidic magic and not herself. Could this be her attempt to make up for that lost opportunity?

That was an unfounded worry, he discovered shortly thereafter, when she finished going over the most basic of basics, the rules that no Druid that had managed to live long enough to become competent with the art of Druidic magic forgot. When she finished, she looked him bluntly in the eye. “Do you understand all that, cub?”

He nodded in confusion.

“Good. Now, for right now, forget it all.”

That was a major shock. That was the last thing he ever expected her to say, and almost immediately, he realized that the magic that she was going to teach him had to be dramatically different than the Druidic magic that most other Druids learned.

“Surprised? Don’t be,” she told him. “From what I know of Sorcery, cub, High Sorcery and the Sorcery that Weavespinners use operates under different rules than the Sorcery you learned at first. Druidic magic is much the same. The more powerful and complicated spells require us to bend the rules a little to use, or totally ignore.” She gave him a penetrating stare. “That’s the key of it, cub. The main thing I’m going to teach you, over the spells themselves, is to know when you have to obey a rule, and when you have to ignore it. I don’t think I have to explain what’ll happen if you mess up.”

He shook his head. There was only one real penalty when it came to botching Druidic magic, and that was death.

“That doesn’t change, cub. That’s the one rule you can never ignore. That means that you’re never to practice any advanced magic unless I’m here to watch over you, and you will never perform any spells I teach you away from me unless I specifically tell you you’re allowed. Is that clear?”

“Very clear, mother,” he said soberly.

“Good. Now, Conjure some lunch, and we’ll start after we eat.”

The first rule of Druidic magic was the rule of image and intent. In order to use Druidic magic, the Druid formed a very clear and concise image in his mind of what he intended to do, and also formed a very clear and strong intent of what was to happen. When the All touched the Druid, it saw that image, read that intent, and then carried out the task in the manner in which it considered to be easiest and most efficient. That was the key danger, as any half-trained Druid knew. The All’s idea of easy and most efficient often required more power than the Druid could withstand, and it destroyed him. The major key to surviving the use of Druidic magic was to form the critical pairing of image and intent that told the All what one wanted to do while forbidding the ways to do it that would kill the Druid. That was the key function of the intent. Image told the All what to do, and intent kept it from killing the Druid.

One of the very first things a neophyte Druid learned was the Rule of One, which actually encompassed the three main tenets of Druidic magic. That, simply put, was that to cast a spell, there had to be one image and one intent, and only one pair could be presented to the All while it was in contact with the Druid. Having more than one image or intent, or having an image or intent that was not absolutely clear, often caused the All to react in unpredictable ways. And in Druidic magic, unpredictable reactions killed the Druid three times out of four. Another aspect of this rule was that a Druid could only present an image and intent to the All once while it was in contact with him. If he tried to cast another spell without breaking his connection and reforming it, the images and intents of the two spells could get mixed together, with potentially lethal results. This was the first rule that Triana told Tarrin to ignore.

Telling him how it worked was simple enough, but the next four months of his life were dedicated to mastering this rather simple expansion of the basic rules. Triana taught him that in order to use the more advanced Druidic magic, a Druid had to present multiple images and multiple intents to the All during a single communion. These images and intents had to be presented in a very precise sequence, laid out in something of a layered order within the mind, each image paired to its proper intent. When presented to the All, they were done so with force of mind, but also with a critical speed; fast enough for the All to read each presented image and intent and comprehend it before it decided how to accomplish the task suggested by the first image and intent, but not so fast that the different aspects of the spell got confused within the mind and became dangerously unclear. The first image and intent were what Triana called the focus of the spell, the overall intended effect. The subsequent images and intents were a series of instructions telling the All how to go about accomplishing this task.

This made sense to Tarrin, after a fashion. By getting much more specific about how the All was to carry out the task presented to it, the Druid could make it do more without requiring so much energy that it killed him. At first, he wondered why this wasn’t taught to Druids during their initial training, then he realized how easy it would be for a neophyte to get confused by it. It was absolutely critical for a Druid to have no distractions, no extraneous thoughts invading the purity of the image and intent. If a Druid got too worried about what image and intent came next, the two would get jumbled together, and it would corrupt the spell. That could be a disaster. By limiting a new Druid to the idea of one, they were protecting them from themselves. Only the most accomplished Druids were taught how to reach past that most basic of all rules. Druidic magic was so dangerous that every precaution had to be taken when training newcomers.

What it told Tarrin was that his gambling bond-mother, or whoever first discovered it, had found certain combinations of images and intents that would work when used during a single connection to the All. He had seen inside his bond-mother’s mind, and knew that she had taken wild, almost insane risks when she was younger concerning her exploration of Druidic magic…so he had the feeling that she had been the one to discover these things. Just as many rules in Sorcery could be stretched, or even broken, Tarrin found out very quickly that the three simple rules of Druidic magic--one image and intent, one spell attempt for each connection to the All, and one penalty for failure--were also mutable. All except one, anyway.

In any shape or form, the concept of the Rule of One always seemed to apply in Druidic magic one way or another.

“Why didn’t Sarraya ever explain this?” Tarrin had asked not long after Triana finished her lecture.

“She doesn’t know,” she answered simply. “Sarraya is strong, but I didn’t teach her this.”

“She--”

“This isn’t magic to be taken lightly, cub,” she warned in a strong voice. “This is magic that only the Hierarchs know.”

“I thought Sarraya was a Hierarch,” he countered.

“She is, but the others thought she needed more experience before teaching her these concepts. She is a Faerie, cub. Do you think she could hold together a sequence of ten individual images and intents?”

Tarrin was about to defend his friend, but then he blew out his breath. Sarraya was impulsive, and she was very easily distracted. She might actually lose her concentration in the middle of it, and that might get her killed. Sarraya had enough trouble holding her concentration for one image and intent.

“How did the Hierarchs keep it from her?” he asked curiously. “You know how good she is at getting information.”

“If you think the ki’zadun is secretive cub, then you’ve never seen the Hierarchs. Sarraya can‘t find anything out because she can‘t find them unless they want to be found, and nobody who receives sensitive information from the Hierarchs will say anything. They wouldn’t dare.”

After those four months of study, as summer wound down into fall and the leaves on the trees bloomed into the brilliance of autumn colors, the first of several distractions invaded the sanctity of Triana’s instruction. She had not yet allowed him to attempt a layered spell, as she called them, splitting the day’s training between physical activity and mental exercises which she supervised by a mental connection, to ensure beyond any doubt that he was capable of assembling the necessary images and intents, correctly pairing them together, and then be capable of presenting one with absolute concentration, without any other staining it, while simultaneously being able to know which came next as well as know how quickly to present the image. She went into exhausting detail about what she called the snap, a sense a Druid got from the All that it had comprehended the image and intent presented to it. A Druid could not continue to the next image until the snap was felt, but when it was felt, the Druid had to very quickly shift to the next image and intent, else the All act on that information and do something the Druid did not want it to do. She had him practice with normal spells almost endlessly, it sometimes seemed, as he performed magic he knew, teaching him what the snap felt like, that instant when the All had comprehension of the demands placed upon it, but before it had decided on a course of action to carry it out.

All things considered, it wasn’t a huge distraction, but any distraction at all irked Triana to no end. She had waited years for the opportunity to finally train Tarrin, and now that she had him, she wasn’t about to give up any of that time. Jesmind and the females, even the cubs, had learned this lesson the hard way. But sometimes outside forces intruded that not even Triana could ignore. This was certainly one of those cases.

After all, averting what could be a world-rending war was something not even Triana could ignore.

The news certainly surprised Tarrin, as he enjoyed a hot dinner after a very long day split between backbreaking physical labor and intense mental exercises. Without a hello, without any kind of warning, Keritanima suddenly appeared in the middle of the common room. She was alone, which was in itself highly unusual. Binter and Sisska wouldn’t even let her Teleport to his house without one of them escorting her, and she almost always had Rallix with her when she made her visits, which occurred about every two or three days or so.

“Tarrin!” she said breathlessly, turning around and walking quickly towards the table. “I need your help!”

“What’s going on?” he asked her, standing up at the table as Triana gave her a sudden hot, hostile glare.

“I couldn’t even begin to explain it all,” she said with a release of breath, pushing her disheveled hair from her face. Tarrin hadn’t noticed it at first, but Keritanima looked haggard. Her dress was rumpled and dirty, her hair was a mess, and her fur was all mussed up. That meant that it was serious. Keritanima took her appearance as seriously as a starving man would take food. “But I need you, Tarrin. Now.”

“I thought I told all of you not to bother us,” Triana said in a sober, dangerous voice.

“Triana, I wouldn’t be here if someone’s life didn’t depend on it,” she said, then she looked into Tarrin’s eyes. “It’s Miranda, Tarrin. If you don’t help me and help me fast, we’re going to lose her.”

Tarrin’s eyes went flat, and his ears flicked, trying to lay back. Miranda was one of his closest and most intimate friends, just the barest shade away from being like a sister to him. Even the thought that someone would hurt her--his claws dug deep furrows into the table as they extended and dug in, then he pulled his paws along the table.

“Tell me what happened,” he said in a cold voice.

“Later,” she said quickly. “We only have a couple of hours, at the most. You’ve got to find her, Tarrin. You’re the only one I know that can do it that fast.”

He stood up. “Take me to Wikuna,” he ordered.

“Not alone, you’re not,” Jasana stated adamantly, jumping out of her chair. “Miranda’s my friend too!”

“Sit your butt right back in that chair,” Triana told her with a cold hiss, making the little girl instantly obey. She looked to Tarrin. “I’m going,” she said.

“Good. I know you’ll help,” Keritanima said, giving Jasana a cursory look.

“Hey!” Jasana objected with a petulant slap of a paw on the table. “I thought you were my friend, Aunt Kerri!”

“Cub, this is no time for play, and you’re just delaying us,” she replied. “When you’re a bit older, I’ll trust you with things like this, but not until then.”

“Hmph,“ Jasana snorted shortly, crossing her arms and looking away, a pouty expression on her face. It had been four months since he had started Triana’s training, and in that short time she had grown noticeably. She looked like a ten or eleven year old human girl, and her mental maturity had grown along with her body. She didn’t always call him papa anymore, for example. She tried to go out of her way to call him father now, just like Jula, the Were-cat she tried most to emulate now. But when she wanted to get his affection, or when she was tired or sleepy or scared or excited, she would revert back to calling him papa. She was wavering on that indefinable boundary between child and teenager--mentally, at least--and soon, he feared, she was going to be one nightmarish handful.

Tara and Rina giggled, which caused Jasana to give them a murderous glare. The twins were about a year old now, fully fledged little toddlers who were almost as bad at getting into trouble as Jasana and Eron were when they were that age.

“We don’t have any time to waste,” Keritanima said quickly.

“Make room for one more, father,” Jula said calmly, putting her knife and fork down and standing up.

“No fair!” Jasana objected. “If I can’t go, then none of my sisters can go either!”

“I’m an adult, Jasana,” Jula told her with just a hint of steel in her voice. “That means I make my own decisions.”

“Ooooh! This is so unfair!” she raged, throwing her fork down onto the table.

“Welcome to life’s first reality, cub,” Jesmind told her with slight amusement.

“If you’re coming, Jula, get a move on,” Keritanima said hastily, already setting her will against the Weave. “I’m weaving the spell right now. If you’re not inside the area of effect when it‘s done, you stay behind.”

“When will you be back?” Kimmie asked as both she and Jesmind reached out in unison to get a handle on their respective offspring, to keep them from rushing into the spell’s area of effect before they were gone.

“I’m not sure. I’ll contact you when we have a better idea of what’s going on.”

“What is going on, Kerri?” Jula asked.

“It’s a long story, so I’ll sum it up,” she said as she started the spell. That Keritanima could talk while weaving such a complicated spell, splitting her attention, was a testament to her skill as a Sorceress. “Remember when I told you that the nobles had something planned, brother? When we were in Amazar?”

“I remember,” he answered.

“Well, it’s all about to come to a head,” she told him as the spell was completed. Keritanima snapped it down and released it, which caused their surroundings to shimmer for just a brief moment as the scenery flowed from his familiar home to the lush, extravagant adornments of Keritanima’s private bedroom. Tarrin knew that room well, for it was the landing point he used whenever he Teleported to Wikuna to see her. “This time, they’ve done a good job of keeping it from my spies, but in the last couple of days we’ve managed to ferret some of it out.”

“What does this have to do with Miranda?” he asked.

“I’m getting to that,” she said shortly as she immediately reached for the Royal robes that were hanging on a peg near where they had appeared. The sun was streaming through an open window that brought with it a bit of a chill; it was late autumn now, almost winter, and Wikuna was a lot further north than Aldreth was. From the smells drifting in through that window, they had snow on the ground already. “Miranda and Jervis have been trying to figure out what was going on for nearly two months now, without much success. Two days ago, Miranda left to talk to a contact, and she didn’t come back.”

“Wasn’t Sisska with her?”

“Sometimes Miranda has to do things without Sisska along,” she said with a shake of her head. “Whoever has her has a good understanding of Sorcery, because I can’t find her using magic. I was about to take Wikuna apart looking for her, but then Jervis returned with information that I couldn’t ignore.”

“What information?” Jula asked.

“Stop interrupting me,” she said shortly as she settled the robes over her shoulders. “Jervis found out that four of the noble houses have allied themselves together, and they’re planning to replace me. It’s a rather clever plan, truth be told.”

“They’d have to fight the entire Vendari army if they tried,” Triana snorted.

“Not kill me, Triana. Replace me. As in put someone on the throne that looks just like me and pretend that nothing is amiss.”

Tarrin frowned. That was a rather clever idea. It would get them around all sorts of nasty complications, the Vendari being the most serious among them. They couldn’t assassninate Keritanima because it would destroy all of Wikuna when the Vendari retaliated. So replacing her was the most efficient option, given that it was a virtual impossibility to force her to abdicate.

“How could they find someone that looks just like you?” Jula asked.

“Kalina,” Tarrin said in a neutral tone, and Keritanima nodded.

“There’s a Wikuni that looks so much like me that only scent can tell us apart, Jula,” she told her. “Her name is Kalina. Jervis found out that she was abducted some three months ago by one of the noble houses to be my replacement.”

“Kalina would never do that.”

“Not willingly,” Keritanima agreed. “But Jervis also found out that those houses have had some rather unsavory visitors in the last few months. Wizards and even a couple of rogue Sorcerers that were left over from the war with the ki’zadun. We didn’t kill them all, remember? Well, since the network is destroyed in northern Sennadar, those that find themselves unemployed are freelancing. From what we’ve managed to gather, they’ve used these magicians to either force or brainwash Kalina into joining the coup.”

“How does Miranda fit into this?” Tarrin asked. “You made it sound serious.”

“Miranda has something to do with their plan,” she told them. “I don’t know what it is, but the information Jervis brought back makes that very clear. And whatever they’re planning is going to happen tonight, when I receive the sashka in the throne room for the start of his yearly visit. I’m thinking that since Miranda is my most visible companion, if they see the imposter with Miranda, then they’ll think that it’s me. I think she’s going to be the instrument to bring about a seamless transition. They don’t have to kill me, brother. They just have to get that imposter on my throne and then convince everyone around that she’s the real Keritanima-Chan Eram. If they have Miranda, then it’s going to make it that much more believable.”

“Miranda would fight them tooth and nail,” Triana snorted.

“She would, but if they broke Kalina, then they can break Miranda,” She said with a glance down, trying to hide her sincere concern and worry behind the brusque mask of a queen. “I’m going to be pinned down here at the palace all day, and besides, I want them to see me here. I don’t want them to know that I’ve unleashed a cadre to hunt Miranda down and recover her.”

“Smart move,” Triana nodded.

“Miranda’s one thing, but no imposter would ever fool Rallix,” Tarrin scoffed.

“True, but once they get her on the thone, she could make Rallix disappear, brother,” Keritanima grunted. “He doesn’t like to make public appearances, so that wouldn’t look too unusual.”

“So, you want us to find a single Wikuni in a city of a hundred thousand,” Jula said, then she chuckled. “Not a problem.”

“I know you can do it, brother, but you have to do it fast,” she said intensely. “You only have about four hours. You absolutely have to find her before I receive sashka, or else my opposition is going to have all of his pieces in place, and I’m going to be at a disadvantage.” She looked away. “And I want Miranda out of their hands,” she added fiercely. “If they’ve hurt her, I want you to make them pay!”

Tarrin looked down at her with narrow eyes. “That won’t be a problem,” he told her, clenching a fist and looking towards the window. “Whoever has her is going to be dead, no matter what you say. Nobody lays a finger on any of my friends. Nobody!”

“They can’t see you leave, brother,” Keritanima warned him as she picked up her sceptre. “They can’t know I’ve brought you in to find Miranda. If they do, they might panic and kill her.”

“They’ll never see us, sister,” he assured her. “I can Teleport us out of the palace.”

“Then do it and move fast,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you to contact me, but Whisper, don’t use the amulets. We’re dealing with enemy Sorcerers here, so I don’t want to take any chances.”

“We will.”

“I have to get back out there or they’ll think that something’s going on,” she said quickly. “She was last seen at the docks, brother, so that should be a good place to start. I’m counting on you, Tarrin.”

“Leave it to us,” Triana told her. “We’ll take care of it.”

Keritanima gave her a toothy smile and nodded, then rushed out the door with her purple robes flying behind her.

Tarrin drew himself up and crossed his arms, trying to control his anger. Whoever took Miranda was going to pay, and pay dearly. Nobody threatened his friends. If Keritanima had already tried to find Miranda with Sorcery, he doubted that he would have any better luck, so he let that option go. It was best to start immediately with trying to find her…and he could think of several different ideas. He looked to Triana with glowing green slits for eyes, an eerie sight in the shadows near the door. “How do you want to go about this?”

“Each of us has our own methods,” she answered. “And this is a big city. So let’s split up. Tarrin, you have the best nose, so you start at the docks and try to track her. I’ll start around the noble manors, in case they‘re holding here there. Jula, you try the slums on the east side of town. They’re good places to hide someone that a bunch of cowardly little mice wouldn‘t want kept at their house.”

“Alright, father,” Jula said with a nod. “Get us out of here, and we’ll go find Miranda.”

After Teleporting them into a narrow alley he could just barely make out through the window of Keritanima’s bedroom--cursing the limitations of localized Teleportation in the process--they split up. Because they were supposed to keep their presence in Wikuna a secret, Tarrin hid them all under Illusions that they were cat-type Wikuni, which allowed them to move through the population of Wikuna without giving themselves away. That, of course, was a relative concept, for Tarrin still had his unnatural height, and that alone was enough to make heads turn, as much as the fact that he knocked any Wikuni in his path out of the way as he moved quickly towards the docks.

His anger building into a kind of cold, seething fury, Tarrin reached the docks and immediately cast his awareness across the entire area with Sorcery, joining his senses to the earth and searching for any trace of Miranda’s scent. He stopped in the middle of the intersection of the two busiest streets in the dock district and put his paws to the earth, stopping all traffic. As the Wikuni screamed and shouted, he spread his awareness for longspans in every direction, hunting out the faintest trace of Miranda’s scent. Even after two days, there would be some of it left.

“Hey, you bloody loon, you’re blocking the road!” one burly bear Wikuni shouted from a wagon. “Move your bloody arse!”

Tarrin didn’t hear him, focusing his awareness and searching in a block by block pattern after the initial sweep produced no results. He started on the north side of the docks and moved steadily southward.

“Don’t make me come down there!” the bear shouted threateningly as Tarrin found a faint trace outside a warehouse on the extreme south side of the docks. Of course it would be on the far side of where he started. Typical. He tracked the scent; it started in an alley, then moved into a warehouse. It moved through a hallway and into an office, and from there, it simply stopped. That had to be where they abducted her. He checked all the other scents in the room, and found six Wikuni scents and one human scent. One of those rogue magicians Keritanima mentioned. They must have trundled her up and carted her off in some way that kept her from leaving a scent, but those who took her left their own scents that he could follow. There were seven of them, and one of them had to have delivered her to wherever she was now--or at least lead him to someone who did know.

“Alright then, you bloody dimwit, I’m gonna have to move you myself!” the bear shouted, to the applause of others held up by the kneeling figure.

Tarrin cast about for traces of those scents. They all moved back to the alley, but then they too stopped. They must have gotten into a carriage or wagon. The trail ended there, but Tarrin felt that if he went to that spot, he could use magic to track the progress of the wheels on that conveyance as they moved through the city--

This was silly. Keritanima had used several rather ingenious tricks to find him over the years, and he was being stupid for not thinking of doing the same thing. By using a Mind weave, he could pinpoint Miranda’s exact location. He figured that the enemy magicians were using magic to mask Miranda from any attempt to locate her, but against this particular approach, they could do nothing.

They could mask her body. They could mask her mind. They could even mask her soul, but they could not mask the one thing that made Miranda the most unique being in the entire city of Wikuna, and that was the fact that she was an Avatar. All he had to do was search for the Divine presence of Kikkalli, the goddess of the sea, sailing, and trade. He was sure there had to be a few holy relics in the city that had her signature on them, but there would only be one that was alive.

Something grabbed hold of his arm. Tarrin opened his eyes and stood up, and found himself staring down at a bear Wikuni that had a grip on his arm. “About bloody time you woke up, you bloody boob!” he said hotly. “You’re blocking the road! Now clear out before--”

What might come after that before was lost in a whoosh of air, and the voice trailed into a ragged scream as the bear Wikuni found himself airborne. He’d never seen Tarrin’s other paw grab him by the scruff of the neck, then toss him aside as if he were so much garbage. The bear flew through the air and crashed into the side of a covered wagon, tearing through the canvas and landing with a crash on whatever was being carried inside. The angry shouting instantly stopped at that, for seeing what they thought was an average Wikuni pick up another one that had to be twice his weight, then throw him a good fifteen spans with a single arm--and a, a casual toss at that!!!--was not what they were expecting.

Giving the brash Wikuni not a second thought, Tarrin turned and wove the spell of Mind, then sent it out away from himself like ripples caused by a stone thrown into a pond. The spell was searching for the Divine presence of Kikkalli, a sensation with which he was very familiar.

Nothing.

Tarrin frowned, and broadened the range of his spell until it contained the entire city, and again found nothing. Muttering, he doubled the power he was putting into it, until the Wikuni watching him gasped and put hands to their heads as the pulses of seeking energy emanated from just above him, the focal point of the spell, washed over them.

Frowning more deeply, he killed the spell and unceremoniously dropped into a cross-legged seat in the intersection, pondering this unexpected turn of events. Nothing. Then again, maybe that’s what he should have expected. Miranda was an Avatar, but that divine aspect of her being was deeply buried to hide it from mortals. Nobody was supposed to know that she was an Avatar. She spent time in intimate contact with Priests of Kikkalli, and they had never noticed it in her. And if anyone would have noticed it, they would have. She would radiate a power that would be familiar to them, just like their goddess, and it wouldn’t take much for them to make the connection.

He’d forgotten about that. He knew she was an Avatar, but the simple fact that nobody else had managed to find out should have told him that using that to find her wasn’t going to work.

So, he was going to have to do it the hard way, and he berated himself for wasting precious time.

He traced the movements of the carriage or wagon that had carried Miranda for nearly an hour as it seemed to almost randomly move through the city of Wikuna. He caused quite a row, mainly because he walked right down the middle of the street, and he would not get out of anyone’s way. He followed the trail exactly as it was laid down, bulling any pedestrians out of his way and upending any cart or wagon that dared impede him. He left a trail of outraged Wikuni in his wake, but took very little notice of them, the carts he overturned, the horses he terrorized, or the goods he spilled over the streets. Even the watch, what Wikuni called blue tops, had little success in dissuading the strange Wikuni--at least what they saw as a Wikuni--a smidgen off his determined path. He didn’t even seem to take notice of the uniformed Wikuni who tried to grab him and arrest him. And they quickly learned that they didn’t want him to take notice of them. When he did, usually when he was carrying four or five of them around, he sent them flying in every direction, snapped off any manacles they had managed to fasten to his thick wrists like they were made of sugar candy, then went on his determined way. They eventually realized that they couldn’t stop him, so they decided instead to clear the streets in front of him to minimize any damage to carts or the goods carried in them.

“Rrroah, enough of this!” Tarrin said in disgust, stopping in the middle of the street. It was obvious to him now that they must have moved Miranda to a different carriage or wagon, because the trail he was following was doing nothing but wandering around aimlessly. He’d just wasted an hour chasing after a carriage that had probably crisscrossed the entire city ten times since it had held his friend. “Mother!” he called in irritation.

It’s about time, her voice touched him, and then in a flash, she was standing beside him. The Wikuni on the street gasped and stared in awe at the tall, tall human-looking woman, with her glowing white eyes and her seven-colored, striped hair, and her gown made out of shimmering starlight. She was his own height, something of a new affectation for her whenever she appeared before him. Tarrin guessed it was because looking up at him chafed at her godly ego, most likely. “That look doesn’t suit you, kitten,” she told him with a whimsical smile. Tarrin looked over to her and felt that same sense of total adoration sweep through him, a mixture of awe and love and trust and faith that never failed to uplift his spirit and make him feel content. The amazing woman was a goddess, or at least a representation of one, and she was his goddess, the one who had first led him down the path that had led him to the Firestaff, a dangerous path with many sharp corners, as she had once described it, but a path which had led to the promised land. Tarrin loved his goddess on every level possible, save perhaps romantic. She was his friend, she was his most intimate confidante, she was a shoulder to lean against in the hard times, she was a hand to hold when he needed reassurance, she was a gentle smile to radiate pride when he pleased her, she was a stern mentor which taught him and made him better, and she was the and she was the towering figure of authority which ruled his life utterly. She was everything to him, and he loved her as much as he obeyed her. His devotion to the Goddess was very un-Were-cat, but not even his powerful instincts were enough to overwhelm the utter devotion that existed within him regarding his beautiful Goddess.

“Blame Kerri, mother,” he told her as he banished the Illusion, which caused even more gasping, gaping, and pointing. Though he was fully aware that she was a god, there had always been a kind of unusual informality between the two of them. She knew his heart and knew that he would obey her without question. She knew that he loved her and was devoted to her more strongly than any of her other mortal followers. But he knew that she didn’t want him to treat her like a god. She was comfortable with him treating her like a friend, so long as the simple fact that she was the god didn’t leave his mind. Niami, the goddess of magic, was quite unusual as far as gods went concerning how they expected their worshippers to act towards them. Since she had so few followers, each one was more than a vassal or a subject, he or she was a friend, and her connection to each of her children was as personal as it was powerful. To Niami, her Sorcerers were literally her children, young, raw, wild forces which she would take under her gentle wing and nurture, and teach, and love, and make them better than they were before they came to her.

But the relationship between Tarrin and Niami was quite a bit more complex than that. Tarrin had once been a god--for about five minutes, anyway--and ever since then she had treated him slightly different. Less like a child, and more like, like a teenager. That was the only way he could really explain it. Her relationship to him was different than it was with all her other children, and he had to admit that it had been so ever since the first time she had spoken to him. She afforded him a great deal more leeway than any of her other children, more autonomy, and unlike all the others, she would personally answer him every single time he called on her. He knew that with her, she was literally only a call away. She didn’t do that with any other Sorcerer, not even Jenna. Tarrin had died after becoming a god, having destroyed himself along with Val, and Niami had made the body he now occupied, literally forming it from the hair that he had left Kimmie as a farewell. It was the first documented instance, Tarrin believed, of hair growing a body instead of a body growing hair. He had a feeling that that was another reason she treated him differently. When he’d first awakened after she had placed his soul into this new body, she had told him that she was now his mother, just as much as Elke Kael was his mother. She had borne him, after a fashion, and even if wasn’t technically correct, it was as good as correct for her. And since she was a goddess, there wasn’t anyone around who would dare tell her that she was wrong.

“Where is she?” he asked immediately.

“She’s not in the city,” she answered, pointing south. “She’s about two days that way, at least on horseback. They’ve been taking her south as fast as they can since they took her.”

Tarrin quickly made an important connection. “Kerri’s wrong,” he said with a frown. “She said that Miranda would be in the city, and that it was part of their plan. If she’s wrong about this, she might be wrong about their plan.”

“Right again,” she said with an approving nod. “Miranda’s only a decoy, kitten. Their real target is the sashka.”

Tarrin raised an eyebrow and glanced at her.

“They’re going to have Kalina try to kill the sashka,” she explained. “They know that Keritanima is untouchable so long as the Vendari support her. They’re trying to drive a wedge between them. They took Miranda for no reason other than to make her bite on the misinformation they gave to her spies.”

“How did you find out about this, mother? You don’t nose into Wikuni politics.”

“True, but I got this from someone very close to the source,” she answered. “Kikkalli.”

Kikkalli was the leader of the Wikuni pantheon of gods, and was the god who was responsible for Miranda. If anyone would know where Miranda was, she would. Being an Avatar of her own creation, Kikkalli had a link to Miranda that no mortal magic could break.

“If they’re after the sashka, then we’d better warn Kerri,” Tarrin grunted.

“I’ve already done that, but you have something to do, kitten,” she told him. “Kikkalli wants you to get Miranda and bring her back before the sashka arrives.”

“Why?”

“You’re allowed to question me, but you don’t get to question the orders of other gods,” she warned in an authoritative voice. “And it makes me look bad when my kitten backtalks my brothers and sisters. Especially where they can see it.”

“Sorry, Mother,” he said contritely.

“Kikkalli has reasons, and it’s not your place or mine to gainsay them. This is her land and her people. She’s allowing me to help, but I am a guest here, not a host. I’ll do things the way she wants them done, and that means so will you.”

“Yes, Mother,” he said in a submissive tone, his ears wilting a little. “Just tell me where to go, and I’ll have Miranda back here before the sashka gets here. I promise.”

“Good. Kerri has to round up all the leaders of the noble houses and the high priests of the nine Wikuni gods and have an audience in her throne room. You’re to bring Miranda to the throne room as soon as you reach her.”

“Do I have to be gentle?” he asked with narrowing eyes.

Niami looked at him and chuckled, then seemed to be distant for a split second. “No,” she answered, obviously relaying the answer. “You can recover Miranda any way you want. Just please try not to kill everything within a league.”

“I hate it when they take away my toys,” Tarrin growled, which made the Goddess laugh with a wicked kind of delight. “Where am I going, Mother?”

“A small seaside village about thirty leagues south. When you get close to it, you’ll know, kitten. I think Kikkalli is going to give you a sign.”

“Thirty leagues? I can be there in fifteen minutes,” he snorted.

“Don’t go too fast, kitten,” she warned. “Kikkalli has some kind of plan, and part of it is that she doesn’t want Miranda to show up until after Keritanima starts her audience. Give her some time to summon all the people who are supposed to be there.”

“I’m not leaving her in their hands, Mother,” he said adamantly. “I’ll recover her and then we’ll wait until it’s time for her to show up before we move. I won‘t leave Miranda in the hands of enemies a second longer than I have to.”

She was distant again. “That’s fine,” she relayed.

Tarrin set his will against the Weave and wove a spell of Air and Divine, the spell to Summon his Elemental. He needed speed, and that meant that he needed his Air Elemental. His Fire Elemental could fly if he created a winged form for it, but it wasn’t as fast as an Air Elemental. He finished the shell, the first stage of the spell, then wove the second stage, which would allow the spirit that would animate the shell to enter his world and take up residence within it.

With a sudden burst of wind, the Air Elemental fully manifested and animated the construct, and the mental connection formed between him and his companion creation--one of the very rare instances when the Cat did not object to a mental link to an alien mind. The Elemental was invisible to everyone else, but Tarrin and the Goddess could see it by seeing the patterns of magical energy which made up its body. Unlike other Sorcerers, sui’kun were so attuned to the power of the Weave that they saw it all the time, even when they weren’t actively using their power. Tarrin usually ignored the strands of the Weave, a trick that they had to learn or else they’d forever find their vision obstructed, but it was nothing to shift his attention to the magic that was usually ignored.

“Good luck, and be careful,” the Goddess said, stepping away as the Elemental surged forth and enveloped him, so that it could carry him south.

The people on the street missed either one half or the other of a wondrous sight. Those whose eyes were pinned to the Were-cat’s seeming newfound ability to fly, as he lifted from the ground and then darted to the south, missed the tall stripe-haired woman simply vanish in a shimmering flash.

A trip of thirty leagues was little more than a short jump when one employed an Air Elemental.

In a half of an hour, Tarrin found himself over a small seaside village, with thatched roofs and buildings made out of red bricks. He may have just passed it by were it not for the massive albatross that seemed to be circling over the village, a bird twice the size of an average albatross, and just seeing it gave Tarrin a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was his sign, he was sure of it, because that bird was either an Avatar or some kind of image or special animal sent just to get his attention. If he was right, Miranda was down there, probably in one of those buildings.

Tarrin reached out with his senses, and nodded to himself. She was there, alright. That same sense he felt around her was present, the faint yet distinct aura of someone connected to the moons. He wasn’t quite sure why he could feel it from so far away, but he could. She was in the largish building close to the sea, facing a very small wharf which was probably used to load and unload very small boats. Probably nothing larger than a raker.

But he wasn’t here to sightsee. Feeling his anger rise up in him, not sure what condition he was going to find his dear friend in, Tarrin leaned down on the back of his Elemental and informed the creature which building was their target, even pointing to it. The Elemental communicated its understanding, and asked him how he wanted it to go about helping him recover Miranda.

“Actually, you can be helpful,” he told it aloud. “Think you can rip that roof off without dropping me?”

The Elemental replied with light amusement that such a chore was child’s play.

“Good. Get us closer and let me get ready, then tear off the roof. I’ll kill anything inside that’s not Miranda, then we can pick her up and get her back to Wikuna.”

The Elemental registered an immediate objection as it moved them into a position about fifty spans over the target rooftop.

“Alright, you can kill a few of them too,” he acceded in a growling tone, his eyes igniting from within with the unholy greenish radiance that marked his anger, quickly turning an incandescent, blazing white as the sui’kun opened himself to the core of his power, and the Weave flooded him with its majestic might. Magelight exploded from his body, sheathing him in a pulsing aura of ghostly light, coalescing and shimmering around him like disturbed fog. That wispy aura suddenly shuddered, then expanded into the blazing four-pointed star which marked a sui’kun expressing the full potential of his ability, the sign of one of the most powerful magic-users on Sennadar gathering that full, terrible might and preparing to unleash it upon the world. That power became an entity unto itself, to the point where it lifted Tarrin from the back of his Elemental, holding him aloft of its own volition.

Freed of its burden, the Elemental darted down and enveloped the thatched frame of the roof, and then quite easily grabbed hold of it like a massive, invisible hand and pulled. The sound of tearing wood and a sudden explosion of dust and chaff heralded the removal of the roof as the Elemental peeled it off the structure like the rind of an orange, then cast it almost a half a longspan out over the open sea.

The dust cleared to show a four-roomed abode below, now without a roof, where two Wikuni sat at a small table in the first room, by the door, playing cards. Two more Wikuni sat at a similar table in the back room, where a trussed-up mink Wikuni was bound to a rickety old chair, a rag tied around her head and between her jaws to keep her from making sound. Five sets of eyes looked up at the sudden daylight pouring into the house, all of them curiously clean and quite startled by the quick and thorough removal of the roof. The Elemental had quite considerately pulled the dust upwards and out of the way, so they could see Tarrin, and Tarrin could see them.

Four sets of eyes widened in surprise, then gaped in terror at the blazing star of furious vengeance that had taken residence over the building, shining the light of impending doom upon them. The last set of eyes brightened in abject joy, as a dirty, bloody Miranda suddenly squirmed against her bonds and tried to get Tarrin’s attention. To make him see her and prevent from getting annihilated in the impending explosion as much to try to get his attention to have him free her.

The Elemental roared forward, condensing water vapor within itself to become visible as a misty cloud, a cloud that suddenly grew multiple tentacle-like limbs as it descended into the forward room. With a sound like a raging tornado, the Elemental proceeded to thrash the two Wikuni standing guard in that forward room with whip-like cracks of those many tentacles, flailing about like a maddened animal as the Elemental expressed the fury and outrage of the Sorcerer who had summoned it from the nether. The other two guards didn’t see the demise of their companions, who were quite literally torn apart by the thrashing Elemental, its misty body turning pink as flying blood was absorbed into the mist making it visible, sending chunks of bloody gore and shards of bloodstained wood and cloth flying in all directions, to splatter the walls and spray out from the open roof like some kind of grisly fountain.

The other two guards didn’t see the destruction of their comrades, for their eyes were locked on the painfully bright star which silhouetted the Were-cat sui’kun, making his body a dark shadow within a blazing concentration of light ten times brighter than the sun. They saw one of the arms move, to point an opened palm at them, but it was the sound that made them blankly realize that they were dead. It was a single word, screamed with such incredible force and fury that it caused waves to rush away from the little village and out to sea, pushed forth by the power of that sound.

“DIE!!!!”

A shaft of pure light, so bright it would strike blind the eye that stared into its depths, blasted from that bright star, unleashed by the power of the Sorcerer within. It tore the air as it raged from the sui’kun, a sound that almost defied explanation, lancing down into the structure to envelop the two Wikuni who sat at the small table with their plate of cheese and wine so casually laid out upon it.

Miranda saw it quite clearly. The figures of the two Wikuni and their table and their chairs became a sudden shadow, much like how Tarrin appeared within his star, and then they simply evaporated, consumed by the brilliant light which surrounded them. But it did not happen instantaneously. Each of them screamed horribly as the blazing column of light enveloped them, and that screaming turned into hysterical shrieks of mindless agony as the light ate away at them bit by bit, peeling them away by layers, but neither of them so much as twitched. There was only that horrid screaming, which lasted but a moment, but was almost like an eternity to the mink Wikuni’s shuddering ears. They screamed in that eternal moment until there was nothing but a skeletal silhouette, and then that too simply melted away like snow before the springtime sun.

Miranda did not even want to think about how painfully those two had died. Tarrin was a sweet and loving person, but he had absolutely no mercy towards those who did his loved ones harm, and he had an evil need to inflict pain whenever he was outraged or infuriated. It was part of the dichotomous existence of the Were-cats, who could be so gentle, even tender, one moment, only to turn and inflict malicious pain and injury against others the next. Good and evil wrapped into one unpredictable package, that was as good a description of a Were-cat as any other.

Miranda blinked as the light simply stopped, and then peered through a jagged afterimage in her vision at the ground under where the two Wikuni had been. Much to her curious surprise, there wasn’t so much as a scorch mark. Not even a mote of ash. Just the bare stones that were the floor of the dwelling. Whatever Tarrin had done, it affected nothing more than the Wikuni and their furniture, leaving everything else untouched.

Tarrin descended into the abode, still shrouded in the blazing light of the Sorcerer’s Star, and even Miranda was totally overwhelmed and awed by the sight of it. Such power! She fully knew what he was and what kind of power he possessed, but he so rarely ever displayed it in such a terrible manner! She gaped at him through her gag, seeing the shadow of his eclipsed by the white light surrounding it, seeing nothing but those glowing white eyes that could be made out beyond the silhouette of his form. The air around him smelled of ozone, and there was a strange shimmering sound emanating from him, coming from the energy that he was giving off, the power of the Sorcerer’s Star disturbing the air and creating sound. Those eyes were narrowed, displaying his anger, and in that moment even Miranda was afraid of him.

And then it stopped. The shimmering light simply broke up around him, evaporating away like fog before the morning sun. The light bled out of his eyes, until there was only the green eyes that she knew so well, vertically slitted pupils narrowed, and then widened as they fixed on her. He made no motion, but Miranda’s bonds simply separated, and the gag fell from her sharp little maw. The emotion of days of imprisonment suddenly overwhelmed her, and she rushed out of the chair and buried herself in the utter security of Tarrin’s gentle embrace, weeping out all her fear and worry and relief and elation all at once.

“It’s alright, Miranda,” Tarrin told her gently, his huge paw resting on her back, nearly taking up the entirety of it down to her shoulder blades. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but I was chasing my tail in Wikuna.”

She gasped. “Kerri--”

“Relax,” he told her. “Kerri’s alright. And I have to get you back to Wikuna.”

She looked up at him curiously. “Kerri has a plan?”

He shook his head. “This is someone else’s,” he told her. “Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

“Nothing permanent, aside from a permanently wounded pride,” she admitted. “I never saw it coming.”

“We all can’t be perfect all of the time,” he told her. A rush of air that could only be an Elemental suddenly enveloped them. At first, Miranda though that Tarrin meant to have the creature take them back to Wikuna, but a sudden blurring of everything around them, replacing the roofless dwelling with the lushly appointed bedchambers of Keritanima’s private apartment, told her that he merely recalled the summoned creature so it could return with them.

“I--”

“Get cleaned up,” he told her, cutting her off. “I don’t know how much time we have, but you have to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“I have no idea,” he answered. “All I know is that as soon as all the leaders of the noble houses finish gathering in Kerri’s throne room, you have to go there. Don’t you want to look presentable, or do you want to go looking like a street urchin?”

She gave him a look, then laughed. Though his words were blunt, brusque, the emotion behind his eyes told her how worried he was, how concerned he was, and how protective he was feeling at that moment. “I’m fine, Tarrin,” she told him with a light pat on his furred forearm. “You forget, I’m a big girl. I’ve been in messy situations before. It’s not the first time I’ve been tied up in a dark room.”

“It’ll be the last time,” he bristled.

She chuckled, then grabbed him by the vest and pulled on it until he leaned down. Once his head was low enough, she grabbed him by the back of the neck and gave him a sweet, playful kiss. Which, for a Wikuni, meant a lick. “Why do you think I wasn’t that worried?” she asked. “When your best friends are the most powerful magicians in the world, it gives a girl a feeling of security.”

Tarrin narrowed his eyes, then blew out his breath in a gruff manner, trying to hide his emotions. He was like that sometimes, she’d noticed. “Go,” he told her. “And don’t leave the apartment,” he added as he turned and looked out the window.

The air swirled around her as the Elemental creature, again invisible, slid around and between them, then gathered around the Were-cat like some kind of loving child. She could tell because the air continually moved around him, pulling at his braid and his bangs, tugging at his vest, and ruffling the curtains by the window. Odd that a magician of such power like him would call on something like an Elemental for help, but that was a matter to ponder at some other time. She was indeed a mess; fur matted with dirt and dried blood, dress torn and filthy, and she smelled like the bootsole of a sewer cleaner. A little cleaning up was definitely in order.

“Uh, Tarrin, love, would you be a dear and give me a hand?” she asked sweetly. “Kerri does this trick where she cleans herself completely up--”

Without a gesture, without even looking at her, a sudden cold rush washed over her fur. It felt like a hundred cold, wet hands crawling all over her, touching her all the way down to her skin. She gasped in surprise as her dress billowed out from her, as air blew under it and through it, pulling free every single speck of dust and every whiff of foul odor. In the blink of an eye, Miranda was immaculately clean, her fur soft and silky and groomed, and her dress as pristine as the day the material came off the loom. It was still torn, but it was clean.

“You are such a dear,” she said with a winsome, cheeky grin, then rushed towards the closet to change into a dress suitable for an appearance in the throne room during a formal audience.

Miranda quickly changed clothes, aware the entire time that Tarrin’s eyes did not leave that window. He was watching for any sign of another attack, despite knowing that they were both perfectly safe within the confines of Keritanima’s bedchamber. She was more concerned with this audience that Keritanima was holding. Miranda had no idea what Keritanima was going to do, but it did not sound good. Every time she called a full audience like this, entire noble houses tended to disappear. Had she ferreted out who was to blame, and intended to punish the perpetrator in full view of the noble houses? She smoothed the skirts of a simple gray dress with a laced neckline, which clung to her curves appealingly, and fretted over it. The noble houses may get too nervous if Keritanima destroyed a handful of them in retaliation, and desperate men and women did desperate things. Desperate things were not easy to counter. She ran her fingers through her blond hair, poofing up the side part that hung over her eyes, tucking it up over her round mink ear to lock it into place. Something told her that she wasn’t going to look forward to this audience.

With abrupt speed, Tarrin turned and faced her. “They want us to go,” he announced.

They? Who were they? Keritanima would have Whispered to him to tell him to come, and he would have said that she wanted them.

She got suspicious as Tarrin led them through the halls of the palace, the shortest route to the throne room. He had been to the palace many, many times, and knew the twists and turns of its passages as well as any resident. They were met at one intersection by Triana and Jula, who took one look at Miranda and seemed to sigh in relief. Tarrin must have Whispered or used Druidic magic to summon them. If she felt safe before, she felt all but invulnerable now.

“You’re looking alright, Miranda,” Jula smiled.

“Of course I am,” she replied with a cheeky grin. “With a big, strong protector like Tarrin around, how could a girl be anything else?”

They escorted her to the throne room, along with that air Elemental ghosting around as a surprising extra layer of defense, and Tarrin threw the door open and marched in without waiting to be announced by the Chamberlain. Beyond him, in the cavernous chamber that housed the throne of Wikuna, stood the entirety of the noble houses. Not just the leaders, Miranda saw. Anyone in position of authority in the noble houses was in attendance. Not only did they stand waiting, but several of the commoner members of the House of Commons also had been summoned, as had the mayor of Wikuna. If that wasn’t enough, the High Priests of all nine Wikuni gods were also attending, eyeing one another and trying to look smugly superior to the rest of the population of the room.

Now Miranda was curious. The nobles, the commoner leaders in Parliament, and the ruling clergy of the churches? Keritanima must have something spectacular up her sleeve.

“Miranda,” Keritanima called in both relief and Royal authority, a command for her to attend smothered in joy at seeing her safely returned. She remained seated, garbed in her purple robes, wearing her elegant crown, and with her sceptre laid lightly in her lap with one hand holding its end to keep it from sliding off. To her immediate right stood the Prince Consort, her husband Rallix, resplendent in a deep blue doublet lined with ermine and a simple gold crown over his banded face. To her left, beyond an empty area reserved for Miranda, stood Jervis, the floppy-eared, deceptively mild-looking rabbit Wikuni who served as one of Keritanima’s closest advisors along with being the head of her spy network. To their sides, and to the sides of the front of the dais, stood both the Royal Guard, resplendent in their gleaming armor, and the Vendari who served to aid the Royal Guard, including Binter and Sisska.

All eyes weren’t on Miranda, however. They were all glued to Tarrin, Triana, and Jula, who drew themselves up with every bit of arrogant posturing a Were-cat could muster and dominated the entire throne room with their presence. The dark scowls on all three faces told everyone in the room that they were not happy, and since the Questing Game had ended with Tarrin’s victory, his reputation for destructive retaliation was widely known and feared. That allowed her to cross the room without attacting much attention, moving quickly and regally towards the dais holding the throne. One of the Royal Guard stepped forward and offered Miranda his hand, and she took it with a cheeky smile and let him help her up onto the dais.

But as soon as she let go of the helpful guard’s hand and stood upon the dais, it was as if she was pushed aside within her own mind and body. She found herself replaced by another, another whose power terrified the Wikuni nearly into insensibility.

The power of a god.

The change in Miranda was dramatic and shocking. In an instant, her expression changed from that winsome, carefree look she often had to a look of solemn determination, and she drew herself up to stand as if she were the queen instead of Keritanima. But there was much more to it than that, Tarrin could sense. A sudden rush of power erupted from the slender Wikuni, power that anyone with any kind of magical aptitude whatsoever could immediately sense, could not help but notice, a power that easily eclipsed anything that Tarrin or Jula or Triana or Keritanima could ever manage. But it was not a visible power, it was a power of presence and potential, as if that vast power were held back, but not hidden.

That sudden shift was not lost on some in the room. All nine High Priests’ eyes instantly snapped from the Were-cats to Miranda, and all of them gaped like a deer staring into the maw of a hungry rock lion, and then immediately sank to their knees.

Then came the inevitable attention-getting display. Miranda’s body exploded with sudden light, startling everyone in the room, even Keritanima, and she was suddenly picked up by the very light that surrounded her. That light shimmered and writhed, and then took form, expanding into the shape of a bipedal creature with triangular ears on top of its head. Miranda was easily visible within that light-shape, but it was obvious to all that she was no longer the focus of sentience. Her eyes were wide open and blazing with white light, almost like a Sorcerer, and her expression was blank, as if she were no more than a doll. The light shimmered and contracted, until a fifteen span tall fox Wikuni stood with Miranda enclosed within its torso, wearing a simple sailor’s shirt and trousers with a ragged sash tied about the waist. It was a female Wikuni with flowing hair that billowed as if in a breeze, waving in time with the snapping of the tails of her sash.

This was the chosen form of Kikkalli, the Wikuni goddess of the sea, sailing, and the sky, and ruler of the Wikuni pantheon. This was the full expression of Miranda’s power as an Avatar, the ability to serve as a vessel for the spirit of her godly mother.

“ENOUGH!” the form suddenly boomed at the stunned gathering, who gaped at the apparition. Some looked a little suspicious, probably thinking it no more than another trick of the Sorcerer Queen, but there was a terrible sense of power that surrounded the vision that made anyone who gazed upon it know beyond any doubt that it was not an Illusion. Just like his Mother, the Elder Goddess Niami, Kikkalli’s voice vibrated in a choral effect, as if no one voice could contain the power behind it. An arm of light swept out in an accusing point that swept across the room. “It was not Keritanima that called you here, my disappointing, children, it was me,” she raged. “You have tried my patience for the last time!”

“Why should we listen to another of her Majesty’s Illusions?” a stout female bear Wikuni called confidently. Vora Plantan, one of the more dangerous noble leaders.

“YOU DOUBT ME?” the figure’s voice blasted through the room, knocking down anyone standing before her out to fifteen spans away. Her head snapped to the nine High Priests who stood to the side of the dais, who all looked upon the image as if it were Death Himself come to claim them. “Speak!” she snapped at them.

“Y-You stand before the glory of the Wavemistress, M-Mother Moon, the G-Goddess Kikkalli,” one of them said in a quavering voice, bowing his head and putting a hand on the floor in supplication. “Goddess of goddesses and queen of all.”

That got everyone’s attention. The speaker was the High Priest of Kikkalli himself, and everyone in the room knew that he would never in his right mind make such a statement if it were not true. A ripple of consternation swept through the assembled audience, and then they started dropping to their knees. One by one at first, but then in a massive wave, until the only one left standing was Tarrin himself. Even Triana and Jula had the wherewithal to kneel in the presence of a god. Even the Vendari, who didn’t follow the Wikuni gods, knelt in her presence, to show her the honor which they believed she was due.

And Vendari knelt to no one.

Kikkalli’s furious gaze swept across the throne room. “You have all failed me,” she grated at them hotly. “I went through a great deal of trouble to put Keritanima on that throne, and now you all conspire to undo what I have ordained to be! Did my warnings not teach you that you were sailing into a whirlpool? Have you become so blinded by your arrogance and lust for power that you ignored my warnings? Did you stop for even one moment to think when I sent the priests of all the gods to warn you that you were acting against my wishes? Are you all that dense?” she raged, which made every Wikuni in the room, even Keritanima, cringe as a sudden overpowering sense of rage, indignance, bitter disappointment, and seething anger washed over them, palpable sensations of the goddess’ displeasure.

“If this is what it takes, then so be it, my bull-headed children!” she shouted. “Keritanima sits on that throne at my behest, and anyone who conspires to take her off of it again will face MY WRATH!”

Every Wikuni noble all but collapsed, putting their heads on the floor. All of them except for Jenawalani, who looked decidedly terrified, but not to the degree of the others.

“You will stop acting like spoiled children!” she shouted at them, a shout so powerful it shook dust from the ceiling. “You will stop resisting Keritanima’s changes, you will stop trying to disrupt her, and you--will--stop--trying--to--dethrone--her,” she said in a clear, powerful cadence, emphasizing every single word. “It stops now, do you hear me? I will put an end to it!

“Every priest of every Wikuni god will be watching you,” she warned in an ugly, ominous tone. “The other gods will be watching, and I will also be watching. The instant any of you even puts a toe on the line, your life will be forfeit! Is that understood?”

There was nothing but deafening silence.

“I said DO YOU UNDERSTAND!?” she thundered.

There was a sudden, terrified jumble of affirmative replies, all delivered in trembling voices.

Tarrin had to suppress a chuckle. Kikkalli had style.

“Good. I’m so glad that you’re all willing to listen to reason,” she said in a scathing voice. “You are the reason it had to come to this. I did not want to interfere, but now that I’ve been forced to put a hand in, you’re all going to pay for it. The games are over, children!

“And one more thing,” she added in a seething voice, casting her withering glare across the throne room. “Miranda is MINE. Any acts against her are acts against ME. Don‘t any of you EVER lay an unfriendly hand on her ever again, or I will personally pay you a visit and show my displeasure. And as to what was done to her earlier this week, don’t think that that’s going to be forgotten. The nobles responsible for that will be making penance VERY shortly.”

Several nobles moaned, and two fainted dead away, collapsing on the floor.

The imposing apparition swept a ruthless gaze across the room, as if to ensure that her message had been suitably delivered. She turned partially to look at Keritanima, who had slid off her throne to kneel before it, staring up at the image with shocked eyes. Keritanima had had exposure to gods, so she was not overwhelmed like the others were, but this was not Mother. “Know that I am pleased with you, Keritanima,” the glowing image of Kikkalli said in a slightly prideful tone, then she turned to look at Jenawalani, who couldn’t bring herself to look away from the terribly beautiful apparition. “Know also that I am well pleased with you, Jenawalani. The seed of light I planted into your heart has indeed taken root and blossomed into a lovely flower. But it is unseemly that sisters who have put aside their past differences remain apart. Perhaps you and your sister should spend time together and discover the ties of blood that bind you.” She looked between them. “The faces you present in the name of politics are no longer necessary.”

She swept her gaze across the room once again. “Too long have we allowed you to play your games of intrigue and politics,” she told them. “But the games are over. The world is changing, and the future demands that we change with it. The old ways are no longer profitable, and we must set our sails to catch the shifting winds.”

Oh yes, she was a Wikuni alright.

“Heed well my warnings, my treacherous children, and accept harsh reality, because we will be watching. And the first object lesson will be the only object lesson,” she warned in a rather ugly tone. “That choice…is yours.”

And with that, the spectral image surrounding Miranda wavered, and then it faded and contracted, flowing back into Miranda’s body like smoke pushed before a breeze. Wind billowed around her, swirling her hair, gently lowering her feet down to the ground. It seemed to support her for just a moment, and then pulled away from her. Miranda staggered woozily, putting a hand to her head, her eyes dazed and distant.

Then they rolled back into her head, and she fainted dead away.