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  Now that this phase of his plan was nearly over, he began to consider the next. It would be daunting, surely. He would have to travel from the middle of Yar Arak to the other side of Saranam, a distance of at least five hundred leagues, in cat form. And his cat form was not large. It would take him months to do it, but he had no real choice in the matter. Those chasing him would certainly realize that he was fleeing back towards the West, and would overtake him in his slower form and try to catch him as he went through. But most of them probably had no idea how stealthy a black cat could be in the middle of the night. Tarrin had no intention of moving around during the day. He was a creature of the night, more at home under the Skybands and the four moons than under the sun, and in the darkness he would have an overwhelming advantage over his pursuers. The only reason he was running during the day was to ensure that they kept chasing him, that they didn't turn and try to go after his sister and his friends.

  Some were safer than others. Tarrin still desperately missed Keritanima, and Miranda and the Vendari and Azakar. They were his friends, but Keritanima was more than that. She was like Allia, a sister in all but blood, the third of the tightly knit trinity of non-humans that had fled from the Tower of Sorcery so long ago. Keritanima was Wikuni, one of the animal-people from across the sea, and she was a princess. She had tried to flee from her duty, but her father had chased her down and captured her. The Wikuni soldiers that had carried out the abduction had nearly killed him, shooting him with a silver-tipped arrow to prevent him from protecting Keritanima when they abducted her. That was why she was so angry. Keritanima was brilliant, highly intelligent and cunning, but she had grown up alone, fearing her own family. Tarrin and Allia were her new family, the only family she trusted, so much so that she too had been branded in the Selani rite of adulthood, just so she could belong. Belong in a way that she had never belonged among her conniving, murderous family, a family where her father and two sisters had repeatedly tried to have her murdered. Her father, because he thought that she wasn't fit to rule, and her sisters just to get another obstacle between them and the throne out of the way. Her father's misjudgment of her had been intentional. Keritanima had used an alter-ego she affectionately called the Brat, acting like an empty-headed, vapid, spoiled brat to cause people to seriously underestimate her intelligence and skill at intrigue, a facade that had been so overwhelmingly successful that nobody realized that Keritanima was smart or experienced at playing politics. It had been a ruse that protected her, but in its own ways it had also haunted her. Tarrin had the feeling that her deception was part of the reason her father had been so vehement at bringing her back, rather than simply let her go and promote her next-oldest sister to the position of heir apparent. And Keritanima probably would have been very happy about it. But her father had erred badly when he ordered Tarrin killed to keep him from attacking anyone trying to take her. That had been the last straw for Keritanima concerning her family. So she had gone back to Wikuna to teach her father a lesson. Tarrin knew that that lesson involved murdering him somewhere down the line, and when that happened, the Sun Throne of Wikuna would fall to her. She was the crown princess, after all. They had been separated from him nearly two months ago, and he had no idea how they were doing. The amulet he wore would allow him to talk to his Wikuni sister any time he wanted, but part of him was afraid that his voice would interrupt her at a very bad time. She was probably right now either plotting the death of her father or carrying it out, knowing her. He had full faith in her, that she would be sitting on the throne of Wikuna before fall. But until she contacted him, the only way he would know it was safe for her, he would be left guessing.

  He would see them again, he was sure of it. Keritanima and Miranda, her maid, a cheeky beauty of a mink Wikuni who held a rather special place in Tarrin's heart. Azakar, the monstrous Mahuut Knight, and Binter and Sisska, the quiet, ever-vigilant Vendari bodyguards that protected Keritanima and her maid at all times. He wanted to talk to Keritanima, to see them again, but he had to wait. Keritanima's safety depended on it, and she didn't seem all that interested in talking to him or Allia. Perhaps what she was doing was too important, too time-consuming for her to spare the time. He certainly hoped so. He knew that she wouldn't forget about them. Keritanima was his sister, and he knew her nearly as well as she knew herself. The ties that bound the three of them together were too powerful for such a paltry thing as a few thousand leagues to get in the way of their relationship.

  Keritanima was family. Allia was family.

  Tarrin seemed to have a great many families. He had his own natural family, Eron and Elke Kael and his sister Jenna, who were in Ungardt right now to keep themselves out of the chaos going on in Sulasia. Something he was very relieved that they had done. He also had his sisters, Keritanima and Allia, who were all but accepted as sisters by his parents and natural sister. They had never met Keritanima, but his parents had met Allia, had come to know her and love her, and who was welcomed at the Kael hearth at any time. Being bound to Allia, that made them part of her clan, though he had never met any other Selani. The fact that he was brother to a Selani and had to cross Selani lands would not help him. He would only be welcomed by Allia's clan, and only if Allia were with him to introduce him. The Selani would treat him as an enemy, whether he had the brands or not, and that was something for which he was prepared. He also had his Were-cat bond-mother, Triana, who served as his mother and protector among the Were-cat society, and whom he also loved. She was much like his natural mother, direct and outspoken, and he loved her just as much as he did Elke Kael. Though Triana was his mother, her daughters were of no relation to him.

  That fact made him somewhat relieved. Jesmind, Triana's daughter, was the one that had turned him Were. They had had a very stormy relationship, full of both love and hate, and for some reason he could never forget her. When he thought of a female, he thought of Jesmind almost every time. Tarrin had very complicated feelings for the fiery-haired Were-cat, running from fascination and intense attraction to furious hatred. He had been attracted to her from the first time they met, but actions both of them undertook caused them to be enemies. That was when he hated Jesmind, and thinking about the times she tried to kill him still made his blood burn a little bit. He figured he felt that way because of the way he felt about her. Tarrin was still attracted to Jesmind, intensely so, and her turning on him had been a violation of his feelings all the way to the core. Even now, he yearned to see her again, though he wasn't sure if he'd kiss her or try to strangle her if they met face to face. The fiery intensity of their feelings for one another had caused more than a few rather complicated situations during their brief yet tumultuous time together. She had tried to kill him more than once, but she had also seduced him on two separate occasions. She was very forward with her feelings, and hadn't held anything back from him. Jesmind was just as attracted to him as he was to her, and despite the rocks they had stumbled over, they had parted more or less on amicable terms. Jesmind had had to leave, though she wouldn't tell him why. He knew that whatever it was, it had to be important for her to abandon him. At that time, she had taken responsibility for his learning to be a Were-cat and his well-being, and Jesmind was never one to shirk a responsibility. If it had been serious enough for her to leave him, then he was satisfied that her reasons were good enough. He had been a little mad at her for leaving him alone, though. Even when they hated each other, her proximity had given him a very strange feeling of security. She had been his bond-mother at that time, and it was like the child within was responding to the presence of mother, even though he had hated her. That part of him took comfort that she would be close to him, and he hadn't appreciated how much it helped soothe him until after she was gone.

  Jesmind had managed to capture his interest, even now, but thinking of her made him give a moment of thought to Mist. Mist was another Were-cat, a Were-cat whose feral nature was so severe that she wouldn't even trust her own kind. Her mental state had come about because she ha
d been wounded long ago, wounded in a way that made her barren, and her inability to have a child of her own had hardened her to the rest of the world. Were-cats were beings grounded in instinct, and in the females of their kind there was no instinct more powerful than the instinct to reproduce and care for the young. The denial of that most primal of instincts had probably been one of the reasons she was so intensely feral, being denied the one thing she felt she was born to do, taken away from her by the hatred and anger of humans. But Tarrin had healed her of her barren condition, an act of impulsive compassion, an act that had caused the feral Were-cat to reach out to him and place her trust in him, the first time in centuries she had placed her trust in another. Tarrin had felt so sorry for her. She had been so tortured inside. He had such compassion for her that he had agreed to father a child for her, her own child, the one thing that would make her life complete. His human morality had been a bit outraged at the idea, it still was, but even it could not deny the lonely Were-cat the one thing in this world she had wanted above all others.

  Were-cat males didn't have a hand in the raising of the young. After making her pregnant, she had left him, left him to return to her home to prepare for the coming of her child. Tarrin hoped that she was well, and that the child would bring everything she hoped it would bring. After all she had suffered through, she needed some happiness in her life. Mist trusted him, something he was very proud about, something that he appreciated for its great value. He hoped she was well.

  The sun was nearly fully above the horizon. Sarraya groaned slightly and stretched her arms, then sat up and yawned languidly. When she did so, he could see her bare back, a back that looked unusual with no diaphonous, multicolored wings attached to them. She had two small ridges on each side of her spine, where her wings attached so they wouldn't hit her back when they fluttered, and the slits where her wings had been were still raw, open wounds. He worried about them getting infected, but she had blown off his concern with that same careless frivolity that she used for anything that didn't interest her. She turned and looked up at him quietly, then her tiny, pretty face broke into a bright smile. Amber eyes gazed up at him, glowing in the morning sun, and he returned her gaze calmly.

  "Tarrin," she hummed. "You should have woke me up. It's already past sunrise."

  "You needed to rest," he answered in the unspoken manner of the Cat, a language of silent intent that all felines used to communicate with one another, a language that the Faerie could understand. "They needed to rest as well."

  "Who?"

  "Them," he answered, nodding his head towards the southeast. "They can't keep up if their horses start dying ten minutes after they start moving."

  Sarraya laughed in her piping, very high-pitched voice, a voice created by the fact that she was only about a span tall. The sprite could squeak like a mouse if she wished to do so, her voice capable of reaching such high tones that no human or creature human sized could manage to find. "You're certainly caring today," she grinned. "I didn't know you cared about them."

  "Not them. I do feel a bit sorry for their horses, though."

  Sarraya laughed again, standing up. "Well, let me conjure up something to eat, and then we can move. You hungry?"

  He shook his head. "I caught a couple of mice before dawn."

  The hunting had calmed him. In cat form, the instincts dominated him, and so he found absolutely nothing wrong with stalking, killing, and eating mice and other prey suitable for a cat, or doing any of the other little things that cats did. He had a particular fondness for squirrel, though none lived in the savannahs of Yar Arak. The rhythmic ritual of hunting had caused him to concentrate on it, to distract himself from his worries, and it had made him feel better.

  And those strange long-tailed mice were rather tasty.

  He watched absently as Sarraya conjured forth a few large blackberries, which seemed to be her favorite. She rarely used her Druidic magic, and because of that, he only understood a few of the things that it could do. He had seen her Conjure many times, to cause to appear small objects and materials, seemingly from thin air. Related to that was Summoning, the apperance of a specific object by bringing it magically to the Druid's hand. That had been what he had used against the Demon in their battle, Summoning his dropped sword to his paw after the Demon had grabbed him and was threatening to crush him. He had seen her heal, a curious healing that was affected by magically accelerating the subject's own healing mechanisms. Aside from those and the fact that Druidic power had a controlling influence on the Weave and Sorcery, he had never seen her do anything else. He knew that she could use Druidic magic to send messages to other Druids, who were distant from her, and Triana somehow used her Druidic magic to cross an entire continent in the span of a day.

  He wondered how Triana was doing. She was with his friends now, taking care of Jula. Jula had been his enemy, a human female Sorceress who had been secretly working for the ki'zadun. She had betrayed him, locked a magical collar around his neck to enslave his will. He had escaped, and in retaliation, had ripped out a section of her spine and left her to bleed to death. But she had managed to procure a vial of his blood, and used it to escape death, to drink it and become a Were-cat herself. But unlike him, she could not control the beast within, and it had driven her mad. The ki'zadun had sent her to Dala Yar Arak, a mindless, rampaging beast, to have her wreak havoc and cause the populace to turn against him and slow him down as he searched for the Book of Ages. He could have killed her, but he didn't. He had had something of a moral epiphany, looking down at her filthy, naked body, and had found it in himself to pity her. He took her for his own daughter instead of killing her, separating her instincts from her conscious mind with Sorcery, giving her a second chance. She had been loyal to him after that, because she understood that her only hope of finding balance within herself was to listen to him. He'd only had her for a few days, before all the insanity with Shiika had turned everything on its head. But even in that short time, he'd seen marked progress. Triana had come to complete her training, and he felt more than confident that his aged, wise bond-mother could be as successful with Jula as she had been with him. Not that Jula would like it very much. Triana didn't know Jula, and she knew that Jula had once betrayed him. Triana could be a bit rough with people she didn't like, but he wasn't afraid that Triana would just give up on his bond-daughter. She would do her best to help Jula find her inner peace, to keep her from going insane again. He knew his bond-mother, knew her well.

  He hadn't felt anything from Jula's bond for a few days now. When he decided to take her for his own child, he had taken her bond, a mystical connection to her brought about by taking her blood. It was something that all Were-cats could do, probably an extension of their affinity for Druidic magic, and he used it to gauge Jula's mental state and her general location. He could feel it when she experienced powerful emotion or physical pain, something that hadn't happened for a few days. He had known when Jula had met Triana for the first time, judging by the panic that roared through her. She had felt several other episodes of powerful emotion since then, but nothing that compared to that first tidal wave of fear.

  Tarrin's feelings for Jula were rather complex. He still didn't like her very much, but his parental duty to her overrode his distaste. She had proved herself to him during those short days, by fighting with him against Shiika's minions, by doing as she was told with no argument. His dislike for her had eased during those days, but his dislike was overshadowed by his powerful, instinctual impulse to protect who he considered to be his own offspring. Jula was his daughter by choice and by bond, and he had a responsibility to her that superseded his own personal feelings. Even among the males, who had little to do with the raising of a child, the instinct to protect the young was powerful, nearly overwhelming. Shiika had come to discover just how far Tarrin would go to protect his child, a lesson that had cost her a few thousand of her Arakite citizens and more than a few buildings. Were-cats were deeply based in their instincts, and t
he rages that could be spawned when those instincts were excited or outraged could be extreme.

  He felt...incomplete. Now he knew how Jesmind felt when he had run away from her, a feeling that made what she did afterward much more lucid to him. He had a daughter out there, a daughter that was not ready to be on her own, and he could not be there to teach her, to guide her, to protect her. It was infuriating, something that ate at him every time he thought about it. He trusted Triana to continue where he left off, but it wasn't the same. He'd be almost insane with worry if Triana wasn't there, and would probably have abandoned what he was doing to seek her out and reclaim her. That was how powerful the instinct to protect her was within him. It would be worse if he felt constant negative feelings through her bond, but the lack of those bad feelings allowed him to more faithfully lay his trust in Triana.

  Sarraya finished her breakfast of berries, then stood up and tugged at her dirty skirt. Both of them looked like they were in desperate need of a bath, and Sarraya's clothes were starting to tear in places that would compromise her modesty. Not that he cared very much. The concept of nudity was a very loose one among Were-cats, who weren't all that impressed by the gratuitous display of things humans preferred to conceal. That change in him from human to Were had been a bit confusing at first, but he had completely shed his human conceptions about it very quickly.