"Heave to!" snapped Adira. "No one crimps my crew without-"
Adira froze as Jedit's bloody, scarred, fire-singed muzzle bobbed an inch from hers. The tiger's growl chilled her blood.
"Don't refuse me revenge."
Blood-flecked tail swishing, limping on a chewed foot, the tiger trotted down the street, bearing west. Wilemina and Jasmine tripped up to Adira, breathless, asking questions with arched eyebrows.
"Go," said Adira. "Keep an eye out. We'll need him and. more now that Johan's returned, damn his ornery hide. Damn both of them."
"Enemies beset me, yet I escape unharmed. Such is my destiny. Yet again I am cursed by cat warriors!"
Alone, Johan complained as he marched barefooted into a wasteland. Tatters of his purple lizard-skin robe trailed, ragged and wet and collecting sand. His red-black tattooed skin shone like fresh blood on agates.
"Forced to brawl in a marketplace like a common thug, and I've squandered the secret of my return, forfeited the element of surprise to the enemy! Still, perhaps this is best. Adira Simpleminded Strongheart and Hazezon Hamhanded Tamar will lose sleep knowing I plot against them, knowing doom dogs their every step!"
Had he been lucid, Johan might have worried that he sputtered and fumed like a village idiot and stooped to childish insults. Yet he blithered on, more exhausted than he realized. Careless of eating and sleeping, Johan had spent weeks crossing a deadly desert before reaching Palmyra, months before that exploring Efrava, and a year or more before that waging war. The furious battle in the marketplace had spent his resources, both mystic and physical, yet he was unaware and plowed on in a mental fog. Fleeing the fight, he'd waded the River Toloron and struck west, for no other reason than that his enemies would expect him to push north. Shaking his horned head, he'd walked for hours, barefoot, without hat or waterskin, no possessions but the shredded purple robe and a few spellcasting oddments in his pockets. Magic sustained his body but took a toll on his mind.
No one heard the half-mad sorcerer mutter, not even an errant shepherd. The land was inhospitable. A few miles from the life-giving river, the terrain reverted to broken shale, crumbled arroyos of orange sand, and scanty bush. Neither sheep nor goats could graze out here. A desert by a different -name, these Western Wastes. Few entered these barrens. Nomads shunned the area, considering it unlucky, believing from ancient legends that unscalable cliffs blocked the way west. There was no water, no greenery, no iron nor gems, no animals-nothing to serve as a lure.
"Tigers. Tiger-men. Man-tigers. Why?" Befuddled without knowing it, Johan talked as he blundered on west. "The cat warriors are too great a force to ignore, so I must control them. Conquer them. But how? Killing them seems too easy. Yet to break them to harness, render them docile, exploit them… What do we know of them? Nothing. What's their secret? How to decipher animal minds? Fabulous knowledge could be had. Yet so much was lost, smothered and crushed by the Ice Ages or swept away by the glacial floods. Somewhere must be preserved the ancient key to subduing the cats-Hunh!"
Johan halted as if poleaxed. Before him, silhouetted against a flaming desert sunset, wavered a mirage-or a vision.
A beautiful woman in blue layered robes, with startling black hair and golden skin, stood with one small hand poised as if to ask a stranger a question.
Hideous in red skin and black stripes and horns like a dragon's, Johan squinted to make the vision freeze, but the woman rippled and shimmered like smoke on water.
Not wishing to appear ignorant, he stated, "I know you!"
"Perhaps." The vision didn't argue. The woman's eyes slanted upward at the comers. A foreigner to Jamuraa. "I am Shauku. I reside in the west."
"You have a library in a palace." Johan nodded like an angry bull. "Hundreds of volumes collected from the far corners of Dominaria. I read of it long ago but only now recalled."
The woman nodded. Johan could clearly see a chipped rock on the horizon through her head. "It's true. All you might wish to learn would lie at your fingertips, were you here."
"Knowledge of the catfolk?" blurted Johan, and could have bitten his tongue for giving up a secret.
"Catfolk? Talking tigers, do you mean? Yes, they are chronicled. A thick book is bound in orange-black hide. Everything to know of cat warriors lies therein."
"Such a book exists?" Johan jerked forward as if yanked on a leash. "To see that-"
He stopped himself rather than reveal a desire, a weakness, but anything that could give him power over the cat warriors he wanted. They were his personal curse conjured by the spirits of the sky, he was sure.
Shauku gestured with a ghostly hand, and from the desert sands seemed to spring the sketchy outlines of a massive palace that just as quickly blew away on the breeze.
She trilled, "My abode is not far for one who can shift body and essence through the planes."
Johan didn't answer, for he could not. To shift, to conjure a spell that whisked one's self immeasurable distances in an eye blink, was a power denied him. Shifting was the first step toward true planeswalking, a feat of true sorcerers who'd grasped the most fundamental secrets of the cosmos. Johan had striven for years to shift but had always failed. So had every other mage in Jamuraa, he knew, even the hated Hazezon Tamar. Perhaps no one in Dominaria could shift. In ancient times drenched in magic, wizards had snapped their fingers and flown to the stars, but it seemed the Ice Ages had first frozen and then diluted all magics. A curse on the current generation, Johan feared.
Lacking an answer, Johan lied. "I'd need an entourage to pay proper respect at your court. It's too much bother to shift weaklings, a strain upon them. I'll come over land."
A smile creased the woman's ghostly cheeks. "I understand. We shall prepare for your visit. It's been too long since so distinguished a guest graced our halls. Until then."
Shauku tipped her chin or perhaps blew an imaginary kiss. Johan wasn't sure, because her visage had already faded. He was left squinting at a chipped rock framed by molten sun.
"Shauku," he muttered. "The ageless librarian, guardian of all the wisdom accumulated by men. Yes, there I must go! And see? I embarked westward before even knowing my journey! No one is more clever than Johan except Johan!"
Pausing, Johan noted his surroundings for the first time. The sun dropped below the western horizon. A cool breeze blew against his right ear, a wind from the north, as always. Already he spoke in imperious tones.
"Very well. We must send word to Tirras for lackeys. Make ready to journey. We strike west! Toward knowledge and greater conquest!"
The far-roaming scouts limped into the town hall just after dawn. Jedit flopped on the floor like an overfed housecat and instantly nodded off.
For a while, people stared at the tiger-man, plainly awed. He sprawled on the floor like a colorful rug, more than seven feet long from toes to nose, with an armspan a fathom wide and a chest like a hogshead barrel. The striped tail, big as a king cobra, stirred and squirmed, never resting. The cat bore scars and scabs from combat that would have killed a man. Ferocious bites marred his muzzle, neck, and shoulder. Some wept fluid, some were swollen and infected and already in danger of breeding maggots. The gruesome burn down his back continued down one leg, and to scorched skin had been added sunburn and rash. All four paws bore bloody scabs from sharp desert shale. He was ticked and dinged and scratched in a dozen other places. Yet despite the homey purring noises, Jedit Ojanen looked deadly as a dozing dragon, and people lowered their voices rather than wake him.