"I'll not have my father challenge the Tower until I know there's a good reason to run," Allia warned her. "You may be casual with my people, but my clan will be taking a very serious risk in harboring us if the Tower wants us badly enough. You forget, you're talking about an order that can send the weather itself to attack my people. My people can't fight the wind."
"Allia, as far as I'm concerned, we already have reason enough to run," the Wikuni replied. "It's blatantly obvious that they want something from us. They didn't bring us here just in the interests of interracial peace. They want something from us, and it must be bad, because they won't tell us what it is. You don't withhold information unless that information threatens your plans. If this task wasn't anything serious, or it wasn't dangerous, we'd have already been thoroughly prepared for it long before we took our first crack at touching the Weave." She sat back down again irritably. "I have the very strong feeling that we're being offered up like sacrificial lambs to further the Tower's goals, and I'm a girl that's learned to listen to her gut. It's saved me more times than I can conveniently count. That tells me right there how bad the Sorcerers want it. To put me in danger risks a war with my father, and no kingdom that borders the sea is insane enough to get into a war with Wikuna. And you, Allia, if your father found out that they killed you for their own ends, I have no doubt that the Selani would Call Council and pour over the Sandshield like a tidal wave of destruction."
Both Tarrin and Allia were quiet for a very long moment. Keritanima was right. If this task wasn't dangerous, they would have extensively prepared them for it. A soldier that fully understood the objectives of the mission stood a much better chance of successfully completing it. And the Tower was going to an awful risk. If Damon Eram or Allia's father found out that their daughters were being trained for a suicide mission, the destruction would reach staggering levels, because those forces would have to take Sulasia apart to get at the Tower itself. Wikuna and the Selani were two of the forces in the Known World that no nation wanted to cross, because they had a very long reach.
"I don't know about you two, but I don't want to be here when they decide to choose one of us," she told them bluntly. "I have the feeling that Tarrin will be their choice, but if he should fail, one of us would be next. I've lived too long to get killed by something that I never intended to cross paths with in the first place."
The attention of half the world is fixed directly on your shoulders, Tarrin remembered the Goddess saying. Yes, he would be their choice. But for what?
"I can't argue with your logic," Allia said finally. "So I'll have to admit that it would be a risk I would allow my father to take. And after we tell my father about what went on here, he'd certainly protect us. He did not send me here to become a pawn in the Tower's games."
"The only part I can't figure out is you," Keritanima said, pointing at Tarrin. "You're the one part that doesn't fit. And I want to know why."
"How do you mean?" he asked in confusion.
"Because how you ended up here doesn't make sense," she said directly. "One thing we all share is that we're all non-human. But you started out human. That link between us falls apart when I try to figure out why the Tower brought you here."
"It was bad luck that Jesmind-"
"No," she cut him off. "You told me that Jesmind was controlled. Someone sent her after you, and I've seen you fight. You wouldn't have stood a chance against her as a human, controlled or not. She would have ripped you in half the instant she got her claws into you."
"I didn't let her get her claws into me," Tarrin flared. "I held my own long enough for Dolanna to get there and use Sorcery on her." He grabbed his left arm almost unconsciously, the arm Jesmind had bitten.
"I'll grant you that," Keritanima said. "But you said yourself that them getting you as well as us was blind luck. I don't think so now."
"Why?"
"Because, brother dear, they'll choose you," she said with penetrating eyes. "I believe in luck, but this is luck that would make Bekir herself look twice." She got up again and began to pace. "You're a black sheep, Tarrin," she began. "You ended up non-human by accident. You're not important, you're just a farmboy from a backwater frontier village."
"Well thank you very much," Tarrin said acidly.
"Brother, you mean the world to me, but I'm looking at the big picture, not my view of it," she said with a disarming smile. "You are a nobody, Tarrin. You're not important. Or you weren't important before Jesmind sank her fangs in your arm. That's when you became important. Me and Allia, we share certain commonalities. We're both royalty, and we're both non-human by birth and upbringing. You don't fit in with us. You're a human in a non-human's body. Sure, you're not human now, but you were born human, and you still try to act human. Maybe that's what makes you so important, or maybe it was indeed just raw blind luck. Either way, the Tower will use you, and they know why. I want to know too."
"That doesn't explain why you think Jesmind was sent after me," Tarrin said bluntly. Keritanima was starting to jump around, and he couldn't quite follow her line of thought. She tended to leave things out when she was talking her way through a problem, so he focused on the part he did understand.
"Because of the one thing that does link us all, Tarrin," she said. "We were born as royalty. You were born with royal blood, even if you were brought up as a country bumpkin. You're the son of a clan-chief's daughter. If you didn't know, an Ungardt clan-chief is a king. That makes you a prince. I don't think the others in your party have that distinction."
Tarrin gaped at her.
"You know what I think happened?" she said. "I think they set Jesmind loose on you to infect you, not to kill you. And then they were going to collect you up and train you to do the same thing that the Tower wants us to do, because the rumor and information I've gathered so far points to something that more than the Tower knows, something that's important enough for kingdoms to fight wars over. But you ended up in the Tower instead of with them, whoever they are, and when they realized that, they did their best to kill you. The reason that they almost specifically came after you is the same reason why I'll believe that you'll be chosen for this task. We don't come anywhere near you, Tarrin. Not in strength, fighting ability, survivability, or power in Sorcery. You're the logical choice, and that's why the ones that don't have you want to kill you so badly."
Tarrin stared at her in shock. He had no idea what to say, no idea what to do. It all rang true with an awful clarity, and there was a logic to it that he could not deny.
"But now that you're having trouble controlling your power, they'll get unpredictable," Keritanima added. "They'll bend you backwards trying to get you to do it right. And they'll want it now. Just be careful, Tarrin. As soon as they think that you can't get your power under control, the Tower is going to try to kill you. You're much too dangerous a weapon to be allowed to leave here alive, because they know that they will snap you up and try to get you to do whatever it is that they want done. So even if you can't control your power, make them believe that you can. It'll only extend your own life."
Tarrin was both awestruck and dumbfounded. Everything that she said fit in with everything that had already happened, and they were motives that explained alot of what had already happened to him. Even he had wondered at how he survived the fight with Jesmind. Keritanima could be right; maybe the collar around her neck prevented her from killing him. One of the few things he remembered about the nightmarish fight was her poised to kill, the pose that she was locked into when Dolanna wrapped her up. He had no idea if that blow would have been delivered now, because she did follow through with a blow meant to kill at the very beginning, when he'd woken up to see her trying to rip out his throat. Was she there to kill him, or to turn him Were? It was a chaotic jumble in his mind, and he struggled to remember something, anything, about the fight that would tip the scales for one side or the other. But it was a blank. He had blocked the majority of the fight from his mind, because of the intense pain he sensed he had endured both in the fight and in the subsequent transformation. Because he wasn't sure, then Keritanima's offering had some merit. It did explain the attacks, and it also explained the Goddess' cryptic remarks about his importance. But the attacks could also be explained with Jesmind being sent to kill him, and for mainly the same reasons.