"That's good enough," Sevren agreed. "Could I borrow Ulger and Kelliver for a few rides?"
"What do you need me for, Sevren?" Ulger asked.
"I think it's time that we took a little trip," he said. "We're going to the Tykarthian border."
"What's there?"
"The Citadel of the Hill," he said cryptically.
"So?"
"So, the Citadel has a complement of Sorcerers there," he said. "It's part of the treaty the katzh-dashi have with the Crown that ten Sorcerers be present at the four Citadels that defend Sulasia's borders. The Citadal of the Hill is the closest one, so we need to ride up there and have a talk with the katzh-dashi pulling a yearly rotation. I think they'll be more trustworthy than the ones at the Tower, and we may need their help. I'll have Koran Dar write a letter ordering them to return, and that will give us ten more trustworthy people to help us in the Tower."
"That is a good idea," Darvon said. "Ulger, you and Kelliver better get some warm clothes. It's going to be a frosty ride."
"Why ride?" Tomas asked. "I'll have the Tenspan sail them up there. That should cut a ride off the trip."
"But the ice-" Darvon began to object.
"The Tenspan is a raker, Lord General," Tomas told him. "It will have no trouble getting up there."
"I thank you, Tomas," Darvon said. "This is much more than we would have asked of anyone."
"I may be a merchant, but I'm also a Sulasian, Lord General," Tomas said. "I think that Sulasia needs us right now."
"Well said," Ulger agreed. "I'll go fetch Kelliver, Lord General. We need to start getting ready."
"Good idea," he agreed, and the Knight stood, nodded to Tarrin, and then exited the study. "I think it's time for all of us to start getting ready," he announced. "You all have a trip to take, and Tomas, Sevren, and I have alot to do. Let's go start getting ready."
Tarrin felt curiously alone after they broke up and began returning to their rooms, to pack away their belongings and prepare. But for what he felt, there was no one to confide in. Allia would justify his actions, and Keritanima wouldn't care either way. But they didn't have to live with the terrible truth. A truth that had only just begun to impact him.
He had killed hundreds of people, with his bare paws. Without mercy. Some of them had been defenseless. He had turned into the monster he always feared he would become, and he knew that it could-no, it would-happen again. There was no way he could stop it, nothing he could do to prevent it. The next time he felt that threatened, he would snap, and the monster within would be unleashed. And now that he had agreed to this mad task for the Goddess, he knew he would be put in a position Goddess knew how many times where he would lose control. As the memories of his acts began to return, he began to fear himself more and more, fear what he was capable of doing. Once, he nearly killed his own mother. He feared for those around him, fearing that they too would find themselves at the points of his claws. That one thought was enough to send his mind whirling in dread, and he realized then that the tenuous balance he had found within himself had been destroyed. He was teetering on a razor's edge. Madness waited on one side, and turning into an emotionless monster waited on the other. He had thought that he had mastered that danger, had understood the Cat within him and found a harmony with it.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
Madness was a very real threat to him, as was turning vicious. He dimly knew that that had already begun. He was turning Feral, and though he didn't understand the full truth of that name, that condition, he knew it was starting to happen to him. It didn't seem much of a life. Live insane, or live in fear and anger of everyone around him, without love or trust of anyone or anything. That in itself would drive him mad.
But he had a job to do. He promised the Goddess he would do it, and Were-cats didn't lie. He would try. He was a very unwilling participant in this game of hers, but there was too much at stake for him not to do anything. He had no idea what lay in store for him out there, in the large, dangerous world, but there was only one thing he cared about.
The Firestaff.
When he found it, he would destroy it, and then he could live in peace.
Peace was all that mattered.
He just hoped he would still be sane by the time he got there.
Tarrin left the study, his mind full, his heart heavy, and his future uncertain. But there was only one certainty left within him, one guarantee laying clearly before his path.
His fight for survival, for sanity, for his future, had only begun.
The night was cold, and it was starting to lean towards morning.
The Star of Jerod was an old ship, a galleon of Shacean build, patched and with pitted paint and an aged feel that hinted at how much activity the old girl had seen in her time. She was moored up to a stone quay near the end of the long line of piers, on a private quay owned by Tomas and his merchant company. The place was relatively isolated, and that allowed them to board the ship without much fear of interference, even though activity could be seen on other docks and quays not far away.
Tarrin looked up at the old ship with a bit of uncertainty. He had never been on a ship larger than a riverboat before, and his old fear of how strangers would react to him had begun to gnaw at his mind. But it was Allia who showed the strongest reaction, staring at the ship in wide-eyed fear, and glancing at the cold water of the harbor like it was a live snake. Allia had a fear of water, a fear born of her desert-born background, and for her, it was a supreme act of will to put her foot on the gangplank.
He looked back on the city. It was a city he really had never known. He had never really walked through it during the day, and every time he had ventured out, he had always been hiding, sneaking, or running. The Tower's seven towers rose up on their gentle hill near the center of the city, a stark reminder of what he was leaving, what had happened to him. It was his past, a past of pain and uncertainty, full of fear and foreboding. But there had been good times. There had been laughter and love, passion and terror, pain and joy. There had been tension, and there had been days spent in carefree companionship with his sisters. It had been good and bad, and though his mind wanted to dwell on the negatives, on how he felt at that moment, he couldn't look back at the Tower and say that every memory from it was a bad one. It was where he met Allia, where he met Keritanima, and where he had learned about the Goddess. It had dominated his life for the last few months, both as an object to attain, a place to live, and an institution to fear.
It was the Tower of Sorcery, and it had become part of him. Both the good and the bad, to mirror the dichotimous aspects of his own existence.
And now it was behind him. What had happened to him there had jaded him against the katzh-dashi…he would never trust them again. What had happened to him had changed him, in many ways, not all of them for the good. He could no longer look back on the Tower, look up to the Tower, take comfort in the Tower, or rage against the Tower. There was only him, his Goddess, his sisters, his friends, and the dangerous mission upon which they were about to embark.
Whatever happened now, he was on his own.
Tomas and Janine stood at the head of the gangplank. The others were already aboard, and Sevren had already returned to the Tower. The pair looked up at him with love in their eyes, and he couldn't look at them without both fear of himself and a profound respect for them. They had really been there for him, for his family, and he truly loved them like his own.
"I'm sorry I've been such a pain, Tomas," he said contritely, scrubbing the back of his head with a paw.
"Nonsense," he smiled. "Now get on the boat. The others are waiting for you."
He gave Tomas a rough hug, then he took Janine in his arms and squeezed her gently. "I'll miss you. Take care of my little mother for me."