Allia slept fitfully that night, as the occasional sound of shouting disturbed her sleep, and also the nagging feeling that something was not right. As soon as Binter ventured into the hallway and proclaimed it safe, Allia was out of Keritanima's room, and she returned to the coupled rooms that were hers and Tarrin's.
The first indication that something was not right was that Tarrin's door was unlocked. She entered his room, and found everything neat and clean and untouched. The bed had not been slept in-that, or Tarrin had made it so it looked exactly the same as it did the day before. That, she doubted. Tarrin favored sleeping in his cat form, if only to avoid having to make the bed, and that always disturbed the blankets. His staff was standing in the corner, and the books Lilenne had suggested to him were still sitting on the small table in the corner. That too was not normal. Lilenne demanded that the books be returned to the library the first thing every morning, so he had to drop them off before going to his appointments where they studied his power.
Concerned, Allia left the room and quickly hurried over to the main Tower. Things were tense, as large numbers of guards roamed the passageways, and Sorcerers, Initiates, and Novices alike moved around in a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. Everyone knew that something very strange had happened the night before, and it involved open fighting in the hallways of the Tower. But Allia didn't concern herself with others, she was there for only one reason, and that was to find her brother. She checked the three places that he may be in the main Tower, the kitchens, the dining hall, and the baths, but he was not there. The kitchen staff had not seen him, and neither had the Novices who tended the baths.
Fear beginning to creep into her, Allia returned to the North Tower and immediately sought out the two people that may have seen him. She found Dar first, as he was scurrying towards the exit to go to the main Tower for breakfast. "Allia, good morning," he said gently to her as she approached.
"Have you seen Tarrin this morning, friend Dar?" she asked immediately.
"No, I haven't," he replied. "We were going to play some chess after class. Why, what's wrong? Did he get caught up in that strange craziness last night?"
"I do not know," she said grimly. "Tarrin is not here. He would have told me if he was going somewhere."
"Why don't you go ask Keritanima, and I'll go ask Tiella," he replied. "I was going to meet her for breakfast."
"Yes, I was looking for her," she said. "Come back to Keritanima's room with your answer."
"Alright," he said, reaching out and patting her on the shoulder and giving her a reassuring smile. "He probably just wandered off. You know how he is."
"I hope so, friend Dar," she sighed.
When she returned to Keritanima's room, she was forced to pull Keritanima aside as a small ferret Wikuni chatted with Miranda. "Sister, Tarrin didn't go back to his room last night," she whispered to her in Selani. "His bed was untouched, and now I can't find him anywhere on the grounds."
"What?" Keritanima demanded, a bit too loudly. "You're sure?"
Allia nodded. "He isn't anywhere he would usually be."
"If he went out to watch the fireworks last night-" she began, then she snorted. "Come on, let's go see if he was in his room last night," she said, grabbing Allia's arm and pulling her towards the door.
Tarrin's room wasn't that far away from Keritanima's, so it only took them a moment to get there. With the immense Binter in tow behind them, Keritanima and Allia re-entered the room. Keritanima immediately closed her eyes and knelt on the floor, putting her black button nose close to the stone. "Tarrin was here last night," she said. "But he wasn't alone. There's a human scent here, one I don't know. It's female. She was here a while, but Tarrin wasn't. Bah," she snorted, standing up. "I'm not about to crawl around on the floor like a bloodhound." She raised a hand, and Allia felt her touch the Weave. A faint glow suddenly sprang into being on the floor, an erratic, splotchy trail of sorts that entered the room, moved towards the closet, then turned towards the center of the room. Then it merged back into the glow by the door. "That's Tarrin's scent," she said. "Now, let's follow it and see where it goes."
"Clever," Allia said. "You must teach me that weave."
"It's something I thought up a few days ago," she shrugged.
The glowing trail wasn't completely illuminated. As Keritanima walked along, the trail in front of her appeared, and the trail behind them winked out. They followed the trail through the North Tower and out onto the grounds, where the trail began to break up on the cold, frost-covered ground. Keritanima depended on Allia's sharp eyes to pick out the faint, weak glow among the frosted blades of grass, and they slowly tracked the trail across the grounds.
It ended at the main gate, where a group of guards stood vigil beside four or five covered forms. They eyed the pair of Initiates with hostility as they approached. Tarrin's scent trail went right through the gate, right across the Ward, to disappear into the streets beyond.
"What happened here?" Keritanima demanded.
"The same that happened on the grounds last night," one guard replied. "Enemy agents attacked last night, and they killed the guards to get onto the grounds."
"Posh," Keritanima snapped, coming over and lifting one of the blankets. The man had been young, and his chest had been caved in as if some Giant had grabbed him in his massive hand and squeezed the life out of him. That was not a wound caused by any weapon she had ever seen. "Unless the agents all joined hands and jumped up and down on his chest, I don't see how they accomplished this."
"They had to have had a mage with them," another demanded. "One of them was burned, and another was frozen solid."
"Arcane magic doesn't work on the grounds, blockhead!" Keritanima snapped at him. "This was Sorcery!"
"You're daft, woman!" the guard snapped back. "What would a katzh-dashi be doing attacking his own guards?"
"Idiots," Keritanima growled. "Allia, I'm going to follow the trail. I want you and Binter to go over to the far side of the grounds, to my Marines. Binter, I want you to order them to fall in and prepare for possible action. If Tarrin didn't leave by choice, and whoever made him leave still has him, we'll make them pay in blood for it. If Tarrin was taken by a Sorcerer, then we may need some serious reinforcements."
"I will not leave you undefended, Highness," the massive Vendari said bluntly.
"You have to, Binter," she replied. "I don't have time to go get Miranda, and I need my men to be ready now."
"I will go get Miranda," Allia said. "Binter will not leave you unguarded, sister. It goes against his honor."
Binter nodded simply. No more needed to be said.
"I will go get Miranda, and have her prepare your men," Allia promised.
"Alright. I'll meet you on the Knights' training field. Have Miranda form my men up there. If it does come down to a fight, I'd like to invite the Knights to join it."
"I will," she promised. She reached out and gave her sister a quick embrace, then left them and ran on swift feet back towards the North Tower.
Miranda was still talking to the ferret Wikuni when Allia entered, and she was not about to be patient. She pushed the slim male aside, his black furred face looking like a mask over his eyes, and put herself firmly in front of the cute little mink Wikuni. "Keritanima is following Tarrin's trail off the grounds," she announced. "She bade me to come to you and have you form up her Marines on the training grounds of the Knights."
"What?" Miranda challenged.
"We do not know if Tarrin left voluntarily. If he did not, then Keritanima wants to be ready to sally out and reclaim him, by force if necessary."
"Slow down," Miranda said. "What happened?"
"There was another scent in Tarrin's room, a female that Keritanima does not know. I believe she suspects that this female either lured Tarrin out, or forced him. The trail leaves the Tower grounds. We found several dead guards at the gate where they left, and they were all killed by Sorcery."
"That's not Tarrin's style," Miran
da mused. "Tarrin would have simply killed them hand to hand. Maybe it was Dolanna?"
Allia shook her head. "Keritanima has met Dolanna. She would know Dolanna's scent."
"You're right," she said, tapping her little pink nose absently. "I'll go ready the Marines. Allia, maybe this is something that the Council should know. They may have an agenda for Tarrin, but that means that they need him alive. They'll help."
"I, do not know how to contact them," Allia said helplessly.
"Then go find Dolanna," she suggested. "If there's one katzh-dashi you can trust, it will be her."
"I will," she said. "I know where Dolanna's room is."
With a living mountain trailing behind her, intimidating everything and everyone out of her way, Keritanima made good time along the slush-covered streets of Suld, following a very faint trail that glowed on the cobblestones before her. The traffic on the streets had partially muffled the weave she was using, which translated a scent's presence into visible light. The weaker the scent, the weaker the glow, and Tarrin's scent had been partially destroyed by the passage of people, wagons, and animals. But it was enough for her to slowly, painstakingly follow the fragmented trail, finding where it started again every time it vanished, slowly working them across the city.
It took nearly an hour, and Keritanima attracted a good deal of attention from the pedestrians. Mainly because she would not get out of anyone's way. When she had Binter overturn the cart of a merchant that angrily demanded she get out of the middle of the street, it caused more than a few of the curious to follow her at a discreet distance. The slender little Wikuni and her awesome bodyguard turned into the head of an informal procession that crept across the city streets of Suld, following something so strange that none of the followers had the faintest idea what she was doing. But Keritanima paid them no mind. She knew that this was it. It was over. And she didn't care.
There was no way she was going to be able to explain this. Keritanima arguing logically with guards, issuing sharp commands, possibly even leading her troops, these were not things of which the Brat was capable. But the Brat was only a figment of her imagination, where Tarrin was a very real part of her life, and he may need her. He had been so kind to her, being her friend, taking her in, giving her a feeling of peace and security that she had never felt before. She loved him, deeply, and the very thought that someone may have kidnapped him, and that they may be hurting him, raised an immense towering fury in her that made her want to smash the life out of the people with her bare hands. The Brat had been created to protect her, and right now, someone else needed her protection more.
Keritanima followed the trail into a courtyard, across some grass, over a waist-high iron fence, and then into a building. She looked up to see where she was, and almost had a heart attack.
The trail entered one of the servant's entrances to the Cathedral of Karas.
"Impossible!" she gasped. "Impossible!"
"What is this place, Highness?" Binter asked.
"It's the Cathedral of Karas!" she said in dismay. "Why here?"
"Why not?"
She glared at him, then stepped back and raised her hands. She wove together a very powerful weave, a weave she wasn't supposed to know, and sent a magical wave of probing Mind flows through the cathedral. The weave was designed to seek out conscious minds, to locate and count the number of sentient beings in an area. Mind weaves usually didn't affect members of other races, but this one didn't affect the mind, it simply registered the presence of active sentience. The Weave could also disseminate between different types of sentience, which allowed the user to discern if the people touched by the weave were of the same race.
Keritanima counted nearly six hundred people either in the cathedral, or far below it. Only three of those contacts registered to her as normal, meaning that those were Wikuni. The rest of them were not Wikuni. Keritanima realized with some dismay that she couldn't tell if one of them was Tarrin.
Changing tactics, she sent another weave of a similar type out, searching for shaerams. There couldn't be that many of those in there. Every shaeram had a tiny touch of the Goddess in them, for they were her holy symbol, and that resonance would respond to her magical probing.
Again, she was dismayed. There were sixteen shaerams either inside or underneath the cathedral. Keritanima had no idea if they were being worn, or simply being kept in drawers, and she had no idea which was Tarrin's.
She smacked herself. How stupid! Searching for shaerams to locate the touch of the Goddess was fine, but there was a way she could search for him using the same technique that would prove it was him!
Tarrin had the holy symbol of Fara'Nae branded to his shoulder, and it had just as much magical presence as a shaeram!
Victory! The holy energies of Fara'Nae's symbol reacted to her searching weaves of Divine energy, searching out Divine emanations of a specific type, that matched the very same emanations that came from the brand on her own shoulder. Tarrin was the only one that had that peculiar signature, unless they were holding a Selani.
Tarrin was almost two hundred feet below the cathedral.
Subterranean passages? What secrets did the cathedral hold that weren't on her plans?
"Binter," she said soberly.
"You found him, Highness?"
She nodded. "He's underneath the cathedral. He's not moving."
"Then let us go get him."
"No," Keritanima said. "We have no idea what we're getting into. Let's come back in force. I'm not going to challenge a cathedral full of priests unless I have an army at my back."
"Wise," he agreed.
Allia began to move with more and more urgency. She knew that something was very wrong. Her brother was in danger. She could feel it. Allia was Selani, and Selani trusted those gut feelings alot more than humans did. That she believed that Tarrin was in danger was enough for her, and it caused her heart to race and her feet to move faster and faster.
Tarrin wouldn't leave without letting her know. He did occasionally wander off to roam the grounds, but that was the grounds. He would never leave the grounds without telling her. She mulled it over again and again, and every time she did, she walked faster and faster. By the time she was out the door, she was running. By the time she reached the main Tower, she was pushing people out of her way. She almost overshot Dolanna's door, sliding on the stone and coming back to it to knock with desperate urgency on the polished wood. There was no answer, so she knocked again, and again, and continued to knock until the door swung open abruptly.
Dolanna looked horrible. Her eyes were red, as was her nose, and she had a haunted look on her face that made Allia's blood run cold. Her blue dress was wrinkled and unkempt, and her dark hair was tangled and unattended. "Mistress Dolanna!" Allia said in shock. "Whatever happened to you?"
"It is a long story," she said in a hollow voice. "What do you need, Allia?"
"Tarrin is missing, Dolanna!" she blurted. "He did not come back to his room last night!"
"Perhaps that is for the best," Dolanna said in a weary voice.
"Dolanna!" Allia gasped. "He is gone! Keritanima tracked him leaving the grounds, and she found another scent in his room. We fear he was abducted!"
That made her blink. She pulled the Selani into the room and closed the door. "Abducted? Oh, dear!"
"What is it?"
"Allia, you have no idea what is going on!" she said, her eyes widening in comprehending horror. "They must have used the collar on him!"
"Mistress, slow down," Allia said, grabbing her by the arms. "What is going on?"
"Jesmind came to me before she left, and asked me to find out what was going on," she said. "I have been looking into things. Last night, I came across a horrifying discovery, something that has made me doubt the integrity of my own order. It is awful, young one. The Council has become monsters!"
"Dolanna!" Allia said, shaking her. "Tell me what is going on!"
She put her hands on Allia's shoulders. "Allia, Tarri
n was not attacked by Jesmind on accident," she said with haunted eyes. "The Council had Jesmind captured, and they set her loose on him on purpose!"
Allia stared at her in shock.
"The Council wanted him to be non-human, so they captured a lycanthrope, the first one they could find, which was Jesmind. They had her infect him with her condition. They had a device left over from the time of the Ancients, a collar that controlled Were-kin. They used it on Jesmind, and made her attack Tarrin."
"You mean the katzh-dashi did that to him deliberately?" Allia said breathlessly.
Dolanna nodded. "Two days ago, that collar was stolen from the vaults," she said. "The Council kept it quiet, but they've been trying to find out who did it. This activity is what allowed me to find out the truth." She stared directly into Allia's eyes. "If Tarrin is missing, then whoever stole that collar has used it on him, and he has no defense against it. It enslaves a Were-kin's will." She pushed the Selani away, for her grip was starting to draw blood on Dolanna's arms. "Last night, there was some kind of war between two shadow groups in the hallways. The thief probably used that to cover Tarrin's capture."
"Holy Mother!" Allia gasped. "Miranda's plan backfired on us!" She grabbed Dolanna by the arm. "We must go see the Council!" she said hysterically. "Keritanima is finding Tarrin now, and we must be ready to take him back! By combat if necesary!"
"I will not go to the Council!" Dolanna said adamantly. "They did this to him, Allia! I will not face them! If I were to come face to face with them right now, I would try to kill them! All of Tarrin's pain, all of his suffering, they caused all of it! You did not see the worst of it, Allia, when he first changed-" she stoppped, her voice breaking. "He has come very far, but even now he feels the pain, and lives in fear of what he has become. And they sit there and watch him suffer day after day as the study him, knowing what they have done to him!"
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