Weavespinner

by James Galloway

  Let go of the All gently, her thought mirrored into his mind, and he knew that she meant it for him. Slowly and gently.

  Doing as she ordered, he slowly, carefully distanced himself from the All, using the newfound control and calmness her touch on his mind had instilled in him. Drawing from her experience with the All, he knew exactly what to do to break his connection safely. The All acted oddly when it was wielded in anger, and it required exceptional care to let go of it without it doing something while in the act of letting go.

  Much to his surprise, what he was doing was something Triana had to do from time to time, and that was make a clean break from the All when her emotions would make its use unstable and dangerous.

  The lock around his shoulders, pinning his arms, was released, and her arms slid down and embraced him from behind. She put her head against his shoulder, and he could feel her sympathy for him, feel the powerful love she held for him in her heart. A little dazed from the shattering of the rage and the enormity of touching her mind, a mind a thousand years old and possessed of memories and experiences both wonderful and horrible, he could only lean against her and both revel in and recoil from that touch. She had been forced to deal with him in the one state in which he never wanted anyone he loved to see, but he was glad that of all of them, it had been her. If there was anyone that would understand, it was Triana. Her hold on him also helped to hold him up. He was also tired, very tired, a weariness that was partially because of the emotional energy he'd expended in the rage, and energy he'd burned up flailing about with Druidic power. He wasn't as tired as he should have been, another indication that his powers in Druidic magic had increased, but he was still tired enough to feel it.

  She was silent for a very long time, just holding onto him, as if he would return to his mindless rage the instant she released him. She also kept that strange window open between them, no longer actively rooting through his memory, but watching his emotional state with intense scrutiny, making absolutely sure that her breaking of the rage was a permanent situation. That, and he had the feeling that she was reluctant to break the contact, if only because it pleased her to hold it thus.

  "I'm alright, mother," he said in a weary voice. She held him tightly for a long moment, and then finally let him go. "That was pretty clever," he complemented. "You shattered the walls just to put the bricks on the floor."

  "I've had experience in this kind of thing," she remarked dryly. "It was a little more complicated given who you are, but it works more or less the same." She patted his shoulders, then stood up and helped him up. "The key of it is having you lose sight of me," she explained. "The only safe place to attack a raging Were-cat is from behind. I'm just glad you didn't think to try Sorcery until after I already had you."

  "I, I think I was too angry to think about using it," he said dully, a paw to his head to try to remember. "That, and the Druidic power was already there. I never really thought of trying anything else until after it wasn't any use to me anymore."

  "That's what I have to teach you to control," she said in a tired voice. "I'm, sorry, cub."

  He knew exactly what she meant. "In a way, I guess I'm glad it was her," he said grimly. "If it had been anyone else, even you, I probably would have tried to kill them. Jasana's probably the only one that could do it and live."

  "That doesn't excuse it," she said in a similarly grim manner. "I think a good thrashing is just the beginning of what needs to be done to put that cub in her place." She flexed her fingers in an ominous manner. "Next time, she may kill someone with her good intentions."

  Tarrin realized that Triana was deadly serious. She was furious, just as angry as he was, but at least she had more control than he did. "It would be a start," he agreed. He didn't like the idea of laying such a punishment on her, but she had done something almost unspeakably wrong. No matter how good her intentions were, there was no excuse for it, and something had to be done. This was twice now that she had gone to extreme, dangerous, even reckless measures with him to get what she wanted. First she intentionally used High Sorcery to make him stay with her, and now she had turned him, despite his vociferous assertion that it was his right to choose, because it was what she wanted. Before, he had generally ignored or brushed off her manipulative ways, partially because she was very good at wheedling her parents into getting her own way. But now he saw how dangerous she could be, and it just couldn't be allowed to continue. He had never before seen a child that was willing to go to such great extremes to get her own way. It defied just the description of spoiled, it reached into an entirely new realm of selfishness that defied rational explanation.

  They all knew that Jasana was a devious, cunning little manipulator, but now he had his eyes opened as to just how far she would go.

  Tarrin stood up and took Triana's paw in his. He looked over at her--strange to see eye to eye with her again--and a wealth of unspoken feelings and understandings passed in his gaze. He had seen into her mind, her incredibly old, wise, and powerful mind, and he understood things a little better now. He found that he loved her even more than ever because he fully understood her deep feelings for him. He was the son she had been waiting for for five hundred years, the one child to which she could pass her wealth of knowledge of Druidic magic. He knew she loved her other children, but had always felt disappointed that of all of them, only Nikki, the youngest, showed any measurable Druidic talent. It was wasn't very strong, only a bit stronger than Thean's, and she didn't have any desire to explore it. His power was now almost as stong as hers, and she felt confident in her heart that training would bring him up to her level. He would be the keeper of Druidic secrets that only she knew, and they would not be forever lost if she happened to die. There were other Druids stronger than her in raw ability, but none of them were as old, except the dragons, and none of them had taken the risks that she'd taken in her lifetime with the power to explore its boudaries.

  It surprised him to find out that his solid-minded mother was a wild gambler in her younger days. Some of the things she'd tried made him look like a timid housewife. And though she was much more cautious now than she had been, she still regularly risked death to explore the boundaries of her ability. He also knew where Jesmind got her fiery nature from. In her younger days, Triana was even wilder and more tempermental than her daughter. Some traits breed true, and Jesmind was proof of that. She'd inherited her mother's looks and her mother's temper. After a thousand years, Jesmind may be as mellow as her mother. For a temper that hot, it took a thousand years to cool it down.

  She gave him a rare smile, breaking that emotionless mask that so thoroughly hid her emotions and her thoughts. "I know," she said simply. "Are you surprised by what you saw?"

  "Yes," he admitted.

  "Well, I wasn't," she said with a very tender look. "I knew I was right about you. The bond told me much more than what others could see, but I saw that I was right."

  "About what?"

  "About taking you as my son," she said simply. "You make me proud, cub."

  "I take it you're not going to explain?"

  She only smiled silently.

  "I thought not." He looked around, then blew out his breath. "Jenna is going to kill me," he muttered.

  "It can be fixed," she said dismissively. "If anything, it'll give these lazy katzh-dashi and Sha'Kar something to occupy their minds and keep them out of trouble."

  "Maybe we should go find her and let her know things are alright."

  "She knows," Triana said bluntly. "She'll find us. Well, let's go."

  He knew exactly what she meant, and where they were going. To go punish Jasana for her actions. But first, he wanted to know how she did it. Somehow, she had stolen that blood and managed to slip it into the potion without anyone, not even Triana or Jesmind, catching her. Either she had help--which was a possibility--or she was much smarter than even he thought she was.

  After crawling through a narrow choked-off rockfall, they got out into the undamaged parts of th
e passageways. He knew where he was now, so he led his bond-mother confidently to the main staircase, which would take them up to the apartments. He wasn't looking forward to this. Facing down people he hated was much easier than looking that little girl in the eyes and standing in the face of the storm of tears and snivelling apologies that he knew was coming. Jenna was devious, and he knew that she'd resort to playing on his affection for her to try to avoid getting punished. But her crime this time was much too grave to be smoothed over by a bit of crying and a little constructive cuddling.

  One thing did gnaw a bit at him though. "How did you get behind me?" he blurted.

  They stopped on the staircase. Triana, smiling in a mysterious way, stepped over to the wall. He felt it distinctly when she made contact with the All, and then she pushed her paw towards the wall.

  And it passed right through!

  "A trick I learned from a creature called a Phase Spider," she told him calmly, sinking her arm into the wall up to her elbow. "They're subeterranean creatures, feeding off things in the network of caves below the Skydancer mountains. They could pass through solid objects, and they used it to ambush prey and as an escape mechanism. It took me nearly ten years to learn how they did it."

  Tarrin whistled as she pulled her arm free and put his paw on the stone. It was unyielding to him, as he expected it to be.

  "That's a neat trick," he said appreciatively.

  "It was a neat trick after I learned not to get things stuck when I ended the spell," she grunted.

  "Did it hurt?" he asked with a shudder.

  "You have no idea," she growled, holding up her right paw. "This is about my fiftieth paw, and I lost count of how many feet I've lost about five hundred years ago. Materializing inside solid rock is very painful."

  "I can imagine," he breathed, looking at the stone wall and feeling a little pang of chilly sympathetic pain ghost through his arms.

  "Just one of the things I'm going to teach you, cub," she said calmly, starting up the stairs again. "When I'm done with you, you'll wonder why you ever bothered to use Sorcery."

  Tarrin chuckled reflexively at that rather bold statement, but he didn't doubt that Triana believed what she said. He followed after her, his expression turning stony as he remembered what they were about to go and do. There was no place for humor in it.

  As they climbed up the stairs, Tarrin's mind raced about what was to come. The fact that they knew who did it seemed to pale now in the light of two very, very important things. How, and why. The why of it seemed rather straightforward, though. Jasana had been complaining about him not being Were, and had been carefully and quietly trying to sway him. He knew because he could look back over every single word she said, and intimate knowledge about his daughter's mannerisms, things the human Tarrin didn't understand, made things clear to him when he looked back on those conversations with opened eyes. She hadn't been more obvious because, quite honestly, she wasn't sure how to try to sway him. He could see that. She was being careful because the human Tarrin was very, very much unlike the father she knew, and in a way, that protected him from the majority of her conniving. Jasana could manipulate her parents rather easily, but the change in him had isolated him from her games, if only because she didn't know how to proceed against him. Of course, since she couldn't sway him, and didn't know enough about him to try--that, or she realized that in this case no amount of wheedling, cajoling, or pleading was going to make him change his mind--she had decided to do things without his permission, and that was what worried him the most. He wasn't sure if Jasana had the ability to plan out and execute something like this, not without anyone suspecting her. And if Triana hadn't suspected her, then nobody would. He hadn't. Not in the slightest, at any time, did he conceive that Jasana had been the one to turn him. He certainly would respect her ability to try, but not respect the idea that she would be able to execute her plan. No, in this case, Tarrin suspected that Jasana had help. That was what he wanted to know. Jasana had been the one to turn him, but she may have had a little outside help to pull it off, and she was going to tell him. Jasana would know that in this situation, telling the complete truth would make things better for everyone involved. After what she saw him do to Jesmind, and that over nothing more than bad treatment, she'd realize that if she didn't tell him who helped her, if he had to find out for himself, it would be much worse for that guilty party when he did. This was going to be the one time that Jasana wouldn't be able to worm her way out of trouble.

  Before he realized where he was, they were on the floor where the apartment was. His own scent was still fresh on the floor, and he realized with some surprise that he'd only been there a short time ago. After the rage, it felt like he'd been here yesterday, or even longer. He felt drained, tired, like he'd been awake for a month, but he had too many important things to do to bother with being tired at the moment.

  "How do you want to do this?" Tarrin asked as they approached the door. They could be calm and rational, or go in there and start with the punishment immediately. They could be stern and unbending or at least give Jasana a chance to defend herself.

  Without saying a word, Triana reared back her fist and smashed it into the door. Though it was a big, metal-bound door, it was no match for Triana's power. The door held, admirably enough, but the latch and hinges had never been made to withstand the awesome stresses that the blow to the door put on them, and they tore like fine parchment in a child's uncaring hands.

  "Alright then," he said grimly as he followed his bond-mother into the apartment. Jula and Kimmie were standing up by their seats, Mist was awake on the couch but had not moved to get up, and most importantly, Jesmind was standing at the doorway leading back to her bedroom. Jasana and Eron were sitting on the floor in the corner playing with some wooden blocks that Jenna had given them.

  "Mother, that was a good door!" Jesmind protested, but that protest died away when she saw the barely contained mask of fury that contorted the matriarch's usually unemotional expression. The apprehension turned into a deep frown when she saw an equally irate Tarrin just behind her, and the fact that both of them were covered in dust, and in Tarrin's case, a little blood here and there. "What happened to you two?" she asked.

  "You've been fighting!" Kimmie said in shock, looking at them. "You mean you two are the ones responsible for all that shaking?"

  "JASANA!" Triana absolutely roared, pointing at the little girl with a clawed finger. "Come here right now!" She pointed to the carpeted floor immediately before her imperiously, and Tarrin realized, as did everyone in the room, that Jasana's very life hinged on her immediate and unequivocable obedience to her grandmother's command.

  Soberly, her lower lip trembling as her half-brother looked at her in confusion, Jasana got up from the floor and shuffled over, very slowly, deathly afraid of what was coming, but even more afraid of what would happen if she did not obey. She stood before her grandmother, head bowed, tail drooping, and her paws clasped before her in a stance of supplication. Tarrin stepped up beside his bond-mother, staring down at the little girl, feeling that same fury begin to rise up in him again. He wanted to thrash her so badly his claws actually itched to taste her blood. She was the object of his rage, but he could not satisfy it as he so desperately wanted to do. If it were anyone but her, they would be dead by now. Anyone but Jasana.

  "There is absolutely no excuse for what you have done!" Triana said in a furious tone, the mask of emotionless slipping from her face. "Do you have any idea how many laws you've broken? Do you realize that by all rights of law and custom, I should kill you right here and now?" She hunched over the little girl, looming over her like a shadow of Death herself. "Well? Answer me!"

  Jasana looked up at them, her green eyes wet with tears, and they were all Tarrin could see. No matter how furious he was with her, he still could not deny that he loved her. Her punishment would be severe, but her life would never be in jeopardy. There was a pleading look in her eyes, on her face, but she flinched away int
o an expression of chagrin and good, honest fear when she saw her father's grim face.

  Kimmie was the first to see to the heart of it. She gasped loudly and actually collapsed back into her chair by Mist's couch, her paws over her mouth and a look of sincere shock in her blue eyes.

  "What are you talking about, mother?" Jesmind demanded, coming around the couch.

  Triana looked up at her daughter, and the coldness in her eyes made Jesmind stop in the act of walking forward, with her foot still hovering off the floor.