"What if they start it?" Jeri challenged. "I'm not going to turn away when some mangy Centaur insults me."
"If they start it, then go ahead and finish it, but we start nothing," Thean instructed them. "Let's not give anyone any reason to call us out."
"There won't be any calling out any time soon," Tarrin said. "Sathon invoked sanctuary. That means we're on chosen ground until we march out tomorrow. All of you remember that."
"Of course he'd call sanctuary, to protect that sharp-mouthed little witch that was sitting at the table," Jesmind growled. "And I was going to go track her down and teach her some manners, too."
"Just let it go, Jesmind," Tarrin told her. "All of us know you could thrash her. Just be happy with the knowledge of it."
"I'd rather be happy ripping her face off," Jesmind growled. No matter how sedate she was trying to be, Jesmind was still Jesmind...and always would be. And he rather liked her that way.
"Let's not be breaking the law," Thean cautioned. "Now after we leave here...well now, that's another story, isn't it?" Thean winked.
"And this from the one that just told us to be civil," Shayle laughed.
"Some things can't be ignored," Thean said defensively. "Since this female started it, I'd say that gives us the right to finish it, now doesn't it?"
"Alright everyone, the deer's ready," Nikki announced. "Let's eat!"
They enjoyed their meal, and then settled in for quiet conversation and simple companionship as the afternoon dwindled into evening, and the sun slowly set. It wasn't often that so many Were-cats gathered in one place, and all of them were feeling rather sociable. They took turns telling stories, stories of what they'd been up to since the last time they'd seen one another. Tarrin more or less tuned them out, playing with Jasana's tail absently as she sat on his lap and listened to the elders talking. The time was drawing closer and closer, and something inside him both looked forward to and dreaded what was coming. He had never been in a large-scale battle before, and more to the point, he had never been the focus of the strategy as he was now. It was going to be his job to distract the Dals with his fire so his Were-kin could take the gate, then he would do the same thing at the castle with an Elemental so they could take the keep. He didn't feel anxious about having them depend on him, for he was used to having others depend on him and his magic, but it felt strange knowing that he would be so...important.
That was the real kicker. Always before, he was just one of a number of unusual, bizarre, or powerful individuals. He really wasn't that remarkable when compared to Keritanima, or Allia, or Dolanna, or Camara Tal, or Phandebrass, or Sarraya. He was used to being part of an unusual group, a group of disparate individuals with pretty formidable powers or advantages. But this felt different. He did stand out among the Were-cats and the other Woodkin, because of what he was. A Sorcerer, a Druid, a very aged and powerful Were-cat. He was just one of the others when he was with his friends, but here he was not. It felt strange to know that he ruled the others. It felt strange that he was where he was in the first place.
Jasana. Would she feel the way he did? Her magical powers were without peer. When she came into those powers, when she matured and learned how to use them, she would be the most powerful Sorcerer alive. Would that knowledge change her? Would it make her arrogant, or would she learn how to accept her power without having it change her? It could, if he didn't teach her the right way. It was important to teach her the morality of power while she was young, establish it in her before the tempation of her power caused her to embrace the headiness of it. If he was diligent, he could see her grow to be everything she could be without being twisted by the intoxication that came with great power. He hoped that he could, that his mission wouldn't make it impossible for him to be there for her when she needed him. He twirled Jasana's tail up around his fingers, feeling how silky her white fur was, how small and delicate she was compared to him. Strange that someone he'd only known for a few short days could suddenly become the absolute center of his life. She yawned and leaned against him, and he put a paw on her belly. She was a handful. She was a manipulative little schemer. She was devious. She was just like any number of little girls out there, human or not. But she was his, and that made her the most special little girl in the entire world.
"It's getting late," Jesmind announced. "Tarrin, why don't you whip up a tent for us? I'm about ready to go to bed."
Tarrin nodded. "We'll have a very long couple of rides ahead of us. I think getting some rest is a good idea for everyone."
"I think I'm going to go talk to Sathon for a while," Thean said. "I haven't had a chance to catch up yet."
"I'll keep the bed warm for you, Thean," Singer smiled at him. "Provided I have one, anyway. We should have borrowed some tents from the villagers."
"I'll take care of it," Tarrin told her, looking at them. "Just tonight. You'll have to take down the tents and carry them if you want to keep them."
"Fair enough," Nikki said.
Tarrin hadn't Created on that scale in a while, and it left him a little tired. But when he was done, six good-sized tents were standing around the fire, each one with bedrolls in them for their occupants. He created one tent for his family, one for Rahnee and Jeri, one for Singer and Thean, and one each for Kimmie, Shayle, and Nikki. Tarrin wasted no time saying his goodnights and ducking into the fairly large tent he made for his family, which had within it nothing but a pair of fairly soft, comfortable bedrolls. Jesmind and Jasana came in right behind. "I don't wanna sleep in my clothes," Jasana complained as she looked around the tent.
"Then take them off," Jesmind told her calmly, grabbing the tail of her shirt and pulling it over her head. Jasana was a Were-cat, just like her parents, and that meant that they would have on qualms about undressing in front of her. Or just about anyone else, for that matter. Tarrin took off his sword and set it on the ground beside the bedroll, then shrugged out of his vest as Jesmind unlaced her breeches.
Jesmind helped Jasana undress and slide into her small bedroll, then impatiently pulled Tarrin into their bedroll almost before he could get his breeches off. She cuddled up to him, wrapping him up to keep him from getting away, then sighed in contentment. "Goodnight, cub," Jesmind called.
"Night mama, papa."
"Sleep well, cub," Tarrin told her, then he surrendered to the peace of it all and fell immediately asleep.
The entire army was up before the sun, and was gone with the dawn.
The addition of the Rangers did not slow down the host by very much. They were all mounted, and their horses were in very good condition. The host had to stop or slow down more frequently to give the horses a chance to rest, but other than that they moved at the same brisk speed that got them to Watch Hill. Tarrin spent most of the day in his ground-eating pace, keeping stride with Mikos as he and Sathon talked. Or more to the point, Sathon talked and Tarrin listened. The Druid meant to teach Tarrin more magic, and he held to his promise.
Tarrin was surprised at how versatile Druidic magic could be. He learned a number of useful spells dealing with organic matter, from flesh to wood to earth to leather, spells to change its shape, age it, invigorate it, even destroy it. Tarrin had been startled to know that a Druid of even moderate talent could use his Druidic magic on himself and affect his own flesh, and bring about a shapeshifting by magic that was natural for the Were-kin. But where Were-kin were limited to three forms, a Druid could transform into nearly any living creature. Sathon warned him explicitely that Druidic shapeshifting was not something for him to try, because he was already a shapeshifter. Any time a Druid Were-kin attempted shapeshifting through Druidic magic, it caused the Were-kin to go temporarily insane. The magic that made up a Were-kin was incompatible with Druidic spells of shapeshifting, forcing a creature whose body was already designed to transform to do so into a form for which it was not designed. The taking of an alien shape caused the instincts within to go wild, and that triggered madness. Tarrin could understand that intimately, becaus
e he had a similar restriction in Circling. Were-cats could only circle with other Were-cats, because of the Cat's violent objection to linking with a mind that was alien to it. If the Cat objected contact with an alien mind so strongly, it only made sense that it would rebel to being trapped within an alien form. But where Tarrin couldn't use those spells on himself, he could easily use them against some unwitting victim whom he wanted to punish, but not kill. Turning someone into a carrot was a pretty formidable vengeance.
Those types of spells were very versatile. By the time Sathon was done teaching him the proper images and concepts of will, Tarrin could take a stick from the ground and make it grow or shrink, could cause it to become unbreakable, could cause it to decay into dust, and he could cause it to explode in a fiery ball. He had done that once before that he could remember, detonating a ship's wheel that had been on the deck of Sheba's ship, a very long time ago. What was more, Sathon taught him a trick of infusing a natural object with the power of the All directly, a trick that Sathon called Animation. By animating the stick, Tarrin caused it to have something of a life and will of its own, but was subservient to his commands. The animated stick would move about by itself and perform tasks as Tarrin directed it. All in all, it was a particularly clever little trick, and Tarrin could appreciate the innumerable ways in which it could be used to frighten, annoy, startle, or even outright attack another person. A strong Druid could cause an entire room full of wooden furniture to suddenly come to life and attack someone in the room with it. A nasty little concept there.
Sathon had been suprised that Tarrin knew the Druidic spells of healing, so he taught Tarrin spells for augmentation of the body. Spells to temporarily boost strength or speed or resistance, spells to turn a normal human into a juggernaut against which no other normal human could stand. Those spells were as hard on the recipient as they were on the Druid, being demanding spells to cast, but they were spells that Druids used on themselves when it became apparent that their lives were in the balance. They were rarely used because of the stress they put on the recipient's body, a stress that had been known to kill the recipient.
Then Sathon taught Tarrin spells that almost all Druids knew and used. The easiest of them was Sending, the sending of messages to other Druids through the All. It was how Thean and Triana and just about all the Druids communicated with one another, for it was easy and dependable. A Sending was little more than a message spoken into the All, and then the All caused the Druid who was the recipient to hear the message. One couldn't conduct a conversation that way, because there was a lag of several moments between the sending of the message and the receiving of it, depending on the distance separating the two. For direct communication, the Druids used two methods. One was called Greater Sending, which was a spell that was hard enough to cast to prevent some Druids from using it. It was a form of Sending, but it allowed for conversation to pass in real time so long as the casting Druid maintained the connection. The other form was what Triana did, which Sathon called a Window. Sathon himself couldn't do it, but he was familiar with the technique. The casting Druid created something of a window through the All, allowing the Druid to see the person to which he or she was talking. Triana had done that to talk to him before, so he knew what it looked like, and now how it worked.
After that was learned, they stopped for lunch, and while they were eating Sathon taught him techniques for creating, changing, shaping, destroying, or transforming elemental matter. A Druid could create fire from nothingness, transform it into earth, change its size, shape, mass, density, or content, then banish it back into nothingness. Sorcery and Druidic magic both were Elemental in nature, magic derived from natural forces, and it gave both orders of magic strong control of basic elemental forces. Creating elemental matter was a bit different from the Creation that Sarraya taught him, for it was actually much easier. The only problem with Druidic creation of elemental matter was that it was always in its base form. A Sorcerer could use Sorcery to create any manner of fire or water or air, from smoke to cold flames of light to fog to toxic clouds, but Druidic magic always limited it to pure earth or stone, pure water, pure air, or pure fire. Sorcery proved to be much preferable to Druidic forms of elemental magic when they were compared with one another. It was even possible to transmute one thing into another through Sorcery, like changing flesh into stone or water into ice or rock into glass, which was much more difficult using Druidic magic.
When they started out again, Sathon taught him Druidic magic concerning life. Druids could affect the life cycles of plants and animals, but not sentient creatures. A Druid could cause a seed to bloom into a flower, accelerating its maturation, and could likewise reverse the damage of aging in an old animal and make it young again. Sathon had no clear answer for him when he asked why they didn't work on sentient beings, only telling him that the limitation was well documented. It was a line that no Druid had crossed and survived. Druids could urge plants or animals to grow in ways that were not natural as well, causing a wolf to become as large as a bear, or causing vines to suddenly grow tens of spans in a short moment to choke off a path or conceal something that needed to be hidden. Those spells weren't very demanding, but they were very, very complicated, and they took Tarrin much more time to learn than the other spells that Sathon taught him.
By the time the sun began to lay low to the west, Sathon was teaching his student Druidic spells to communicate with animals. Animals would obey Druids when they were spoken to in ways the animal could understand, even putting their own lives in jeopardy to protect a Druid from attack. It explained some of the things he'd heard about Druids, about how the plants, the animals, even the earth itself would rise up and attack those trying to harm a Druid. From what he'd learned that day, he knew that those weren't stories. That the plants and the animals and the earth itself would rise up at the Druid's beckoning, rise up and defend him from harm. Spells to speak with animals were fairly simple in form, but were surprisingly demanding on the Druid.
When Tarrin left Sathon after the army stopped in a large field by the road and made camp, he was surprised at how much he had learned, and how versatile Druidic magic really was. Sorcery had always seemed to eclipse Druidic magic, but now he knew Druidic spells that had no comparable technique in Sorcery. Sorcery was still much preferred as battle magic, or the creation or manipulation of elemental matter, but Druidic magic was extremely useful when attempting to enact change on living things, something that Sorcery could not easily do without killing the target.
Tarrin hadn't been the only one to receive that education. Jesmind had been close to him all day, as had Thean and Jasana, and both of them had listened studiously to the elder Druid as he granted his wisdom and experience to Tarrin, and indirectly to Thean. Thean had Druidic talent, but even he admitted that his talents barely rated among the Druids. He had enough talent to use Sending, and some minor Druidic spells. He could Conjure and Create, so long as it wasn't a large amount or something exotic or not naturally occuring. He could Summon, but nothing larger than a large dog in size. And using just about any spell outside Sending exhausted him, so he usually didn't bother using magic when he could go about it the normal way. It was much easier on him.
"The old human sure talked alot," Jasana observed as they padded over to where the other Were-cats were gathering, well away from the others, in a narrow corner of the field. "I was starting to wonder if he was going to come in our tent and keep talking."
"Mind your manners, young lady!" Jesmind snapped at her. "You don't say things like that about a Druid!"
"Someone should go hunt up some dinner," Tarrin suggested, looking at the others.
"I need some exercise," Jesmind said stiffly, stretching. "You want to come?" she asked in the direction of her sisters.
"Sure," Shayle said with a grin. "It'll give us a chance to gossip."
"You're not leaving me out," Nikki announced.
"Can I go, can I go?" Jasana pleaded.
"Sorry, cub, but
we need to bring food back quickly," Jesmind told her with a pat on the head. "You can go when we have time to teach you what we're doing, alright?"
"It's alright, kidlet," Kimmie told her, coming up behind her and sweeping her off her feet. "I'll help Tarrin keep an eye on you while your mother's out hunting. We'll have fun."
"Awww," Jasana growled. "Hurry back, mama."
"Bring back something big," Jeri called as the three started towards the trees. "I'm hungry!"
"We have our own work to do, cub," Tarrin told him. "Let's get this place set up, so we can start cooking as soon as they get back."
It didn't take long for the camp to be erected. The tents were raised, a firepit dug, and some logs were dragged out and cleaned to serve as seats for the Were-cats. Jeri and Singer grumbled at being tagged for firewood duty, but Singer managed to come back with a rabbit as well as a hefty amount of firewood.
What happened next surprised Tarrin. Singer used the rabbit to quite literally bribe Jeri away from Rahnee. It didn't surprise him that Singer was interested in Jeri, it surprised him that she did it right in front of everyone else, including Rahnee. She offered him the rabbit, in exchange for staying in her tent that night instead of Rahnee's. And he agreed.
"What was that about?" Tarrin asked Thean as Rahnee glared at the two of them.
"Me and Singer parted ways this morning," Thean said in a quiet tone. "She told me that she's always had an interest in Jeri, and having him so close wasn't fair to me, when her mind was on him." He chuckled. "You just witnessed one of the ways that females steal males from other females. Some try to seduce, some literally grab them and drag them away, daring the other female to challenge her over him. Singer used bribery."
"What if the male objects?"
"He certainly can," Thean agreed. "It's part of the danger of trying to steal a male. If you go to all the trouble to steal him and it turns out he doesn't like you, you just ticked off the other female for no good reason. And she will definitely remember what you did to her the next time she catches you alone out in some dark, deserted tract of the Heartwood."
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