It was primal, but he couldn't control it. He showed them his fangs, a dangerous snarl, crouching somewhat in a very aggressive posture, his claws out as he pointed at Triana. "Do you know who did this?" he demanded in a voice that would brook no hedging in the matter.
"No," she answered levelly. "But are you sorry for it?"
"I'm sorry I never got the chance to decide," he said in a hissing tone.
"That's not saying it wasn't your choice."
"It was my choice, but taking that choice away is as good as turning me against my will!" he said in a furious tone, almost shouting.
Triana lifted her chin, a nearly challenging act, staring him in the eyes. "Then you chose to be what you were meant to be."
"I was satisfied with it after it was made for me," he said in a hot manner. "It's not the same."
"The end justifies the means. You say so yourself. Don't get hypocritical on me now, cub."
Unable to reply to that, trapped by his own words, he could only glare at her coldly, but his anger had lost its bite in her eyes. He knew that. He may be able to intimidate the others, but Triana wouldn't be patently afraid of him. Then again, little he could do would put Triana off for long. She was too old and too wise and grizzled to be afraid of him for long.
Jesmind finally stirred, and her moving seemed to break Jasana of some kind of paralysis. She ran over to her mother and knelt by her as she sat up woozily, her eyes glassy and blood flowing liberally from both corners of her mouth and her nose. Tarrin's blow probably crushed every bone in her face, and it probably poured a great deal of blood into her mouth and nasal cavity before the damage was repaired. She looked up at him in confusion, and not a little bit of hurt.
"Don't cow eyes at me, witch," Tarrin said brutally. "I'm furious with you over how you treated me when I was human. I'm not going to forgive you any time soon."
"I did what I had to do to keep you," she declared, but her voice was a bit slurred.
"What you did was drive me away!" he shouted at her.
"You'll get over it. If I have to wait a few hundred years, that's fine. I'm patient."
"Now you're patient," he said with barely disguised contempt.
"I got what I wanted," she said shamelessly, looking up at him. "Now that I know you're Were again, I can rest easy. That's all that mattered to me."
Tarrin was a bit outraged by her declaration, but it fit in with what he knew of her, and he knew her very well. Jesmind could be rather patient when she needed to be. After all, she'd moved to Aldreth and waited there for him for nearly two years, knowing he would come back eventually. But the fear and uncertainty of what happened to him, the prospect of losing him as a mate forever, had affected her judgement very greatly. She had acted with great rashness, despite knowing that she was only making him angry and pushing him away from her, but in her rather precarious position, it was all she could think to do, and her need to do something made her do whatever seemed most able to achieve her desired goal in the quickest manner, despite how it may damage their relationship. She was more than willing to accept him being furious with her, as long as he was Were. She knew, as he did, that no amount of fury would hold in him forever, and even if it did, all she had to do was bait him into a fight to make him release his anger on her. After that, the matter would be settled, and it would be forgotten. It was ever that way between Were-cats. The fight settled all, and after the fight was done, it was as if it never happened. She'd done it to him before, and she knew how to go about it. She knew him almost as well as he knew her.
It took having his Were nature back to see that, to finally understand Jesmind's actions. She did everything she did with only the goal of making him Were again, because she knew that no matter how mad she made him, she could fix that with a little time and a willingness to get beaten up when the time came. It all made perfect sense now, and he had to admire her audacity. Then again, being able to again think like a Were-cat made everything clear.
But it still didn't excuse it. Just because he could understand her actions didn't mean that he was going to forgive her for them. And unlike the last time, when she baited in into a fight that made him lose his anger against her, he had no intention of making it nearly so easy for her this time. He wanted her to feel like he did, like she was being overwhelmed by the will of someone else. She had overwhelmed him with her obsessive need to control his life, and now he was going to repay her by not giving her any chance to let her work back into his good graces.
"Papa, why are you being mean to Mama?" Jasana asked in a tiny little voice, not even looking at him.
"Because she had it coming," he said in a furious hiss. "You'd better be patient, Jesmind," he said with seething disgust, "because it's going to be years before I can look you in the face without wanting to rip your head off. So just stay clear of me." He turned his back on her. "And may every god there is help you if I find out you turned me, Jesmind. I'll come after you, and there's nowhere in this entire world you can go to hide from me."
Tarrin stalked away, towards the door, but Kimmie jumped to her feet and called his name. "What about us?" she asked plaintively. "Are you going to shut us out too?"
"Until I know who did this, none of you come anywhere near me," he said over his shoulder. "I'll kill you. As far as I'm concerned, you're all guilty, even if you didn't do it."
"Not even the children?" Kimmie gasped.
"Not even the children," he growled. "I won't be good company until I find out who did it. I won't punish them for my own temper."
"Cub!" Triana said quickly as Tarrin reached the door, ducked under it absently. She took a step forward, but a withering glare from the male stopped her dead in her tracks.
"I said none of you come near me, and I meant it," he said with an evil look, then he remembered what he came here to do in the first place, or at least one of them. "If you want to be of any use to me, Triana, you'll do as I ask."
"What do you want?" she asked cautiously.
"The Goddess wants Sarraya here. I know you can bring her quickly."
"I can have her here by tomorrow morning."
"Then do it."
"I will, but only if you agree to one thing."
He turned and looked at her, a single eyebrow rising in curiosity while his face showed his irritation, almost anger, that she would dare bargain with him right now.
"I can feel it in you, cub. You're stronger, alot stronger. Things are different for you now, and you're going to have trouble with it unless you get some serious instruction. You need to be taught."
"The Goddess warned me about it," he said bluntly. "Until I calm down, I don't think I could stand to be in the room with you, Triana."
"This goes beyond spats of temper, cub. This is important. Unless you get some training, you're going to hurt yourself, or even worse, someone else. We can agree to meet and not kill each other, because if we don't, you're going to have an accident." She looked at him. "Have you done anything yet?"
"I Conjured this," he said, touching the vest.
"Did you mean to do it?"
The question took him off guard, and caused a little of his anger to bleed off. "Now that you mention it, no," he admitted.
"That's what you have to be careful of, cub," she said with intensity, almost desperation, in her voice. "When you're at the level you're at now, the power comes to you even when you don't want it to. You have to keep a tight rein on your emotions, and don't let your mind wander too often, or you'll miss the telltale signs that warns you that it's reaching for you. You could slip, and it's going to act on whatever it finds in your mind, no matter how outrageous or disastrous it may be." She put her arm out, reaching towards him. "I know you're ticked, cub, but be careful. Keep an eye on the All, and be watchful for the sense of it. If it seems to be getting close to you, that's the sign that you need to get your mind under control, and do it fast. You can't stop it from touching you until I show you how it's done, so you have to make sure that it does
n't do anything you don't want it to do when it does. So please, for everyone's sake, be careful of that."
Tarrin could appreciate the frankness of that warning. Druidic magic had no limitations. The only limits came with the Druid using the power, and if he tried to do something that required more magical power than his body could withstand, it would destroy him. Tarrin understood that danger, but it was the thought of Druidic magic running wild that frightened him more. He'd had experiences where Druidic magic unleashed through him with no control, and the results had been nearly disastrous. The All was notoriously fickle and unpredictable, and any time a Druid lost control of a spell, just about anything could happen. Very rarely were those wild misfires beneficial to the Druid, or anything in his general vicinity. He saw her warning for what it was. It was no ploy or attempt to get into his good graces, it was a very serious, very sober warning from a master Druid to an acolyte Druid about the very real dangers of the demanding magic they commanded.
He nodded once, eloquently. "I will. After you bring back Sarraya, we'll meet so you can teach me what I need to know," he said in a neutral tone.
"I can live with that. Just please, be careful."
"I'll be careful," he promised, then he turned and stalked back through the door, slamming it behind him.
He didn't have much time to think about what Triana said, but what time he had made him appreciate her warning that much more. He did feel much closer to the All now, and it didn't seem much of a stretch for it to reach into him rather than him reaching into it. The Weave did things like that itself sometimes, as it was an active, dynamic force, where the All was also very dynamic and, in its own way, nearly alive. The All had a kind of animating force in it, the part of it that allowed it to interpret what it found in the mind of a Druid and decide on the manner in which the task would be accomplished. It was why Druids had to be extraordinarily careful, for that awareness within the All had no concept of human limitation, and it often took wild liberty if the Druid didn't envision the spell exactly as he wanted it to function. Triana's warning was a very serious one, and Tarrin was serious about heeding it. From the moment he left the females, he kept one part of his mind on his outrage and anger, and another part kept steadfast vigil over the All, ready to warn him should it seem to come closer to him.
That suitably done to his satisfaction, he bent to the task at hand, and that was finding out who turned him. He was so consumed by it that even going to greet his sisters and friends seemed hollow in comparison that burning need. Only his desire to have it out with Jesmind and his duty to carry out the will of his Goddess superseded that singular compulsion.
That didn't prevent them from coming to him, and that was exactly what happened. The first to find him was Keritanima and Allia, guided by Keritanima's magic. They rounded a corner almost on top of him and gave out cries of delight, and even his anger was brushed away by the sight of them. He embraced his two sisters tenderly, lovingly, having their scents fill his nose with the rightness of them, the perfection that he seemed to feel whenever they were together. It took him a moment to calm them down to where he could speak rationally to them, and they spoke Selani, as was always their habit when conversing privately amongst themselves.
"Brother, they told us what happened!" Allia said as Keritanima blurted "they wouldn't let us sit with you!"
"I'm alright," he told them gently, putting a paw on each shoulder. They were so different from one another, and a thousand forgotten memories of them, of the tediums of everday life in the Tower and on the road, their every expressions and moods, it all came back to him and made him love them that much more. Both weren't without their thorns, but his love for them was stronger for their faults than it was for their perfection.
"Who did it?" Keritanima asked immediately.
"That's what I'm going to find out," he said grimly. "It's why I didn't come running to you as soon as I woke up. I have to start while the trail is freshest."
"Did they tell you what Sapphire did to Mist?" Allia asked.
He nodded. "Mist is alright, or at least I think she was," he said. "All the females were in her company, so I wasn't very sociable when I saw her."
"I can imagine," Keritanima snorted. "Which of them do you think did it? I think it was Jesmind, myself."
"I'm not sure, but it may not have been any of them," he said grimly. He told them about his talk with the Goddess, and when he was done, Keritanima whistled sharply through her muzzle.
"That certainly complicates things, but we'll be looking for someone with a motive, brother. Just anyone that knows about the blood is a suspect, but we can do things to narrow down the field some."
"That's what I'm on my way to do. Me and Sapphire and Jenna are going to where the blood is so we can see what we can find out."
"Well, you're not doing this without me," Keritanima said flatly. "I'm much more devious than you, brother. I think in ways you don't, and I can be a real use to you."
"Both of you can," he said. "Just being here is enough. I have to keep a tight rein on my temper, and you two always did have a calming effect on me."
Keritanima looked at him in a strange tilt-headed manner. "You're… different, brother," she said hesitantly. "I didn't sense it before. I guess I was too excited. But I can feel it now."
Allia looked at him carefully. Then her eyes turned sober. "Even I can sense it," she agreed. "He is like a lodestone within the Weave, drawing its light to him."
"That's part of why I have to keep my temper in check," he said ruefully, then he explained what Triana and the Goddess had told him as they moved towards his room, where he was to meet Sapphire. "I'm not sure I understand all of it, but I do know that my increased Druidic ability is dangerous," he told them. "Triana warned me, and I believe her. She had no reason to lie, not about something like that ."
"At least some part of your brain is working," Keritanima chided with a toothy grin.
He let that pass. "She told me what I need to do to make sure nothing bad happens until she can teach me what I need to know, so I should be alright, at least for a short time. But I can feel it there, Kerri. It's just like Triana said. The All seems to be lurking out there, just the same way High Sorcery did back before I could control it. It's just waiting for a chance to connect with me, and I have to be very careful to make sure not to have anything go wrong if that happens."
"Can we do anything to help?" Allia asked.
"Just stay near me," he said. "I need a level head, and you two always were able to cool my temper."
"That's no great chore," Allia said with a loving smile.
"I hope not."
"Brother, I must ask. Are you happy?" Allia asked in a voice powerful with emotion.
"I'm content," he told her simply. "Had I had the choice that was stolen from me, I would have chosen this. But it's the theft of it that makes me so angry. Nobody had the right to steal it from me, and I mean to punish whoever did it. Thoroughly," he added in an ominous tone, his eyes narrowing.
"It can't be thorough unless we get our licks in too," Keritanima told him, rubbing her hands together. "I have quite a few little ideas brewing. I'm pretty sure that they're not much nicer than yours."
"I guess we'd better start drawing numbers. Sapphire intends to kill whoever did it. I'm going to have to talk her out of that, because whoever it is won't fully appreciate how furious I am if they're dead."
"He is angry," Allia mused to Keritanima.
"Was it ever in doubt?" she replied impishly.
"I win, sister," Allia added.
"You did not. Someone else turned him, so it's invalid."
"What is this?" Tarrin asked.
"When you went nuts on us about us fighting over what you should do, me and Allia made a little wager," Keritanima explained. "I bet you'd stay human, she bet you'd want to be Were again."
"I won," Allia said stubbornly.
"It wasn't his choice," the Wikuni fenced. "It's an invalid conclusion, so it's
a draw."
"What was the wager?" Tarrin asked curiously.
"Oh, nothing serious," Keritanima said. "Just ownership of Sha'Kari."
" What?" he gasped.
"Well, nobody lives there anymore, do they?" Keritanima said defensively. "All the Sha'Kar left. And it's a perfectly good place. Lots of nice empty buildings, and someone has to keep up the maintenance on them, don't they?"
"Don't you realize that the Sha'Kar own all that?" he said.
"I asked Ianelle. She said when they abandoned it, it became nobody's property. That means it's there for whoever wants to claim it."
Tarrin had a sneaking suspicion. "When do they get there?" he asked bluntly.
The fur on Keritanima's cheeks ruffled, her version of a blush. "They should be there already," she admitted. "I haven't gotten any recent reports."
"Who got where?" Allia demanded.
"Kerri's fleet," Tarrin said. "I'll bet she sent them out to claim Sha'Kari about two seconds after Ianelle told her it was up for grabs."
"It was more like ten minutes," she said modestly.
"And you wagered possession of it against me?" Allia asked, her eyes flaring slightly.
"I knew you wouldn't do anything with it, Allia," Keritanima said smoothly. "In the end, it was going to be mine anyway, so why are we fighting about it?"
"Get out your purse, sister," Allia said cooly. "You are about to pay me rent."
"But you didn't win the bet," Keritanima said stubbornly. "When Tarrin was turned before he made a choice, it invalidated the whole thing. We don't know what he really would have decided, since he never got the chance to think without the Cat influencing him, do we?"
"That's nothing but a flimsy excuse for you to weasel out of your word," Allia accused.
"What would you do with a place like that, Allia?" Keritanima asked.
"I thought it might be a nice place for me and Allyn to spend our honeymoon," she said simply. "I have some very pleasant memories of some places there," she added with a wicked little smile.
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