The Questing Game f-2

by James Galloway

  His prison was now his sanctuary, and every time he set foot on land, he would be in danger.

  It almost seemed ironic. He leaned on the rail, looking down into the water where the gray fish that someone called dolphins swam alongside, breaking the water occasionally. They moved in a group, swimming effortlessy at a speed faster than a fit man could run on land. He wondered fleetingly what it would be like to be like that, to not have a care in the world, and have the entire world as your playground. Even when he tried to not have a care in the world, they always seemed to seep back into him. They had been what had brought him out of his instincts after he nearly killed his mother, that nagging knowledge that there were serious things out there that needed his attention. He didn't much like knowing that so much had been set on his shoulders, but life was hardly fair.

  Holding up a paw, he absently ordered it to change, and it flowed and melted down into his human hand. He could change into his hands, or his feet, could also get rid of the fur on his arms or his legs, but that was as far as he could go. Doing anything else meant a full change. He couldn't even change both hands and feet at the same time, or get rid of the fur on both arms and legs. It still hurt, but Allia's concentration techniques allowed him to simply ignore the pain, shunt it away into a corner of his mind where it didn't distract him. What amazed him was how quickly he had learned them, over the course of only two days. The concept of meditation wasn't new to him, and it had been relatively easy for him to apply his prior training to what Allia was teaching him.

  He stared at the hand. It looked so alien. It looked as it had before he was changed, but it didn't change the fact that it looked like someone had stuck someone else's hand on the end of his arm. He wiggled his fingers at himself, trying to remember what it had been like to see it every day, to never notice the hand because it was so normal. Just something he saw every day, day in day out. Just a hand. Not anymore. Now it was special, unique, probably the same way people thought of his paws and feet and tail. What was normal to him was unusual for them, and the tables were turned. What was normal for them was now unusual for him.

  Yet another way his life had been twisted all around. Everything seemed as backwards as that anymore, but at least he could find ways to tolerate it. He could tolerate being trapped on a moving prison surrounded by strangers. He found that if he worked at it, he could even tolerate conversation with them, or being in close proximity for long periods of time. He even found that he liked Phandebrass. Why, he had no idea. The man was a scatterbrained danderhead who just had a penchant for telling a good story, and his two pet drakes were very unfriendly to him. Strange that not six months ago, being on a ship full of interesting people would have been wildly fascinating to him.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago, and his human, younger self seemed like a different person. He had been so, sociable. He'd liked people, and could talk to them. He'd been curious about the world, absorbed in learning the arts of warcraft. He'd wanted to be a Knight, riding out and doing grand deeds in the name of Karas and Sulasia. He'd wanted to learn every language there was, since he'd found that he was so good at learning them. It had been, and to be fair to himself, still was, one of his real talents. But then Dolanna and Faalken came, and turned his life on its ear. It really wasn't her fault, and he didn't blame her for it, but that had been the beginning of the end of his first life. It started with Dolanna, and it ended with Jesmind.

  Jesmind. Just thinking about her conjured an image of her, with her fiery red hair and powerful, determined look. She was so much her mother's daughter, he'd come to find out. He missed her, and part of him hoped that she'd be standing on the dock the next time they came into port. Well, if he saw her again, first he'd throttle her, then he'd kiss her. She left him, left him alone, and that still stung. He'd had no idea how much he depended on her nearness until after she was gone. Even when she was an enemy, a part of him took comfort in the fact that she was always nearby. It was probably an aspect of Were that he still didn't completely understand, but it was there nonetheless. Even now, a part of him yearned for her to be near to him. It was related to the part that just wanted her. She was the only female he'd ever been intimate with, and he wasn't so out of touch not to realize that he still had strong feelings for her, both emotionally and physically. His feelings for Jesmind were a jumble of love, hate, anger, regret, frustration, and sexual attraction, and it certainly never made thinking about her boring.

  But seeing her again probably wasn't meant to be. She'd left him, and he doubted he'd ever see her again. If he even lived long enough for it to happen.

  Next on Renoit's schedule was the city of Shoran 's Fork, the westernmost coastal city in Arkis. He remembered the maps he'd seen of the area. On the east bank of the River Ar, there was Shoran's Fork. On the west bank of the river laid the city of Var Denom, an independent city not part of the Arkisian kingdom. The two cities were supposedly friendly yet vigorous rivals, always competing with each other for ships to dock and trade with them, yet never coming to blows over their competition. Like two friends who competed against one another. Tarrin wondered fleetingly what made Renoit choose Shoran's Fork over Var Denom for his location. Maybe Shoran's Fork had a large marketplace or empty area where the circus could set up its large tent. Maybe Shoran's Fork offered Renoit money to come there rather than Var Denom. Maybe Renoit liked things on the right rather than the left. Maybe the ship couldn't make left turns. He didn't know, and any of them were equally good reasons until he found out.

  It was one step closer to Arak. He knew he wouldn't like going there. Just saying that word made Azakar shudder. The Mahuut had been a slave there, first working in the mines, then fighting in the gladitorial arena, a place where men killed each other to entertain the crowd. Tarrin thought it was barbaric, and that was only the good things he'd heard about the place. Arakites had nasty reputations outside their empire, well known to be egocentric, effete snobs who thought everyone else wasn't even human because they weren't Arakite. A vast empire where slavery and barbarity were cultural requirements, where a man was only as good as the money he was worth. A brutal society full of ruthless people, his father has told him a long time ago. He knew that his father had been right on the mark. Tarrin knew the Arakite language, and it was as harsh as the people who spoke it were reputed to be. Full of hard sounds and gutteral pronunciations. The Arakites and their language supported the idea that a language was a good indication of the cultural disposition of the people who spoke it.

  And getting there was just a part of their problem. They had to look through the largest city in the world to find a single book. It was an impossible task, and it was made harder by the fact that there were sure to be others doing the same thing. If one of them found it first and got it out of the city without Tarrin knowing it, he could be there for the rest of his life undertaking a futile search. That didn't sit well with him. There had to be an easier way.

  If there was one, it wasn't presenting itself to him.

  He looked out towards the land again. The sea was a brilliant blue, the wind was steady and cool, and the sun was warm. The sky had only a few small clouds, puffy and well away from the sun, which were being pushed along by the steady westerly wind. It was certainly pretty from so far away. He glanced to his side, where a Wikuni acrobat was practicing handstands. He wondered idly if they had any idea that Keritanima, their Crown Princess, was sharing the ship with them. Nobody called her by her full name. She was Kerri to the people on board, and they probably didn't identify her as who she really was. They probably thought the Princess was some silk-clad figure escorted by armies wherever she went. They probably had no inkling that the foul-tempered dancer was the woman that had once been destined to rule them. Imagining their reaction if they found out never failed to make him chuckle.

  It was too bad they couldn't see her in less stressful circumstances. Keritanima wasn't usually so vicious, but Renoit's games with her had worn her patience to the bone. Keritanima had disc
overed, much to her shock, that Renoit was just as underhanded and subtle as she was. The man never let up on her, not only making her dance, but making her suffer for her adamant refusal to do so with cunning set-ups and situations that humiliated her into compliance. Keritanima was a very proud girl, a product of her upbringing, and those little humiliations made her utterly furious. What probably made her more furious was the ease with which Renoit manipulated her into doing what he wanted her to do. She had become waspish with the performers, and even a bit short-tempered with her friends, but they all understood why she was being that way.

  Allia seemed to have taken to her role a bit better. She was no longer a performing acrobat. Renoit wouldn't be able to display her in Arak, because they despised the Selani. She was a teacher now, teaching the acrobats ways to make themselves even more flexible and limber, teaching them how to do more complicated and more difficult acrobatic feats. The other reason for the change was her promise to Renoit that she was going to kill Henri if he disrespected her one more time. After that blunt warning, Henri was removed as the leading acrobat. He was taken completely out of the acrobats, sent to the jugglers to perform in that capacity as long as Allia was in the troupe.

  It was good that the others had managed to blend in so well. Azakar and Dar were well liked by the performers. Dar had quite a covey of the youngest women after him, though he was too young or naive to notice it. Then again, he didn't have Tarrin's sense of smell. He could smell it when women were after a man, because the texture of their scents changed. Just the way he could smell fear. Azakar wasn't pined over by the girls, but he had made solid friends among the circus people. Dolanna was too mysterious to be approached by most, and none of them would try to make friends with Binter or Sisska. The Vendari devotion to duty precluded such socializing.

  He didn't see them practice often. He was still restricted off the deck during the daylight hours. The performers were very afraid of him, and he had to admit that they had very good reason to be. Of all of them, only Phandebrass would speak to him, and sometimes Tarrin felt that that was because the absent-minded mage didn't have the sense to be afraid. Not even Renoit would approach him or talk to him without Dolanna. That suited him just fine. He had his friends and his sisters. They were all strangers, and he didn't trust any of them. So long as they stayed out of his way, he was perfectly content to let them hover about on the edges. Their fear of him didn't sting as much as it used to, as it had when he was in the Tower. He had grown used to it over time.

  Faalken approached him, and he looked like he was the father of Marcus Lightblade. Pride exploded all over his face, and his scent couldn't contain the elation that he was obviously feeling. "Dolanna said you were going to give me that sword," he blurted out, his dark, curly locks bobbing up and down as the Knight literally bounced in place. "Was she toying with me?"

  "No," he said quietly. "I don't like swords, and it's too small for Azakar to use. You can have it."

  Faalken gave out a whooping sound, then grabbed Tarrin in a fierce hug and picked him up, then spun him a few times. The move startled Tarrin, but the fact that it was Faalken doing it was the only reason he managed to keep his gizzard inside his belly. "Have I told you today how much I like you, my boy?" he said with a laugh, then he literally ran towards the stairs leading below decks. He left Tarrin standing there with a surprised look on his face, and all twenty of his claws extended. He had to breathe deeply a few times to get over his shock, calming down to the point where he could sheathe his wicked claws and chuckle ruefully. Faalken was an eternal child. He would never grow up.

  Shaking his head, Tarrin changed form, the deck blurring until he gained a much lower perspective of it. He padded over to a coil of rope and settled himself down inside it, laying his chin on the edge of it and closing his eyes. There had been a time, which seemed a lifetime ago, when he would have done something like that.

  Sometimes it wasn't the days, rides, months, and years, it was what happened within them that changed someone.

  Tarrin drifted off to sleep, musing at how he had lived two lifetimes in only eighteen years.

  It was apparent to anyone looking that the two collections of buildings on either side of the wide river Ar were not the same.

  The buildings on the left were stone with tiled roofs, and the streets were narrow and very crooked. It was an ancient city, with old buildings and a rambling layout that had probably been much neater some five hundred years ago. The buildings on the right were timber and stone, with tiled roofs, but what made them so distinctive was that they were larger and more spread out than the buildings on the opposite bank. Wide, straight avenues separated the buildings, apparent even from the ship, and the layout of the place was one of straight streets, gardens, and space making the place seem less cloying and restrictive.

  Var Denom to the left, Shoran's Fork to the right. Two cities within sight of one another, yet visibly and obviously as different as night and day.

  The two cities were separated by the wide, slow-moving waters of the River Ar, fresh water that poured into a shallow yet very wide bay. That bay was filled with many ships, alot like Tor had been, but what Tarrin noticed was the unusual concentration of Wikuni warships that were anchored off from the wharfs and quays of both cities. There were even a trio of frigates parked squarely in the middle of the river's mouth. There were alot more Wikuni ships here than there had been in Tor, and for some reason, that worried him.

  Tarrin stood at the rail with Dar, watching as a longboat rowed out to meet them as they carefully wound their way among the ships in the bay. The man inside shouted out in Arakite, telling Renoit's ship to follow it to a wharf. Dar looked a little wistful. Arkis was his home kingdom, though Shoran's Fork wasn't his home city. Dar was from Arkisia, the capital, a very large city on the coast closer to the Sandshield Mountains, which separated Arkis from the Desert of Swirling Sands.

  "Homesick?" Tarrin asked, flexing his human hand absently, getting used to the nagging pain, shunting it to the back of his mind so he could do his job without it distracting him.

  "A little, I guess," he sighed. "My parents probably think I'm still in school at the Tower. They'd have a fit if they knew what I was really doing."

  "At least mine know what I'm doing."

  "I'm surprised they're not right here with you."

  "You know, if it wasn't for Jenna, they probably would be," he said after a moment of thought.

  "It's strange hearing Arakite without an accent."

  "My accent isn't that bad," he protested.

  "Not bad at all, but you still lack the dialect of a native speaker," Dar teased with a smile. "Look at all the Wikuni. You'd think this was one of their naval bases."

  "I noticed. I don't like it."

  "It makes me a little nervous too, but I doubt they'll find us. Kerri doesn't look anything like what they think she'd look like, Binter and Sisska will be hiding behind illusions, and you and Allia won't be out there to give us away. As long as we don't attract attention to ourselves, we should be alright."

  "I hope so, Dar. I really hope so."

  The longboat directed them to the wharf at the very end of the city's docks. It was a small quay, barely long enough to support the garishly painted galleon. The wharf beside theirs was occupied by a Wikuni clipper, and he could see the Wikuni on board rush about, as if preparing to cast off. There was an open area between the wharf, the city wall to the right, and the large warehouses to the left. The place was empty, but that wasn't all that unusual for a part of the city that didn't have much traffic. The wharf was in the corner of the city, and the wharf which probably supplied the warehouses across from them was empty. It was probably a good place to have Renoit dock, where his troupe wouldn't interfere with the cargo loading and unloading where the docks were busier.

  Hawsers were thrown out and caught by men on the dock, which were then tied down. Tarrin moved to help the others bring up the first of the poles that would form their large te
nt as Dar went below to Dolanna, where they would create the Illusions that concealed the Vendari's true identity. They came up a few minutes later, Dolanna, Faalken, Binter and Sisska, with Keritanima and Miranda coming up behind. Miranda was disguised as well, looking like a human woman of the same dimensions as she had when she wasn't hidden by Illusion. Tarrin understood the strategy behind that. Fox Wikuni weren't uncommon, but Miranda, with her mink features and very striking appearance, was very rare. It was much easier for Keritanima to change her appearance without magic than it was for Miranda. Keritanima took one look around, and immediately frowned.

  "What is it?" Miranda asked.

  "That's an Eram clipper," she said, giving the Wikuni ship beside theirs a cursory glance. "One of my family's private commercial ships."

  "Do you think they will recognize you?" Dolanna asked.

  "I doubt it," she replied. "Most of them have never seen me. The Brat hated anything that even closely resembled work, so she didn't accompany her father to the docks very often."

  "I do not like this, Princess," Binter said quietly. "This does not feel right."

  Tarrin looked at the huge Illusion's face, looking like a monstrously tall man with bulging muscles, knowing that he was really looking at Binter's chest.

  "Come, my friends, we must set up!" Renoit called from the stern. "We will showcase Shoran's Field this day!"

  The gangplank was lowered, and the dancers filed down, carrying smaller bundles of rope. Tarrin was among a group of eight, carrying the poles that would help raise the tent. But when he got down on the dock, he stopped dead, making the man holding the back end lose the pole off his shoulder and start cursing. Tarrin felt it slip off his shoulder, but he barely registered its presence.

  The men that had tied down the ship were nowhere to be seen.