"Odds are, Shiika has some kind of ulterior motive," Jenna said. "I like her, but she is a Demon. I don't trust her."
"How can a Demon be a queen, anyway?" Tarrin asked. "Don't the people hate her?"
"Actually, she's the best thing to happen to Yar Arak in a thousand years," Jenna admitted ruefully. "She's not like other Demons. She's actually got a kind heart, at least compared to other Demons. She's very smart, she's amazingly organized for a Demon, and she's cleaning up Yar Arak much faster than I anticipated. Give her a hundred years, and she's going to have an empire as well run as Wikuna. I'd better make a note to keep an eye on things over there."
"Maybe you should build another Tower."
"Until we get our numbers back up, we're not rebuilding anything," Jenna said sourly. "There aren't enough katzh-dashi to staff a third Tower right now."
"Why don't you tell her that?"
"I say, it's never wise to reveal your weaknesses, lad," Phandebrass told him seriously.
"Yah," Jenna grunted. "So, what brings you two to my door? I doubt this is a social call."
"Actually, it's not, Keeper," Phandebrass told her. "I need your best Mind weaver to help me isolate the exact means your brother's memory was attacked."
"I was hoping you'd ask for our help," Jenna smiled at him. "Our best was Amelyn, but I don't think you want to use her. Koran Dar is probably the best after her."
"I say, Amelyn is still alive?"
Jenna nodded. "I put a shield around her that won't let her use her power, and she's currently residing happily down in our dungeon." She put a hand to her amulet. "Koran Dar," she called in a light voice.
"Yes, my Keeper?" his voice seemed to come out of the amulet, but it was a bit tinny, like a higher-pitched echo.
"Could you come to my office? We need your expertise for a rather complicated problem."
"I'll be there in a few moments, Keeper."
"I see you wasted no time learning that," Phandebrass smiled.
"It does come in handy, Phandebrass," she said with a smile. "I thought Duncan was going to kiss my feet after I told him that he didn't have to send runners and pages quite nearly so often anymore."
Tarrin spent the time waiting for Jenna to tell her about the fight he had with Jesmind, and then he outright asked her if she would teach him Sorcery. To his surprise, she looked him in the eyes and shook his head. "No," she said bluntly.
"Why not?" he demanded, just a bit petulantly.
"Because you'd be like a bull in a glassblower's shop," she answered. "As strong as you are, there is no way you're going to go monkeying around with Sorcery right now."
"But you're teaching Jasana," he pointed out indignantly.
"Jasana isn't you," she said a bit crisply. "Look, Tarrin, you lost your memory, but you're very sensitive to echoes in the Weave. If I start teaching you and you get one of those that shows you something you can't control, there's no telling what might happen. To say that it would kill you would be a mild understatement."
Tarrin was considerably disappointed, but the sincere look in Jenna's eyes convinced him that she was being serious. Right now, she certainly knew more than him about that kind of thing. "All right," he said in a slightly sullen tone.
"Just be patient, brother. You'll get it all back soon."
"I hope so."
Koran Dar arrived but a moment later, and Tarrin had to pause to admire the man. He was very, very tall, even taller than Tarrin, and had the same coppery colored skin that Camara Tal had. He had raven black hair too, just like Camara Tal, and he had ruggedly handsome features. He also had huge hands, Tarrin noted. No wonder Camara Tal was pining for him. He looked a very handsome fellow.
But it was his mind that Tarrin realized Camara Tal liked so much. After exchanging polite greetings with the Keeper, Jenna sent them to a different room where Koran Dar and Phandebrass could do their work in peace and quiet. Tarrin had the chance to talk to Koran Dar, then listen as he talked to Phandebrass, and he was impressed by how smart the man was. He was able to meet the addled mage on many intellectual levels, going way, way over the young man's head. Tarrin felt a little lost by the time they reached a quiet chamber with no windows, that had nothing within but a table and four upholstered chairs, with one of those ever-present glowglobes suspended over the table. Some kind of small meeting room. But he did know that the two of them had been working out what Koran Dar was going to do.
"Alright, Tarrin," Koran Dar said in a calm, bass voice. "Sit down here, and let me say right now that you need to relax. I'm going to be using magic on you, and you're going to feel it inside your head. It's important that you don't fight with it. It's going to feel strange, but it's not going to hurt you, alright?"
"Alright," he said a little uncertainly, sitting down in the chair Koran Dar had indicated. The Amazon man pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him, and then reached out and put his hands on either side of Tarrin's face. Tarrin felt a little anxiety, but he figured that that was natural, considering that he was about to allow this man to use magic to look around inside his head. That took a considerable amount of trust, and only his trust in his sister's judgement was allowing him to go through with it. Tarrin felt it when Koran Dar used is Sorcery, felt that strange energy build up inside him, then could literally see the magic snake out of the nearly invisible magic that moved through the room and converge behind his eyes.
He was more than aware of when it started, for he did indeed feel the man's touch inside his head. It was the strangest feeling, and it wasn't entirely comfortable. Tarrin tensed up at the initial contact with it, as he felt something decidedly unnatural appear inside his head. It was like a little star floating around in the darkness of his mind, and it was like he could see it with his inner eye, like a daydream, moving here and there inside his mind. He tried his best to relax, but it wasn't easy. The little star kept touching on old memories and some secrets, and Tarrin wasn't sure if Koran Dar could see or understand anything that the star was touching inside his mind.
Gripping the arms of his chair tightly, Tarrin strove not to get too screwed up as Koran Dar's magical spell dug deeper into his mind, going past memories and dreams and into the more autonomic places, like subconscious and ego and even instincts. Every time Koran Dar's spell touched something, Tarrin felt it surge through his mind, like the touch had triggered it into action. He endured any number of primal impulses, anger, fear, even a strange overwhelming superiority to everyone else, and then Koran Dar's star moved even past those, even deeper, down into the blackest depths of his mind, where the only light was coming from the star itself. Even Tarrin lost the sense of the star as it went beyond his capacity to track, into the darkest tunnels of his mind that had known no conscious thought. He knew it was there, and for some reason its presence in that blackness made him feel cold, and very, very anxious. Almost as if he knew there was something there that he didn't want him to find. Deeper and deeper it went, closer and closer, until it had reached the very bottom, the deepest part of his mind, the bottom of the well. Tarrin was sweating, but was very cold, and the sweat made him feel like ice as the star formed by Koran Dar's spell seemed attracted to something it found there in the very darkest part of his mind, floating closer and closer to it, nearly touching it. It turned its light on that area to see what was there--
--even Tarrin was not prepared for what happened next. Magical power flooded into him like a tidal wave, and before he even understood what was happening, It lashed out at Koran Dar with that raw magical power, almost of its own volition. Tarrin fell backwards with his chair as he recoiled from the bright light and ear-splitting crack as the energy manifested in the real world. The ceiling and the floor traded places a couple of times as he rolled to a stop on his back, his legs still tangled in the chair, feeling like someone had just sucked all the energy out of his body.
"Sizzling lizards!" he heard Phandebrass exclaim. "Koran Dar, I say, are you alright?"
"Sizzling is a good
word," the Amazon man said in an unsteady voice. Tarrin managed to sit up and saw Koran Dar lying on the floor a good ten spans from where he'd been when he started, the front of his robes smoking and blackened. "If I hadn't deflected most of that, it would have burned a hole through me," he admitted.
Tarrin was too disoriented yet to feel guilty at having hurt Koran Dar. His head was spinning in a very uncomfortable manner, and even sitting up was making him so dizzy that he couldn't tell which was was up. He laid back down on the floor staring at the ceiling as it rotated in a wobbling manner around the glowglobe, and he wondered how he was staying on the floor when gravity kept changing directions on him. He was certain that his legs trapped in the chair was the only thing holding him down on the floor.
There was more. There was something else in his mind with him, something alien...yet there was a familiarity to it that he could not dismiss. It was like another being, but it was also a part of him. It had been that other thing that had lashed out at Koran Dar, for it had objected to his presence in their shared mind so strenuously that it had attacked the Sorcerer to chase him away. It was a non-thinking entity, primal, nothing but a bundle of feelings and emotions and impulses and instincts. Something primitive, but its power was more than Tarrin could deny. It may be simple and instinct-driven, but it was very, very strong. He felt it retreat back down into that chasm inside his mind unwillingly, as if it were fighting against the force holding it down there, but was not strong enough to counter its power. And as it retreated, Tarrin felt his disorientation and dizziness ease, but it did little for his dazed condition. The reaction and abrupt appearance of that other entity was too much for his mind to easily accept, and he wasn't sure how long he lay there on the floor before he became aware of Koran Dar and Phandebrass kneeling over him.
"What, what happened?" he asked in a bleary tone.
"I found what I was looking for," Koran Dar told him in a rueful tone. "I just didn't expect it to attack me."
"A-Attack you?" Tarrin asked in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"The part of you that made you a Were-cat, at least mentally, is still inside you, Tarrin," Koran Dar explained. "You always called it the Cat, so that's how I'll refer to it. It's still in your mind, or at least an echo of it is. I guess it couldn't be completely separated from you. It's part of what you lost, trapped with the memories that were taken from you. That's the key there, young one. The memories you lost are intertwined with the Cat. That's going to make recovering your memories without bringing that back into the forefront of your mind very, very difficult."
"But we can do it?" Phandebrass asked.
Koran Dar nodded. "I managed to discover how the memory was pulled out of him, Phandebrass. It was an attempt to erase it, but it only managed to erase the part of it that was locked in his human mind. When whatever happened to him stripped his Were nature out of him, it couldn't purge it entirely. The Cat had become a part of his mind, and not even tearing out his Were nature was enough to destroy it in him. It made the Cat retreat into the very core of his mind, and it took those memories, or at least copies of them, with it. Everything he knew since losing his memory is still in his mind. They're just locked up in the lost part of his Were nature."
"I say, restoring his Were nature would most likely restore his memories as well," Phandebrass mused.
"I'd say most likely, but we were told to find a way to give him back his memory as a human, Phandebrass," Koran Dar reminded him.
"I say, I think I can do that too," he said brightly. "Now that I know how his mind was affected, I think I can research a suitable cure, I can. I'll need to borrow the resources of your library, good Koran Dar. Would you mind terribly?"
"I think I can say with certain authority that you have the run of the library, good Wizard," Koran Dar said with a slow smile.
Tarrin looked at them in uncertainty and a bit of anxiety. The lost part of his Were-cat nature had possession of all his lost memories? It was still inside his mind, even though he was human again? He guessed it was possible; Triana had admitted that what had happened to him was something she considered absolutely impossible. She said that any attempt to cure Lycanthropy would kill the Were-creature in the attempt, for the nature and magic of being Were utterly infused the one turned. Whatever had separated that out of him could not do it with absolute certainty. It had left the tiniest of pieces of it inside him, and that fragment was holding onto all his lost memories.
"You mean if they made me a Were-cat again, I'd get back my memories?"
"I'd say yes," Koran Dar said with a solid nod. "The Cat is holding onto those memories, and I'll bet that it's trapped in the deepest part of your mind because what made you a Were-cat was stripped from you. If you were a Were-cat again, it would return to its rightful place in your mind, and I'd bet that it would restore your memory in the process. But I'm not saying that's the only way, Tarrin. Give Phandebrass some time, and I think he'll find an alternate solution to the problem."
"I say, I should have an answer by tomorrow evening," he said confidently.
"Why did I attack you with magic when you touched that--whatever it was?"
"I say, because the Cat in you rejects mental communion with unlike minds," Phandebrass told him calmly. "It was a phenomenon you'd displayed before. You can't Circle with any other Sorcerer, because your Were mind wouldn't accept the mental connection necessary to form the link, it wouldn't. I say, I think when Koran Dar touched the remains of the Cat in you, it reacted just as it did the other times others have tried to touch your mind. The Cat doesn't seem to like humans very much," Phandebrass said with a grin.
"You didn't attack me, Tarrin. The Cat attacked me," Koran Dar said calmly. "You are the same being, but sometimes you and the Cat can do things independently of one another. Like two sides of a coin. Both are different, and they can mean different things, but they're still the same coin."
"I don't understand."
"I don't want to scare you, but I'll be blunt," Koran Dar said evenly. "The Cat is a part of you, but as you just saw, it's capable of acting of its own volition when its instincts are suitably provoked. The Cat saw me as an intruder, an invader, and it took steps to protect itself from me. That's why it attacked me. You had nothing to do with that magical spell. The Cat did that all on its own."
That did scare him, and he had to admit it to himself. Triana and Jesmind had said that the Cat would make them do things, but he'd never experienced it quite like that before. He barely had any memory of it, and it frightened him that he was capable of reacting so violently and having no real idea why. He could kill someone and have no inkling as to why he'd just done it, or what it meant.
"Don't worry about it, Tarrin," Koran Dar smiled. "The Cat won't manfiest like that again. It simply can't, because you're not a Were-cat anymore. The only reason it could was because I was so deep inside your mind that I could touch it."
"It's a scary idea, knowing that there's something in me that may hurt people when I don't want it to," he said in a small voice.
"When you had your memory, you had control over it," Koran Dar assured him. "The Tarrin I knew may have been intimidating, but he didn't go around killing people for no reason. You weren't a monster, Tarrin. You simply had special circumstances that meant that people had to treat you in certain ways. That's all."
"What if they didn't treat me in those certain ways? What did I do?"
Koran Dar chuckled. "They only did it once, that's for sure," he said. "Usually, you made your displeasure abundantly clear."
"Breaking limbs was always your preferred method of education, it was," Phandebrass laughed.
"I sound like I was a bully."
"You weren't a bully, Tarrin. You were the king of the hill, and you knew it. There's a difference."
"That makes me sound arrogant."
"You were," Koran Dar smiled. "But all Were-cats are arrogant. Think about Triana and Jesmind. Aren't they arrogant?"
Tarrin considered t
hat, and he realized that Koran Dar was right. Both of them were rather arrogant. And even Kimmie and Jula displayed traits of superiority, though not to the same degree. The Were-cats were bigger and stronger than humans, and they knew it. And they made sure everyone else knew it too.
"You were more modest than most of them, you were," Phandebrass told him. "But you still walked like the sun followed you around." He patted the pouches on his belt. "I say, I really must get to the library. I know exactly what books I need to study first, and I'm sure half the Tower is waiting for me to find an answer, it is."
They waited for Tarrin to feel completely recovered, and Phandebrass rushed off towards the library with an expectant gleam in his eye. Koran Dar escorted Tarrin along the carpeted passages of the Tower, taking him to the kitchens so they could get some breakfast. The revelations that had been placed on him made him quiet and thoughtful as he tried to work through them. The trauma of a sort that had come with finding the Cat still inside his mind--though he couldn't remember it--had been considerable. He'd felt...helpless. Though it was only hitting him now. He could have killed Koran Dar, and he had no idea that it had happened until it was over. That really frightened him, and all he could do was wonder if someone else was going to do something that would make him attack them too. Everyone around him, the servants, the katzh-dashi, the guards, they all seemed almost menacing to him now, as if one misspoke word or unconscious gesture would cause that buried part of himself to rise up from its dark prison and attack again. It made him very withdrawn, unwilling to speak or even look too long at anyone, afraid that he may hurt someone.
Another serious fear was over what the information that Koran Dar had discovered may mean. The absolute instant that Triana and Jesmind heard that restoring him as a Were-cat would most likely restore his memory, they'd be looking for a good place to sink their fangs into him. Tarrin wasn't sure if he wanted to be a Were-cat again, and he was positive that they were not going to give him a chance to decide one way or the other. As far as they were concerned, making him a Were-cat was the only possible course of action. They wouldn't even consider anything else. They'd both so much as admitted it. Even Kimmie had stated something to that effect. He'd become a Were-cat the first time by accident, when he had no choice in the matter. Now he did, and he didn't wan the Were-cats trying to take that choice away from him.
Tarrin Kael Firestaff Collection Book 5 - Weavespinner by Fel © Page 14