The Questing Game

by James Galloway

  "I cannot defend your actions any longer," she told him, putting her hand on the doorknob. "I have tried to make you feel comfortable by treating you like anyone else, but I see that was a grave error. From now on, you will not be treated like everyone else. You have dug your own hole, my dear one. Now you must stand in it."

  "How dare you pass judgement on me!" he suddenly roared, snapping to his feet by the bunk and glaring at her. "If anyone could understand the way I feel, I thought it would have been you! They were warned not to be hostile to me, Dolanna, and that kid did it anyway! He called me a freak! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Do you think it doesn't remind me of what I used to be, and what I've lost? I never asked for this, Dolanna, and now I'm being punished for it! Do you have any idea how helpless it makes me feel to know that I never had a choice? I had a life, Dolanna, and it was taken away from me with no regard as to what it would do to me!" He turned from her and looked at the wall. "When he called me a freak, all I could think of was that I am one!" He whirled on her, holding out his clawed paws. "Look at me. Look!" he said in a nearly hysteric tone that made her take a step back. "I used to have hands, Dolanna, human hands that could pick up a fork or spoon. I used to be alone in my own head, I used to be in control of myself. I used to be normal! But now I'm not, and I never had a chance to be anything else!

  "Do you think I like being like this?" he said in a shrill voice. "Do you think I like knowing that killing a man means as much to me as picking a burr out of my tail? Do you think I like seeing the fear in people's eyes when they look at me? I've lost everything I used to care about, and all I had left was my friends. And now I'm losing them too!" Tears formed in his eyes as he stared accusingly at Dolanna. "I want my life back, Dolanna, and I can't have it! I'm so tired of being this way, but I don't have a choice!" He whirled around and put his back to her, paws on the sides of his head.

  "Tarrin, I--"

  "Get out!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"

  Wordlessly, Dolanna left. Tarrin knelt on the floor, then put his forehead to the wood, weeping out the pain of deep wounds, wounds that he thought had healed long ago.

  Outside the door, Dolanna leaned against it, tears flowing freely down her face. Allia and Keritanima stood in the companionway, ready to help subdue their brother had he stepped over the line. That Dolanna now feared him, feared that the trust he had for her wouldn't be enough to protect her from him was enough of an indicator of how dangerous she felt he had become. Tears stained her pale cheeks, and they were out of place with the wan smile that graced her features.

  "We heard the yelling, Dolanna," Keritanima said quietly. "Is he going to be alright?"

  "Yes, Keritanima," she said wearily, tears and smile painting a paradox on her features. "I think that he will be just fine."

  "It sounds like he is crying," Allia said in concern.

  "It is a long time coming, Allia," Dolanna said. "Never before has he admitted, even to himself, the pain his condition causes him. He has never mourned the loss of his humanity, of his former life. What he is doing now is what he should have done the very first day after he was turned."

  Both of them stared at Dolanna for a long moment, then tears formed in Allia's eyes. "My poor deshaida," she whispered. "Even to me, it was as if he accepted it."

  "What choice did he have, sister?" Keritanima said with a sniffle. "I know how it feels to be trapped in a life you don't want."

  "We should--"

  "No," Dolanna said, holding Allia back. "This is not a time when he would appreciate company. Leave him be."

  She gave the door a long, searching look, placing her hand upon it as if she were laying a gentle hand on someone's back. "Just leave him be."

  Chapter 6

  There just never seemed to be an end to it.

  Tarrin stood on the deck, near the bow, staring up into the clear night sky, up at the four moons. The night was unseasonably warm, with a muggy wind blowing up from the south. The sails had been raised and the sea anchor dropped so that the ship could sleep during the night, with only a trio of watchmen to look for danger and inform the navigator of how much they drifted during the night. They left him alone. They knew better than to bother him.

  It had been months since his transformation into a Were-cat, and he'd thought that the trauma of it had been dealt with. But the simple fact of the matter was that he'd never faced it before. The very moments after he woke up had been spent trying to deal with the new body, the instincts. He'd never allowed himself to think about what he had lost, only how to make the best of a bad situation. There had been laments, wistful thoughts, but never did he allow himself to dwell on what had happened. Even when he had time to think about it, the chaos at the Tower always gave him something other to think about. Staying alive had been a very large part of his life since being turned, forcing him to shunt away almost everything except that one simple goal. To stay alive. Part of the acceptance was because of the very instincts inside him. They forced acceptance, had altered his mind so that it seemed natural to him to be what he was. But it wasn't natural to him, a fact that he'd only now been able to face.

  He stared up into the sky, and what looked back at him was an image of how he used to be. A very young, somewhat naive boy that had once been very friendly and outgoing, modest and thoughtful. A boy that would spend days wandering the unexplored tracts of the Frontier for no other reason but to see new things. A boy that was much too innocent for his age, whose life had been sheltered more than his parents realized. But he was dead now. There was no way to deny that. Tarrin Kael died the instant that Jesmind's fangs sank into his arm, and the new Tarrin was born. The change had taken time, as the newborn acclimated to new instincts and motivations, but that change was so terribly complete now. He was nothing like he used to be, like the way he remembered. Even if he could go back, to be human again, now it would be a hollow sensation. Too much had happened, had tainted him, and he could never be that way again.

  And now he knew it. He'd said it to himself, but maybe some little part of himself wouldn't accept it, had clung to the hope that he could rebuild his life the way it had been. That was gone now. There was nothing left but stark reality, the blaring truth that he was a Were-cat, and that could never be changed. He had been thrown into the inferno, and finally he had admitted to himself that it had burned him.

  But there was no comfort in that confession. There would only be the struggle to maintain some shred of his humanity in the face of his animalistic impulses, instincts that made him capable of killing. He'd never believed that animals could be cruel, but in a way they were. They weren't sadistic or evil, but they had little regard for the possible injuries they inflicted on others. The hunter killed to survive. It didn't relish inflicting pain on its prey--it didn't even understand that concept--but it was trained to kill, to inflict pain, from its earliest days. To the Cat, the end justified the means, and that the means may hurt someone else were of no matter.

  And he had to live with that. In a way, he didn't have a choice. The Cat forced it on him, had changed him so that that concept of life seemed completely natural. But every time he hurt someone, he killed, it hurt the human inside him. And to isolate himself from that pain, he had buried that part of himself. He had tried so hard to hold onto his sanity, and had succeeded. But to keep from going mad, he had forced himself to sacrifice his humanity, to cast it aside and embrace the animal instincts that were the causes of the madness. He had kept sane, but the cost to him seemed more now than going mad would have been, because at least in madness there would be no feeling of guilt over what he did. Not like it was now. Every life he took brought with it the deep feeling that it was wrong, yet he was totally incapable of stopping himself.

  Haley was right. He had truly become a monster. And what struck him hardest was that even now, with his realization and confessions of it, he really, truly, did not care.

  There wasn't much left for him anymore. Just his sisters and his friends, an
d this intangible quest that made less and less sense to him every day. Every time he thought he had overcome what he was, had found a peace within himself, it was stripped away from him, and left him to start anew. This time, it had taken nothing more than an arrogant young man and the word freak.

  Sometimes it only took one word.

  The wind in his face made it hard to scent the approach of others, but the whispery footsteps that approached him from behind betrayed the presence. By the sound of the slippers and the measure of the stride, he knew it was Miranda. The mink came up beside him and put her hands on the rail, then looked up into the sky quietly. Neither of them spoke for quite a while, simply sharing each other's company. There was little doubt she knew. She was Keritanima's closest friend, and there was nothing Keritanima knew that Miranda didn't find out. Dolanna would have told Keritanima, and Keritanima would tell Miranda. And that put Miranda here. She obviously had something to say, so he simply waited for her to get around to it.

  "Are you feeling better?" she finally asked.

  "No," he replied in a quiet voice. "Where are the others?"

  "Keritanima was very upset, so I put her to bed," she replied. "Allia is with her. I don't know about the others." She put her hand on top of his paw. "There's no need to be alone, Tarrin," she said reasonably. "We can help."

  "Not with this," he replied gruffly. "There's nothing you can do, or anyone else." He looked down at the calm water, barely stirred by the lack of wind. "I woke up this morning feeling just fine. Then a single word makes me realize how angry I really am about what happened to me. And then, after that, I stared at myself in the mirror, and realized exactly what was staring back at me. It has not been a good day." He closed his eyes. "I've become everything I was afraid I'd be, Miranda. I'm not a rampaging beast. I'm worse. I'm a cold-blooded murderer, and the real kick is that I don't care. I know what I've become, but I don't care. Isn't that strange?"

  "Hardly," she snorted. "I've never seen you kill someone that wasn't deserving. I've seen how gentle you are when you don't feel threatened, how tender you are with children. You're not evil, Tarrin, you're just frightened. And because of that, you react in an extreme way whenever you feel in danger. It's a very basic reaction among animals, and humans and Wikuni, for that matter. It's instinctual. The only thing that sets you apart from us is that you're so powerful."

  In a strange way, that made him feel a great deal better. "Thanks, Miranda," he said sincerely.

  "We're friends, Tarrin," she smiled. "Outside of Keritanima, Binter, and Sisska, you're my only friend. And I don't let friends go around being all mopey."

  "Only friend?" he challenged. "Don't you like Allia and the others?"

  "I know them, Tarrin. I haven't decided yet if I like them. They don't really understand me, and I don't bother trying to explain myself. You don't require things like that. You take me as I am, just as I take you as you are. No questions, no regrets." She looked down into the water. "I'm really not a very nice girl, Tarrin. I'm a spy, sneak, thief, and from time to time, an assassin. I have more skeletons in my closet than you ever will. People in my line of work have trouble finding friends, because we're all naturally suspicous and distrustful. But from the first time we met, I just had this feeling that we were going to be friends. Very good friends. And here we are."

  "Here we are," he agreed. He put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned against him comfortably.

  They stood at the rail and stared up into the sky quietly. Nothing more needed to be said.

  Despite the fact that Miranda had helped him feel much better about himself, it didn't change his restrictive punishment. For four days, he spent his days in the cabin, and was allowed to come out only at night. And even then he was restricted to his cat form. The days were long and almost insufferable, because everyone was kept up on deck to learn their routines for the carnival performances. They didn't have the leisure to spend time with him until well after noon, nearly sunset Tarrin spent that time the only way he could, reading. Keritanima had brought several books with her, two of which were the Sha'Kari language books. It turned out it that Keritanima had used Sorcery to create written words, and used that the laboriously translate every word of Sha'Kar she knew into the common tongue, and the other way around. The result was a dictionary of the Sha'Kar language, the closest thing to a comprehensive work on the Sha'Kar language that there was. The other book was the original Sha'Kar instruction scrolls transcribed into the book, which she still studied nearly every day. Tarrin didn't understand why she did that. Keritanima had the amazing ability to remember almost everything she read or heard, with an exacting recall that was astounding. Even things read or heard months or years ago were still immediately recalled whenever she needed it. She had admitted that her memory wasn't perfect unless she studied the material a while or she was paying very close attention when she read or heard it, but she had had that book for months. Certainly that was long enough for her.

  The time had had a souring effect between him and Dolanna. He was somewhat angry that she had punished him, and stewing about it alone in the room day after day did not help that at all. He was mad at her, but he already realized that it was like a rebellious adolescent stiffening against the orders of a parent. Her rebuke of him had also stung him, stung him deeply, making him feel like he was starting to drive away his own friends. His friends and family were dear to him; they were all that he had left in a very empty, cruel, and unforgiving world. Without them, he would be utterly lost, and the very thought that Dolanna didn't like him anymore was enough to send a cold wave through his heart. He wasn't sure why he could be both angry and afraid that she had rejected him, but he was.

  The fifth day of imprisonment began as the other four had, with him trying to sleep away as much of it as possible. There was a kind of sublime forgetfulness in sleep, and being part cat, he had the ability to sleep whenever he wanted, for as long as he wanted. But the sounds of laughter and voices would drift in from above, and it would awaken him with a sharp pang of loneliness and regret. His cabin had no windows, forcing him to rely on the light of a candle, but it was currently out. There was no need for light, and the light shining from the crack under the door was more than sufficient for him to see if he wanted to. He couldn't read like that--it was too dim, and a cat's eyes couldn't see with the exacting clarity needed to make out letters written on a page--but he didn't feel much like doing anything that required rational thought. He drifted in and out of sleep, trying to ignore the sounds of music above him.

  And then the entire ship rocked violently to the side, followed up by a ear-splitting crack that seemed to reverberate throughout the entire ship. Tarrin was hurled off the bed and head-first into the wall some five paces away, so violently did the ship lurch, as if struck by some gigantic hand. The impact dazed him, leaving him to lay on the floor woozily and try to stop counting all the pretty little stars. After what seemed ten years, he finally managed to shake the cobwebs loose from his mind. He pulled himself off the floor, fighting against a wave of intense pain that went up his skull and down his spine. The impact had broken his skull, and it didn't seem to be healing back very fast. He left his head drooping until the pain subsided, and then he quickly changed form and rushed out of the cabin.

  The companionway was clogged by several fallen beams from the ceiling above, and more than one small hole let murky light filter in from the sky above. He slithered over and around several obstacles, and over the still form of Phandebrass the Unusual, who looked by casual inspection to be alive but unconscious, clonked on the head by a piece of wood. He didn't have time to mess with that now, he had to get on deck and see what had happened. He raced up to the steep stairs, then was thrown back to the deck as the ship shuddered again. Tarrin clawed back to his feet as the ship swayed alarmingly back and forth, hearing the screams and the sounds above that sounded like breaking wood and general confusion. The light from the outside streamed down the stairs, heavy with dust shaken fre
e by the impacts. Using the claws on his paws and feet, he pulled himself up onto the deck by steadying himself against the rocking of the ship by hooking into the walls of the staircase.

  Outside it was chaos. The central mast was sheared off about halfway up its length, leaning heavily over and straining the rigging that held the masts and sails in place. Debris littered the deck, as well as several still forms, and to the ship's left he could see a large fogbank. Six large, sleek black ships hung lazily in midair, moving with a silent grace as they surrounded the garishly painted galleon, and he saw men along the sides, pointing down at the decks and unleashing small, sizzling missles that looked to be purely magical in nature. Men and women rushed about mindlessly, screaming and seeking shelter, even as some of them fell to the magical attacks from the ships above. Zakkites and their skyships, probably attacking by surprise from the fog.

  Tarrin simply stood there, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. He surveyed the deck, looking for his friends, for his sisters. Dar was hunkered under a fallen boom and sailcloth, looking up at the ships in raw panic. Faalken had smashed a hold hatch and physically threw Dolanna into it before jumping in himself, just as a sizzling bolt of lighting hit the deck right where he had been standing. Allia had pulled a young woman into another hatch near the bow before disappearing with her below decks. Binter was sheltering Keritanima near the bow bulwark, holding onto her, as the Wikuni kicked and gouged and seemed to be screaming, but it was lost in the loud cracks and deafening din of the coordinated attack. It was her eyes. She was in a panic, and she was desperately trying to get free of her protector and run across the deck. Tarrin followed Keritanima's eyes, and he saw them.

  Sisska laid still on the deck, her tail twitching spasmodically, and beside her laid Miranda, who had a wisp of smoke rising from her chest.