The Questing Game

by James Galloway

  Dolanna smiled slightly and nodded. "On the table are maps. Each of you should take a map, and use it to mark off where you have already been. I will study the maps each day, and ensure that we are covering all of the available areas. Renoit expects the three of you to perform," she said in a strong tone, "so do not stay out until dawn. Leave that to Tarrin and Sarraya.

  "And to you two," she turned on them, "I expect you to do this quietly. There will be no bringing down houses, no pausing to torture residents with pranks, and no unnecessary killing. I do hope I am making myself clear." She gave them a flinty look. "And above all, you must keep yourselves hidden. Rich Arakites would spend an absolute fortune attempting to capture either of you as a showpiece to use to impress their friends. This applies to you as well, Allia. Be very careful, and remember that your swords do not have to extricate you from every situation. You are a Sorcerer. You tend to forget or overlook that fact. Do not abandon your power when it can help you escape a bad situation."

  Allia nodded soberly as the two drakes landed on the table with Tarrin and Sarraya. "Phandebrass, have you instructed your drakes?"

  "I say, they're ready, Dolanna," he replied. "Turnkey will go with Dar, and Chopstick will go with Allia. If you need their help, just point to the door in your way, point to an open window, and tell them to unlock the door," he instructed the others. "They will enter the house, find the door, and unlock it from the inside. I also told them to keep a nose out to keep any brigands from sneaking up on you. If you need them for defense, simply point at your agressor and tell them to attack."

  Dolanna nodded. "This is a huge city, my friends," she warned. "This first night, I do not expect you to go out. Use this night to familiarize yourselves with the maps and the major streets. Save your searching for tomorrow."

  "Just show us where to start," Sarraya said in a voice that was uncharacteristically serious for her.

  Phandebrass unrolled one of the maps, then pointed to a large circle near the middle of the large page. "Right here," he said. "I say, this place is called the Fountain of Life. It's nearly the exact center of the city. Just take the Street of Sand to the Street of Gold, turn left, and that will take you right to the fountain," he guided, tracing a finger along the route that led from the tents to the fountain. "I say, you should be ready for traffic. Dala Yar Arak never sleeps. You'll see many merchants, nobles, and well-to-dos out on the street. Many of them only come out at night, when it's cool, they do. Especially this early. The streets get taken over by the nightstalkers well after midnight."

  Tarrin studied the map, but found his cat eyes had trouble making out the fine details written onto it. His cat eyes sacrificed some clarity and focus for enhanced ability to see light. In cat form, he couldn't read or make out fine detail, but he could see in the dark as well as any human could see at noon. He jumped down off the table. He shapeshifted directly into his human form, feeling the all-too-familiar nagging ache settle into his bones at holding the unnatural shape, and reached down and picked up one of the medallions. Then he looked at the map again, seeing exactly where Phandebrass was indicating on the map. He picked up one of the other maps silently and stuck it in his belt pouch after folding it down, and then put the medallion in his pouch as well.

  His face an emotionless mask, he looked down at Sarraya. "Are you ready?" he asked her.

  "Yup," she grinned and nodded. "Let's go."

  Without a single word to anyone else, Tarrin stalked out of the tent, with Sarraya buzzing along behind him. He felt no real anticipation at finally getting started, no excitement, no happiness. There was only the mission in his mind, and it overwhelmed any emotion he may be feeling. He didn't want to get emotional right now. With all the things wrong with Dala Yar Arak, if he got emotional, he may go on a moralistic rampage and kill a whole lot of people he felt had no right to live. Focus on the job, ignore how the city made him feel. He had to find the Book of Ages, and that was what he was going to do.

  No matter what it took.

  The streets of Dala Yar Arak were alive.

  Not literally, but more than any other city he had seen, the streets of this city were busy, well into the night. And they weren't just homeless vagabonds and street urchins, either. They were wealthy merchants with their bodyguards, slaves, and entourages. They were singing sailors staggering down streets, they were shady thieves stalking a target. There were a good share of homeless and the hopeless, wandering along the Street of Sand looking for anything of value. Some sat under lit lanterns hung at regular intervals along the street and pandered to those who passed by, begging for whatever they could get.

  Tarrin moved through them boldly, almost imperiously, keeping his chin high and his eyes firmly in front of him. He wore no hood or cape or cloak to hide his difference from them. His blond hair stood out like a beacon, his wrist-thick braid swaggeringly like his tail would have if he had it, attracting eyes to him as easily as if he were a Troll. He was keenly aware of their eyes, of the attention, but there was nothing to be done for it. So long as they didn't get in his way, they wouldn't get hurt. It was that simple. He still wore the simple leather vest over the half-sleeved white shirt that Dolanna had given to him, a shirt ripped a little bit around the forearms from where he would cross his arms, and his claws would snag on the material. He also wore leather breeches that were tattered around his shins, breeches that were getting a little worn in the seat and knees. He'd had them for a long time. He looked something like a street urchin, but only to the casual observer. His shirt and trousers may be a bit ragged, but his vest was clean and well made, and he was bathed and had clean, well kept hair.

  "Did you know that there's a hole in the back of your pants?" Sarraya asked playfully. "When you move the right way, I can see all sorts of interesting things."

  That was the slit he'd cut for his tail. Unfortunately, he either had to make a neat, controlled slit for the tail, or have it rip a hole when he shapeshifted.

  "Then stop looking," Tarrin said bluntly, reaching another major avenue. That had to be the Street of Gold. He knew to turn left there, so he did, with Sarraya's invisible wings buzzing slightly as she changed her direction to keep at his side.

  "Come on, Tarrin, give us a smile," the Faerie bantered. "I know you're itching to get going, but you're being way too morose. I haven't seen you smile in days."

  "There's nothing to smile about, Sarraya," he said in an emotionless tone. "Not anymore."

  "Being gloomy's not going to help your state of mind," she warned. "Come on. As a friend, humor me. Think of something funny, and tell me what it is."

  "Drop it," he warned, glancing in her direction, even though he couldn't see her. "When we do what we came here to do, I'll have a reason to smile. Not until then."

  They moved on in silence for several minutes, until they found themselves staring at the Fountain of Life. As fountains go, it wasn't very impressive. The Fountain of Swans in Suld was breathtaking. This was nothing more than a pool of tepid water, with a small egg-like stone formation in the center, from which poured a trickle of water. But in the arid climate of southern Yar Arak, Tarrin could understand how it got its name. Water was life in the arid lands, and this simple pool of water represented a place where people could drink. It probably supported a large number of homeless people and street urchins. There was nobody around the fountain, the pedestrians all walked around it, and there were alot of them. The Fountain of Life was the intersection of two major avenues through the huge city, according to the map, and a goodly number of people moved around the fountain as they went on their way.

  "You know, I haven't seen a single watch or patrol since we got here," Sarraya noted. "That's weird."

  "It's a big city, Sarraya," he replied calmly, folding his map and putting it away. A glance up at the brilliant sky and the Skybands told him which direction was which, and he walked around the fountain to stare down the other major avenue that crossed the Street of Gold. That was west. That was his direction. />
  Staring down the street, he realized that months of hard work, pain, suffering, sacrifice, and decdication had culminated itself into that one moment. He and the others had strove for months to get right where he was, to begin the possibly long and exhausting search for the Book of Ages. So much had gone wrong, but then again, some things had gone well. They'd left Suld in the first marches of winter, with ice clinging to the sails of the Star of Jerod. It was nearly midsummer now, a mere ride from the Festival of the Sun, which marked the midpoint of the summer and the summer solstice. Some six months or so. They had lost Faalken, and Keritanima and those with her had been separated from them. But, on the positive side, he had gained new friends in Camara Tal, Sarraya, Phandebrass, and even his drakes. He had made peace with the Were-cats, and had earned the respect of Triana, Jesmind's mother. He had changed greatly since the Tower. He had grown hard, grim, feral, had faced himself at his worst and embraced it. And he could live with that. So much had happened since the night they left Suld. It had seemed like a strange adventure at the time, but it felt nothing like that now. It was a chore, a mission, an unpleasant assignment he wished to finish as quickly as possible, so he could move on and do something he wanted to do.

  Looking down at the crystal medallion, he stared into its depths as it sparkled with the reflections of the lights of the lanterns around them. Everything depended on those four little hunks of quartz.

  Closing his eyes, he released himself from the painful constraints of his human form. He felt himself flow into his taller humanoid body, felt his tail and ears and claws and paws all take up their rightful, natural places. He ignored the startled gasps and exclamations from the people around the Fountain of Life. He had shapeshifted in front of them, and he did not care. They couldn't do anything to catch him. They couldn't stop him. They were, after all, only human. He didn't care if they knew what he was, he didn't care if it made them afraid of him. His only concern was to find the Book of Ages.

  Whipping his tail back and forth a few times to settle it comfortably in the slit in his breeches, he looked down at the medallion, cupped in the palm of his paw, laying against the thick, triangular pad, and then held it up to the west. "Work," he breathed quietly, ignoring the people who had stopped and were staring at him. "Find the Book of Ages, little crystal."

  "Tarrin, are you nuts?" Sarraya hissed in a strangled tone. "You just announced to the city that we're here!"

  "So what," he said bluntly. "They always seem to know where we are, so let them come. Let them try and stop me. It'll be alot easier for me if they come to me so I can kill them, rather than hunt them down."

  "You're getting too big for your breeches, cub," Sarraya sighed. "I go that way. Just do what Dolanna told us to do, Tarrin. Don't get melodramatic out there."

  "You're a fine one to talk," he drawled as the crystal began to glow with a faint reddish light. By a little moving around, he realized that it was pointing him in a specific direction, just as Phandebrass said it would. "I'll see you in the morning. Be careful."

  "You're the one who'd better be careful," she returned, then she flitted away.

  He gave her not a thought more. His eyes focused on the medallion, then he looked towards the northwest, where it was telling him to go.

  The hunt was on.

  To the surprise of the people on the street, Tarrin took a few bounding strides, then vaulted twenty five spans up onto the flat roof of one of the dwellings near the fountain. Without the slightest pause, he raced along the rooftops towards the northwest, jumping from roof to roof as easily as a human would walk down the street, moving directly towards his goal. He felt his worries and fears melt away in the simple ritual of the hunt. His prey wasn't food or enemies, it was a thing, an object that he had to possess, the one thing that would release him from his self-imposed servitude and set him free.

  It was the first target, and it proved to Tarrin that this wasn't going to be easy. In many ways.

  The medallion had led him to a large compound about fifteen blocks away from the Fountain of Life, a very large compound indeed, and the medallion was pointing directly inside it. He circumnavigated the large, ornate iron fence surrounding the place and had confirmed it was in there. Beyond that fence patrolled a good number of guards, armed with swords, crossbows, and polearms, and they had trained dogs with them on their rounds. The guards were no problem, but the dogs were another matter entirely. Behind that formidable barrier stood a cluster of buildings, obviously belonging to some rich merchant or important person, and he had no idea which building the medallion was telling him to check. He'd have to get closer, so it could point him towards one specific buildings.

  What had annoyed him more than anything else was what happened while he squatted on the roof of a nearby dwelling and planned how he was going to infiltrate. Light footsteps behind had warned him of the approach of someone else, and he caught the scent as he turned his head and looked. It was a figure clad in a dark cloak and black trousers, male by scent, an Arakite that had the look of a thief. He had jumped from another roof, much like Tarrin had travelled, and it proved the notion that the rooftops were another highway in the massive city, for those daring enough to attempt it. What got Tarrin immediately riled up was the smell of silver that exuded from the thief, a smell that Tarrin recognized and immediately took as threatening. Narrowing his eyes, he turned on the man with claws out, daring him to approach. But the man only looked at him and laughed.

  "I think we can do business without the display," he said in Arakite, chuckling a bit more.

  "Business? What business would I have with you?" Tarrin demanded, quickly adjusting his Arakite to remove the majority of his bad accent.

  "We know who you are," he said simply. "We know why you're here. I'm here to tell you to do your business and leave. There are people in this city that don't like you being here. When the circus leaves, we expect you to be with it. If you're not, well, then we won't be very nice."

  "Who is we?"

  "Call us the concerned citizens of Dala Yar Arak," he smirked.

  "And who will throw me out? You? Five of you? Ten? Fifty? If I want to stay, there's not a damned thing you can do about it, human. Stay out of my way, and you won't be bothered."

  "We may not be able to do much to you. But there are other factors you should consider. Like that sweet Selani face that paraded in with you. I'd hate to see it cut off."

  That was the wrong thing to say. Putting his ears back, Tarrin's eyes exploded into the green aura that marked his anger, a greenish radiance that was pronounced in the darkness, and he immediately pounced on the man, claws leading. He drove the startled man to the stone floor of the roof, holding him down by the neck with one paw as the other rose up. "Take this back to your leader, dog!" he hissed in a brutal tone, then he deliberately drove his palm into the man's face with such force that it caused the man's head to explode, showering Tarrin with brains, bits of bone, and a spray of blood, and cracking the stone beneath where his head had once been.

  Heaving with icy fury, he picked up the headless corpse and threw it off the roof, into a narrow alley. He was focused on his anger, his rage, and it threatened to overwhelm him in a way that he hadn't felt in a long time. He could feel it just under the surface of his mind, a mindless bloodlust that yearned to break free, to rampage and destroy as it had done under the Cathedral of Karas so long ago. The smell of the blood sprayed on him only intensified his frenzy, but the rational part of his mind managed to retain a tenuous hold on his rage. He turned that fury on the one thing that mattered to him more than going on a rampage, and that was finding the Book of Ages.

  Any concept of a plan went out the window as Tarrin lept from the roof and rushed towards the compound, then vaulted over the fence. He attacked a small knot of guards and their two dogs mere steps inside the grounds, striking from the shadows, falling on them with a savage fury that took them completely by surprise. Tarrin killed the dogs first, then turned on the guards and kille
d them in a lightning fast explosion of claws, killing three of them before they even registered that they were under attack. One was smart enough to run, to try to get help, but Tarrin was on him seconds after killing nine men, driving a single claw into the back of his neck, severing the spine and making the body tumble lifelessly to the ground in midstride.

  It wasn't enough. His protective instincts over his sister were fully exposed, completely aroused within him, and that gave his anger a fuel that wasn't about to run out any time soon. But the need to seek out and destroy abated with the killing of the guard unit, mellowing into a seething, clear-minded objective. Find whatever the medallion indicated was in the compound. That overrode his desire to hunt down the rest of the guards, to completely eradicate any challenge to his progress, to kill the men one by one and feel the twisted satisfaction that came from the act. He recovered enough of his sanity to hold up the medallion and have it point the way for him. He wouldn't hunt them down, but he wasn't about to hide. Anyone who got in his way was going to die. It was just that simple.

  After a quick move into the large compound, he located the proper building. It was a large, oblong construction with large windows, but the windows were barred. It also had a large, ornate set of doors, bound in brass and with a large wolf or jackal crest etched upon them. They looked to be bolted from the inside.

  It only took one hit. Tarrin struck one of the doors with his shoulder, using his inhuman strength to break whatever lock was keeping the door closed. He heard that bar snap in a squeal of protesting metal, and then he pushed open the door and looked inside. Beyond was a large receiving foyer, and four shocked guards holding pikes. One of them brandished his weapon towards Tarrin.

  That sealed their fates.

  Like a pouncing lion, Tarrin literally flew into the room with his bloody paw leading, ripping the throat out of the nearest guard with a blazing swipe of his paw, a swipe that sent flesh and blood flying in a wide arc as his paw came around. He grabbed the dead man's pike with his other and immediately brought it to bear against the second guard, smashing his own weapon out of Tarrin's direction of movement and letting his claws get to the man unhindered, shearing through his throat in a calculated slash of a single claw over his neck, a slash that opened the major artery and vein in the neck and caused blood to pump from the wound in a ghastly fashion. The dying man clutched at his throat and gurgled out the last of his breath as he sank to the stone. The other two men just started to react to the Were-cat's blindingly fast attack by the time he reached them, bringing the pike around and spinning into it, putting both paws on it to give it more force, then bringing it around his side and slamming it into the side of the nearer guard. The impact shattered the pike and sent the man flying, a ragged scream coming out of his mouth just before a fountain of blood replaced it. Before he landed on the carpeted foyer floor, Tarrin threw aside the broken handle of the pike and rose up over the last of the guards, who was paralyzed with terror, staring blankly into Tarrin's glowing green eyes. Tarrin showed no mercy, rending four finger-deep slashes into the man from his left shoulder to his right belly, running off his body as Tarrin's power drove his claws through leather, flesh, and bone like a sword through snow. He struck the man across the face with his other paw, ripping most of it away and sending the body tumbling aside in a bloody, limp heap.