Bulaybub looked at her and rolled his eyes. Through his cracked lips and parched throat he said, "Get off me, child, and all you hot holy ones, too. The day is far too warm for your nearness to be comforting." As he spoke, he turned completely human. His tail disappeared, his ears settled down behind his jawbone and shed their fur to become rounded and flesh-colored. His hands and feet lost their fur and claws and became dirty but bare, with broken toenails.
Even the wild animal tang in the air vanished. The priest stank as a damaged, overheated, underwashed human stank. As he transformed, Miw-Sher draped his lower body with a scarf similar to the one she had given Acorna, to preserve his human modesty.
The cats sat back.
RK projected, (Well done, shipmate. He seems perfectly healthy now, though he's lost what looks he had.)
"Uncle, can you stand? We must get you indoors."
The priest rose awkwardly, clutching the scarf to his middle, so that it draped down his thighs and tangled between his knees. The Temple cats took up sentinel positions on each corner of the roof. Acorna could see that they were determined to warn their human companions should anyone approach them.
Miw-Sher assisted her uncle to the ladder leading down into the house. The occupant, conveniently, was not at home, but had left the ladder to the roof in place.
Bulaybub gave his niece a conspiratorial smile, though one that was somewhat white around the lips. "Being a mendicant monk has advantages," he said. "If you beg door to door often enough, you soon find out what is behind each of the doors you beg at."
"Is that how you knew you could use the home of the woman who had gone to help her sick sister, the place where the guards found all that blood?" Acorna asked.
"Yes, and it is how I know that the family who lives here went to help their country kinfolk slaughter their infected animals and will not return for some time." He half fell down the ladder and heaved himself onto the seat against the wall beside the cold hearth. "Ahhhh." He finished with a sigh as he leaned against the wall to rest.
Once the humans were safely hidden inside the house, the Temple cats followed them - flowing down the crude ladder as easily as though it was a grand staircase. They arranged themselves around the room to watch the show.
"I do believe I'm feeling better," Bulaybub said, sounding just a bit tired. "You are indeed the miraculous person we were told would come, Ambassador," he said to Acorna after a moment.
"Not so miraculous as all that," Acorna said, wondering just who had told the priest she was coming, when she hadn't known that herself until she was practically landing on the planet. She'd deal with that issue later, after she'd broached the far more urgent topic on her mind. "I have some small talents as a healer, but it appears that in this instance, I have been able to raise the dead. I understood from the Mulzar that your corpse was throttled, nearly decapitated, and eviscerated."
"Oh, yes. Well, obviously, the body they found was not mine. It seemed useful to let Edu and others believe it to be mine, at least for a time, however. Unfortunately, it required a great deal of rather nasty claw work postmortem to obliterate identifying characteristics."
"Are you going to tell me whose body it was, not to mention how he came to be postmortem?" Acorna asked.
"Do you think that if I do so, I will confess how I came to be a murderer?" the priest asked with a hint of wry amusement.
"That would be truly enlightening, Brother," a voice said from the roof, immediately followed by the lithe form of Nadhari Kando, who slithered down the ladder, her gaze never leaving Bulaybub and Miw-Sher, her grip never loosening on the deadly dagger she carried. "And I, too, would love to hear your answer."
Bulaybub inhaled sharply. "Nadhari," he said, and his voice was filled with pain, pain that clearly had nothing to do with his recent wounds. "You must listen to me," he said, "I know the Mulzar is your relative, but all is not as he would have you think."
Nadhari looked at the priest more closely, though it was hard to distinguish features in the windowless room with only the light from the roof hole to illuminate it. "Of course it isn't. Do you think I'm a fool? But I'm a bit surprised to hear you admit Edu might be misleading us, Brother Bulaybub. I thought you were Edu's righthand man."
From the way Nadhari and Bulaybub spoke to each other, Acorna gathered that she was not the only one in the room with secrets to keep. Everyone here, probably including the cats, obviously had agendas heretofore unshared with her.
The Temple cats lounged around and upon the various bits of furnishings and architectural irregularities in a manner designed to make a decorative display. They groomed themselves while Miw-Sher, with a frightened glance at Nadhari, gave her uncle sips of water. None of the cats, however, seemed to feel that anything that was happening was especially strange or upsetting. Even RK curled up beside Bulaybub and purred.
"Wait," Acorna said. "Before we get into politics, Nadhari, may I ask a few basic questions? Brother Bulaybub, last night you changed from a man to a large cat, and back again. You changed up there on the roof, too. I saw it myself, and so did RK. How did that happen?"
"He did?" Nadhari asked. "I wish I'd come earlier. I'm sorry I missed it. Go ahead, Brother. I want to hear the answer to that one."
"I would have told you sooner or later, if only you had stayed, Nadhari," Bulaybub told her.
"Why should I have stayed? You wouldn't see me. Your family wouldn't allow me to come near you. You weren't even talking to Edu back then. As I recall, you didn't like him in those days."
"I didn't, I-"
"Please," Acorna said. "Obviously you two have a history and equally obviously it must be part of this, but it can wait. Answer my questions, Brother Bulaybub."
"And that name!" Nadhari said, strong emotion causing her for once to override Acorna's attempts to make sense of the conversation. "How did you come up with that one, Tagoth?"
(The plot thickens,) RK told Acorna. (I'm loving this!)
"You two are not helping matters," Acorna said. "Before the guards come looking for us, Brother Bulaybub, or Tagoth, or whoever you are, I need answers. A lot of them. Please will you tell me why you turned into a cat? Who was the man who died? Did you kill him? If so, why? And what part in all this do Miw-Sher and the Temple cats play?"
Acorna looked from Nadhari to the priest, and saw their eyes locked in a battle of wills. Acorna sent a little push to each, but neither budged.
Miw-Sher sighed, set down the water jug, and said, "About the changing. Some of us do it. From a few families - especially those who have intermarried often with certain of the rainforest tribes. It started there. It's a very rare gift these days. The families keep it a close secret when one of their children begins changing-usually there's only one in a family at any time and the trait can skip a generation, my mother said. Uncle Tagoth changes, but his brothers did not. I - I change, too. It started with my courses. With boys the changing becomes apparent later, I was told. It was later with Uncle Tagoth, wasn't it, Uncle?"
"Hmm-yes," he said, with a meaningful deepening of his glare at Nadhari. "Later."
"Sometimes the gift even vanishes," Miw-Sher said. "If the choosing is right and just, and not tampered with by conquerors or war, the high priest is a holy person chosen by his or her blood for the position. When such a one dies in this life, in the next life, that one returns as one of the Temple guardians. All of the Temple cats here were once holy high priests and priestesses, lady," the acolyte told Nadhari.
"And when a guardian dies, if he or she wishes, the next lifetime may be a human one -but if so, it is to the tribes of the forest they are born, and when they are no longer children, they can resume their true form. Therefore, by our beliefs, my uncle and I have ourselves been high priests and guardians in our past lives."