And it wanted him. He could taste its hunger. It wanted him to surrender to it as the albino had surrendered, so that it might devour his soul and excrete the remnants into this warped ecosystem. One careless moment and he might well suffer the albino’s fate.
He gazed down at the wolf for several long minutes, assessing its value to him. Unlike the albino he was not a reckless man, but some things were worth taking chances for. Knowledge was chief among them.
At last he said, very quietly, “I can restore your human form. Perhaps your human soul as well. But there would be a price for such service.” He paused. “A high price.”
The wounded wolf stared at him. It was impossible to read what was in its eyes.
“If I give you back your human life, then that life will belong to me. For so long as you remain human you will serve me. All that you possess, all that you know, all the power you command will be mine for the asking. That is the price of my assistance. Do you understand?”
The wolf continued staring at him. Did it still comprehend human language? If not, then there would be little hope of restoring it to its former state.
Finally, in a jerky and pained motion, it nodded.
“Then you must surrender yourself to me now without reserve. Forget everything that you were up to this moment, and permit me to reshape you as I see fit. Anything less than that, and you will not survive the process of transformation.” He paused. “You were a sorcerer once. You understand why that is necessary.”
He could not interpret the wolf’s expression, but he sensed that inside that bestial head quasi-human thoughts were struggling to take shape. Perhaps it was trying to remember the ways of sorcery, so that it might evaluate his instructions. Perhaps it was asking itself whether or not it was capable of the degree of submission he was asking for.
If not, Tarrant thought, then you will die.
“Do you agree to my terms?” He pressed.
The wolf’s eyes were fixed on him. Unreadable.
Finally-weakly-it nodded again.
Stepping back from it, Tarrant braced himself for what must come next. Shapeshifting was one of the most dangerous Workings in a sorcerer’s repertoire, and more than one student had died while attempting it. In order to adopt the form of another creature one must surrender oneself body and soul to the fae, allowing it complete dominion over one’s flesh. It was a terrifying process, and a dangerous one. Failure to submit completely might result in one being trapped between forms, and such a state was a rarely viable. Few were the sorcerers who dared attempt such a Working, and fewer still the ones who succeeded.
As for working such a transformation on another human being, as Tarrant was about to do… that would require the same kind of absolute submission, but not only to the fae. This human-turned-wolf must be willing to place very his soul in Tarrant’s hands, without hesitation or resistance. Tarrant remembered the sorcerer he had seen in his vision: proud, vain, arrogant. Could someone like that manage the requisite humility? If the man’s years in the Forest had broken his spirit- Tarrant suspected-perhaps. If not, then Tarrant would have to conjure the information he sought from the man’s ashes. Difficult but not impossible.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he summoned forth the coldfire power that was in his sword, channeling it into a dramatic Working. Blue flames roared forth suddenly from its blade: a heatless, unnatural fire with death at its core. Several of the wolves yelped in alarm. One of them turned and fled into the Forest, and a second one followed. Then another. Soon they were all gone, and Tarrant let the Working fade.
The clearing was silent.
Now, he thought. Carefully.
He could feel the Forest’s power prodding at the edges of his consciousness as he began to shape his Transforming. This kind of Working called for an immense amount of power, and normally he would have summoned whatever was available to him, drawing upon the currents of fae that surrounded him without even thinking about it. A sorcerer’s reflex. But if he tried to mold these currents to his will they would try to take control of him, and even if they failed, the concentration required to control them would likely doom his efforts. The Transforming of living flesh left no room for error.
He would have to work with what he had.
At last, when he had summoned forth all the fae that was available to him and bound it to his purpose, he directed a powerful Transforming at the wolf’s body. The animal spasmed in pain as Tarrant’s sorcery engulfed it, which was only to be expected; shapeshifting was not a pleasant process. Molding its body organ by organ-cell by cell-Tarrant forced it to adopt a new configuration, ever so slightly more human than the last. And then another. And another. Normally such changes would flash by in an instant and only the end product would be visible, but this was not a normal Working. Each intermediate stage in this transformation had to be viable in its own right, a combination of organs and limbs that was capable of sustaining life. Whether Tarrant had sufficient knowledge of biology to choose a viable pathway-and the power to force human flesh to submit to it-would determine whether his subject lived or died.
But the albino’s body had been human once, and on some metaphysical level it seemed to remember its previous form. Once Tarrant realized that, he needed to do little to guide its transformation. Slowly the limbs of the wolf straightened and lengthened-its ribcage contracted-its teeth shrank. The fur fell off in sickly clumps, baring a hide that was bloody at first, then pink and raw, then white and soft. The albino’s body trembled as it transformed, and once or twice a howl of pain escaped its lips, but for the most part it bore the suffering in silence. Perhaps it remembered enough about sorcery to understand that pain was the price of success in such an undertaking.
And then, finally, it was done. The body that lay before Tarrant now was naked and filthy, but it was unquestionably human. The chest was rising and falling erratically, its breathing ragged but its lungs clearly functional. The heart was pounding hard enough that the veins under the man’s skin twitched visibly, but its rhythm was within normal human bounds. The wound was gone, Tarrant noted; apparently in the process of recovering its original form the body had healed itself.
He let his power fade and waited.
For several long minutes his subject lay utterly still, with no sign of consciousness about him. Hopefully his mind had not been so badly damaged that he would be incapable of communication. If it had, then all this had been a wasted effort.
Very slowly, the thin, translucent eyelids opened. Scarlet irises were surrounded by a corona of broken vessels, turning the eyes into crimson orbs.
“What is your name?” Tarrant demanded.
The albino’s brow furrowed as he struggled to process the question. Tarrant gave him time. Regardless of whether the speech centers of the man’s brain had survived the change intact, he had not dealt with human language for a very long time. It might take him a while to remember how to speak.
“Amoril,” he whispered at last. He winced as he spoke, as if the passage of sound through his throat was painful. “Name… Amoril.”
“Where are you from, Amoril?”
The crimson eyes squeezed shut as he struggled to remember. He looked much more human with them closed. “Not sure… not remember… maybe Sattin? Long time ago…”
Some of his long term memory may have been damaged, Tarrant observed. And: He may be easier to control if it is not restored.
“Thirst,” the albino gasped. “Water. Please.”
It was a reasonable enough request, but not one that Tarrant could satisfy. “We will have to go find some. I do not carry supplies for the living.”
The bloodshot eyes opened wide and fixed on Tarrant. For a long moment Amoril just stared at him, as if trying to make sense of what he was seeing.