"Quickly!" exclaimed Tal. "This is a serious problem, not an opportunity to…" He saw from the sly look on Quickly's face that she'd been putting him on. "Can I count on you to keep this quiet?"
"You know you can, lad. I'll cancel today's shows and put out word that half the cast is down with river fever. That should keep the other half from snooping about tonight." She gave Tal a comrade's hug. "We'll see this thing through, just you and me."
"And Lommy!" cried a voice from the dark rafters. Tal looked up to see two pairs of yellow eyes peering down. "And Otter!"
"Eavesdroppers!" scolded Quickly.
Tal hesitated a moment. "Chaney, too," added Tal. "He'll be here before nightfall. We'll need him in case the cage doesn't hold."
"What do you expect he can do about it?"
"We need the sword, Quickly."
Even the false cheer at last drained from her cheeks. "You can't mean it, Tal. There must be another way."
He shook his head. "I'd rather die than kill again. Even Alale didn't deserve what he got. Imagine if I woke up at Stormweather tomorrow morning."
"The cage will hold," affirmed Quickly, grabbing one of its bars and pulling. It didn't budge.
"Let's hope so."
Chaney arrived an hour before moonrise with assurances that he'd taken care of the problems back at the tallhouse. He'd also done something he assured Tal would keep Eckart quiet for a while, but he wouldn't reveal what it was.
"In you go," said Quickly. Lommy and Otter had lowered the cage to the ground, and Tal stepped inside. Quickly locked the door and set the key on a prop table, well away from the bars.
"You want us to turn our heads or anything?" asked Chaney.
"Would you if I said 'yes'?" asked Tal.
"Well, no," admitted Chaney. Quickly laughed, but Tal could see the tension on both their faces. He thought of the tasloi peering down from above.
"No matter what happens," he called up to the darkness, "you two stay up there."
Lommy and Otter squeaked their assent.
"Well," said Chaney, "I don't plan to stand the whole time." He found a couple of chairs for himself and Quickly, then eased himself comfortably into the better one.
"The sword!" said Tal suddenly. "Don't forget the sword."
"Right, right," said Chaney in a tone that convinced Tal that he hadn't forgotten it.
"You'll never find it on your own," said Quickly. "I'll show you where it is." She led him down the narrow stairs to the small prop room under the stage.
Tal found himself wishing one of them had stayed. He looked up toward the ceiling, but there was no sign of Lommy or Otter. He stopped himself from calling out to them. They were probably more frightened than he was and had run off to avoid witnessing his horrid transformation.
A muffled thump came from the prop room.
"Chaney?" called Tal. "You haven't been drinking already, have you?" He tried to keep his tone light, but a new fear crept into his heart. "Chaney? Quickly?"
Neither of them answered.
He tried again. When no one replied, he fell silent, gripping the bars of his cage. Time oozed at a gelid pace.
Tal heard two pairs of footsteps rising from the prop room stairs. "Come on, now," he said weakly. "Stop kidding around, you two." The echo of his voice made him fall silent, and he watched as two people emerged from the stairs. They weren't Chaney and Quickly.
The intruders each wore long, gray cloaks, the hoods pushed back to reveal their faces. Tal immediately noted the family resemblance. Feena had her mother's determined jaw and slightly upturned nose.
"What have you done with my friends?" demanded Tal. He'd meant to sound intimidating, but he failed to conjure his father's voice.
"They are well," assured the old woman in the voice Tal remembered from his confined convalescence. She turned to her daughter and gestured toward Tal in his cage. "Does this reassure you?"
"Yes, Mother. Perhaps I was hasty."
"There is hope for you, young Uskevren," said the old woman, "but only if your faith is strong."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Tal. "Who are you?"
"My name is Maleva. I am a servant of Selune."
"The goddess of the moon," said Tal.
Maleva nodded, then gestured to the young woman beside her. "This is Feena, my daughter and acolyte. We pulled you from the brambles of the Arch Wood and tried to cure you of your affliction. Now we offer you one last chance to escape the curse of the beast."
"But there's a price," said Tal suspiciously.
"There is indeed a price," agreed Maleva. She produced a crystal flask from beneath her cloak. A thick, pearlescent liquid glowed within the container. As Tal watched, the stuff seemed to move, undulating like a jellyfish. "This is moonfire. I have traveled far for the privilege of offering it to you."
"It can give you control over the beast," said Feena, "but only if you have not hunted and devoured your fellow men."
Tal felt a heavy sigh escape his chest. "Well, that's where we have a problem. You see-"
"I have seen," interrupted Feena. "While mother traveled to the city of Ordulin to beg a fraction of moonfire from Dhauna Myritar, I followed you here, to Selgaunt. In the past two nights, you have slain no one."
"You must have nodded off," said Tal. "This morning there were two dead bodies in my room." He realized suddenly how easy it would have been to lie, but something about the strange women made him blurt the truth.
Maleva's faint smile told him that he had passed a little test. "We were not the only ones to follow you," said Maleva. "Rusk slew the men who watched over you, then tracked you to your home."
"Rusk…" said Tal slowly. "That's the name I heard the night I was attacked."
"Rusk is a servant of the Beastlord" said Maleva, "a priest of the god Malar. We children of Selune are charged with checking the atrocities of his kind. It is he who led the attack on your hunting party. Now he claims you as his disciple."
"He's the werewolf who mauled me?" ventured Tal. The women nodded.
"He rarely ventures from the wood," said Maleva, "but something brought him…"
A beam creaked noisily from the rafters above. At the sound, Maleva and Feena stepped back as one, clutching the talismans they wore about their necks, their voices chanting two different spells.
Harsh laughter boomed from the rafters. It wasn't a sound Lommy could have mimicked.
Feena raised her talisman like a shield. A pair of eyes surrounded by stars blazed on the amulet. Before Feena could finish the words to her spell, a great dark figure crushed her to the ground.
It was a huge man, bigger even than Tal. His leather jerkin was open to expose thick gray hair on his muscular chest and arms. A beaded headband kept his unruly locks at bay and held the bronze image of a ragged claw upon his forehead. His mustache grew down either side of his broad mouth, while grizzled stubble covered his cheeks and throat.
He crouched growling over Feena, who moaned and shook her head dazedly. Rusk turned his blazing blue eyes on Tal and made a savage smile.
With a flash, a blue-white blade of light appeared in Maleva's hands. Without a word, she raised the weapon high. Rusk whipped around to face her and spat a single word: "Stop!"
Tal saw Maleva's arms tremble, but her conjured blade was fixed fast above her head. Rusk stood, towering over the old woman.
"Your powers are weak," he declared, balling a fist scant inches from her grimacing face. "Strength lies only within the heart of the beast."
Rusk punched Maleva in the stomach hard enough to lift her feet from the floor. Her paralysis broken, she fell back hard. Tal heard the crack of her skull on the wooden floor.
"Stop it!" he shouted from the confines of the cage. Real anger empowered his voice, making a weapon of it.