Of course I did, she said with a choral giggle. But it seems to make you feel better if I pretend to ask about things I already know, rather than bowl you over with them.
"Thanks," he said dryly. "Goddess-that sounds so impersonal," he grunted. "But maybe I should be more formal. You are a goddess, after all."
Let's not start that again, she warned in a dangerous voice. You know how I feel about frivilous platitudes. It's how you feel in your heart that concerns me, not how silly you can make yourself look for my benefit.
He looked into the sea, quiet and brooding.
I know, she said gently. You should have expected it, my kitten. You're a being of the wild, trapped on a seagoing ship. It's only natural that you'd start wondering why you're here, and doubting what you're doing. I don't blame you for it, because I know your heart. You won't abandon me. I count on that.
"It's more than that," he sighed. "I'm just not the same person anymore. I've turned into everything I feared I become. Even more."
It's necessary, she said gently. It's a process of discovery. You've only been Were for about six months, kitten. You haven't discovered what that means to yourself yet, and being on these ships isn't helping you. But there's nothing I can do about that. All I can tell you is that no matter how much you feel that you've lost yourself, you will always have the power to decide what you want to be. It may not be an easy road to travel, but there's nothing stopping you from trying.
"I know. It's just so hard sometimes. Sometimes, I feel like I should go back to Suld and gut the Keeper for doing this to me. I should have killed her."
No, she said sternly. The Keeper had no choice. She was acting on my orders.
"Your orders? You made them do this to me?" he asked in shock, his entire moral and religious foundations beginning to buckle dangerously.
Yes, I did, she replied calmly, almost challengingly. And the reason you are so weak is the very reason why.
"What do you mean?"
Kitten, you are a Weavespinner. Maybe now you appreciate more fully what that title means.
Tarrin blinked. She was right. The title wasn't some archaic, ambiguous term, it was a literal description.
That's right. You have the power to create and destroy strands of the Weave. It's a very rare gift, something that even the Ancients didn't see very often. My children may remember the title, but they had no inkling of what to do with you. They trained you like a normal Sorcerer, because they didn't know any better. They didn't realize that when they did that, they would have signed your death warrant.
"What do you mean?" he asked in confusion.
Weavespinners are so strong in the Weave that they can't survive being in direct contact with it, the way that Sorcerers contact it to draw power. Had you remained mortal, were you still human, the instant that Jegojah pushed you into the Heart, it would have incinerated you. Your Were body, with its inhuman endurance and ability to regenerate, was the only reason you survived. And if it wouldn't have been him, it would have been something else. The first time you would have touched High Sorcery, it would have Consumed you. Being what you are is the only reason you can survive it.
So, my kitten, I had you changed. It was a simple matter of keeping you alive. You may hate it, and you'll probably hate me for it, but there are some things that we all must do that we don't like.
Tarrin turned that over in his mind several times. That the being he looked upon as his patron deity had been at the center of his life's greatest turmoil shocked him to the core, but the logical part of his mind couldn't refute her explanation. Pragmatism seemed to be a universal compulsion. To save his life, she had ordered him turned Were. And he had survived. He was still struggling with those consequences, but as his mother would say, life was an opponent, to be challenged and battled. There was a little sense of betrayal, but it came from the childish part of him that still believed in happily ever after.
"You're right, I hate it. But I can understand it," he said after a long moment, in an emotionless tone. "But couldn't you have found something a little less… traumatizing? I may not feel so alienated if I was a Were-wolf instead."
There was nothing else, she replied. Were-cats are the only breed of Were-kin that would have suited.
"Why?"
It goes back to the Breaking, kitten. Were-cats are much different than other Were-kin, and it's much more than skin deep. It happened to them in the Breaking. The next time you see Triana, ask her about it. She was born just after it happened, and she can explain some of it to you. Anyway, after the Were-cats were changed, they were like you are now. But what most outside of Fae-da'Nar don't know is that it gave the Were-cats some enhanced abilities compared to other Were-kin. Were-cats retain their inhuman strength, speed, agility, senses, and their power of regeneration in any form, where in other Were-kin they only receive those gifts in their hybrid form. It's the gift they receive in exchange for losing the ability to hold the human shape without pain. It's also one of the reasons the other Were-kin resent Were-cats. Only a Were-cat's body is suited to resist High Sorcery. Using any other Were body would have still killed you.
Tarrin considered that. It was a bit surprising. Jesmind had said that Were-cats were different, but it seemed that even she didn't understand the truth about their condition. He wondered why that would make the other Were-kin resentful.
Because they're a little jealous, the Goddess answered.
"But they can take the human shape."
So can you, if you're willing to endure the discomfort. The only thing the Were-cats really lost was the ability to stay human for extended periods of time.
"What caused them to change?" he asked curiously.
The Breaking did more than kill mages and Sorcerers, and make magical objects explode, she replied. It also affected some species with ties to magic, like Were-cats. The Were-cat condition is something of a side-effect of the Breaking, an alteration brought about by the shift in magical power. A mutation, in a word.
"What does that word mean?" he asked.
It's a rather technical term for when a child born of parents doesn't look like the parents, she explained. I'm not talking about just facial features or hair color either. Imagine if all human babies born after this moment had four arms instead of two. That's a mutation. That's what happened with the Were-cats. All children born after the Breaking were like you and Jesmind and Triana.
"If they were born changed, what happened to the parents?"
They're all dead, she replied, a bit sadly. They tried to raise their children, but they were very different from their parents. The original Were-cats were very benign and domestic, where their changeling offspring were wild and grounded very much in their instincts. That made the parents afraid of them, so they branded the Were-cat offspring to be Mal-de'Kii, or Children of Darkness. The same title given to vampires, lamias, and other exotic creatures that prey on humans. The parent Were-cats then tried to kill their children, deciding to reproduce by biting humans, to infect them with the same type of lycanthropy that they had. Humans bitten by these elder Were-cats became the same type of non-mutated Were-cat. By then, these changeling children were old enough to defend themselves, and there was a merciless war between the changelings and the original Were-cats. It ended when the changelings wiped out their elders, replacing them in Fae-da'Nar as the new Were-cat society.
"That's horrible!" Tarrin gasped.
Yes, but it was a matter of survival, she replied gently. As a Were-cat, I think you understand how savagely a Were-cat will fight to protect its life. Tarrin was forced to nod in agreement there. There was no other way. I don't think that the changelings wanted to take it that far, but even one elder Were-cat had the power to bite humans to increase their numbers, then come after them again. So they decided to exterminate them all. It may be sad, but not everything in life or history is all light and sunshine.