"I'm alright, sister," he assured her.
He embraced Keritanima, then took Miranda's hand gently as the Princess slapped him several times on the chest and shoulder. "Stop doing that to me!" she demanded. "What possessed you to run off and fight that thing alone?"
"You have no idea what it is and what it can do, Kerri," he told her seriously. "Leaving you behind probably saved your life."
"I think you think I can't carry my own weight," she said scathingly.
"Kerri, I wouldn't even let Allia fight that thing. What do you think that means for you?"
Allia gave him a penetrating look, and Keritanima laughed ruefully. "I hate being the low girl in this totem pole," she said to them.
"When I face it one on one, I know exactly what it's going to do. If I'd have had others with me, it would have been unpredictable. Trust me, sisters, the best way to go about it was to do exactly what I did."
"I guess we must bow to your experience in this matter, my brother," Allia said. "But I do not like it. You dishonor me by treating me like a child."
"No, sister, I'm keeping you alive," he told her. "It can't be hurt by weapons that aren't enchanted by magic. There's nothing you can really do against it other than be a target."
"I can defeat you without magical weapons," she snorted.
"I also feel pain, sister. That thing is already dead. It doesn't feel pain and it doesn't have any fear. I ripped its arm off, something that would stop almost anything else, and it didn't affect it any more than using harsh language. Kick me in the head, and I get stunned. Kick it in the head, and it'll turn around and cut out your liver."
"You have a point," she acceded.
"I'm sorry if I worried you, but I did what I did for all of us, not just for me," he explained.
"Your reunion, it is over, yes?" Renoit shouted at them from the stern. "Practice, my performers! There is only eight days to Shoran's Fork!"
"I'm going to-" Keritanima started with a growl.
"You're going to go practice," Tarrin cut her off. "I'll still be here tonight, sister."
"Alright," Keritanima chuckled.
Tarrin watched his sisters and friend go back to their practice, sighing a bit. He was just glad they were alright. He'd fight the Doomwalker fifty times in a row if it meant keeping those he held dear out of danger. He knew they'd all have to fight together at some point, but the longer that took, the happier he was.
Tarrin went the rail and stared out at the landline on the horizon, a greenish-brown strip near the horizon. He was still a little surprised that Triana had spared him. The look in her eyes, the complete emotionlessness of her stare, it had convinced him that she was going to stand there and watch him die, to make sure of it. But she had spared him. The Goddess said that what he had to say to Triana would decide whether he would live or die, and it had come true. He didn't remember what he said to her, but whatever it was, it had to have been effective.
He hated it. He didn't hate Triana. She was strong, commanding, and just the sight of her seemed to both terrify him and bring to him a strange pride. He knew she didn't hate him. She was just doing her duty. It was just like it was with Jesmind, but Jesmind had had a more intimate interest in him. He wanted to learn from Triana, to get to know her, but fate had cast them down on opposite sides of a line in the sand. He didn't want to fight the Fae-da'Nar, but he didn't have the time to stop and learn what they wanted to teach.
It had been a hard choice, but it really was no choice at all.
In a way, Fae-da'Nar and the Were-cats were a part of his family. Jesmind had been his bond-mother, responsible for him, then she had become something more. Part of him still yearned for her. It hurt in the strangest way to reject them, to force them to have to try to kill him. He had no animosity towards any of them, but they just wouldn't listen. They were all too stubborn, too wrapped up in their law to understand that it only took a little bending of it to make everything alright. Jesmind's pride had made them enemies, and now Triana's ferocious tenacity was doing the same. Nobody would listen to him, listen to his side in their dispute, and that both frustrated and saddened him.
To them, he was just a child. Perhaps that made them think that they knew what was best for him.
Jegojah was another matter. At least he understood what the Doomwalker was doing now. He would see it again. And again, and again. It would keep coming back until it finally destroyed him. Jegojah was an enemy, but again, there was a curious lack of hatred in him for it. It was a powerful fighter, cunning and highly skilled, and Tarrin had the oddest respect for his supernatural opponent. He wondered where it had come from, what it had done when it was alive to learn what it had learned.
Fighting the Doomwalker was going to be suicide. It was just too skilled with its weapons. They were nearly evenly matched now, because of the training he had received from Allia and Binter since the first battle between them. The law of averages said that it was just a matter of time until Jegojah won a match. And if it did, there wouldn't be another. Sorcery could affect it, so that had to be his primary focus. He had to get a handle on his power, to be able to use it. Even if only for a moment or two, long enough to be able to deal with Jegojah the next time they crossed swords. Tarrin would eventually run out of tricks, or run out of luck. He needed to even the battleground between him and the Doomwalker to gain the advantage. Tarrin's Sorcery was alot more powerful than Jegojah's magic. He knew it, it knew it. It was simple fact when he told it that if they both used magic, then the Doomwalker would lose.
That was going to be a long road to travel. He couldn't even touch the Weave anymore. It was like it was a living thing, and when it sensed him come into contact with it, it reacted to him, tried to smother him in its power. He couldn't handle the radical flood of magic for even a fraction of a second before it overwhelmed him. What he did to try to trick Jegojah had been everything he could do. It was the lightest contact with the Weave he could manage, and it took absolutely everything he had just to throttle it. If he'd tried to use Sorcery, he would have removed that single tentative block against the power, and it would have drowned him.
Right now, Sorcery was more deadly to him than Jegojah and Triana put together, if only because it was so easily at hand. He had to get a handle on it before it killed him.
Triana. How did she find him so fast? How did she get from Dayise to Tor as fast as a ship? That seemed impossible. If Dayise had been on the same land as Tor, it may have been possible. A Were-cat could run at nearly full speed all day, faster than any horse. But she'd have to get back to the mainland, and that would have taken time. It took a day for them to get from the islands back to within sight of the mainland, and that day would have made it impossible for Triana to cover the distance in that amount of time. How did she do it?
He'd have to ask her, if he could keep her civil long enough the next time he saw her. Putting his paws down and leaning on them, he stared absently at the landline, thoughts wandering in and out of the instinctual murmurings of the Cat.
The land was a long way off. It seemed strange to him now, knowing that they were out there. Enemies. Anyone who knew about the Firestaff was now an enemy to him. So many that he couldn't count, and if they were even partially in the loop when it came to intelligence, they'd know who he was and what it meant. That was a scary feeling, knowing beyond any doubt that half the world was after him. He'd known it before, but it was intangible, a feeling that though he knew it, perhaps it wasn't really true. Well, now he knew it was true, and it was like cold water thrown in his face. It would make a drunk man stone sober. And the ship, the ugly pink ship that had seemed so much the prison to him before, now it was his only sanctuary. The land was the prison now, where he would have to hide and protect himself. But on the ship, this ship, he could move about freely, without worry that someone was standing around a corner waiting to stick a silvered dagger in his back. The only thing they had to worry about were pirates, Zakkites, and the Wikuni, and it was very hard to get close enough to surprise them.