The Cat had nearly driven him mad, and now the Tower itself was trying to finish the job.
Oh, it wasn't the Tower itself, it was the situation. Tarrin was living in fear, and if he were human, it may be something that he could deal with. But he had the Cat with him now, and the Cat was changing Tarrin's usual reactions to such things. What was the danger now was Tarrin's conscious mind, because he would make the decisions that would turn him into a ruthless monster.
Blinking, she settled the shirt over her lean stomach, then marched deliberately for the door that adjoined Tarrin's room with the Selani's. She knew the Selani was awake, and was fully aware of what was going on. And the Selani didn't disappoint. She stood near her own door in the small room, wearing nothing but a nightshirt, and holding two slender swords in her hands. Her look was one of grim determination, and it seemed to Jesmind that she had been torn between charging in there and saving Tarrin from her, or trusting in Tarrin's judgement and not interfering.
Jesmind would need that trust.
It was something that, unfortunately, she could do little to help him with aside from taking him out of the Tower. But she couldn't do that now. Things had changed, and taking him back was no longer an option. She couldn't force him, and she was in no condition to fight. She had only one thing to say to the Selani, which she did as the woman stared defiantly at her. "I'm leaving," she told her bluntly. "Watching him is now your responsibility. Keep him alive, Selani. If you let him get killed, I'm going to hunt you down and take your hair for a bellpull."
And then she left the Selani before she could respond.
Creeping through the north tower in the dead of night, the female Were-cat avoided guards and Sorcerers with an ease that would make the greatest master thief envious. She crept across the Tower grounds and entered the main Tower itself, her delicate nose following a faint scent trail set down some hours before. It was faint and deeply covered by a multitude of other scents, but her exceptionally sensitive sense of smell followed that smell of human and lavender and silk and ivory quite easily. She moved in utter silence, her large padded feet making not even a whisper of sound on the stone of the floor, her white fur seeming to absorb the darkness and merge with the shadows created by the glowglobes. She flitted from shadow to shadow, hallway to hallway, moving through the Tower like a ghost, raising not a whisper of sound or flicker of motion to alert those that moved around her, totally oblivious to her passing.
In all the Tower, there was but one human that Jesmind would even come close to trusting. She reached that person's door not long after entering the Tower, using a single claw to throw the latch and entering the small, elegantly appointed room of the human woman that had taken in her cub in her absence and protected him as best she could.
Dolanna's eyes opened when Jesmind's shadow fell over her, blocking the light from the small window that let the cool air of the waning summer into the room. Those large, dark eyes betrayed no fear, and the Sorceress made no overt moves. She simply stared up at Jesmind with calm eyes, assessing the Were-cat's motives. Not much could rattle the Sorceress, Jesmind had come to discover over the months of watching her cub from the shadows.
"And what brings you past my door at this hour?" Dolanna asked in a calm voice.
"Don't push it," Jesmind told her. "I still can't believe that I'm doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Trusting one of you," she spat. "But my cub trusts you, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt."
"And what, may I ask, would you need my trust for?" she asked calmly and to the point.
"Something is going on," she said bluntly in reply. Dolanna sat up as she looked down at her, those large, dark eyes calm and attentive. "The Tower wants something out of him, Sorceress. It's so obvious, even he has noticed it."
"You give little credit to him," she said.
"Oh, I give him alot more credit than you think," she retorted, "but Tarrin's a backwater country boy thrown into a viper pit. He's not used to seeing intrigue and backbiting, and it is credit to say he's noticed something that he's really never seen before."
"I stand corrected," Dolanna replied mildly. "And why does this bring you to my door?"
"Because there's alot more going on here than just some errand that Tarrin can run for the Tower," she said. "Tarrin made mention of the fact that they brought Allia and the little Wikuni in as well, and all three of them seem to have alot of attention from the Keeper and the Council of Seven."
"I have noticed that, yes," Dolanna agreed. "I think it is because the difference in culture demands that all three of them be given close scrutiny."
"No," Jesmind snorted. "They're collecting them for a reason, and they don't seem to be too picky about how they get them."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember when you caught me?" she asked. "Remember that collar that was around my neck?"
Dolanna nodded, and her eyes were beginning to look troubled. "It was magical in nature," she said. "You were being controlled."
"That's right," she spat. "And it was a Sorcerer that put that damned thing around my neck."
"How do you know this?"
"All of my kind have a touch of Druidic magic in us," she replied. "Some more than others. My own Druidic power rates about at the level of pond scum, but I can tell the difference between a Priest's chant, a Mage's spellcasting, and a Sorcerer's weaving. I tell you right now, woman, that one of you put that collar on me. One of you set me loose in Tarrin's bedchamber. I don't know if they wanted him dead or just wanted him to be Were, but there was no accident about it. I remember specifically being sent after him. I rather think that they wanted him dead, myself. That he survived was a stroke of the wildest luck. When he turned Were, they just added him to the other two. An added bonus."
Dolanna was quiet for a moment. "Why do you bring this to me?"
"Because only a fool wouldn't know that something's going on," she said. "Since I think that whoever caught me sent me to kill him, it makes me wonder why half of you Sorcerers want to train him, and the other half want him dead." She crossed her arms and looked down at Dolanna grimly. "I know you, Sorceress. My cub is alive because of you. I know that you are very attached to him. Well, I have to leave, so I won't be here to protect him anymore. So you have to find out what's going on, and protect him from whoever's trying to get rid of him."
"You are aware of much more than I expected," she said with a sigh. "I happen to know that Tarrin is indeed being trained for a very special task. I do not know what this task is, but I have been given instruction from the Keeper herself that he is to be trained as quickly as humanly possible. As to the attacks on him, that I do not know. I do know that the Keeper somehow knows who is behind it, but she would never share such knowledge with me. I am not, as they say, in the inner circle. My involvement in this begins and ends with Tarrin."
"So, the Tower wants him alive, and someone else inside the Tower wants him dead," Jesmind surmised. "Now, the big question is why. What makes my cub so important?"
"His power, probably," Dolanna said. "I tell you this, Jesmind. That boy is the most powerful Sorcerer I have ever seen. When he is trained, his raw power will be unrivalled on this world. It would take a full Circle to stop him. My guess is that he is being trained to undertake a mission that only someone with his power could complete."