Tarrin scoffed. "No," he said. "It probably took them a very long time to get those Trolls here. I seriously doubt that they could do it again. Not any time soon, anyway. If they stay on their little pattern, I have at least a ten-day before they try again."
"I don't see how you can be so calm about it," he said.
"I'm not," he said flatly. "But there's nothing else I can do, so it's best for me not to get myself worked up about it."
"Just be careful, Tarrin," Dar said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder.
"I intend to, Dar," he assured him. "I, I want to go out tonight," he said. "Can you leave the door open for me?"
"I guess," he said. "Want me to stay up?"
"No, just don't lock the door if you wake up," he replied. "I just want to get out a while without so many people watching me. It's almost creepy."
"I can understand that," he sighed. "Oh, they're giving me the Test next ten-day," he said.
"We already know how it's going to turn out," Tarrin said with a grin.
Dar grinned back. "I know, but it still has to be done," he said.
"Like it matters."
"They give it to you gifted ones too," he said.
"I've already taken it."
"This is a different test," he replied. "It gauges what spheres of Sorcery you're strong in. That way they know how and where to teach you."
"I didn't know that," Tarrin said, sweeping a fly off his back with his tail.
"I didn't until yesterday," he replied. "I managed to get an Initiate to explain it to me."
Tarrin shrugged. "It's still nothing to worry about," he said.
"I know," Dar replied.
The Keeper was walking towards them. "Uh oh," Tarrin said in a low voice. "Trouble off the port bow."
"Man the catapults," Dar quipped. Tarrin had to stifle a laugh. They stood respectfully as she approached, and it was quickly obvious that she meant to talk to them. They bowed as she stepped up before them. Tarrin noticed that the Keeper was only slightly taller than the fifteen year old Dar.
"Tarrin," she said.
"Keeper."
"I have a gift for you," she said tersely. "It was something that we didn't want to give to you until you reached the Initiate, but it seems that you can use it now." She reached into a pocket of her cream colored dress, and withdrew a shaeram, one made of some kind of black metal, but it wasn't steel. Tarrin knew the scent of steel. This was some other kind of metal, one he'd never smelled before. "It's been enchanted," she explained. "It'll let you change form without losing your clothes or anything in your hands. They'll go to some other place when you change, and come back when you change back. The shaeram itself will turn into a little metal collar when you're in your cat shape."
"Uh, thank you, Keeper," he said uncertainly, accepting the black metal amulet. It was surprisingly light, and the metal seemed both cold and warm at the same time.
"Let me help you put it on," she said, motioning for him to turn around.
He really couldn't deny her her request. He turned around and knelt so she could reach his neck easily, and she fastened the black metal chain of the amulet around his neck. He had the most peculiar feeling the instant she fastened it, but it faded so quickly that he doubted he felt anything at all. "Now let's have a look at it," she said, patting him on the side. He turned around and let her inspect the amulet, and then she smiled. "It looks nice on you," she said.
"Uh, thank you, Keeper," he said.
"Let's test it, make sure the weave was made right. Change shape, and then change back."
"Alright." He stepped away from them and willed himself into his other form. There was the customary blurring of vision, then he had a new point of view at the level of their shins. He sat down as the Keeper knelt beside him and put her hands on the delicate black metal collar now around his neck, a collar so close to the color of his fur that it was almost invisible. "No clothes," she told him. "The amulet did that part of its job. Alright, change back." When she moved away, he did so. And he was fully clothed, with the amulet around his neck.
"Excellent," she said, smiling. "The weave is working just fine."
Tarrin looked down, smiling. That solved the one problem he constantly had about changing his shape. It opened entire new levels of sneaking around for him. "Thank you, Keeper," he said sincerely. "This is an excellent gift." He already had plans. Little did the Keeper know, she'd just given him the opportunity he needed to do a little snooping. There were many, many cats on the Tower grounds, there to chase down the rats, or the cats that were personal pets. One more wouldn't attract much attention.
"I'm glad you like it," she said with a smile. "Oh, by the way, don't worry about what happened today. I'm going to see to it that it doesn't happen again," she said with a bit of steel in her voice.
"I won't," he replied civilly.
"Well, I won't keep you any longer," she said. "Enjoy the rest of your day." She looked up at the late afternoon sun. "What's left of it, anyway."
"That was nice of them," Dar said as the Keeper disappeared from view.
Tarrin held the amulet in his paw, looking down at it. It seemed…warm. "It's a welcome gift," he said sincerely. "I don't change form because I'll lose my clothes. This solves that problem. I'm going to have to start wandering around as a cat from now on. That way I won't attract as much attention."
"Probably not," he agreed. "There are cats all over the grounds."
"It'll also let them get used to not seeing me," he said with a wink.
"Oh," he said, winking back. "That could come in handy too."
"Just a bit."
Tarrin's "gift" had an unforseen side effect, one that very nearly caused him to go into a rage.
It wouldn't come off.
It was held on by magic, about that much he was positive. Though the chain was long enough to slip over his head, it would not. And there wasn't a clasp anymore anywhere on the chain; it was a continuous chain all the way around. He'd ripped off a good amount of his own skin struggling to remove the amulet, and he'd worked himself up into such a frenzy that both Allia and Dar had to work together to calm him down.
Like the rest of his kind, Tarrin had a nearly phobic fear of being trapped or captured. The fastest way to set him off was to put him in a cage, where the Cat was imprisoned, and its desperate need to be free caused it to all but overwhelm the human half. It was that instinctive reaction that had caused Jesmind to go berzerk in Torrian and kill so many people during her escape. The amulet necklace was no cage, but it was a collar, a symbol of his imprisonment. They may have well put a leash on him. To be subject to the will of another was so against the very nature of the Cat that it seemed alien to Tarrin's human half as well. They were fiercely independent creatures, and the amulet represented a limitation, a stricture on that freedom that he couldn't deny. Just thinking about it got his blood seething, and he felt the almost overpowering need to break things.
He stalked about in a white-faced fury for the entire day, and people avoided him like Death herself. He had an entire bench to himself during breakfast. Even Allia and Dar were afraid to get too close to him. The setting for the day was when he woke up, and the door latch stuck as he was trying to get out. Without hesitating, Tarrin ripped the door off the hinges and threw it into the hall, nearly startling Dar out of his wits and sending two Novices running for cover. Elsa had tried to confront him about the door after breakfast, but one look at his face made her blanch and back away. Nothing was taught in his classes that day, since the instructors were too busy jumping every time Tarrin so much as twitched. A guard tried to stop him from leaving the Tower after lunch, and Tarrin left the man groaning with both arms and legs broken and his pike tied in a knot around his waist. He spent the whole afternoon pacing through the city, heedless of the fact that Novices weren't allowed off the Tower grounds, wandering aimlessly and not paying attention to anything. The gate guards had tried to stop him too, but after Tarrin had nailed one of them to the gatehouse with a dagger through each forearm, and hurled another into the magical fence, the others wisely got out of his way. They seemed to realize that he was keeping himself from killing anyone, but he had absolutely no reservations over hurting them. He walked right over more pedestrians than could be easily counted, and had overturned three carts and killed two horses that refused to get out of his way. Eventually a contingent of the city guard was dispatched. Not to detain him, but to clear the path in front of him. The fact that he wandered with absolutely no set pattern or goal made it very hard for them.