"Don't congratulate me," he told her. "I didn't do it."
She chuckled. "Guess not. What's it like?"
"It's not all that bad," he told her. "But I have the Cat inside my head too. He kinda came with the body. Sometimes, sometimes I have trouble controlling it. When I get mad, or I'm in a fight." He cut himself off. "Let me show you around," he said. "The gardens here are very pretty."
He took them on a tour of the grounds, introducing them to Faalken and the Knights, then showing the the huge garden behind the north Tower, where the hedge maze was. Tarrin enjoyed it immensely, feeling the worries of the last month flow away at the touch of his parents' hands, or the bright laughter of his sister. They walked around the garden five times, then sat down on one of the marble benches. "We've decided to stay here, Tarrin," Eron told him.
"Stay?" he repeated. "But the farm-"
"Tarrin," Eron said. "Don't worry about the farm."
"But it's our home, father," he said.
"It's not anymore," Elke said quietly.
"What happened?"
"Not long after the Sorcerer arrived to train Jenna, the village was attacked by Dargu," she told him. "We were all in the village that day. Emiris, the man sent by the Tower, gave his life to defend the village. He managed to make them turn and run, even with two arrows sticking out of his chest. He died with honor," she said with respect in her voice. "When we got back to the farm, there wasn't much left. They missed the underground rooms, but everything else was burned to the ground. Instead of rebuilding, we decided to bring Jenna closer to the tower, and we thought that with us close by, it may make you feel more at home here." She patted his paw. "So we packed up everything we could and came here. When you leave the Tower, we'll go back home and rebuild. Maybe," she said. "I rather like it here, and Eron's starting to get a bit restless out there in the forest. I think a couple of years in the city will be good for him. And the Sorcerers said they'd see if they couldn't fix his limp," she added with a smile.
"I'm used to it now," he said mildly.
"True, but you'd be more fun to chase around the bedroom if you weren't so easy to catch."
Tarrin laughed, and Eron flushed a bit. He figured that it was his exposure to his mother that made him relate so well with Allia, and at one time, with Jesmind. They all three were very much alike.
"I'll miss the old farmhouse," Tarrin sighed, "but I guess it's not all that important."
"No, not really," Elke replied. "What matters is that we're still a family, no matter where we are."
"Amen," Eron said.
They ate dinner that night in the same private room where he'd met them, and they all sat around the table and talked for quite a while. The Dargu attack had been sudden, but only a very few houses were damaged, and though there were casualties, they had been light. Only three men had been killed, all of them men Tarrin didn't know very well, who lived to the northeast of the village. The Kael farm, the Sain farm, and the Ubara farm had been burned down, and a few fires in the village itself from burning arrows were just about it. Tarrin marveled at the change in his home village, how it had always been so peaceful and quiet. Now, two attacks in so many months. It was as if the entire world were starting to get unsettled.
But the villagers would cope. Elke respected them a great deal, though she didn't show it, because they were strong. It took a special kind of people to live in a frontier village, where danger could show itself at any moment. The fact that Aldreth saw alot of Dals come down from the mountains, and even the occasional Forest Folk wander in from the Frontier, made them a bit more cosmopolitan than normal backwater villages, and it gave them a tolerance for things that weren't "home". They were a rugged people.
"What have you seen so far, Tarrin?" Eron asked.
"Not much," he chuckled. "I've been in the Tower almost all the time I've been here. I came in the middle of the night like a thief, and sight-seeing wasn't on my mind. I-" he stopped abruptly, turning in his seat. Jesmind's scent was touching him, and it made his ears instantly go back. He had no doubt that she was listening, and in an instant, he realized that if she could use his family to draw him off the Tower grounds. That filled him with a sudden icy rage, so sudden that the Cat roared up from the dark place in his mind and very nearly seized control.
"What's the matter?" Elke asked.
He put up his paw to hush her, and he reached out with his formidable senses. Her scent was her cat-scent, and it was wafting in from the window. He stood up, oblivious to the strange looks his family was giving him, padding on silent feet towards the window.
He had no choice now. To protect his family, Jesmind had to die.
"Get out of the room," he said in a cold, tightly controlled voice.
"What?"
"Get out!" he shouted, as his hand lashed through the window and closed over fur. He drew his hand in, and whipped the white cat across the room. Jesmind yowled in shock and surprise as she sailed through the air, which turned into a screech when she slammed into the far wall with enough impact to chip the stones. Jesmind changed form, blurring into her human-like shape on her hands and knees, her eyes wide, and sudden fear glowing in them.
Utter, total rage boiled through Tarrin's mind as he charged forward, picking up the table and sending his family tumbling in every direction. Jesmind seemed frozen in place, then she suddenly tried to spring out of the way as Tarrin levelled the table at her, but it was too late. He slammed the table into her, as it shattered from the impact, and for a moment she was pinned between the remains of the table and the wall, crying out in pain, until she got a leg up and put a foot on the table, then pushed it away. "Tarrin!" she gasped hurriedly, "I'm not here to fight! Tarrin!"
But Tarrin was beyond any mere words, and one look into his eyes told her that. There was nothing rational left in his eyes. She ducked under when he swung the table pedestal at her, her claws ripping the muscles in his arm and making him drop it. But instead of pressing, Jesmind backed away, quickly, backing straight towards the window.
She never saw it coming.
Eron stepped up behind her and smashed a table fragment into the back of her head, and she crumpled like a rag doll.
Yet that wasn't enough. Tarrin was on top of her in the span of a heartbeat, kneeling over her with one paw on her chest to hold her down, the other rising with claws out to finish her off. She put both her paws on his wrist, weakly trying to push him away, but her eyes were unfocused and she had no strength in her arms.
"Tarrin!" Elke gasped in shock. She grabbed his wrist with both hands. "You can't! She's defenseless!"
Tarrin yanked suddenly, sending Elke reeling, but she would not let go. "No!" she barked at him. "Tarrin!"
He rose up off of Jesmind and smashed Elke against the wall, her feet dangling half a span off the floor, holding her up by the paw she held in her grip, as the other paw reared back, claws out. Her stunned look of terror did not register to him. At that instant, she was not his mother, she was an enemy, someone trying to stop him.
He didn't know what would have happened, had Eron not smashed him in the back of the neck with the table leg. The blow made him let go as he gasped in pain, staggering back. The blow knocked some sense back into him. Jenna was crying hysterically. Elke Kael was wheezing for breath, and Eron was just beside him, ready to hit him again should do anything untowards.
Tarrin looked up, and he realized what had almost happened. He had very nearly killed one of the most important people in his life. "What have I done?" he said in a voice filled with self loathing.
He had almost killed his mother.
He stepped back, putting his paws to his face, bending over to hide from the shame and agony of it.
He had almost killed his mother.
Everything he had ever feared had come to pass. He was losing control of himself, becoming the monster that he appeared to be. Not even his own family was safe around him any more. He would have killed Jesmind, and he would have killed Elke, had his father not stopped him.