Laying his ears back, he bared his fangs and hissed at her for everything he was worth, a primal threat display in response to something that terrified the Cat within him. If Allia wasn't holding him, he would have shapeshifted right then and there, and probably would have attacked her immediately, but to do so would harm Allia, and he would never hurt his sister. He got his free paw out and extended his claws, taking a swipe at that hand as it reached for him, threatened him, and he tried to back out of Allia's arms so he could get down and flee.

"My goodness!" the Empress of Arak said in surprise, flinching away from him with surprise in her green eyes. Eyes that seemed to burn into his, eyes that had nothing but pure and unadulterated evil within them. Tarrin looked into those eyes, and he simply knew the truth about the Empress of Arak.

She wasn't human! he had no idea what she really was, but she wasn't human, she was no part of Fae-da'Nar, and she probably had no natural place on the face of Sennadar. That made her either an Outworlder or a Demon. By the total unnatural content of her scent, he thought her to be a Demon.

Tarrin growled at her, hissing again and holding out his paw to dissuade another attempt to touch him. "F-Forgive him, Empress of Arak," Allia said in total surprise. "He does not favor strangers, but I have never seen him do that before. You must have surprised him."

"Oh, goodness!" she said in a slightly vapid tone. "I hope I didn't scare the little dear. That simply wouldn't do."

"Many apologies."

"Oh, you don't have to do that," she said with a thin smile. "Accidents do happen." She looked down at him, and that lightheartedness evaporated from those eyes like smoke, and the penetrating power of her stare bored into his eyes. "Don't they, little kitty?"

It was almost hypnotic, her gaze was. It insinuated itself into his consciousness, laid itself over his will, seeking to smother it in a strange sort of need to please her. It was almost as if she had penetrated herself into his mind, whispering soundless words to him to woo him, to subvert his fear and his instinctual distrust of her. He felt his will corrupting, felt it loosen against her, but then his human mind realized that something outside of him was causing that strange sensation. That caused the Cat to roar back into his mind and attack that strange sense of lassitude like an enemy, exactly as it did when he attempted to Circle with other Sorcerers. Tarrin's dual mind joined in a common cause, lending him the power to eject the strange feeling, to eject her from his consciousness.

Tarrin shook his head to clear the disorientation, but more surprisingly, Empress Lika recoiled as if someone had stuck a live snake in her face. She looked at Tarrin with eyes that were filled with shock, with inconceivable surprise, and then she laughed. It was a hollow sound, a wicked little chuckle that made Tarrin's fur crawl. He put his ears back and growled at her again, a deep rumbling sound in his throat that was too deep to come from the throat a housecat.

"I think your little cat doesn't like me, Selani," Empress Lika said with a light laugh. "No matter. He'll learn to love me. Everyone does, sooner or later."

The strange undertone of her words made Tarrin look at her in surprise. She knew! She knew he had thwarted whatever it was she did, and she was telling him that she knew! And she was promising that it wouldn't be the last time she tried!

What was she?

She moved to catch up with her husband, but she left in her wake a very shaken Were-cat. She introduced something into this game that he never expected. The Empress of Arak was not what she appeared to be, and she knew that he was not what he appeared to be either. He was sure of it. Her will was so powerful, no normal cat could have resisted it.

He watched her walk away, and it made him cold. Somehow, he was sure that that wouldn't be the last time he and the Empress of Arak faced off against one another.

He was sure of it.

GoTo: Title EoF

Chapter 23

He really didn't know what to say, or how to say it.

Tarrin turned away from Allia in Renoit's tent and threw up his paws. She and Dolanna were grilling him about what had happened between him and the Empress, but he simply didn't have the answers to their questions. Tarrin was still visibly shaken by his meeting with the Empress. He was noticably pale, and his tail slashed behind him like a berzerker's sword. The fur on his arms was still standing straight up, and he was nervous, edgy, and extremely jumpy.

That scent. It still burned in his nose, hung inside it like an ooze, and he pawed at it ceaselessly to try to shake the memory of that scent loose. It was just ghastly. He never imagined anything could ever smell that way. It wasn't that the smell was overpoweringly putrid, it was the sense of absolute corruption that rested within it. Total evil. If evil had a smell, then that was it. That smell wouldn't fade from his nose, clung to his mind, and it made him feel like the woman was right behind him.

"She's not human," he declared bluntly. "She got close to me, and I could smell her. It was-" he shuddered. "It was like her scent was pure evil. It gives me the chills to just think about it. She reached out for me, and it was like an instant response. No animal would get within a longspan of her, Allia. That explains why I haven't seen very many birds around here."

"She seemed to imply that she had pets," Allia countered.

"She tried to, enslave me, sister," he bristled. "That's the only way I can explain it. She looked at me, and it was like her eyes were trying to bleed off my will. I could feel a part of her inside my mind, something like a Circle. If it wasn't for the fact that my mind instinctively rejects that kind of contact, she would have succeeded." He hugged himself a bit. He felt cold. "If she has pets, it's because she did that to them."

"Are you absolutely sure about this, Tarrin?" Dolanna asked intently. "You are talking about the Empress of Arak! She represents the paragon of Arakite purity! She was married to the Emperor for no reason other than to produce an heir!"

"She has red hair, Dolanna!" Tarrin shot back. "Doesn't that tell you that she's not Arakite?"

"She did not have red hair, Tarrin," Dolanna said, not a little confused. "Her hair was black."

"It was black, brother," Allia agreed.

"It was red," he said adamantly. "She had red hair and green eyes, just like-" he shivered again. "Just like Jesmind."

"This is not something over which I would usually disagree with you, dear one," Dolanna said, "but I know what I saw, and I felt no strange sensation from her."

"I did not like the look in her eyes, but I saw nothing unusual either, deshida."

"What color were her eyes, Allia?" Tarrin asked.

"Brown, but for a moment I thought that they looked a little different. I think it was because she had the sun in her eyes."

"That had nothing to do with the sun," Tarrin snorted.

"Tarrin, I understand your apprehension, but you should just let this go," Dolanna said. "She is the Empress. We are but visitors, nowhere near her notice. The odds are that you will never see her again. Why worry about who and what she is? It is none of our concern. Simply leave her be, and worry no more about it."

"I agree, my brother."

"On to another matter. Sarraya said that she was visited by a man in a black cloak last night, a man who knew who we were. Did you receive such a visitor?"

Tarrin put the Empress of Arak out of his mind for a moment. "I did," he replied. "He threatened to hurt Allia, so I killed him. It made me mad enough to forget sneaking around, too."

"What did he say?"

"He said that if we weren't with the circus when it left, then they'd hurt Allia. I didn't give him time to say anything else. I lost it right after I heard that."