"Whatever," Tarrin grunted. "Sarraya can Conjure you anything you need."

"I really need to learn how to do that," Denai laughed, holding the claw up to her sword, comparing them. "It must be very handy to make anything you want appear."

Tarrin ignored her. "We have to move. This thing is going to attract scavengers, and they may like their meat fresh."

"What about Sarraya?" Var asked.

"She can find me no matter where I am. She'll be fine."

They moved to a shallow valley about a longspan from the carcass, a valley abutted by the wall, a defensible position to await Sarraya's return. Var and Denai sat by the wall as Tarrin stood on the hilltop, watching out for any more surprises. They didn't wait for very long, for the Faerie appeared before him and landed lightly on his shoulder about an hour after they moved. "I saw the body. It looks like you had fun without me."

"That wasn't fun."

"It looks like you did it. Where were they?"

"Waist deep in a pond, splashing water at each other."

Sarraya laughed, then she hovered so she could look at him. "I'm impressed," she said seriously. "You protected them, Tarrin. That's pretty remarkable, coming from you."

"That wasn't protecting them," he said gruffly. "That thing was coming after me."

"Because you put yourself out where it would see you first, most likely," she said dismissively. "Rationalize it any way you want, Tarrin, but you can't hide the truth. You're protecting the Selani. I've seen you do it for days now, without making much of an issue of it."

Tarrin stared at her, but she just smiled at him. "You're losing your bite, you grumpy curmudgeon," she teased. "But as I recall, a long time ago, that's what you were trying to do. I think Triana would be proud of you."

Tarrin looked away from her, suddenly embarassed. And he had no idea why.

"Let's feed the masses, and then settle in. There are a lot of critters out there, and we'll be zigzagging quite a bit to avoid them. So we'd better leave at sunset. The most dangerous ones aren't nocturnal."

"Good plan," he said.

Tarrin hadn't thought of it, but he had to admit that it worked out perfectly.

Moving at night had been the perfect solution. With Tarrin scouting ahead and Sarraya leading the two Selani along the surprisingly dark canyon floor, they managed to traverse it without any major incidents. All the dangerous predators were sleeping, for they were cold-blooded, and couldn't operate after dark. The air was surprisingly warm, for the humidity there locked in the warmth radiating from the stone walls of the canyon, and the winds prevented the heat from radiating out. That kept the floor of the canyon very nice, like a summer night in Aldreth, and Tarrin found the journey across the floor to be almost pleasant.

The place was alot different at night. The towering walls blocked much of the sky, and that kept most of the light generated by the moons and Skybands out of the canyon itself. Tarrin's night-sighted eyes had no trouble seeing in the darkness, and the disappearance of the reptiles made the landscape seem almost like the grassy plains in the West. So much like them that it was easy to forget where he was, at least until he looked ahead of him and saw the longspan-high canyon wall approaching.

The reflection didn't really start until they got to the other side, and huddled by the wall to rest while Tarrin kept watch. Sarraya was right. Tarrin found that he liked Denai, and he could tolerate Var, and that had caused him to act in a protective manner. He was protecting them. Even though he still couldn't bring himself to be civil to Var, he would still act to protect him, and that confused the Were-cat. That was not his normal reaction. Usually he wouldn't care. But now it did matter to him that Var remained healthy, and he had no inkling as to why. Var meant nothing to him, but something inside him just wouldn't accept the idea of leaving the Selani in danger. Something human.

He had acted the same way before, with Sheba. He didn't care for Sheba, but he had prevented her from killing herself, even had healed her of her injuries. Out of impulse. Those impulses, long submerged under his ferality, were starting to reassert themselves, and that gave him a little hope for the future. They were human impulses, they were the remnants of his human morality trying to restore itself in his mind. He had swung about all the way he could towards the Cat, and now it seemed he was swinging back towards something of a center between his dual natures.

He was changing. He could admit that to himself. But what was causing it? The haunting of the eyeless face, had it literally frightened him into change? Had his proximity to Var and Denai, two strangers, begun to eat away at his suspicious nature? Or had the strength of his human side, so long dominated by the powerful instincts of the Cat, finally found a way to fight back against them?

Any of them could be the answer, but it left him in a bit of a quandry. He didn't like the idea of being moral. Killing people who got in his way was an expedient and efficient means of dealing with problems. The human in him didn't exactly approve of such behavior. Morality would cloud his world, and he didn't need any additional worries or confusion. It wasn't that he liked being monstrous, but in this dangerous game he was playing, getting hung up by an attack of moral consciousness could be a very bad thing. He was dealing with people who were utterly ruthless, willing to start wars and kill thousands to get what they wanted. He had to be capable of the same thing, or they would have an advantage over him. He welcomed the idea of not being so feral, but the idea that he would become a weak-hearted sop didn't rate highly with him. Mercy was for the weak, compassion was for the weak. They didn't fit in with his instinctual concept of the way things were.

More to the point, they didn't fit in with the Cat's concept of things. Triana and Jesmind both had told him, and he had told Jula, that it was the balance between human and Cat that mattered. Tarrin hadn't had that balance. His ferality had caused his Cat instincts to dominate his thinking. And as they had so long ago when he tried to abandon his human side, they had proved to be much more resilient and powerful than he realized. The human in him was proving that it was just as strong as the Cat, but in different ways.

He looked back at Var and Denai, who were both sleeping. He clearly identified both of his thoughts of them. The Human saw them as companions, even friends, and it sought to protect and nurture them. The Cat in him saw them as strangers, enemies-almost. Denai had even managed to worm her way into the Cat's good graces. It didn't particularly trust her, but it couldn't help liking her. It didn't want anything to do with them. They weren't his kind, they were weak, and they were a liability. It wanted to leave them behind.

It struck him as slightly odd. The Cat was a racist.

Not precisely a racist, he realized. It was a powerful creature, highly dignified, and with a strong sense of control. The weak submitted, the strong ruled. That was its law. Denai was no challenge to it, so it almost accepted her, as a submittant. But Var was another matter. The Cat saw Var as dangerous, a potential rival, and much as he had reacted to the Were-cat males he had met in Shoran's Fork, he reacted much the same way with Var. He realized that if the Cat clearly believed it was dominant, it would come to accept Var. It was why it had accepted Sarraya, Camara Tal, and Phandebrass. They all had submitted to him in one way or another, though in Camara Tal's case, it took quite a while.

Sometimes he overestimated that part of him. Sometimes it seemed more than primal, but time and time again he realized that the Cat in him was not smarter than it seemed. It was affected by his human intellect, but it still operated in basic, simple ways, and understanding those operations was the key to heading it off when it wanted to do something that the rest of him didn't want to do. It was and always would be an animal, no matter how long he lived or how smart he became. It would never change. Only its ability to affect his behavior would change.