clumsily tied his hands and feet.
Hestia was left unbound, braced by two scouts, as Ruko ordered, 'Stand fast, Hestia, daughter of Grapter! Interfere not in tribal justice!'
'Justice!' Jedit Ojanen raged and thrashed in the enveloping net, almost incoherent. 'What kind of justice- Aargh! — do you call ambush!'
'Scream your lungs out, Jaeger's son.' Ruko settled his blue turban and picked up his wurm-tooth spear. 'Your mother also cast a vote to capture you.'
That fact silenced the fighter. The two prisoners, with Hestia under guard, were toted back into the village slung on long poles like dead deer. The entire populace awaited them, scores of tigers waiting with the council before the scorched ruins of the common hut. Jedit and Johan were laid on the hardpack of the village square. Ruko and his scouts stood back respectfully but watched the prisoners.
Johan tucked his feet and sat up. He had no fear for his life and was curious to see this new interaction. Anything he could learn about these cats, especially their decision making, would aid him later.
'Mother,' snarled Jedit, twists of net snagging his muzzle and whiskers, 'why this betrayal?'
'No betrayal, my son.' Musata's voice was calm and cold, a village elder fulfilling an unpleasant duty. Only the quaver of a mother's tears underlay her words. 'We act for the good of the tribe. While you wandered with the manling Johan, we searched our hearts and beseeched Terrent Amese for an answer. I was granted a vision, a glimpse of prophecy-'
'None, One, and Two?' Despite himself, Johan blurted the question.
Glowing amber-green eyes fixed on the man. 'Yes. 'When None, One, and Two clash, only Two shall remain to usher in a new age.' '
What? thought Johan, but kept his face blank. In his stronghold far away, he'd heard the prophecy differently, put more simply. Now, closer to the source, he learned additional information. Two shall clash? And Two usher in a new age? The same Two? How so? Stunned by the news, Johan's mind reeled, so he barely caught the next news, a threat.
'Little matter.' The crowd stirred as Musata went on. 'You shall not see that fabled day, manling. We sense your discontent. Eventually you would depart to tell other men of our secret homeland. We heed the warnings of ancient history, of law, even of prophecy. All tell how the workings of men bring evil to our people. Thus will you be executed at moonset. Neither my son nor Hestia will interfere.'
Jedit's answer was a howl so horrific the elders jumped back. Some tigers glanced around, wondering if their representatives had made the right decision. Yet no one spoke up. Still raging, Jedit was hauled away.
Johan remained icy calm but again smoldered with anger as he was hoisted like a prize pig and lugged to his wooden cage perched on stilts. Stripped of his bonds, he was clapped inside. The lock was a stout green stick too strong for a man to pull free. Standing on wooden bars nine feet off the ground, Johan ground his teeth. Ever since arriving in this uncharted valley, he'd been treated like an animal. As Tyrant of Tirras, he had treated every living thing like an animal, as if they existed only to serve him, and he'd snuffed out anyone who opposed or displeased him. To be treated the same way galled him.
No matter. He knew almost everything about this valley, about its savage striped inhabitants, their exact numbers and weaponry and customs. He'd even gleaned more of the benighted prophecy. He had enough. Time to leave, so he might return and conquer. That the mage was imprisoned in a stout cage and watched by twin guards didn't matter.
The cage stood in a small clearing not far behind the common hut, which had somehow burned. Before, curious tigers had been allowed to gawk, but now two guards shooed them away, even piled slash and brush to hide the man from sight. Showing respect for a condemned criminal, no doubt. Two scouts paced in a curious rhythm, one circling thirty feet out, the other marching back and forth under Johan's feet. Other scouts had gone elsewhere, likely to patrol near the berserker Jedit.
All to the good, thought Johan. Rubbing his charming crystal against his forehead to appear humble and harmless, the mage struck.
'Guards.'
Pacing tigers glanced upward.
'Both of you come close,' said the magician evenly. 'I have something to say.'
Unworried, the scouts in blue headbands and loincloths and carrying wurm-toothed spears approached the wooden cage, their heads almost level with Johan's bare feet.
In that curious antique accent, one scout asked, 'What say you, manling?'
Johan squatted as if to whisper. Tigers leaned closer. The mage flicked a hand as if brushing a fly. 'Die.'
The scouts recoiled too late. Johan could have killed them in a dozen ways, but this method both rendered them harmless and silenced them instantly. Both scouts clutched their throats and gargled a whimper. Their necks ceased to exist. Two heads were drawn into bodies like turtles until chins rested on chests. Too, the tigers' heads spread sideways, melting like candles. Clawed paws elongated and fused into two fingers that turned into dark spikes. Their bodies bloated, swelling like ticks full of blood, until their loincloths split off. Orange stripes on their sleek hides grew dark and merged with black stripes, then turned shiny and iridescent. Both guards gasped in pain and fell as their sides split to disgorge extra legs, while their existing limbs curled and withered and darkened like tree branches.
Johan too was changing. He hissed in agony as his form expanded and split and shriveled all at once. When, half-crazed by pain, he toppled to the barred floor of the cage, he clattered like a coin dropping on a table. Feebly he kicked stick-legs and thrashed as a white-hot searing burned his body like firebrands. Valiantly Johan struggled to maintain his sanity and wits, for he must escape once fully transformed.
Slowly, after seeming weeks of prickly pain, Johan's wracking subsided. Opening his eyes, he found the world reproduced a hundred times in tiny facets like a diamond. Images of jungle and wooden bars swirled, a hundred pictures moving in unison, a dizzying sensation. Experimenting, Johan moved three arms and found he could stand, then crawl. Poised on six legs, he tried to turn his head but could not, for he had no neck, just a gleaming black skull jointed to a glistening carapace.
Johan had become a beetle. A giant insect five feet long. Good. That suited.
Scuttling awkwardly, crawling on thin but strong legs braced on wooden bars, Johan scooted until his mandibles bumped wood. His beetle's jaws were almost a foot long and hard as blacksmith's tongs. Swinging his bulky head back and forth, Johan attacked the first wooden bar. Squeezing his jaw, he snipped green wood as easily as cutting a daisy. Shuffling sideways, he plied his crushing mandibles to snip the next bar and the next. A few more and — With a lurch, drop, and thud, Johan was free, dumped on the dirt beneath the prison cage. Tucking his legs close, Johan reached into his mental library and, mandibles wiggling, recited a disenchantment. Immediately he was wracked by more pain, but this agony was offset by the delicious sense of relief that the spell worked. The odds were small but real that, transformed into a non-speaking creature, he could never utter the reversal spell.
Since he was returning to his original form, the transformation went quicker. Within minutes Johan could sit up, roll to all fours, and stand, whole but shaken. Blinking, glad for normal vision and not a hundred refracted images, the sorcerer cast about to see if anyone witnessed his escape.
All was quiet except for the wasp-buzz of the tigers on the square. Both transformations had taken only a few minutes.
Johan looked for his twin guards. One huge beetle, black with only the vaguest stripes for decoration, twirled aimless circles not far away. Another beetle had driven itself into a thick bush as if to hide. Six legs scrambled stupidly to push deeper. Coolly, the mage picked up a fallen wurm-tooth spear and stabbed the circling beetle at the joint of head and carapace. Stricken, the insect collapsed then died as Johan twisted. Stepping, Johan drove the gory spear into the other beetle's soft hind end, ramming the shaft forward until the wurm tooth lodged in the head. That beetle twitched and stopped digging, then lay quietly.
Dusting his hands, Johan strode into the jungle along a rude path faintly outlined by tiger hair at the tips of branches. Once the village was left behind, so only darkness and the cool night air accompanied him, Johan turned.
West.
