kilt borrowed from the playhouse wardrobe. It was loose enough to fall away when his hips grew long and narrow, but for now it provided a slight modesty. His hands lay open upon his thighs, and his head drooped slightly as he held his eyes closed and listened.
'Now lean back and float. Let the water hold you up. You can still hear the surf as the waves gently carry you deeper.'
Feena sat on a stool near the cage. He had asked her to stay farther back, but she had ignored his request. Whatever else she might be, the cleric was not afraid of him in any form.
Tal tried to let his mind drift with the imaginary currents. Feena had decided that water was the best focus for him after listening to his descriptions of his previous transformations.
'The sea is a reflection of the moon,' she explained, 'moving with Selune's own passage, just as you do, just as everyone does.'
'Every nightwalker, you mean.'
'No, every living creature responds to the moon in some way. Men are simply less sensitive to her passing. That makes it harder for you to learn to ride the moon.'
Tal began to object, but then he realized the truth of what she was saving.
'Is that why most clerics of Selune are women?' he asked.
'Part of the reason,' Feena answered, nodding. 'It's easier for a woman to learn how to ride the moon. For you, who haven't felt the passage of the moon all your life, it helps to think of something like the tide. Imagine yourself as part of the sea, ebbing and flowing with the moon.'
And so he tried exactly that as he and Feena sat in the basement of his tallhouse, but he found it far harder than he had expected. Troubling thoughts continued to intrude on his meditation. Some of them were the lingering suspicions he harbored about Feena's motives for helping him, and Dhauna Myritar's for sending her to Selgaunt when she and Maleva lived so far away. It made sense to send someone who had fought against nightwalkers for so long, but he suspected the greater appeal was the opportunity to study one closely.
The thought made him feel paranoid and ungrateful at the same time, but it was hard to set aside his doubts.
Even worse were his concerns about Chancy, who had had become increasingly scarce since the journey to Moon-shadow Hall and Feena's subsequent return to Selgaunt. Feena joked that he was jealous that Tal had given her the guest room that Chaney had occupied so frequently before. Tal suspected the truth involved Chaney's criminal associates. He no longer deluded himself into thinking that his friend's problems were confined to a gentleman's wager or a social dispute. Somehow he had gotten himself into real trouble with Selgaunt's underworld, and Tal's interference had only made things worse. Finally, Tal's persistent questions had driven off his only close friend.
'You aren't focusing,' said Feena. 'You'll drown if you let yourself become distracted.'
'Drowning' was the word Tal used to explain the helpless sensation he felt the first several times he underwent the change. It was an apt description, agreed Feena, but the trick was not to resist the sensation of an intruding force. It was the draw of the moon, and it was as much a lure as an invasion. Those who let it pull them only so far from their own minds could establish equilibrium. They could remain conscious during the transformation and afterward, and with training retain control of their animal selves.
'When the waves wash over you, don't struggle. The goal is not to swim but to float. Try not to listen to my words, just hear them and imagine floating on the sea. Think of the vast, dark water gently rocking you.'
With an effort not to make an effort, Tal finally relaxed enough to hear her words without thinking about them. It was a state of mind he reached only while fencing, when for brief moments he could obey Master Ferrick's instructions without knowing he'd heard them. Soon Feena's words dissolved into the images he had practiced forming.
He felt himself floating in warm water, the tide gently tugging him first away from and toward a shore he could sense but not see. Each wave that pulled him farther from land was stronger than the one that pushed him back, and each time he felt slightly farther from his surroundings, even his own body.
Gradually he floated out to sea, the distant shush of the surf growing fainter as he went. The waves grew stronger, raising him high before dropping him back below the surface. He tried to remain calm as he rose back to the surface, but he felt smothered and restrained. A sharp pain twisted his back. He gasped for air but felt no relief.
Opening his eyes, he saw only a dim yellow light on the other side of the bars. A human voice spoke to him from beyond the lamp, but he could not understand its words. Standing, he felt the clothing fall away from his transformed body, rough straw and hard iron bars beneath his paws. A hundred strange smells competed for his attention. They were all familiar, but he could not think of their names. One in particular called to him, a musky odor similar to the smell of his own body but far more alluring.
'Tal,' said the voice.
It was a sound he should recognize, he thought briefly, but he was more interested in the scent. He moved toward it and found the bars. He was too big to press between them, so he turned to find another path. He turned and turned again, finding nothing but the narrow spaces.
The other animal kept speaking, low and urgent. He felt the sounds should mean something, but they were unimportant. It was the borders that vexed him. He could not stay trapped. He would not stay trapped.
He called out for help, and a voice answered. It told him to stay, to remain calm, but it was not trapped as he was, and it would not help him.
He forced his head between the bars and pushed. They would not yield. He leaped up upon them, shouting to frighten them away. They did not run. Instead, the blood roared in his ears, and a red cloud filled his eyes. Rather than blind him, it gave him the hunter's sight-he could sense every movement in the room, despite the bright spot of light.
The other animal was out there, and it was keeping him confined. He wanted to get at it, to tear and bite at it, to kill it for holding him here.
Again and again he threw himself against the barrier, raging and howling in the darkness.
'Halt!'
Tal remained utterly still as Master Ferrick strolled among the four ranks of students. At just over five and a half feet, he was shorter than his reputation led most to believe, though his hawkish nose and imperial gaze gave him an air of authority. More than sixty years had left their trails across his tanned face, but his compact body was that of a man half as old. He moved with a quiet grace, never hurrying.
When he first joined the school eight years earlier, Tal found these slow, deliberate inspections excruciating. His twelve-year-old arms could not hold even a foil steady for so long, and he dreaded attracting Ferrick's attention. Fortunately, he had earned Ferrick's correction only rarely in recent months. The man's keen eyes spied every imperfection, and he noted them in terse syllables as he passed each offender.
'Overextended,' he told one student. 'Grip,' he said to another.
Silence as he passed was all the approval he was likely to give. Tal accepted his gratefully, keeping his eyes on his imaginary opponent as Ferrick passed. The instructor completed his inspection and stood beside Radu Malveen. Even in his peripheral vision, Tal detected Ferrick's faint nod. The instructor's foremost student was the only one worthy of acknowledgement. Despite frequent absences, Radu retained the mantle of first student. He had never lost a challenge.
It was no longer a secret that Tal wanted to change that standing.
Ferrick snapped out another string of commands.
'Return. Cross left. Advance. Retreat. Half advance! Cut four! Parry eight! Recover!'
The words never formed completely in Tal's brain. Instead, his body moved before he could think, but always in the right direction. Action without thought was one of the best things about fencing drills, and he had become much better at it since Feena's arrival. Learning to ride the moon was a difficult and often disturbing process, for each morning after he remembered more and more what it was like to have been a wolf. The rage he felt at confinement was frightening, but he knew it meant he was gradually asserting his own will over the wolfs mind.
