So close was their friendship that Mika began to brood. It was he and Tam who were supposed to be bonded, best friends for life, not Tam and the princess. How could Tam take her seriously? After all, the princess was only a female!
Mike even tried to talk to Tam, to tell him how he felt, but Tam merely looked at him with blank eyes and quickly returned to the princess's side. Mika's ears burned, and he wondered if they, too, were somehow talking about him.
Of late, it seemed that Tam scarcely ever left the princess's side. Once, he even bared his fangs and growled at RedTail when he ventured close. RedTail stared at him blankly, then turned aside and thereafter kept to himself.
Time seemed to lose its meaning in the beautiful, crisp, cold days. Hunting was good, and they decided to make a short excursion up onto the lower slopes of the mountains to hunt the wild dass sheep that sported massive, curled horns and dense, oily coats.
They made camp in the mouth of a cave at the base of a steep ravine that cut into the mountain. They collected broken bits of wood, deposited throughout the dry steam bed running in front of the cave, and built a large fire, basking in its warmth.
They were fortunate enough to kill an unwary antelope. After filling their bellies, Hornsbuck relaxed the rules that usually controlled his behavior while on a mission, and he and Lotus Blossom drank a full skin of honeyed-ale. Soon they were wrapped in a beery embrace, asleep in front of the fire. RedTail had shared in their ale, and he lay soporific in front of the fire as well.
Mika was restless, having had no desire to partake of the ale, unusual in itself. It seemed that Tam and the princess were restless, too. They milled about and stood at the mouth of the cave, sniffing the cool night air and whining, high shrill sounds that spoke of yearning and wishes unfulfilled.
Mika watched them, envious of their togetherness, unhappy at being left out. It seemed that everyone had someone except him. Hornsbuck had Lotus Blossom, Tam had the princess, and RedTail had Hornsbuck. Only Mika was alone. He felt his loneliness keenly.
He grieved for himself and tried to remember what it felt like to be happy, to be in love. He tried to remember what it had been like to have fun. He was tired of brooding and feeling bad. Mika was miserable.
Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. It wasn't right that everyone else in the world was having fun and friends while he suffered so. He wanted to have fun again and feel as though someone liked him, and by The Great She-Wolf, mother of them all, he would! Picking up his shoulder pouch, he pawed through it until he found his spell book. He drew it out and leafed through it until he came to the right page. A beatific smile lined his face as he anticipated the wonderful time to come.
A sense of urgency filled him, and he shed his clothes quickly, save for his magic gemstone. He picked up the book once more, his eyes racing over the page, committing the difficult words and the complex rhyme to memory.
For a moment he thought about using the stone to ensure that the spell was said properly, but he quickly rejected the idea, having used the spell successfully twice before without benefit of the stone.
He knelt in front of the fire and, under RedTail's phlegmatic gaze, began to recite the words to the spell.
The flames leaped in front of his eyes, a crimson curtain on which the words were written as he uttered them clearly and carefully, enunciating with precision. Concentrating. Conscious of the fact that the smallest of mistakes could be disastrous.
The words to a spell were like those of a recipe. If the recipe were not followed exacdy, the result could be very strange indeed. If one got the words wrong and were lucky, nothing would happen-the spell would simply not work, and the user would have to memorize the words ail over again. For the words of a spell were magical, and once used, they vanished from one's mind completely and had to be relearned to be reused.
It was when one said the spell wrong and it worked in spite of being wrong that the real trouble began. In some extreme instances, the complex magical properties exploded catastrophically in the attempt to mesh two or more properties which were not compatible. When this happened, the user was generally killed or maimed in the process.
Sometimes, however, the result was worse than death, mixing separate components and producing a ghastly, hybrid mistake.
Mika had had such an experience himself when he first attempted the polymorph spell. He had turned himself into a great snowy owl, yet he had retained his human feet. This mistake, while looking rather silly, had not been fatal and had actually been of some help. However, it quickly became apparent that be had made another error somewhere in the recitation when he returned to human form-his arm had remained an owl's wing for several days.
Fortunately, the arm eventually returned to human form. But Mika had learned his lesson and now made very certain that he learned the spell thoroughly before speaking the words. Still, poly- morphing was not something that one did lightly. Were Mika not so miserable, he would never have attempted the change.
The words spoken, Mika stared into the leaping flames and waited. The now familiar dizziness and nausea swept over him; he closed his eyes and felt the ground shift beneath him.
The flames were still blurred when he opened his eyes and looked down. His lips twitched in a lopsided grin. It had worked; he had become a wolf!
RedTail's eyes grew large and he stared at Mika, watching him intendy. Mika stretched, feeling the long, hard muscles move beneath his sleek, black pelt. He shook himself, enjoying the feeling.
Mika abrupdy looked down at his paw and saw that he had not lost the demon hand in the transformation; it had merely become a green, scaly, clawed demon paw. His dewlaps dropped in despair. Somehow he had almost convinced himself that the demon hand would not transmute itself and he would be normal as a wolf. Blackness closed in around him, and he felt like throwing back his head and howling. Madness seized him, and he glared at the hated appendage, snarling as though it were a sentient thing that had chosen this course of action. Hatred overcame him and he bit at the paw, as though he might solve the problem by ripping it from his body.
Pain, real pain, brought him back to his senses. He blinked the tears from his eyes and licked at the offending paw, soothing the ravaged nerve endings. Fortunately the scales were extremely tough and had not been broken by the force of his teeth, protecting him from himself.
This is crazy, thought Mika. I changed into a wolf so I could have fun, not bite myself on the paw- hand. Paw. Whatever. I could have done that as a human. Forget the paw. I'm a wolf, and I'm going to do some howling-have some fun! Kill a deer! Run! Play! No more grim thoughts. No more being crazy! Having delivered the lecture to himself, Mika leaped to his feet and hurried off to join Tam and the princess with tail wagging and a smile on his dewlaps.
Their reception was anything but what he had expected. The last time he had polymorphed into a wolf, he and Tam had experienced a deep joining of spirits, an intense feeling of brotherhood that had strengthened their bond of friendship, even after he returned to his human form.
Now, Tam turned to him with cold eyes and, extending his head stiffly with hackles standing on end, sniffed him from head to tail, slowly and carefully, as though he were an enemy!
Mika stood very, very still, watching the flat, black pupils of Tarn's eyes. They were hard and unfriendly and looked on Mika the wolf with open hostility.
The princess was far friendlier, extending her black nose in an open, curious fashion, her busy, silver-tipped tail wagging back and forth. She sniffed him all over and then coyly slid alongside, presenting her own body to be sniffed in turn.
Not wishing to be rude, Mika carefully lowered his head and sniffed the princess's neck in a perfunctory manner, all the while keeping his eyes on Tam, whose upper lip seemed to be quivering over his canines.
The princess slid past Mika, her small, lithe form pressing against his muzzle. Her slender back passed under his nose and then her tail brushed across his face, obscuring his vision, blocking out the sight of Tam.
And then the most exciting scent he had ever smelled hit Mika. A powerful yet elusive scent, it exploded in his brain like a bolt of white lightning. His body felt as though it were charged with electricity, and his world shrank until it contained nothing other than himself and the princess.
Tarn's presence lingered on the fringes of his mind like a black cloud on the horizon, but it no longer mattered-nothing mattered to his frenzied mind but the princess.
The elusive fragrance crept into his nostrils, coated his tongue and palate, and saturated his brain. It was a
