horses.  The wind shifted into Tarrin's face, and that brought to him the smell of man.  Several of them, just up ahead.  Faalken was at the rear, riding up from a scout of their trail and possibly moving on up ahead to scout the front.  "Dolanna, there are men and horses in front of us," he warned her.
	"How many?"
	He sniffed at the air.  "I can make out at least six different men," he told her, "but it seems like there are more than that."  Up ahead, the road turned sharply to the left to avoid a deep streambed.
	Dolanna called for them to stop by raising her hand and reining in.  "This road is known for bandits, because of the lack of population along it," she told Tarrin.  "Let us make sure it is a trade caravan before rounding the corner.  Put up your hood, young one.  Walten, Tiella, come closer."
	He lifted the hood in place as Faalken reached them.  "What is it?" he asked.
	"Tarrin smells men up ahead," Dolanna told him.  "We will wait to see if they show themselves."
	"That's not all of it," he said.  "There are several men riding up from behind, hard," he told her.  "I could just make out their dust.  They'll be up to here in just a little while."
	Tarrin scented a change in the attitude of the scents, getting stronger.  They were moving, and it wasn't up the road.  "Dolanna, the men are moving, but they're not coming up the road."
	"Which direction?" Faalken asked.
	"Towards us," he replied.
	"That tears it," Faalken said grimly, clapping down the visor of his helmet.  "Caravans don't sneak through the woods."
	Walten drew out Tarrin's bow and nocked an arrow.  Surprisingly, Tiella drew out a sling from her belt pouch and slipped a stone into the cup.  "No, take the pack horses," Walten told her.  "I need both my hands.  You can still get off one shot holding the horse's reins."
	"Tiella, take the pack horses off the road," Faalken told her.
	Tarrin could hear them now, rustling the brush ahead of them, near the curve.  He could make out a startled oath of disappointment, then there was the sound of swords sliding out of scabbards.  Tarrin laid back his ears and snarled wordlessly as the Cat in him prepared to beat back the attackers.  "They're coming," Tarrin said, pulling his staff out from the saddleskirt.  Now that they were closer, more and more scents were becoming clear to him.  "Dolanna, I can smell at least fifteen now, maybe more."
	"Listen!" Dolanna said sharply.  "Stay together, and do not advance past me," she warned.  "I will have to use sorcery, and I do not want to hurt one of you by accident.  Faalken, with me.  Tarrin, stay with Walten and Tiella and defend our pack animals."
	In a rush, at least ten men erupted from the brush ahead, shouting and brandishing weapons.  Five men on horses rounded the corner ahead and charged, and a single man stood back by the brush.  Tarrin could hear him shouting in oddly discordant, unintelligible words that made Dolanna's eyes widen like saucers.  He could feel her do her magic, then he felt a sensation of enclosure.  The shouting man pointed his hands at them, and Tarrin almost jumped when a ball of fire erupted from his hands and streaked right at them.  It struck something in front of them, something invisible, and exploded.  Tiella screamed and Tarrin had to supress the sudden urge to run away when an inferno of angry fire surrounded them, licking at the invisible something that prevented it from reaching them.  Dolanna's magic had created some sort of shield that was defending them from the enemy's magical attack.  "Walten, take out that mage!" Faalken demanded instantly.  Walten raised the longbow instinctively, pulled back, aimed, and fired.  Tarrin could see from the instant it left the bow that it would hit the mark.  It arced over the small field separating them, homing in on the chanting man, then simply bounced away harmlessly.
	He had something protecting him too.
	"I cannot divide my attention," Dolanna said in a strained voice as the men reached her shield and started beating on it with their swords.  "It is all I can do to hold a shield this size!"
	Tarrin pulled off the robe and dropped off the horse, understanding instinctively that if the mage wasn't killed, he would bring down Dolanna's shield, and they would be hopelessly outnumbered by the attacking bandits.  He dropped his staff and waited for the right instant, right when the middle-most man was rearing back his arm.  Then he exploded forward like an arrow from a bow.  His shoulder caught the man squarely in the chest, picking him up and carrying him into the man behind him, exploding him off his feet and carrying him for several spans before Tarrin threw both of them aside almost negigently.  Then he put his ears back and ran flat out right at the mage.  Tarrin's inhuman strength gave him inhuman speed in that sprint, faster than a horse, and the chanting man's eyes' bulged and he nearly mis-spoke himself as he saw the Were-cat bearing down on him, his face full of mindless fury.  The mage simply redirected his spell, pointing at Tarrin instead of Dolanna.  A bolt of brilliant white lightning lashed out from the man's hands, arcing across the meadow.
	But Tarrin wasn't there.
	The man blinked a second, then a shadow on the ground made him look up.
	It was the last thing he would ever see.
	Tarrin had sprung into the air at the last instant, jumping clear of the magical attack, jumping impossibly high, nearly twenty spans into the air.  He could have jumped onto the roof of a two story bulding with his vaulting leap.  It wasn't that hard for him to adjust his trajectory so that he would land right on the unfortunate man  His hand-paws leading, Tarrin slammed directly into the man's chest, and he was already slashing and tearing before his opponent hit the ground.  They both rolled several times backwards as Tarrin's momentum blew them both back towards the trees, as Tarrin got a grip on the man's shoulder with one hand, his claws sinking deep into flesh, and he brought up a foot and put it against the man's ribcage.  He drove his claws into the man's belly as they rolled, then kicked out and down even as his hand pulled the man into it.  It was an instinctive move, the same as a cat raking with its back claws, and it was devastating. Tarrin ripped the man open from the base of his ribcage to his hips, and all his internal organs flew out of him in a stinking, bloody spray, their rolling making them fly all about.  The man managed to make a gurgling croak before he came down hard on his back, Tarrin on top of him.  His eyes registered shock as Tarrin lifted a paw while hunched over the man, his other paw holding him down by the chest and his face twisted into an animalistic snarl of pure hatred, and then struck with it.  The blow was aimed at the throat, but the sheer force of it, and Tarrin's inhuman strength, ripped the man's head right off his body.  That head was swiped aside by the raw power of the blow, bouncing in the bloody grass like a ball before coming to rest at the base of a tree.
	Tarrin was almost overwhelmed by the smell of the blood, and for a horrifying moment, he had to stop himself from ripping the man apart.  He put a blood-saturated hand-paw to his head, trying to shake off the loud song of the Cat trying to get him to do as it willed, urging him not just to kill, but to savage the victim.  But his human reason prevailed; his friends needed him.  Tarrin got up and turned around, looking at the men beating against the shield Dolanna created with their weapons.  Dolanna made a pushing motion, and the shield suddenly exploded outward, sending the men flying in all directions.  Faalken charged into the fray with his sword drawn, having his warhorse stomp and grind enemies into the ground under his hooves.  Tarrin sprinted back towards them, chagrined at throwing away his staff like he did.  Walten put an arrow into a man's belly as Dolanna seemingly grabbed small balls of fire from the air, hurling them with deadly accuracy into the chests and backs of the attackers.  Tarrin hit the back of the regrouping men like an avalanche, grabbing one by the back of his mail armor, picking him up, and hurling him into three others with enough force to tumble them three paces down the road.  He raised a bloodstained paw, the claws with small bits of ripped flesh stuck to them, and ripped the face off one attacker with it, then backhanded another with enough power to rip through his chain mail.  One man desperately tried to spear him from the side, but Tarrin twisted, grabbed the spear with a free paw, and swung the man around, throwing him to the ground.  Tarrin used the spear shaft to block a sword, then an axe, then stepped into an overswing and delivered a short kick to the knee.  It snapped the man's leg like a twig.  Tarrin almost instinctively fell into the Ungardt forms of fighting, and found a center, a focus that kept the Cat in check and let him concentrate on the matter at hand.  Killing enough of them to make the survivors break and flee.
	Tarrin went to rake a man across the chest, but an arrow appeared in his side, and Faalken cut him down from behind an instant later.  Tarrin darted to the horse's side and grabbed the haft of an axe that was aimed at the horse's leg, then yanked it out of the man's hand and buried it up to the handle in the back of the man's head as he was turned by the strength of Tarrin's yank.  Tarrin saw out of the corner of his eye a man trying to stab him in the side with a sword, then grabbed the brained man and dragged him into the sword's path.  The man lost his sword as the dead man fell, then he fell himself with an arrow right in the temple.  Tarrin had to admit, Walten was a very good shot with his bow.
	The remaning five men, two wounded by Faalken's sword and Walten's arrows, turned and fled, screaming in panic.  "Let them go!" Dolanna said wearily as Tarrin moved to chase them down.
	"Are you alright?" Faalken asked.  "You're covered with blood."
	"It's not mine," Tarrin said through clenched teeth.  He'd killed.  Not just one, but several men; he couldn't even remember how many.  Although it was a case of kill or die, he'd never taken a human life before, and he found the taste of it to be very bitter.
	"Tarrin," Dolanna said in a tightly controlled voice.  "The next time you decide to do something like that, let me know.  You nearly gave me a heart attack."
	"I didn't know I was doing it myself," he muttered quietly, looking away from the carnage and trying not to smell the blood, or listen to the Cat sing to him in his mind.
	"This was no group of bandits," Faalken said with a grunt.  "Not with equipment like this."
	"And not with a Wizard leading them," Dolanna agreed.
	"This is too much, too fast," Faalken continued in a sober voice.  "There was the fire at Watch Hill, and then the attack on Tarrin, and now this.  Somebody doesn't want us to get back to Suld real bad."
	Tarrin could hear the pounding of horses' hooves, and feel the vibration of it in the pads of his feet, coming from the road under him.  "Dolanna, those horses are coming up fast," Tarrin said urgently.
	By the time Dolanna had turned to look up the road, the first of them appeared.  The man behind the leader was carrying the banner of Torrian and Duke Arren.  They were dressed in the blue surcoats that were the uniform of the armored, mounted warriors under Arren's control.  They slowed to a stop at the battlefield, and the lead man advanced.  "Lady Dolanna, Duke Arren sends these twenty men to be your escorts and guards on your journey," he announced.  "I am Captain Daran."  He looked around.  "I see we didn't ride hard enough," he said in a grating voice.  "Are there any wounded?"
	"Not among us, captain," Dolanna said warily.
	The captain reached under his surcoat and produced a letter.  "The Duke asked me to give you this, to prove our identity," he said.  "Jarax, take two men and see if the survivors of this are still lurking around.  Kardon, take three men and pull these bodies off the road.  Let's not litter the King's Highway."
	The two men, one slim and wiry and the other massively built, saluted and took men to carry out their orders.  Dolanna accepted the letter from the captain, broke the seal, and read it quickly.  "These are the Duke's men," she affirmed.  "Noboby but Arren would know what is written here.  Considering what just happened, captain, we will be very glad to have you along."
	Daran looked around professionally.  "Quite a rumble," he noted.  "Looks like the Were-cat did some serious damage.  Good work, Master Kael," he said, bowing in his saddle.  "It looks like you saved one of my Duke's favorite people."
	"It was nothing," Tarrin said weakly.  The smell of the blood was getting to him, and it was getting very hard to control the instincts.
	Dolanna looked at him sharply.  "Tarrin, there is a stream just at the bend up ahead," she told him.  "Take a clean change of clothing and go wash up."
	"I think I will," he said gratefully.
	After scrubbing the blood and bits of flesh off his paws and getting himself clean and into clean clothes, he rejoined them.  The bodies had been pulled off the road and placed in a line in the meadow.  The bodies had been carefully searched, nearly stripped, much of their equipment now on the pack horses serving the Duke's men.  Dolanna was with Walten and Tiella, talking to them as Faalken helped the captain throw the last body into line with the others.  The three men sent to look for the survivors had returned.  Tarrin joined Dolanna with the others as she finished telling them about something.  Tiella, Tarrin noticed, was a bit pale, but had a determined look on her face.  "You alright, Tiella?" he asked.
	"I'm alright," she told him.  "I almost got pulled off my horse by one of the bandits, but Sir Faalken saved me."
	"Not before you put that sling stone in his eye, then kicked him in the face," Faalken chuckled as he rejoined them.  "That had to hurt."
	"It was supposed to," she said primly.
	"I imagine it would," Faalken grinned.  "For a trio of farm children, you three are rather nasty fighters."
	"It's from working all day, Sir Faalken, and having nothing else to do but shoot things," Walten replied dryly.
	"Just Faalken, please," he corrected.  "And I think I'd rather have you three farm villagers in a fight over a pack of knights.  Are we ready to leave, Dolanna?"
	"Yes, we are ready now," she said.  "Tarrin, pick up your staff and put the robe back on, and we will be off."
	Tarrin rode with Dolanna and Tiella as they got under way, encircled protectively by the Duke's alert men, wrapped in a layer of steel and trained warriors against another attack.  Faalken and Jarax were scouting ahead, and the captain had a man riding behind as rear guard.  Tarrin had a grim expression on his face as he broached a subject he wanted to continue talking about.  "Back there, Dolanna, you said that you didn't think that they were bandits," he said.
	"They were not," she said gruffly.  "A pack of bandits would not have a Wizard leading them."
	"And then Faalken brought up the fire, and, and what happened to me."
	"Yes, and I do not think that they were mere coincidence.  Not now.  Tarrin, someone sent the female Were-cat after you on purpose.  The collar that she was wearing was a device that was controlling her.  And now the attack on us, after you and Faalken had noticed the Wraith.  And before that, the fire that started so mysteriously, and raged out of control faster than even my magic could control it.  No, someone is trying to stop us from reaching Suld.  Someone with considerable resources at his disposal."
	"But why?" he asked.  "It makes no sense.  We're three villagers being brought to the Tower by a Sorceress and a knight.  What possible reason could someone have to try to stop us?  We're not worth the effort."
	"I know, that is a part of the puzzle," she said thoughtfully, a finger tapping her chin as she thought.  "Obviously, these people know something that we do not.  Or believe that they do."
	"I think--" Tiella said, then she quickly hushed herself.
	"Go ahead, child," Dolanna prompted.  "Do not think that you cannot speak your mind to me."
	"I think that maybe it's not just one person," she said.
	Dolanna raised an eyebrow.  "An intriguing concept," she said with sincere interest.  "Why do you believe so?"
	"Well, there was the fire, then what happened to Tarrin, and now this," she said.  "And the Wraith, but it didn't attack us.  Well, aren't they just a bit too different?" she asked.  "Why not try another fire?  That almost worked, and they had to know that.  Why send that woman after Tarrin, when she could have attacked you?  If they got you, Dolanna, the rest of us would probably just turn around and run home.  Then there was this, where they tried to kill all of us, but they used brute force and not magic or a slave, like before.  They just don't add up."
	"I think that you have a point," Dolanna said.  "They may be from the same group, but I think you are right in believing that this was not the work of an individual.  This was either a group or several individuals working independently."
	"The question is still why," Tarrin maintained.
	"That, I cannot answer," Dolanna said, rubbing her delicate jaw.
	"So we'd best plan our moves carefully," Tarrin said.
	"I have already mapped out our plan of action," she said.  "At Marta's Ford, we will take a riverboat to Ultern.  That, I hope, will leave behind any spies that are watching us.  From Ultern, it is but a bit over three days to Suld.  Two days to Jerinhold and one day from there to Suld itself.  Plus, the Ultern Road is packed at most all times with caravans and travellers," she added.  "The congestion on the road will help to conceal us from sight, and dissuade another such direct attack."
	"So the worst of it will be getting to Marta's Ford," Tiella said.
	Dolanna nodded.  "It is still three days to Marta's Ford, even if we travel hard," she told them.  "This is a wide expanse of unsettled territory, where most anything can hide and wait in ambush.  I must admit, I am relieved beyond measure that Arren had the foresight to send a guard detachment after us.  Daran and his men are highly skilled, and are extremely familiar with this terrain.  They will get us to Marta's Ford.  That is our main objective at the moment."
	"And from there, a boat ride," Tiella said.
	Dolanna nodded.  "Renne should still be at Marta's Ford," she said.  "He is an old friend of mine.  He told me that he would not be leaving for a while, so that his crew can conduct minor repairs to his ship.  Perhaps, if he is there and seaworthy, he will agree to take us downriver.  His ship is fast, and his crew skilled.  They will put us far ahead of any pursuers."
	"I like the sound of that," Tarrin said sincerely.
	"As do I," she said.  "Now then, let us pick up the pace a bit.  We still must make Skeleton Rock before we may stop."
	Skeleton Rock was literally self-explanatory.  They reached the formation right at nightfall, and all four moons rose early and full, washing the land with enough light to see by for a human.  The others couldn't see that far into the distance, but Tarrin's eyes could easily see to the cliff face that towered over the road some distance away.  In the side of it, there was the head and partial skeleton of a monstrous animal so huge that Tarrin doubted it was ever alive.  The skull was long and vaguely reptillian, and it looked like the teeth were as long as Tarrin's foot, all of them coming to sharp points.
	Tarrin peered at the formation for several moments, then stopped Dolanna as she walked by.  "What kind of beast is that?" he asked.
	"Nobody knows," she replied.  "The bones are actually stone, but I have been told that bones turning to stone is a natural process.  It means that the bones are beyond ancient.  They are so old that all the Tower's attempts to study them through magic have failed.  It is just too far back for our magic to reach.  There are reports of much smaller creatures resembling that one that live in the Desert of Swirling Sands, to the west."
	"Much smaller?  How small?"
	"About the size of a house," she replied calmly.
	"Yeek," he said under his breath.  "I wouldn't want to see one of those up close.  It looks like it's nothing but an eating machine."
	"That is a fairly accurate description," she said with a light chuckle.
	Tarrin was given his own tent, and it was another night of dreams.  The fear wasn't as bad this second night, but the dreams were even worse, because more than once he simply could not wake from it.  They were also mixed with human-like dreams of the men that he had killed, rising up from their resting places and following him around, demanding to know what gave him the right to take their lives.  That scared him more than the Cat dreams.  Tarrin had suppressed the shock, fear, and horror at what he had done, but when he was asleep, they all rushed back at him in a flood.
	Hours before dawn, he found the idea of going back to sleep to be too frightening to contemplate, so he dressed and left the tent.  Three men were standing guard around the camp, and the fire was low.  He spent the hours before dawn reading one of the books Dolanna gave him, a book about the sources, uses, and practioners of magic.  The book was confusing, obviously written for someone that already had a basic understanding of magic and the people who use it, but he did learn several things that he thought were important.
	There were four distinct types of magic-users, and each one drew magic from a different source.  The Sorcerers, who were born the ability inside them.  Where anyone with sufficient intelligence could learn another type of magic, only people born with the ability inside them could be Sorcerers.  They manipulated the existing pattern-web of magic that laid over the world, twisting and changing it into the magical effect they wanted.  This magical matrix was called the Weave, and it was from this web of magical energy that Sorcerers drew their power.  Sorcerers were the only magic-users that could generate Illusions, it said, and a Sorcerer could interfere with the flow of magic through the Weave that would disrupt and block the powers of a Wizard.  There were also Wizards, or Mages, who drew on their magical power from an elsewhere, a place that nobody really understood.  They did this with their arcane chants of special words of power and precise gestures, and the presence of certain materials that were vital for the magic to operate.  Wizards were the only ones that could Conjure creatures up from other worlds and command them to do their bidding.  Much like the Wraith that he had seen.  Priests, or Clerics, were the worshippers of Gods, and it was the Gods that supplied these faithful with the magical power.  Tarrin was already familiar with Priests, for one from the temple to Karas in Torrian visited Aldreth every two months to check in on them and see if they were doing alright.  Abram preached alot about the goodness and power of his God when he was there, and though the villagers politely ignored his ranting, they were always happy to see him, because he could perform healing on the sick or injured.  The main powers of a Priest were healing, supportive, and defensive, the book said, meaning more to aid than to hurt, but Priests did have formidable offensive magic at their command.   Mending broken bones, breaking fevers, that sort of thing was what Abram did for the village.  Sorcerers could heal too, but a Sorcerer's healing worked differently.  Sorcerers could heal injuries, but not illnesses.  The last type of magic-user was also a type that was born with the ability.  They were called Druids, and little was known about them or their magical power.  What was known was that their power seemed to come directly from nature itself, almost like the magical energy of life that was theirs to command.  Druids were rare and exceptionally powerful, because a Druid could disrupt and block the magical attempts of any other type of magic-user.  But Druids were as rare as they were powerful, living far from human settlements and doing their obscure work in the wildest of the wilderness.
	Tarrin digested that during the dark hours, wondering at the why of it.  Why could Sorcerers block a Wizard's attempt to cast a spell?  And why didn't Dolanna do that to the Wizard when they were fighting?  How did Priests call on the Gods for their magic?  Could anyone?  The book didn't say.  What other place did Wizards get their magic, and how did they learn of the creatures from beyond that they could summon up into the world?  And just what did the Druids do?  Why could only Sorcerers create Illusions?  Why could Wizards only summon creatures from beyond?  Just what magic did the Druids draw on for their power?
	Many questions, questions that he doubted the book was going to answer.
	The wiry man, Jarax, came out of a tent and sat near him by the fire.  He was a thin man, seemingly too thin to wear the heavy armor, with wiry muscles and a long, narrow face.  His black hair was short and slicked back off his face, and he had a scraggly beard and moustache.  "I see I'm not the only one that can't sleep," he said.
	Tarrin had not talked to any of these men, and he was a bit afraid to do so.  They knew what he was, and it was their companions, their friends, that the female killed in her escape.  He was almost certain that most of them probably blamed him in some way for what had happened.  Besides, he was a bit nervous about talking to strangers.  He couldn't see past his own transformation in order to communicate with people he didn't know, so self-conscious was he about what had happened to himself.  Tarrin just nodded vaguely, hoping the man would just sit down and be quiet.  He wasn't sure if the man was talking out of simple courtesy, or friendliness, or out of fear of him.  All in all, he rather preferred it if there was no talk at all.
	"What are you reading?" he asked politely.
	"A book on magic," Tarrin replied quietly.  
	"Don't think I ever read that," he mused, leaning back against a log.  "I prefer stories and poetry myself."  Tarrin went back to his book, and after a few moments, the man spoke again.  "Is that what you always read?" he asked curiously.
	"Do you mind?" he asked.  "I'm trying to understand this."
	"Sorry," he said a bit tartly, leaning back against the log again.  Tarrin looked at the book, not really reading it, turning a page every few minutes.  It was worth it to avoid talking.  "Could I interest you in a game of stones?" the man asked.
	Tarrin snarled at him, his ears laying back slightly.  The man gave him a startled look, then hastily stood up.  "I think you'd rather be alone," he said, stating the obvious.  Then he turned and walked away.
	Tarrin put the book down, putting his palm to his forehead.  Where did that come from?  It wasn't like him to react like that, but the man had irritated him.  What scared him was that it came without thought, and he reacted on it just as mindlessly.  Were the instincts changing him so much?  Like what had happened earlier, with the mage.  He'd torn the man apart, literally, and he had reveled in it for one horrifying moment.  It wasn't a perverse joy, it more like a deep satisfaction that came with killing an enemy.  But it frightened him just the same.  He was changing, he knew it, he could feel it.  And there was nothing he could do about it.  He could only hope that he could temper it.  So that there would be some part of Tarrin left once the mental alterations were complete.
	"Would you like to talk about it?" asked a voice.  It was Tiella.  She sat down beside him on the log, fearlessly taking his hand-paw into her hand and stroking it reassuringly.  That simple act was devastating in its simplicity, and he was about to surrender completely to her and let her scratch him behind the ears.  Tiella turned his hand up and looked at his palm, with its large, tough pad and the smaller pads on his fingertips, marvelling at the paw-like qualities of his hand, which truly made it a hybrid of the two, and not one or the other.
	"I'm...doing things, Tiella," he said uncertainly.  "I'm not thinking about them...it's like I can't think about them.  They just happen, and I'm afraid of it."
	"Why?" she asked.
	Tarrin blinked and looked at her.  "Why?  Because it's not what I would do," he told her.
	"That's to be expected, Tarrin.  This," she said, holding up his hand-paw, "this is not what you were a few days ago.  It's different now.  You have to let yourself get used to it, but that doesn't have to mean that you have to be afraid of it."
	"What do you mean?"
	"Well, when something like that happens, ask yourself why it happened," she told him.  "What happened?"
	"That man kept talking to me, and I wanted to be left alone," he said, shuddering a bit.  "So I snarled at him."
	"Alright, now why did it happen?" she asked.
	"I don't know, because he was irritating me, I guess," he said.
	"No," she said.  "That's what you think happened," she said.  "What about the other mind in there?  Why did it do it?"
	"To make him leave me alone," he floundered.
	"No," she said again.  "Because you wouldn't do anything about it," she told him.  "It let you try first.  When you either gave up or failed, it decided to do something about it.  And it worked."
	Tarrin stared at her for quite a while.  It was a bit crazy, but in its own way, it was perfectly logical.  The Cat in him had its own way of doing things, that was true...but it was also true that that didn't happen until after then man repeatedly bothered him.  Had the Cat sensed his human desires, and acted upon them?  If that were so, then didn't that put the Cat under his control as much as it put him under its control?
	"You're going to have to start asking yourself why you do the things you do," she told him.  "There has to be reasons for every single thing.  And if you can understand those reasons, well, then maybe it won't be so scary.  So the next time it happens, don't be afraid of it.  Explore it, try to understand it.  Experience it.  If you try to just ignore it, then you'll never be able to stop it."
	He chuckled ruefully.  "Tiella, I don't think you know how much better I feel now," he said sincerely.  "I think you may be right.  Dolanna told me not to ignore what I was feeling and the instincts in my head, but if