.  "You're a sneaky one, boy.  I'll remember that."
	"You do that," he said in a low, dangerous tone.
	"I think you ticked him off, Camara," Sarraya said impishly from nearby.  "Someone's gonna get a whipping."
	"Before you go congratulating yourself, boy, why don't you put your hand on your belly."  He did so, and felt the cold steel of her sword.  She was holding it against his stomach from the deck, the angle of his stance keeping him from seeing it or the hand holding it.  "I could have gutted you the instant I hit the floor, if I wanted.  You may be sneaky, but not sneaky enough."
	"I don't think you had that there the whole time," he challenged.
	"Think whatever you want, it won't help you when someone decorates your hide with a swordblade."  She rolled out from under his weapon, pulling hers with her, and regained her feet.  "Now then, show me this touted skill you're said to have."
	It had been too long since he'd fought in human form.  He felt slow, clumsy, heavy, working through the sword forms his mother and Allia had taught him, the moves he learned from the Knights.  The sword seemed to move too slowly, and though it moved with great skill and competence, he couldn't penetrate the Amazon's considerable defense.  She was a master swordsman, moving the weapon with a fluid grace that made it seem that the weapon was a part of her.  It moved like it was a natural extension of her arm, as a weapon should move, and he had to grudgingly admit that the Amazon was indeed a rare example of a master swordsman.  Tarrin struggled through feeling her out, getting an idea of her speed and her strength, but he felt too strangely out of sync with himself to capitalize on what he felt were her weak points.
	Blade struck blade, sometimes sending out a short burst of sparks, sending the chiming rings along the deck of the ship.  Tarrin worked himself, sweating visibly as he defended himself from a dizzyingly complicated series of shallow slashes and jabs, peppered liberally with many feints and fakes to make him unsure of where the sword would go next.  The Amazon seemed to be moving through her own forms, flowing from one attack or move to the next with the calm grace of the lightest dancer.  The tip of that weapon got closer and closer to him with every passing moment, forcing him to commit what his mother felt was the cardinal sin of fighting, retreating.  He backed away from that weapon as it overwhelmed his ability to follow it, gaining precious distance from her to give him enough time to get a feel for the unusual style she used.  He blocked a slash at his flank easily, but out of nowhere something hit his hands, and it jarred the sword out loose.  It clattered to the deck, and he realized that she had kicked him in the wrists.  He had never seen it coming.  She leveled the point of her sword at his nose, staring down the blade with a serious expression.
	"If I were an enemy, you would be dead," she declared.
	"If you were an enemy, Tarrin would never have picked up a sword," Allia's voice came from the side.  Tarrin looked at her, and he saw that she was holding his staff.  "He may fight you in human form to even the field, but if you wish to see him fight, let him fight with his own weapon.  With this in his hands, you will lose," she announced, holding up the staff.  "Or perhaps he will keep the sword, and I will give you the staff.  That way you will both fight with weapons you do not prefer."
	"Give him the stick," Camara Tal said confidently.  "I've never seen a piece of wood defeat a sword.  That's why we gave up on spears in close fighting a long time ago."
	"Then your people have a very narrow view of combat," Allia snorted.  "No weapon is greater than any other.  It is the skill of the hand wielding that weapon that will give it greatness.  In the proper hands, a spear is a deadly weapon."
	Tarrin threw down the sword willingly and caught his precious staff when Allia lobbed it to him.  He took one step back and settled into an end-grip, holding the staff almost like a sword, settling his feet into the deck as the feel of the staff in his hands caused his confidence to soar.  Allia was right.  He had fought against swordwielders for a very long time, and his staff gave him all the advantages he needed to stuff that sword down Camara Tal's throat.
	The Amazon waded right in, not even bothering to size up his new weapon.  She had seen him use it before, and probably thought that that was how he used the weapon all the time.  He had used it that way because the men he was fighting didn't force him to raise his skills up to their full potential.  Simple "bashing" was all that was necessary to beat the pirates.  Tarrin deflected several quick jabs and slashes, then twisted inside the arc of another slash, which turned out to be a feint.  That close, she brought the sword back and adjusted to stab at him, getting inside the arc of his own staff, but he simply shifted to the center-grip and parried the thrust, turned his side to her, and cracked the other end of the staff against her knee.  She staggered to the side, and was helped along when he put the sole of his boot in her belly.  He whipped the staff around and let go with one hand, holding that hand out towards her as she staggered back, putting his staff behind him and sideways.  She stopped moving backwards and reached down to rub at her knee, glaring at him a bit as he pulled his staff into a center-grip and brandished it at her.
	She was much more tentative the second time, but that didn't last long.  It was her that was rocked back on her heels as Tarrin unleashed the true fury of a center held staff on the Amazon, the two ends of the staff coming at her from every conceivable angle, the middle butting against her and deflecting her weapon, every square inch of her body in danger from the whirling staff's ends.  Feet and ankles began to move quickly as Tarrin attacked them just as often as he went for her head, sides, and torso, forcing her to protect her entire body from attack that could materialize out of thin air and strike faster than a coiled snake.  Every attack, move, feint, or parry seemed to fuel Tarrin's resolve, and it also increased his displeasure with Camara Tal.  That displeasure evolved into anger as he systematically destroyed her defenses, forced her to back away from him to get enough space to regroup herself, which he did not permit her.  Think he was an untrained lackey?  He'd show her!  He was more than capable of beating her down with his staff, and he was going to prove it to her!  He waited until the Amazon tried to stab at him again, then he struck the weapon aside with one end of his staff, then instantly reversed his direction and hit the sword from the bottom, near the hilt, in a classic staff disarm.  The double-jolt on the weapon from two directions, so closely together, was enough to shake it loose from her grip and send it lobbing over her head, to clatter to the deck behind her.  Tarrin grounded his staff calmly, standing there and staring at her with not a little hostility.
	"Keep bruising me, boy, and you're liable to make me mad," she taunted as she turned and picked up her sword.  Tarrin was about to make a scathing reply, but Keritanima's sweet voice emanated from his amulet, instantly taking all of his attention.
	Tarrin put the Amazon out of his mind and concentrated on Keritanima's information.  She had reached Wikuna, and was preparing to deal with her father in the way that only she could.  In a strange way, he felt sorry for her father.  Keritanima was a wonderful woman, a sweet girl, and one of his closest, deepest friends, but even he had to admit that she could be quite petty at times, and had a vicious streak in her about as wide as the Sandshield Mountains.  Damon Eram had really made her mad, and now she was going to go take care of him.  He had little doubt that the King of Wikuna wouldn't survive that experience.
	It would be strange addressing Keritanima as her Majesty, but he'd get used to it.  With Damon Eram dead, the crown would fall to her.  She probably hadn't thought that far ahead.  He just hoped she'd be ready for it when it happened.
	All that work to avoid taking the throne, and she'd back herself into it as a by-product of getting revenge on her father.  Life was full of little ironies.
	"Get your head out of the clouds, boy," Camara Tal said gruffly.  "We're not done yet."
	"Don't call me that," Tarrin said flatly.  "And if you want to get beat up some more, that's alright with me."
	"As I recall, you've only given back what I gave you, boy," she challenged.  "Now shut up and get on with it, or are you too frightened to go on?"
	Her taunting and words were starting to build on the anger he'd felt from before.  He could feel it seething inside him, stirring the Cat, which was at its most subdued state when he was in human form.  She had to be crazy!  Why would she insult him?  She knew that he didn't take that very well.  Why she was doing it made no sense to him, but it was having a very immediate effect.  Her status as a stranger rose up in his mind, and the sword she held in her hand stirred the Cat within him more and more as she brandished it at him.  He glared at her viciously and raised his staff to a guard stance, which caused her to rush in.
	It was much different.  His anger, his seething, it distracted him from the forms and from the fight, and it robbed him of his concept of their fighting.  He concentrated less and less on sparring with Camara Tal, and more and more on hurting her.  What she probably felt was nothing but sparring had turned very real in his mind, and he wasn't just playing anymore.  His distraction degraded his ability to press her, to do her harm, causing her to rise up with her sword and battle him to a standstill.  "Oh, so it's not just for play anymore," Camara Tal hissed in his ear when he locked her sword against her shoulder and leaned in.  "Want to bash my head in, do you?  Well here it is, boy.  But you're too blinded by your own anger to hit it, aren't you?  Can't fight a whit now that you've lost your temper, can you?"
	That was just too much.  With a growl and an explosion of fury, Tarrin pushed her back and threw the staff aside, then changed form.  Long, wickedly curved, sharp claws extended from their sheaths, and the Were-cat's glowing green eyes fixed on the Amazon and promised her ugly and brutal demise.  Tarrin was pushed aside as the Cat joined with his mind, joined with his anger, and his temper was unleashed fully on the Amazon.  He took a swipe at her head, which she quickly ducked under.
	It was a good thing.  Had he hit her, his claws would have ripped off half of her face.  Tarrin had lost his temper, had gone into a rage, and it was brutally apparent to the stunned spectators that he meant to kill her.  He tried to drive his claws into her chest, which she evaded, but she couldn't avoid the first paw coming back and ripping four bloody lines across her side and stomach as she twisted away from him.  Spatters of blood sailed away from her abdmonen as his claws ripped through her skin and flesh, claws driven with such power that the four slashes were as neatly cut as if they were made by a razor.  Claws that would have gutted her had she not twisted to present less belly to them as they came at her.  He put so much into the blow that he had to recover himself, giving her a precious half-second to back up and grab hold of her amulet.  She raised her amulet towards him and uttered a single word.  "Eshok!" she called in a commanding voice, and some magical thing seemed to settle around him like a wet blanket.  It tightened around him, hindering him, placing such a weight on him that not even his powerful legs could support it.  It was like having a mountain put on his back.  Every part of his body was coated with that magical weight, making his movements slow and erratic as he struggled against the magical effect.
	He couldn't resist it.  He fell to the deck on his stomach, heaving to draw breath against that great weight placed over his back, driving him into the deck.  His mind whirled with anger and bloodlust, but that red haze dulled as the lack of air affected his ability to think.  He started feeling faint, wheezing for breath.
	"Anger is only a weapon for your opponent, Tarrin," Camara Tal said bluntly.  "You lost your temper, and you paid for it.  You can't afford to do that.  Not once, not twice, not ever.  No matter how good you are, if you don't think, you won't live.  You're beaten.  If I were an enemy, you would be dead."
	Tarrin's mind boiled at that one statement, achieving a level of rage that caused all rational thought to evaporate like smoke.  The animal within reached without, coming into communion with the Weave, grabbing the strands and yanking them towards himself to fill himself with their power.  Tarrin's eyes turned from that glowing green to a blazing incandescent white as an avalanche of power flooded into him, infused him, brought under control by the raging beast and focused to a single point.  With a primal scream, Tarrin's paws exploded into Magelight, and he rose from the deck like a revenant, like an elemental force which no man, no power, could hinder.  Muscles ripped and one of his legs broke from the strain of rising against the magical spell, but in his enraged state he felt no pain, would not stop no matter what tried to prevent him from regaining his feet.  He attacked the spell placing the weight on him at its source, striking like a viper against the energy that fed the spell, gave it its power.  He severed that link immediately, breaking the spell, then turned on the stunned Amazon with blazing paws upraised, then levelled them at her like an archer raising his bow to a foe.  At the last second, she seemed to understand that she was literally looking Death in the face, and she dove to the side.
	A bolt of pure magical energy, so bright that it hurt to look at it, erupted from his paws, that same primal weave he had used before, one of the few ways in which the Cat knew how to use magic.  It roared down the deck, missing the Amazon by fingers as she dove aside, then hit the sterncastle and caused he wooden wall to explode violently, sending flaming shrapnel back across the stern section of the deck.  The bolt blew out the stern of the ship, splitting the water as it streamed across the surface for nearly a longspan, then hitting the water and causing it to explode.  That detonation sent a shockwave of hot air back at the ship, making it rock, and sending a spray of water hundreds of spans into the air.
	Seeing his antagonist still alive, the Cat within changed tactics.  Energy hazed around him, an aura of Magelight, as he collected the power to weave together another spell, sucking it from the Weave faster than it could flow into him, causing the Weave around him to shudder and vibrate in a eerie harmony that only a Sorcerer could hear.  He wove together that spell, consisting primarily of Divine energies, with token flows of the other Spheres to give the weave the power of High Sorcery, and a small ball of infathomable blackness coalesced over his left paw.  Electrical energy crackled around it, against his paw and manacle, increasing in birghtness and frequency as the black ball expanded, swallowing up the light.  The Cat knew that against this weave, there was no defense.  Without so much as a thought, he released it, hurling it at her in a broad sidearmed toss.  It hurtled towards her, and her almond eyes widened in shock and fear as it sought to utterly destroy her.
	Then it simply stopped.  Both Tarrin and Camara Tal stared at the magical orb in stunned shock, and then Sarraya appeared directly in front of it, her tiny hands held out as if to push it away.  She somehow brought it to a halt, then pushed up with both arms, and the ball sailed into the sky, barely avoiding the ropes of the rigging.  An image of something similar touched the Cat within him, an image of Triana turning his spell into the sky, taking control of its direction.  Sarraya had done the same thing.  Her tiny hands pointed at him, and he felt the Weave simply disappear, draining away from him as if it had never been.  The power within had nowhere to go, so it generated a backlash that put him on his knees, a backlash that generated a physical blast of wind that radiated from him and struck everyone and everything around him, knocking people back and making the masts and rigging sway in the sudden wind.  The Magelight winked out from around him, the incadescent white light faded from his eyes as he felt the Weave abandon him.
	Even that was not enough.  His rage was focused on Camara Tal, and he would not stop until she was dead.  The Faerie had opposed him, so she was now also his enemy.  His leg still broken, he pulled himself to his feet, leaning grotesquely against his broken leg, eyes still blazing with the greenish aura that made them so striking.  Someone grabbed him by the wrist, and he pulled on his arm, dragging that someone towards him.  Paw grabbing the figure by the neck, he lifted it up, then slammed it against the deck with impressive force, claws on his other paw rearing back to kill the interloper.  But a flash of silver hair and a brown-skinned face struck his mind harder than a giant's fist, and eyes bluer than the sky locked onto his calmly.
	It was Allia!
	The sight of her was all it took.  If there was one person in the entire world that Tarrin could not harm, could not injure, no matter what his mental state, it was his Selani sister.  Her visage soothed his fury, the security he felt when he looked at her defused his explosion, allowing him to regain control of himself.  Tarrin wilted visibly as his rage drained away, drained out of him by the blue of her beautiful eyes, eyes that bored into his and did not waver.  He let go of her neck and knelt beside her, confused and scattered, unable to link together two coherent thoughts.  That was somewhat normal after coming out of a rage, and he knew in the back of his mind that he only had to wait out the disorientation.  He had very little memory of what he did while in that state, lost in the swirling fury that had dominated his mind.  With the loss of his rage, the pain of a leg that had healed wrong struck him, pain of muscles only partially mended hit him like a thousand sticks all over his body.
	He looked up just enough to see Sarraya.  The tiny Faerie looked at him with concern, compassion, and mercy, and he could only stare at her.  "Sleep," she whispered to him sweetly, touching him on the forehead gently.  "Let the pain go through sleep."
	It had to be magical.  Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a weariness that flowed into him, through him, settled into his bones, dulled his pain, calmed the chaos of his mind.  Eyes rolling back into his head, Tarrin sagged to the deck, lost in a dreamless oblivion of sleep.

	There was a moment of stunned, awed, horrified silence.  Everyone who had witnessed the entire episode stared at the inert Were-cat, worry showing on their faces that he would wake up and continue his rampage.  The Amazon half-sat, half-lay nearby, watching the Were-cat carefully, wiping a line of blood from her chin, as the Faerie landed just in front of the Were-cat's head, putting her hands on his forehead and cheek.
	The moment was ended by the Selani.  She rose quickly from where she lay on the deck, blood smearing her back and flowing down the backs of her legs.  The deck was split where the Were-cat had rammed her into it, but she showed no signs that she even realized she was wounded.  Hot eyes locked on the Amazon, and only one word was uttered, a word that made it clear how she felt.
	"Fool!"
	The word echoed through the silence, issuing through the ship, ringing in the ears of nearly everyone who was looking on.  The Selania balled a four-fingered hand up into a fist and shook it at the Amazon, who still looked a little dazed from the assault.
	"You set him off deliberately!" The Selani raged at the Amazon.  "You did that on purpose!  Fool, Tarrin is not a dog that you can beat so long as it is kept on a leash!  When he is enraged, everyone and everything around him is in danger!  Had he chosen to use another weave, rather than concentrating on just you, he would have destroyed this ship!  You nearly killed us all!"
	"I meant to make him angry, not to make him go off," Camara Tal replied woozily.
	"There is no difference when it comes to him!" Allia screamed back at her furiously.  "Shebaka!" she cursed sulfurously, then she went on a long string of Selani curses that lasted for quite a while, more than long enough for Dolanna and Dar to arrive from below decks.
	"What happened here?" Dolanna demanded.  "Dar, tend  Camara Tal.  Sarraya, what is going on?"
	"Not much, Dolanna," the sprite said grimly as Dar helped the Amazon get back on her feet.  "Camara the Genius over there just ruffled Tarrin's fur deliberately.  He went into a snit and nearly killed all of us while trying to wipe her off the face of Sennadar."
	"She did what?" Dolanna demanded, flabbergasted.  "Camara Tal, surely you have more sense than that!"
	"I didn't mean to enrage him, only to anger him," she defended herself.
	"Oija!" Dolanna sighed in her own language.  "Amazon, that is a line so faint that no one aside from Tarrin himself can distinguish it!  Tarrin is not dangerous so long as you do not provoke him!" she said with impressive power in her voice.  "What insanity possessed you to do such a thing?"
	"They were playfighting," Sarraya told her.  "Tarrin was handling it pretty well until Brainchild over there started taunting him.  He snapped and tried to take her head off, and she used magic to subdue him. That managed to just really tick him off."
	"No wonder," Dolanna snorted.  "To use magic against him is the same in his mind as attacking him.  When you did that, you drew his wrath as surely as the sun rises in the morning."
	Camara Tal wiped some blood off her leg, the four neat slashes in her abdomen already healed over.  "I'll remember that next time," she said calmly.
	"There will be no next time," she replied.  "If Tarrin even allows you near him again, it will be a miracle.  You have probably just permanently poisoned him against you, Camara Tal.  I suggest you keep your distance, if you wish to live.  If he is too violently opposed to you, we will let you off at Saranam.  That will be the only way to save you."
	"Come on, one little spat won't--"
	"We shall see," Dolanna interrupted.  "Tarrin is not a forgiving person, Camara Tal.  If he blames you for what happened, he will not forgive you.  And if he will not forgive you, then he will probably try to kill you.  Tarrin's mentality is very much aligned by thinking of everyone as friend or foe.  We will have to see where you stand when he awakens."
	The Amazon was silent, crossing her arms under her breasts and staring at the small Sharadi Sorceress with unblinking eyes.  Then she turned and walked away.

	The night was warm and breezy.  The rain line that had dampened the ship had passed long before the sunset, but behind it was cooler, dryer air that was unsettled now that the sun had gone down.  It blew from the east fitfully, bringing along with it the smell of more rain to come, hidden behind the horizon.  The ship's masts and ropes creaked in the breeze, the sails still down and tended by a handful of men as the ship made up time by sailing at night.  Those men ignored Tarrin for the most part as he stood at the bow, looking at the dark seas ahead.
	Sarraya had helped fix the damage he caused.  She had conjured forth boards to replace the walls of the sterncastle he had destroyed, and an afternoon's work while still moving had sealed up the holes.  The smell of the scorched wood was still heavy aboard the ship, as was the faint scents of blood from the few people that had been hit by shards of flying wood.  There had been no deaths, not even a serious injury from the flying shrapnel, but there had been enough bleeding to leave traces of its smell in the deck.
	He could smell their fear, and he couldn't blame them.  They had seen him at his worst, and they couldn't forget it.  The smell of their fear roused the Cat within him, response to prey-fear, but it was nothing he couldn't control.  Their fear was justified.  They should be afraid of him.  The memory of what had happened had eased back to him faster than usual for a rage, probably because he was enraged only for a short time.  Camara Tal had sent him into a rage, and she had done it deliberately.  Well, maybe not deliberately, but she was definitely trying to make him angry.  Trying to teach him a lesson, he guessed, a lesson about anger.  But she was the one who learned the lesson.  Tarrin's anger was a weapon, a powerful weapon when unleashed, a weapon that did not discriminate.  It was a double-edged sword, giving him the power to destroy what he normally couldn't destroy, but also representing the greatest danger to himself.  He couldn't control his Sorcery, unless he was in a rage.  Only then did he have the power, for the Cat had the primal drive, the will, to control what his conscious mind could not.  But when he had the power, he had no morals, no compunction to use it responsibly.  When enraged, he did not care, not about enemies, not about friends, not even about himself.  He would gladly destroy himself, if it would destroy his enemies at the same time. He eventually would destroy himself, the one time Sarraya or Allia was not there to prevent him from doing so.
	He was his own worst enemy.
	He was still somewhat mad at Camara Tal.  He didn't like going into a rage.  It was dangerous for him, and for everyone around him.  He always had to deal with what evil he committed afterward, when the memories returned and haunted him, drove him to distance himself from his guilt, driving him more and more feral.  If Allia hadn't snapped him out of it, he would have killed someone.  And the thought of killing someone didn't really bother him, unless it was someone he knew and trusted.  It didn't bother him, but he knew deep inside that the human in him would cringe at the act, would make him feel remorse and guilt, emotions that would only make his feral nature more solid.  The more evil he committed, the more he would detach himself from the feelings associated with it, and the worse he would get.  Not a year ago, he would have been mortified to kill innocent people, but now it wouldn't make him bat an eye.  He was becoming more and more violent, less concerned about the suffering he was inflicting on others.  What he truly feared was the day when he found pleasure in it.  That would be the point of no return, when he would truly become the monster that lurked within.
	What price his power had cost him.
	Feeling the breeze against his back, smelling the wood and the people and the fear behind him, he put it out of his mind and looked up at the stars.  There was only one thing good of what had happened.  He hadn't hurt Allia.  Even in his blind rage, he recognized her, and the sight of her was enough to instantly melt away the icy rage around his mind and bring him back to himself.  Triana had told him once that the key to surviving rage was learning how not to hurt the ones he loved, even when in the throes of it.  And that had happened.  For the first time, that had happened.  In the middle of a rage, intoxicated with fury and looking to kill, he had come out of it at the sight of his sister.  He had nearly killed her.  He would have killed her, but he had recognized her, and something deep in his soul had risen up and screamed no.  That had been enough.  He felt comfort knowing that he couldn't bring himself to hurt Allia, no matter what state of mind he was in at the time.  The horror, the nightmare of killing his sister in the middle of a rage had lost its impact.  It was still possible, if he couldn't recognize her, but now he knew that if he could see her, could know who she was, he could not bring himself to deliver a killing blow.  He'd broken a few of her ribs when he smashed her into the deck, but that had been before he recognized her.  That was the important thing.
	He didn't hate Camara Tal.  Something told him that she never meant to do what she did.  He doubted that she would intentionally risk the lives of everyone on the ship.  Despite not trusting her, the Goddess told him that she was there to help him, and that weighted how he felt about her in his mind.  He didn't trust her, but he was willing to give her more latitude than he would anyone else, if only to satisfy the Goddess.  He wouldn't have her accusing him of rejecting her outright.  He would give her the chance to either befriend him or alienate him.  The decision was hers to make.  He was mad at her, and would be for a while, but there was no hatred there.  She had made a mistake, and he could forgive her for that.  But he would not forget.
	The moons were out.  Dommammon, the great white moon, was full, shining its brightness down upon the sea.  This far south, so close to the equator, the Skybands were little more than a knife-edge in the sky, and the night seemed darker because of it.  The White Moon took up some of that void with its milky light.  The Twin Moons, Vala and Duva, were just cresting the horizon, each half full, and the Red Moon, Kava, was descending towards its setpoint, which was little more than a curved sliver.  They all had their own cycles of waning and waxing, and were rarely either full or new at the same time.  But it did happen.  About every five or six months, they would become full or new for a couple of days, either filling the sky with light or descending it into an eerie darkness that was unusual.  The moons had a mysterious allure for him, probably something deep within his Were nature that responded to them.  It may be why so many myths about Lycanthropes changing only during the fullness of the White Moon were so rampant.  It sang to him, sang to his soul, singing a sweet melody that he could neither hear nor sense, yet stirred his soul with a haunting melody of union.  It was something the others couldn't understand, it was why he would stand on the deck for hours on end and stare up into the sky, almost every night that Dommammon was full.  The song was strongest during the full phase of the moons, strongest with the largest moon, and it sang to him of peace 