izards still being blocked?" he asked, sheathing his weapon.  It was apparent that it wasn't going to be needed.
	Tarrin nodded.
	"Then if Camara Tal is right, they're helpless," he surmised.  "It'll just be a matter of picking them up."
	"No, it won't," Kimmie said with a sigh.  "As soon as Tarrin drops the spell, they'll get their magic back.  We can't afford that.  We can't take prisoners, Zak.  Not now.  And especially not Zakkites."
	Azakar looked at Kimmie with surprise, stunned that the gentle Were-cat who was so amiable would say something so ruthless.  "But they'll die if we leave them out there!" he protested.
	"They won't be helpless, Zak," Kimmie told him.  "Some of those men swimming around out there are Wizards.  They'll have magic that will help them save themselves."
	"But what about the slaves?" Azakar said loudly.  "They didn't ask to be here, and the Wizards aren't going to save them!  Are we going to leave innocent men out there to die?  Are we?" he demanded with a shout.
	"We are," Tarrin said in a low voice, his tail slashing behind him as he looked over his shoulder at the Mahuut.
	"That's cruel!" Azakar said accusingly.
	"I'm not known for my sentimentality, Zak," he replied in a cool tone, narrowing his eyes at his fellow Knight.
	"We can't just leave innocent men out there to die!" Azakar shouted.
	"I'll give you a choice, Zak," Tarrin told him, turning around halfway.  "We either leave them behind, or I'll kill them all right now."
	Azakar gaped at him in horror.
	"This is not a game, Zak, and we don't have time to be chivilrous, or even nice.  Those men will threaten us reaching our goal, and I won't let anything stand in our way."
	"But leaving them out there, that's cruel!  That's evil!"
	Tarrin raised a glowing paw, lightning crackling around his fingers.  "Then I'll make sure they don't suffer very long," he said in a deadly serious voice.
	"No!" Azakar said, reaching for Tarrin's paw, but the Were-cat pulled back out of his reach too quickly for him.  "Tarrin, we can't do this!  Kimmie, tell him we can't leave those men to die!"
	"Zak, sometimes you're too much a dreamer," Kimmie sighed, looking up at him with compassionate eyes.  "Tarrin is right, Zak.  This is a war, my big friend, and sometimes in a war we have to do things we don't like."
	"Well, I'm not going to be a party to murder!" Azakar shouted.
	"Then choose, Azakar.  It's up to you, because to be completely honest, I don't care either way."
	Azakar looked at him with disbelieving eyes, shock apparent on his face.  "I, I won't let you kill them," Azakar stated defiantly.
	"Then we leave them behind," Tarrin said, turning his back on the Mahuut.
	"I said I won't let you kill them," Azakar said hotly, drawing his sword.
	Tarrin stopped dead.  "Don't go any further, Zak," he warned in a deceptively soft voice, not looking at the Knight.  "If you use that sword against me, you won't live to resheathe it."
	Before things could deteriorate any further, Kimmie put herself between the two towering males, putting a paw on Azakar's chest and pushing him away.  "Zak, are you insane?" Kimmie demanded in a surprised voice.
	"I'm not going to let him kill them," Azakar said with a snarl.
	"He's not.  I am," Keritanima said in a strong voice from behind the Mahuut.  Azakar turned and looked at the Wikuni Queen, whose eyes were hard and her posture stiff.  The bearing of a monarch, not the young woman they all knew.  "We take no prisoners, Zak.  None.  We can't afford the risk."
	"I can't believe any of you!" Azakar hissed at her.  "You're going to condemn innocent men to death because it's not convenient for you?"
	"You have a choice, Zak," Keritanima told him in a level voice.  "You can see the little picture, or you can see the big picture.  We can pick up the survivors and save a few dozen lives.  And if we do, we put at risk the lives of every single person on these ships, and even more than that, every single person you know and love.  We put the lives of everyone in my kingdom at risk, in Suld at risk, bloody hells, we put everyone in the world at risk.  You forget what we're doing out here.  We run the risk of letting someone else beat us to the Firestaff, and having them use it.  You know what's going to happen if that happens.  Are you willing to risk that, Zak?  Are you ready to put my life on the line?  Miranda's?  Dolanna's?  Everyone you know and love?  Are those few dozen lives worth risking the safety of the entire world?"
	Azakar lowered his sword and his head, his eyes haunted.
	"That's right.  It's not an easy thing to face, is it?" Keritanima asked with a quavering voice.  "Do you think I enjoy abandoning men to the sea?  I don't, I assure you.  If anyone understands, if anyone wouldn't want to see it happen, it's a Wikuni.  But I'm going to do it because the risk I'd take if I saved them is just too terrible to contemplate.  Those men are going to die.  That's a fact that you can't change.  They can die here and now, or they can die when we fail and unleash ultimate horror on the world.  The only question is how many other innocent people are going to die with them."
	Keritanima looked stern, but Tarrin could see the tears forming in her eyes.  "So make your choice, Zak.  Because I simply can't stand here and talk about this anymore."
	With a hanging head, Azakar dropped his sword to the deck.
	"Donovan, pass this order," Keritanima told the Tellurian as he approached her, speaking in a voice almost trembling as she tried to control it.  "Pick up no survivors, and discourage them from approaching the ships.  We'll weigh anchor and go under sail until the steam engine is fixed.  We are leaving this place.  We have to get away from those Zakkites before Tarrin can lower his spell of disruption, and I won't have him kill himself maintaining the spell while we lounge around here."  She sniffled.  "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd really like to be alone right now," Keritanima said with teary eyes, turning and running towards the stairs leading below decks.
	Tarrin sighed.  That couldn't have been easy for her.  The memory of the dream came back to him, of Keritanima standing on a mound of skulls, weeping.  Now he understood the meaning of it.  Keritanima had no qualms about destroying the guilty, but when it came to sacrificing the innocent, it was a different story.  It was something that, as a queen, she occasionally was forced to do, but it was never easy for her.  And if it did become easy, then she would be no better than her father was.  Tarrin looked towards Miranda, and they shared a knowing look, then the mink ran after her friend and employer.  Miranda understood.  The dream had been a warning, he felt, a warning to not allow Keritanima to dwell on what had happened.  Miranda would know what to do.
	Tarrin felt the weight of the spell begin to take its toll on him.  It had taken High Sorcery to create, and he couldn't let go of High Sorcery until he ended it.  His paws still glowed with Magelight, and they would remain so until he could safely end the spell.  But as Keritanima pointed out to Azakar, he couldn't do that so long as they were close to the surviving Zakkites.
	"I hate this," Azakar finally said, his head still hung low.
	Tarrin reached down and picked up his sword, then wiped the water off of it and resheathed it for him.  "So do I, Zak," he said honestly.  "I know you think I'm a monster, but maybe now you understand me a little better.  I don't do what I do because I like it.  I do what I do because I know what will happen if we fail.  In this case, my gentle friend, the ends justify the means.  We must succeed, no matter what."
	"No matter the cost?" he said in a quiet, plaintive voice.
	Tarrin bowed his head himself, a wave of emptiness flowing through him, and there was no sound but the sound of the rain on the deck.  "Some of us have already paid that price," he told the Mahuut.  "Thank your gods you weren't one of them."  Then he padded slowly, statefully, towards the stairs to return to the cabin, to get out of the pounding rain.
 
Chapter 9

	As always, whenever someone confronted Tarrin about what he had become, it caused him to undergo a period of depression afterwards.  Tarrin knew what he was, but he didn't revel in it the way some people thought he did.  He had been like Azakar once, gentle and caring, but the Cat, time, betrayal, and the danger of his mission had changed him.  He knew that it changed him, he knew that if the Tarrin that had been could see himself now, he would be horrified.  But in the end, there was nothing he could do about it.  And since it was a situation he couldn't change, he didn't dwell on it.  That was forced upon him by the Cat, but in a way, he was glad of it.
	He wouldn't have been able to be very depressed even if he tried, because of Kimmie.  She stayed with him the entire day, using careful, gentle words and sincere affection, humor and compassion, to prevent him from falling back in that black pit of nearly psychotic self-torture.  She lavished the same kind of attention on him that he had been lavishing on her, making him feel like the most important person in the world.  Kimmie did indeed know him better than he knew himself, and her previous experience dealing with Mist had made her almost invincible in her battle to keep him from brooding.
	Things were rather tense on the vessel after the surprisingly swift victory over the Zakkites, and Tarrin was only a part of it.  Phandebrass and four of the Tellurian engineers had somehow--nobody knew how--managed to salvage some of the magical equipment from the lone Zakkite ship that had not sunk as the five Wikuni vessels prepared to get under way.  It took so long because the steampship's sails hadn't been unfurled since they started out, and the sailors needed a little extra time to set the rigging to support the sails.  Phandebrass and his fellow Tellurians had left in a longboat--Keritanima was furious that the sailors had helped the mage lower it--and had somehow managed to get over to the ship without any of the Zakkites in the sea challenging him or trying to climb into his boat.  They then boarded the badly listing ship, which would sink at any moment, and had managed to get out just as it did sink with several enemy spellbooks and other strange things thrown into a sack.  What was most surprising of all was that the mage had somehow pulled up the magical device that allowed the skyships to fly, pulled it off the deck, tied a rope to it, tied the rope to the longboat, and then let the ship sink with the device still aboard.  The longboat very nearly sank when the rope kept it from falling into the deep, and Phandebrass and two of the Tellurians that were helping him had to bail frantically as the other two rowed desperately to get the longboat back to where they could tie it to a Wikuni vessel and keep it from going under.
	After he got back, Keritanima let him have it.  But it was just the kind of thing that Phandebrass would do, and they all knew it.  Whenever Phandebrass found something that intrigued him, he would go to almost any lengths to study it or research it, even at tremendous personal risk.  He was almost crazy that way.  He had been curious about how the Zakkites made their ships fly, for no mage outside Zakkar had ever been aboard one of their legendary skyships.  Tarrin had seen their flying device before, and had described it to the Wizard long ago, during one of their many talks.  Phandebrass knew exactly what to look for, so when they boarded the sinking ship, he knew exactly what to do.  He had had the Tellurians go about tearing the device out of the deck as he recovered any magical equipment he thought may be useful or interesting to study.
	And so, those were the circumstances that caused a flying device from a Zakkite skyship to be lashed down onto the spare deck space on the steamship.
	Phandebrass was deleriously happy about it, so happy in fact that he handed over all the spellbooks and magical knicknacks to Kimmie for her to study as he worked on the flying device.  It was a large metal contraption that had a floor and two pillars, and from the pillars there were chains with manacles on the ends.  Tarrin had seen that device before, when he had destroyed the Zakkites long ago when they were on the Star of Jerod, seen a Wyvern locked into those manacles just before destroying the ship with Sorcery.  It was very large, so large in fact that it should have sunk the longboat like a stone as soon as the rope that tied the two together had snapped taut.  How the longboat managed to stay afloat was an absolute mystery, and only enhanced Phandebrass unusual reputation among his friends.  The Wizard was wild and scattered, but he seemed to have this absolutely amazing luck that allowed him to slither through any situation unscathed.  That mystical luck had saved the Wizard once again.
	The steam engine was repaired at about noontime the next day, as Keritanima took Tarrin down into the engine room so Donovan could show him the part that had broken.  Tarrin used Druidic magic to Conjure a replacement, and once it was installed, they were under steam once again and moving at good speed towards their destination.
	Those days were filled with magical uncertainty.  It turned out that it wasn't the spells of the Zakkites that made them so devastating in an attack on other ships, it was their magical objects.  Phandebrass had recovered nine separate little wooden sticks that Kimmie called wands, sticks that had been magically imbued with the power to invoke a magical spell upon command.  It was the same spell over and over again, and each of the little wand devices could only invoke the spell so many times before its magical supply was exhuasted.  Tarrin could feel that magical power stored inside the little sticks.  What made everyone so nervous was when Kimmie worked on unlocking the means of activating each wand.  Magical balls of fire or raking blasts of lightning or pale beams of magical energy would fly across the deck at random intervals as Kimmie succeeded in discovering the method of activating each wand, then began studying them to determine their function.  While she was doing that, Phandebrass was absolutely attached to his flying machine, never moving more than twenty spans from it as he measured it, studied it, experimented on it, even tried to cut the tip off one of the tapered pillars to learn what the device had been made from.  His experimentations had noticable effects on the device, and on the ship to which it had been attached.  On one occasion, the entire ship suddenly lifted about two spans off the surface of the water for about three heartbeats, then dropped back down, shaking up the entire ship and everything in it.  An infuriated Donovan ran out from the engine room and actually slapped Phandebrass across the face because his little stunt had broken a part in the steam engine.  Tarrin was summoned to Conjure a replacement part, and after about three hours, the ship was again under way.
	That had been the last straw.  Keritanima threatened to throw the device over the side if Phandebrass did any more experimenting.  She told him he could study it, but no more magic.  Phandebrass looked indignant and terrified that his precious captured device would be thrown overboard, so he promised to behave.
	The destruction of nine Zakkite ships had done much to thin out the crowds on the sea.  Or more to the point, the nine Zakkite ships had done the thinning, and the Wikuni formation was reaping the rewards of that sweep.  They encountered no vessels for a long ten day stretch, but on that tenth day, Allia's eagle eyes had spotted exactly what none of them wanted to see.  Another Zakkite Triad had appeared on the northwestern horizon, and they were moving southwest, towards them.  But Keritanima seemed unconcerned.  Zakkite ships were fearsome in battle, but they didn't fly everywhere they went.  And when they were on the sea, they were slower than Wikuni vessels.  The common Wikuni tactic for dealing with Zakkites was to flee from them if outnumbered and send out the call, and every Wikuni ship in the vicinity would converge in a central location then turn around and attempt to chase down the Zakkites with superior numbers.  The Zakkites were familiar with this tactic, so it turned into a game of cat and mouse on the high seas, as the Zakkites tried to sink lone Wikuni vessels before reinforcements could arrive.
	Though Keritanima said that the Wikuni were faster, those three Zakkite ships did not disappear from the horizon for long.  They would reappear at irregular intervals, looking as if they had put on every square finger of sail in an attempt to keep up with their quarry.  The Zakkites' ability to keep up unnerved the Wikuni sailors on the steamship, and the lack of space and brutal heat only made them even more short-tempered.  The occasional fights that been going on before became more common, and had even spread to the clippers.  The famous discipline of the Wikuni Navy was starting to break down.
	The morale of the men got worse and worse as each day passed.  Tarrin heard them muttering constantly under their breaths about the insane mission the Queen had pushed on them, mutter about other sailors they didn't like, complain about the steamship's bad conditions, and voice their discontent.  The mood got darker and darker as they moved ever southwestward, slowly turning more and more south as they kept the Diamond Crown firmly at the bow.
	The insidious nature of it hadn't been apparent to Tarrin until he began seeing discord among his friends.  The sniping between Camara Tal and Phandebrass began to get ugly, and Azakar glared at Tarrin every opportunity he got.  Tarrin and the Mahuut hadn't really talked or reconciled since the fight over the Zakkite survivors, and Tarrin's behavior had seemed to rankle the Knight as time went by, festering like an infection.  Dar and Keritanima started fighting like siblings, arguing over the least little thing, and their arguments got longer and more vicious every time.  Keritanima seemed consumed by her need to wrangle with Dar, but one fact kept Keritanima focused, kept them all focused.  They had left Vendaka a month before, and the instructions said that they were supposed to travel for only forty.  They were getting very close to their destination, and that knowledge kept all of them rational.  They only had about ten days to go, and then they were going to be there.  That helped alleviate some of the stress, and the air had even begun to cool as they moved deeper into the southern hemisphere, away from the tropical heat of the equator.  It was still hot, but it wasn't as brutally hot as it had been, going from unbearable to merely uncomfortable.
	So it was understandable that there was a tremendous amount of tension on the ship when they sighted their first land in more than thirty days.  It was a small island, little more than a volcanic peak jutting out of the water, with smoke issuing forth lazily from the volcanic cone.  The whole thing was a mass of black stone, coastlines that rose out of the sea as steeply as the side of a mountain, as waves pounded frothily against the steep black rocks.  The disappointment that it wasn't an inhabitable island, that there would be no respite from the diet of hard tack and salted meat that was the staple of a sailor, made the Wikuni even more irritable.
	The night after the island passed by was quite momentous.  Tarrin was awakened by Sapphire biting at his ear, but there was also a scraping at the door, very faint, very muffled.  Had Tarrin not had his nose buried in Kimmie's hair, he would have smelled the Wikuni outside the door.  His keen eyes made out that they had stuck something very thin, like a knifeblade, through the doorframe to try to throw the latch.  They were trying to get in.  But why?  Tarrin crept over Kimmie and slinked up to the door silently, pausing to listen.  The similarity of the situation struck him, as he recalled creeping up to a door in the Tower to listen to men that tried to break into his room.  Those men had been trying to kill him.  What did these men want?
	"Careful, ya clumsy oaf!" one of them hissed.  "That beast has ears, ya know!"
	"Why're we doin' this, Clem?" another asked. "Ye've seen that monster, and ye heard the stories!"
	"We can't convince her Majesty to turn us around and take us home unless we got collateral, Vin," a third voice said. "I like her Majesty, but this insanity has gone on long enough.  We just had the bad luck to draw these two.  You got that silver knife handy?"
	"Aye, but I hope we don't have to use it.  Goin' home is good and all, but that big furry one saved us from the Zakkites.  It ain't right to pay him back by killin' 'im."
	"Ain't nobody here wants bloodshed, Vin," the one called Clem assured him.  "We just want her Majesty to turn us around."
	"We'll be hanged fer sure."
	"Better to hang at home than die out here," the third one whose name was unknown said immediately.
	Tarrin was stunned.  They were going to mutiny!  He knew that they were unhappy, but to mutiny, it was unbelievable!  That one was right, they would be hanged.  But they sounded like they'd rather hang than keep going!
	It was irrational!  Why would they want to go home, when certain death was waiting for them?  Not only were they going to mutiny, they were going to mutiny on the ship that carried their queen.  That would be as good as high treason against the Crown!  And there were more than these three.  they said that they got the bad luck of drawing Tarrin.  That meant that other mutineers were going to try to take some of the others hostage, the ones closest to Keritanima.  They'd never get anywhere near Miranda, so that left Dar, Allia, Dolanna, and Camara Tal.  They'd die quickly trying to take Allia or Camara Tal, and though Dolanna wouldn't kill them, they'd fare just as badly against her.  Dar was the only one they'd have a chance of taking, but the young Arkisian's Sorcery was much stronger now.  He would be no easy mark either.
	Weaving blindly, Tarrin sent a weave of Air across the door and released it.  He felt it collapse around the three mutineers, enfold them in itself, and quite effectively paralyze them by encasing them in sheaths of solid Air that only gave enough for them to breathe.  "Kimmie," Tarrin called quickly, then put his paw on his amulet.  "Kerri."
	"You woke me up!" came a bleary response.
	"You'd better get up.  Three of your men just tried to take me hostage.  And from the sound of it, there are more."
	"What?"
	"Just get up and get Binter and Sisska out into the companionway.  Allia will kill whoever comes after her, you know that, and we need these men alive to find out what's going on."
	Tarrin ignored any reply, shifting his attention.  "Dar."
	"I'm up, Tarrin.  I was about to come get you.  Do you know that two of Kerri's sailors just broke into my room?  They tried to tie me up!"
	"Are you alright?"
	"I'm fine.  All those nights sleeping in the same room with you has turned me into a light sleeper," he chuckled.
	"Did you kill them?"
	"No, I just tied them up with Sorcery.  We need to tell Kerri about this."
	"Three of them just tried to do the same to me," he informed his young friend.  "I think we all need to get out there and break up this little rebellion."
	Tarrin tried raising Allia, but he got no reply.  The sudden sound of combat that roared up the companionway explained why.  There were shouts of fury, then sudden groans of consternation, then shrieks of agony.  Tarrin opened the door to hear sudden confused shouting, and when he looked out, he saw about fifteen of the Wikuni sailors in the companionway, all holding knives or cutlasses or starwheel pistols.  They looked shocked and frightened, and Tarrin saw why.  Allia was standing in her doorway with her two shortswords in her hands.  She was nude, and there was blood spattered all over her.  She looked furious.  And in all the world, there was nothing worse than an infuriated Selani.  The sailors in the companionway saw her, saw that she had caught the men trying to sneak into her cabin, and dealt with them in a manner that was quite final.
	One fellow had enough of a mind to level his pistol at Tarrin's sister.  Tarrin's protective instincts roared to the forefront, but the man fired before he could stop him.  Allia seemed unphased by that act, and Tarrin saw why when the small lead ball struck something in front of Allia, ricocheted into the wall beside her.  Allia has woven a shield of Air to protect her against the pistol.  Wise Allia, even prepared in a moment of fury!
	The man may have had the time to fire the pistol, but he didn't have time for anything else.  Tarrin was on him a mere heartbeat later, his wicked claws ripping the life out of the dog Wikuni before the loud bang of the pistol had a chance to fade from the cramped passage.  The attack on Allia had sent Tarrin right into a blind rage, and his rage caused him to savage his unfortunate victim in exclusion of turning on the others.  That moment of fury gave the Wikuni sailors a chance to flee from the Were-cat, whose attention was focused on shredding the body of the one who had fired on his sisters into pieces as small as he could possibly make them.
	It was about to turn into a very ugly slaughter, as Camara Tal came out of her room, this time in a breastplate as well as her tripa, sword drawn and ready.  Binter and Sisska stepped out into the passage with Keritanima just behind, and Phandebrass and Azakar too had come out of their rooms ready to do battle.  Tarrin roared in fury as he reduced the Wikuni who had attacked Allia to a mangled pile of quivering gore, then turned and moved to attack the fleeing Wikuni, who were running up the passageway towards Keritanima, Binter, and Sisska.  Tarrin's room was the first one passed after coming down the stairs, and Allia's was the second.  That put Tarrin between the Wikuni sailors and the only way out of the companionway.  Only the three Wikuni sailors that Tarrin immobilized with his magic were on the other side of him, the only ones with a chance to survive the Were-cat's fury.
	Then Kimmie was there.  She rushed in front of him and put her arms out wide, looking squarely into his eyes.  "He's dead, Tarrin," she said softly.  "The one that tried to hurt Allia is dead.  Let it go.  Let it go."
	The Cat looked at her, recognized her as mate and friend, and saw that she was moving to defend the enemies behind.  The Cat paused to consider this.  The Cat knew that mate was wise and knowing about things that the Cat did not understand, and the Cat deferred to her wisdom.  So if mate protected the enemies, perhaps they were not enemies.  She had her back to them, and they were not attacking her.  That helped the Cat make that decision, and gain more respect for mate.  Mate was strong of heart to challenge the Cat when it was angry, when mate knew fully well that she was the weaker of them and could not stop it if it decided not to listen to her.  Mate was a good female, and the cub she would bear him would have her strength of heart as well as his physical power.  A fine cub.
	Easily and gently, the Cat receeded back into Tarrin's mind, allowing his conscious to regain control over himself.
	Tarrin put a paw to his forehead, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs.  As always, he was a little disoriented and unsure what had happened, but he did know that he'd been in a rage, and that he'd only been like that a few quick moments.  He looked and saw Kimmie standing between him and the dozen or so terrified Wikuni sailors behind her, arms out and her expression resolute.  She was protecting them from him!  She didn't protect all of them, for he could smell the blood and flesh of a Wikuni all over him.  He'd killed at least one of them.
	It came back to him quickly, because he'd only been in his rage a moment.  One had shot at Allia with a pistol, so he had dealt with the man in a suitable manner.  He looked at the others, saw them all standing woodenly, turning around to face Keritanima.  They turned and just stood there.
	Tarrin sensed it after clearing his head.  Keritanima was using Sorcery, a Mind weave, on them.  Because Keritanima was Wikuni, she could affect other Wikuni with Mind weaves.  She was using one now to control all of them, to keep them from panicking.
	"Just what in the bloody blazes is going on around here!" Camara Tal snapped, brandishing her sword.
	"A mutiny, it seems," Phandebrass answered her.
	"I didn't ask you, you clod!" Camara Tal shouted at him, raising her sword in Phandebrass' direction.
	"Now see here, I've been very nice to you up until now, but I've grown tired of your incessant picking," the mage said grimly, pulling one of the captured wands out of the belt over his nightshirt.  "If you don't like me this much, I think we should do something about it, we should."
	"Cease, both of you!" Dolanna said, but it fell on deaf ears.  Camara Tal stalked up towards Phandebrass with her sword levelled at him, and Phandebrass pointed his captured wand at her threateningly.
	Then they both simply stopped.  Their eyes glazed over as Tarrin felt Dolanna do the same thing to them that Keritanima did to the Wikuni.
	"What is going on around here?" Dar asked, looking at Tarrin fearfully.  "Camara and Phandebrass like each other!  They just argue because they enjoy it!"
	Tarrin looked at Camara Tal and Phandebrass in surprise, but Dolanna closed her eyes and bade at them.  They stiffly obeyed her, coming up to her and kneeling before her, so Dolanna could put her hands on each of their heads without having to strain herself to reach up so far.  Dolanna's expression became searching for a long moment, then her eyes snapped open in surprise.  "Goddess!" she gasped.  "It is magic doing this!"
	"What?" Kimmie asked, turning to face the diminutive Sorceress.
	"It is very faint, very subtle," she said.  "But there is a magical influence provoking this animosity."
	Keritanima beckoned to one of the sailors, and he marched up to her and stood stock still.  Keritanima put her hands on either side of the ram Wikuni's face, under his horns, her expression one of concentration.  Then she opened her eyes.  "There is something there," she agreed.  "It's affecting his mind, irritating his anger and influencing him."
	"We are close to our goal.  Perh