Unicorn Saga - The Unicorn Peace Part 32

"Because," Jarrod said slowly, "while the Discipline

170 has been granted territory in the Outland, its location hasn't been decided upon. As you probably know, I was the Discipline's representative on the Commission. Now, if you were one of the Queen's spies ..." He let the phrase die.

"Oh, so that's the way of it," Yarrow said, and slumped out.

Early the following day, Jarrod made his way to Greygor's lodgings with a tingle of antic.i.p.ation. Al- though what he was hoping to do was not considered serious Magic, he felt, nonetheless, as if he was em- barking on an adventure. The previous evening he had gone over the notes he had made as a boy. He had dis- liked the anatomy sessions that were an integral part of shape-changing, but he was glad now that Greylock had been so meticulous in his tutelage. The drawings of the musculature and skeleton of that long-dead cat were clear and precise.

Greygor opened the door at his knock and then bus- tled about preparing chai.

"Do you want me to go out for a walk?" he asked.

"Not unless you want to," Jarrod said. "In fact it would be rather a help to have someone to judge how successful my efforts are." He accepted a mug of chai and added, "You'll have to be absolutely quiet."

"I'll just sit in a comer and watch," Greygor prom- ised. "D'you mind telling me what will happen?"

"Not much of anything to begin with. I shall just try to get into the mind of one of your cats first. I know what the body of a cat looks like, but I don't know what it feels like."

"You won't hurt the cat, will you?" Greygor asked anxiously.

"Not at all. If I do it right the cat won't even know I'm there."

"Oh well then, I suppose it's all right," Greygor said, 171.

sounding not altogether convinced. He took his chai over to a miraculously cat-free chair by the wall.

Jarrod drank his fill and put his mug aside. He looked over the group of cats. Two were grooming each other, one was stalking a fly, three were intently watching something through the window and the rest were snooz- ing. He picked a large white stretched bonelessly in a patch of sunshine. He adjusted his own posture until he was comfortable and then shut his eyes and collected himself. He blocked out his awareness of the room and concentrated on the image of the cat. He reached out gently with his mind, seeking that other intelligence. He sensed a veiled consciousness, somnolent on the sur- face, alert below. He probed further and knew that the cat was aware of him. He felt an ear twitch. He slid further in.

The cat's eyes flicked open and Jarrod saw a segment of the room from the floor up. The cat shook its head.

Huge chairs loomed. The ceiling was a long way off.

Distance, however, occasioned no loss of detail. Every- thing was sharp and clear. Inside the cat there was wari- ness balanced by intense curiosity; a concentrated stillness that could explode into motion in an instant.

The cat rolled from its side to its belly, hind legs pre- pared to spring into escape if that was needed. The head moved from one side to the other, scanning the other members of the extended family to see if they had no- ticed anything amiss. No visual evidence of that. The cat sniffed the air and Jarrod knew the pack smell made up of a dozen different strands. Chatham's odor was part of the familiar. His own, he realized, was less so, but the cat detected no sharpness of fear or anger com- ing from his body.

The head turned and looked over the shoulder just to make sure. Jarrod saw himself as a vast expanse of blue, tapering upward. No sign of a threat, but one

172 never knew with strange humans. The cat was on its feet in one lithe move. It stretched, claws digging into the carpet. It sauntered across the room and lept up onto an unoccupied bench. Good vantage point, back protected. Whatever this disturbance within it was, there seemed no reason to display aggression. The eyes roamed over the room just to be sure. When in doubt, wash. Grooming commenced.

Jarrod withdrew and slowly opened his eyes. His sight, he noted, was not as sharp and his sense of smell seemed severely limited. He sat up.

"Interesting animals," he commented.

"Beautiful, mysterious and independent," Greygor replied.

"The surface is cool and collected, but it's completely feral underneath."

"Miniature warcats," Greygor said complacently.

"Fortunately I don't have to become one, just look like one."

Jarrod stood up and undid his rope belt; then he started to pull his robe off over his head.

"What are you doing now?" Greygor asked.

"Taking off my clothes," Jarrod said, his voice muf- fled by the cloth.

He folded the robe and put it carefully on the carpet.

He unlaced his sandals and took them off. "No self- respecting cat would wear clothes," he said. "Besides, I'm going to have to make myself very much smaller and I'd get swamped." He undid his breachclout, folded it and put it on top of the robe.

"I hadn't thought of that," Greygor said, averting his eyes. "One thing. Perhaps you ought to try this in the other room."

"Oh, right, in case someone conies to visit."

"There is that, but I was thinking more of the cats.

173.

They might not take kindly to a strange cat in their midst."

"A good point. I don't have the pack scent that says I'm harmless. You do, by the way."

"All the more reason," Greygor said, and opened the inner door.

The room was small and mostly taken up by the bed.

The bed, like the furniture in the main room, attested to the family's past affluence, first by its size and then by its appearance. The wood was dark and l.u.s.trous. At some point in its history it had been carefully polished by a servant or a conscientious housewife. The posts were delicately carved, but the silk of the canopy was dim and, in places, tattered. Jarrod edged past Greygor and stood on a small rug. Greygor went and sat cross- legged on the bed, Jarrod rotated his head to ease his neck and shook his arms, hands hanging limp. He be- gan to breathe deeply and rhythmically, clearing his mind of everything except the task ahead. His eyelids drooped and his chin sank.

Greygor found that he was holding his breath and forced himself to breathe normally. Life was pa.s.sing strange, he thought. All those years of scrimping and make-work when nothing interesting happened from one month to the next and now his debts were paid and he was in his bedchamber staring at a naked Mage who was trying to turn himself into a cat. At that instant the Mage's outline wavered and Greygor blinked a couple of times to clear his eyes. The outline was sharp again, but it seemed to Greygor that the Mage was shorter than before. The blurring occurred again and this time he was sure. Courtak was shrinking.

After about half of an hour had pa.s.sed, Jarrod was the size of a six-year-old boy and his skin was sheened with sweat. This was harder than he had expected, and he hadn't even begun on the transmogrification. He

174 dropped onto all fours and began to concentrate on the bones and muscles of his arms. He brought the fore part of the cat to mind and started with his fingers.

The movement startled Greygor and, for a moment, he thought that the Mage had fainted. Then he noticed that the fingers of the hand nearest him were retracting while the hand itself arched and became clubby. The proportions of the arms changed so that the miniature Mage was canting forward. There was a pause when nothing seemed to be happening and then, with increas- ing swiftness, the legs began to change. From the coc- cyx a protrusion grew into a thin, ratlike tail. Hip and shoulder joints modulated. Greygor stared transfixed and slightly nauseated as the nose shrank and the jaw became rounded. The ears elongated up into points.

There on the carpet was a pink, oversized cat, hairless except for a incongruous cap of tight, brown curls.

That too began to change. The curls straightened out, the hair became shorter and natter and finer. Hair be- gan to sprout over the rest of the body and the spindly tail bushed out. In a matter of what seemed like minutes a very large, dark brown cat appeared. There was an- other pause and Greygor could see that the animal's breathing was labored. The chest rippled and became more barrel-like, the hips slimmer. The breathing slowed. Gradually, like snow settling on a ploughed field, the brown fur turned white. There was another blurring of outline, and when the cat became solid again it was half its size. It was still big for a cat, but Greygor had seen cats of that size before.

The round head fumed and Greygor saw the bright pink of the inside of the ears and of the nose. Vivid blue eyes regarded him quizzically. There was some- thing not quite right, he thought, as the cat sat back on its haunches and curled its tail around them. Then it struck him.

175.

"Whiskers," he said, and his voice came out hoa.r.s.ely.

"You need whiskers."

The cat's eyes closed and thin white filaments began to grow out of both sides of the b.u.t.ton nose.

"Long enough," Greygor said. "They're supposed to be exactly the width of the broadest part of your body.

That's how you know if you can get through a given s.p.a.ce."

The cat's eyes opened and the pupils were no longer round, though the irises remained a startling blue. The transformation was complete. It stretched, first one way then the other, testing its new muscles. Then it walked quietly around the room, taking everything in. It circled back to the bed, looked up at Greygor, collected itself and sprang. It landed lightly on the bed and sat down with a look of palpable satisfaction. It lifted a paw to its mouth and nonchalantly began to groom itself.

Greygor laughed delightedly and applauded.