<html><head><style type="text/css"></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><div><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///G:%5CUsers%5CRyx%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///G:%5CUsers%5CRyx%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///G:%5CUsers%5CRyx%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><style>  </style>                 “Behold!  He is but a creature, a great lazy beast that you might find among any menagerie.  Perfectly normal though truly fearful to look upon, and more so to hear give voice to the roar that proclaims him King of his domain.  But look, now, at the female of this handsome pair.  Truly, a monster!  Vicious as any of her kind, a hunter of beasts as large as the wagon within which she resides.  See how she paces, how deadly those eyes.  Don’t look too closely now, she is a temperamental beast.”  A susurrus of uneasy sound percolated through the crowd as the showman carried on.  Malger studied one of his fingernails, digging under it with the tip of his dagger while Murikeer and Vinsah listened on, and waited.  “What say you, kind folk of the world?  Is this monstrous looking chimera of man and beast something that was once man, or was upraised from its humble beginnings as a beast?  Or is it something else, something progenitored by much less wholesome acts by the barbaric tribes of the south?”<o:p></o:p>                 Max left that question hanging as he stepped aside and just let his audience ogle.  From behind the crowd Vinsah could just make out the head and shoulders of some tall, scarily feline beast that looked remarkably humanoid.  He blinked and frowned as the lioness looked over the heads of the assembled, snarling and baring great teeth.  Her upper fangs dropped below her lower jaw by a good handspan, giving her a look of savagery that quailed Vinsah a good thirty feet away.  He was starkly amazed, and beside him Murikeer looked likewise amazed.  Malger merely gave the fearsome lioness a quizzical look.<o:p></o:p>                 “What in all the hells is she?” the minstrel asked in surprise.<o:p></o:p>                 “A saber-tooth lion, from the southern continent.” Vinsah breathed in awe.  “I’ve seen one, when a great circus came through Abaef and Yesulam some years ago.  They’re reportedly far more dangerous than the eastern lion that you more traditionally see in these traveling menageries.  Those are bigger, but they don’t have those teeth.”  The crowd began to thin and move on, following the showman once again as he resumed his speech.<o:p></o:p>                 As the people moved on Malger and his retinue approached the wagon.  The lioness still paced, back and forth, back and forth, from one end of the huge rolling prison to the other.  Her pelt was striped, black on a silvery gray, in the manner of a tiger, and her eyes were an arresting bronze that bored right into them when she looked down at them.  She stopped as they neared the wagon, turning to grasp the heavy iron bars with hands easily large enough to grab their heads like melons.  For a moment the foursome stared at each other while the huge male saber-toothed lion in the cage languorously rolled over and yawned lazily.  He was likewise striped gray and black, but probably weighed a good two hundred pounds more than the bipedal female.<o:p></o:p>                 Then she shook the bars of her wagon and let out a screaming, full throated roar that sent the three of them back in hasty retreat and caused the gaggle of onlookers moving toward the other wagon to start in fear and whip their heads around so quickly that many staggered.  The peasants cried out in surprise and clustered together fearfully while the better dressed aristocratic youths gathered closer to the old noble in their midst.  The Lightbringer, visible only as a face among the crowd and her own retinue, looked back over the side of her divan curiously.<o:p></o:p>                 “Come away, come away.  She’s a nasty beast with a temperament to match.  She gets angry because such easy prey stands before her and she can’t reach it.” Max called out through the crowd as the three travelers moved with steps a little quicker than earlier to catch up with the crowd.  “Don’t you have any fear, these wagons, each and every one, have been blessed by the most powerful of Lothanasi priests, a handful of great wizards, and the best metalsmiths that gold can find between Kelewair and Silvassa.”<o:p></o:p>                 With many uneasy glances back at the raging lioness rattling the stout bars of her prison, and rocking the entire mass of the wagon with her energetic anger, they caught up with the crowd as it gathered around the side of the second wagon.  The same two wagon tenders came with their poles and took up positions at either end of the wagon.  It was then that Vinsah noticed the two tall, barrel-chested men that drifted along in the wake of the showman.  Two others had preceded him and were already in position near the wagon.  All four of them wore long, heavy looking swords and had heavy chain mail hauberks draped over their broad frames.  Bodyguards, and confident fighters by their look, with hard expressions on their faces.  Just looking at them gave him a queasy, uneasy feeling in his gut.<o:p></o:p>                 “As you saw with the singing she-cat over there,” Max was saying over the uneasy mumbling of the crowd and the angry, bellowing roars of the lioness, “the excesses of mankind’s zealotry can create dangerous, feral monstrosities such as she.  Among the skinchangers none are more feared than those who were granted, by some means or another, perhaps by the touch of some insane god or the machinations of a wizard with evil ends, the ability to adopt for a time the form of their tribal totem.  The ideal of the beast overwhelms the fallibility of the human embracing their gifts, banishing mind from soul, and soul from humanity, and leaving behind a shell that is ferocious beyond the measure of mortal beasts, furious at the trap that is its flesh, and wholly insane.”  Poles thunked into sockets and with a great, protesting squeak of wood and metal hinges, the awning on the second wagon rose.  This time the ohhs and awws of the crowd were not as fearful.<o:p></o:p>                 “This sad sample of mindless carnage was captured along the forests south of the Whitestone Tower, and not even the mages who restrained her could tell us whether she was once as human as you or I, or the failed experiment of some twisted sorcerer.  What function anyone would make of such a species, other than as a mindless killing machine, I could not tell you.  Do not let her momentary state of calm beguile you, there lad, don’t step so close now, she’s as ferocious as the fanged one you’ve already seen.  But she’s also more cunning, there’s more between those ugly ears than the eyes portray, an animal cunning that makes this displeasing looking beast as dangerous as any that I have mastered in this menagerie.  Lucky for us this evening she’s already had her feast, so is at least calm enough to reveal.”  Max turned and walked on, the crowd following him with a few curious and uneasy glances at the unmoving tenant of the second wagon.  “You should consider, if you would, enlightened folk, why that one’s cage is not quite so clean as the others.  She has the nature of the beast, and cares not at all in the filth of her condition.”  Indeed, the wagon, once the awning was raised, reeked like a barn in which too many pigs had been kept in far too close quarters, and the people moved on with willing haste.<o:p></o:p>                 After months and years spent among the commingled scents of hundreds of animorphed creatures residing within the walls of Metamor the three travelers were much less affected by the stench of effluence that spilled from the soiled interior of the wagon.  Vinsah could not help but place a paw over his sensitive nose, whiskers and ears lying flat under the guise of Murikeer’s powerful illusion.  Malger stepped up beside Murikeer after a long look toward the crowd as it moved on.  “Are these beasts illusions, lad?  Can you see?”<o:p></o:p>                 Murikeer shook his head, “They’re not illusions, but what they are beyond that I cannot see.”  He was rubbing his good eye with a hand, his face drawn in a pinched expression of pain.  “These wagons are so tangled and enwrapped in prisoning magics that I can see little through it all.  I don’t sense any illusory patterns, but I could be missing a lot, I’m sorry.”<o:p></o:p>                 Vinsah moved up beside him as the hyena bitch within looked at them from the corner of one dark brown eye.  She was a sad specimen even for her species, her fur matted with filth and straw, missing in some places.  One ear was little more than a ragged ruin and the clear marks of ringworm fouled the fur of the leg nearest.  She was sitting with her back against the rear wall of the wagon, her short, stout legs chained at the ankles to a huge spike in the middle of the floor.  Thick arms were draped over her knees, hands dangling between them, wrists manacled to a heavy chain that ran around her waist.  “Is she cursed, Muri?” the priest asked quietly, looking at the pitiable creature.  He met her gaze and she held his, head turning slightly in a motion of curiosity though she did not otherwise move.<o:p></o:p>                 Apparently perturbed by their continued expressions of profound stupidity, the hyena made a single gesture with her nearer hand, waving toward them an incredibly vulgure gesture with her fingers.  Vinsah felt his jaw drop and he gasped, covering his open muzzle, and Murikeer missed it entirely.  Malger let out a short chuff of amusement, then frowned and looked toward the crowd once more.  Abruptly he turned and strode toward them, leaving his charges to follow more slowly in his wake.  Vinsah put an arm around Murikeer’s shoulder as the young mage put a hand over his eyes, good and bad alike, in a gesture of pain.<o:p></o:p>                 “Muri, what’s wrong?  What did you see?”<o:p></o:p>                 “Have you ever stepped from a dimly lit cloister and into the brightness of noon, and find yourself accidentally looking up directly into the sun?  That is what I saw.  There is so much magic concentrated into the spells that keep those wagons in one piece, moving, and keep the prisoners contained that I felt I was trying to pick out an individual flame on the surface of the sun.”  He gave his head a shake and gently pushed Vinsah away.  “If they’re Keepers, I can’t see the curse under all that mess.”<o:p></o:p>                 “With the pale walls of Yesulam, looking at anything in the light of noon after being in a library is like stepping out onto the sun itself.” Vinsah offered blandly as they trailed in the wake of the crowd a little more slowly.<o:p></o:p>                 “Often there are those who, in their arrogance, believe that they can make a thing better than the gods of creation did themselves.  Mages and powerful scholars, wizards and alchemists, powerful priests and angry followers of dark gods.  They bend their wills to some goal that even the most sane mind cannot fully comprehend, seeking to accomplish a task that to them is so blindly mundane that they would rather leave it to the hands of someone else, some thing else, than to do it themselves.  To this end they find some luckless victim, some creature that they believe can perform this task, day in and day out, without ever growing tired of its tedium, but who would never ask for a penny of copper for their labors.  Nay, they seek to create of the beasts of the land a servant who asks only for a warm pile of straw upon which to rest, and a bucket of something that their own creators would never contemplate eating.<o:p></o:p>                 “To this end they try to twist form and mind, attempting in their prideful arrogance to give a beast something that was not given to them by the Gods themselves on the day of their creation.  Very, very seldom are they successful in their maniacal efforts, resulting in unmentionable creations, twisted parodies of man in the flesh of beasts that you’ve seen already.  Sometimes they cannot change the form, but instill within an ability to think, an almost human cognizance of self and situation.  But even that falls short of the ideal they seek, and these unfortunates are either slain out of hand, or left to fend for themselves.”<o:p></o:p>                 The awning creaked quietly, the hinges on this wagon well oiled and maintained.  “What did a hunter understand when he chanced upon this monstrous beast, sitting beside a spring in the forest reading a book?”<o:p></o:p>                 “In very short order the hunter knew nothing.” Replied a slow, deep voice that sounded like bottled thunder.  “But oh, he was tasty.”<o:p></o:p>                 The showman seemed unphazed by the humorous remark that nonetheless sounded like a thin veil across barely contained rage.  “What pitiable beast of the forest was this, grabbed and twisted by a mad wizard, to what end?” Max continued to the crowd as the denizen of the cage stood to a full, amazing twelve feet and glowered down at the pitiful gathering of humans before her prison.  The grizzly looked very much like one would expect a grizzly bear to look.  Except for the huge paws that looked like stunted hands, and the outsized frames of well used spectacles perched precariously upon her broad snout.  She glared over the gold rims down at the showman so very far below.<o:p></o:p>                 “What about your legs, master showman?  You don’t need them.”  She sat down with a heavy thump that made the wagon creak and groan, batting through the bars at the human who stood safely just out of reach.  “Riding around like you do in that great bloody mansion on wheels.”  The bruin licked her lips with a huge pink tongue, an image of savagery commuted by the heavy book clasped in her other huge paw, one claw stuck between the pages to mark her place.  “Oh, they look tasty.”<o:p></o:p>                 “Granting thought to the mind of a beast does nothing to curtail that which makes them a beast, as you can plainly see.  Though she can speak, and most seductively if you have the key to her wagon in your hand, there is nothing behind those eyes but a desire to destroy, to wreak bloody havoc, and shamble off into some dark hole to sleep it off.” The showman was saying as Murikeer and Vinsah rejoined the crowd just to one side of the wagon’s tail end where they could finally see both showman and specimen at the same time.<o:p></o:p>                 Maxamillian was an impressive man, Vinsah noted quite swiftly.  Physically his presence was arresting, a middle aged man not yet gone soft with age, with a charismatic face and an easy poise that hinted at much careful study of physical prowess.  He was dressed in impeccable velvets in hues of blue and midnight, stitched with silver threaded embroidery and trimmed with white sable.  There was a plethora of lace about the cuffs of his wrists and neck, with a high collar reminiscent of fashions new to regions around Yesulam when Vinsah left the previous summer.  As he spoke he flourished his hands in intricate, grand motions, always staying an easy length from the wagon and the reach of the occupant within.  At each corner of the wagon stood one of those hard, cold looking body guards who were dressed quite differently than Grimmarn’s soldiers.<o:p></o:p>                 “Sleep it off is what you do best, after a long night in the bottle, showman.” The grizzly replied flatly with that bottled thunder voice.  Lazily she reached up and adjusted the spectacles her snout, a motion that spoke of long habit, and looked across the crowd.  Her gaze quickly picked out the Lightbringer priestess and the gaily clad fop standing next to her.  “Now you, you great heathen wench, would keep me going all winter long with just one meal.”<o:p></o:p>                 The priestess glanced down from the bear to Max, “She speaks rather well despite her bluntness.”<o:p></o:p>                 “Who can understand the wants and designs of wizards, mistress of the Light.  She is how the baron’s trappers captured her, and just as belligerent as the day they hauled her in to the market to be gaped at by the locals.” The showmaster said with a smile and a shrug, turning and walking toward the next wagon in the circle.<o:p></o:p>                 “How typical of your order, pagan.  Fat and sassy, but not a whit of compassion.” The bear snarled.<o:p></o:p>                 The Lightbringer said something softly and the heavily muscled man pulling her divan paused.  Peasants broke around her conveyance with abrupt awkwardness and milled about for a moment before moving on to follow Maxamillian.  “What do you know, beast, of my order to make claims?” she challenged with a hard stare, but no anger.<o:p></o:p>                 “What do you know of beasts?  Of beasts that read, witch?  Do they, often, in your experience?” The grizzly sow waved the oversized book as if to emphasize the strange dichotomy of beast and man.  Vinsah noted with some surprise that it was a much dog eared copy of the canticles, from an ancient collection if the binding was any indication.  The priestess quirked one corner of her mouth in a condescending manner and shook he head, waving for her alert bearer to continue.<o:p></o:p>                 “Considering your taste in books, bruin, I leave you to your ignorance.”<o:p></o:p>                 Vinsah stepped up closer to the wagon but the passing bodyguard that stepped across his path gave him a hard look and motioned for him to step back and he did with haste.  The man then turned and moved to follow his master.  Noticing his proximity the bear ducked her muzzle to her furred breast and looked over the gold rims of her age worn spectacles to glower down at him.<o:p></o:p>                 “And what do you want, snack?” she growled.  Her dark brown eyes flicked to Murikeer as the young mage stepped up beside Vinsah.<o:p></o:p>                 “Who are you?” the bishop asked quietly, shooting a momentary glance toward the back of the bodyguard taking up his post near the next wagon.  Malger was no where to be seen, lost among the spectators.  The bear blinked once, reached up and readjusted her spectacles though she was not looking through them, and blinked a second time when Vinsah remained where he was.<o:p></o:p>                 “Who’re you, snack?” she countered with a heavy growl, the thunder of her voice softened with her curiosity that some unknown peasant should ask her questions.<o:p></o:p>                 “Vinsah,”<o:p></o:p>                 “Sho.”<o:p></o:p>                 “From?”<o:p></o:p>                 She glowered, head cocked slightly.  The powerful musk of unwashed bear, and other animals, assailed Vinsah’s nose, but he ignored it.  While Metamor had many ways to clean ones’ self, and it was preached quite often and openly to everyone about the great importance of personal hygiene, the smells of Metamor were still often quite amazingly potent.  Luckily for the two of them, and anyone they happened to encounter, Murikeer had a powerful masking smell to counter his likewise acridly potent natural scent.  “I am sister Sho Rosewain from Midtown.”<o:p></o:p>                 Murikeer, watching the crowd around the next wagon, and then looking back toward the now quiet lioness, looked up at the bear seated in the wagon.  The floor of the wagon was perhaps chest level on them, a good four feet from the ground, but the bear even sitting down was another six feet above that.  “Northern Midlands?”<o:p></o:p>                 “Aye.” Sho seemed tentative, untrusting, as she stared down at them.  Her expression had gone from annoyed consideration to one of grudging curiosity and caution. “Cursed, you understand.” She added after a moment.<o:p></o:p>                 “Like all the rest.”  Not a question but a statement of fact, as Murikeer looked back toward the lioness’ wagon, then the hyena.  He frowned deeply and rubbed his eyepatch.  He looked toward the crowd that was now moving on once more.  In the newly revealed wagon a long-limbed simian was juggling several small brightly colored balls while hanging up-side-down from a bar mounted in the ceiling of his wagon.<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p>                 “Some are far more interested in art and pleasure, and they seek to capture the easy grace of animals into some form that they can admire for themselves in a private way.” Maxamillian explained as he moved on from the circus ape who spouted drunken poetry while he juggled whatever he happened to have lying around his wagon.  The showman was quite perturbed, but tried very gamely not to show it though Malger spied it as easily as he spied the man’s true identity, that this was the day that the orangutan had chosen a dozen wooden balls, the skulls of two small animals, and the partially eaten corpse of a kitten for his show.  Malger once more tried to insinuate himself through the crowd to get close to the Lightbringer’s divan while the crowd was waiting for the next prisoners to be revealed.  “Some merely want to isolate those things that make these animals graceful, and capture them as traits that they themselves can steal away and in turn work upon themselves.  There are mages the world over who desire to look upon beauty, just as much as you or I, for its simple sake.  Others have less benign goals and desires, but they, too, are inspired by the beauty that surrounds us every day in the creatures we husband on our farms, stalk through the forests and riddle with arrows, or curse because of their natural cunningness of getting into places we don’t want them to be.”<o:p></o:p>                 Malger listened with half of his attention as he slipped lithely through the throng of peasants up to the rear of the Lightbringer’s divan between two of her men at arms.  They both gave him hard stares and he smiled back at them winningly.  “Cuialye lothan.” He said smoothly with a nod of his head.  The awning on the wagon was going up, silently, lifted easily by two burly wagon tenders dressed in garish clothing.  Each had an instrument strapped to their backs, a tambour and lute, and as the awning went up the sweet cry of a violin drifted forth to silence the crowd.<o:p></o:p>                 “Grace, there is no more simple a name.  So innocent and fragile is such an ephermeral and rare gift as grace.  In the act of merely existing we see grace in the world’s creatures around us,  and we stand in awe of them that we have been given dominion over.” Maxamillian spoke, his voice blending seamlessly with the sweet strains issued forth by the violin.  The wagon tenders socketed the poles and took up their instruments, accompanying the light, sweet waltz offered by the violinist.  Even Malger was completely taken aback by what he witnessed, blinking with his jaw hanging as he clutched the back of the lightbringer’s divan.<o:p></o:p>                 A striped woman that resembled some sort of gazelle in form and line, but who was stripped striking black and white from head to hooves.  She had four broad stripes, and the two slender arms that held her viola easily nestled under her long chin were banded with three.  Her hands had five slender, dextrous fingers that ended in narrow claws rather than the hooves that graced her slender legs.  She stood near the front of the wagon, and played for the two that dominated its center.<o:p></o:p>                 Two graceful deer, a buck with a full rack of fourteen points, and a doe, both gracefully waltzing in the confines of their prison, hooves thunking quietly in time to the stately rhythm of the waltz.  Malger blinked, closing his jaw with a purposeful click, and reached forward to tap the lightbringer’s shoulder.  One of her men at arms glowered at him and made to reach out and grasp his arm, but the lightbringer raised a single finger and forstalled him as she looked back.<o:p></o:p>                 “I sensed you there, waiting, dreamwalker.  Speak.”<o:p></o:p>                 “Cuialye lothan, mistress.  I have a request, a petitioner to matron.”<o:p></o:p> </div> </div> !DSPAM:4c393f80156961412310228! </body></html>