Mentor
urn it back," Danica pleaded, her voice edged in desperation, her hands trembling at her sides. Cadderly stared helplessly at his squirrelUke I limbs, without the slightest idea of how to begui
JL to reverse the process. "I cannot," he admitted, as much to himself as to Danica. He looked helplessly to her, his gray eyes wide with disbelief and horror.
"I cannot."
Danica moved to him, or tried to, until the pain in her side sent her lurching over. She grasped at the bloody wound in her abdomen just above her hip, and slumped to one knee.
Stubbornly, Danica got back to her feet, one hand held out in front of her to keep her concerned lover at bay.
"That must be tended," Cadderfy pleaded.
"With squirrel arms?" Danica's retort stung the young priest more than she had intended. "Turn your arms and legs back to human, Cadderly. I beg you."
Cadderly stared long and hard at his limbs, feeling deceived, feeling as though his god, or the magic, had led him astray. Danica stood before him, needing him, and he, with the limbs of a rodent, could do nothing for her.
The young priest searched his memory, let page after page of the Tome of Universal Harmony flip through his thoughts in rapid succession. Nothing openly hinted at what he had done, at this transformation, miraculous and damning, that he had somehow brought upon himself.
But while Cadderly found no direct answers, he did begin that distant harmony, that sweet, inspiring song where all the mysteries of existence drifted past him, waiting to be grasped and deciphered. The song rang out a single word to the young priest, the name of the one person who might help him make sense of it all.
"Pertelope?" Cadderly asked blankly.
Danica, still grimacing, stared at him.
"Pertelope," he said again, more firmly. He turned his gaze to Danica, his breath coming in short gasps. "She knows."
"She knows what?" the young woman asked, wincing with every word.
"She knows," was all Cadderly could answer, for in truth, he did not really know what information the headmistress might have for him. He sensed only that the song was not tying to him, was not leading him astray.
"I must go to her."
"She is at the library," Danica argued. "It will take you three . . ."
Cadderly stopped her with an outstretched palm. He closed his mind to the stimuli around him and focused on the song again, felt it flow across the miles, calling him to step into it. Cadderly fell in with the tune, let it carry him along. The world became a dreamscape, surreal, unreal. He saw the gates of Carradoon and the western road leading into higher ground. Mountain passes zipped along beneath his consciousness, then he saw the library fast approaching, came upon the ivy-strewn walls and passed right through them ... to Pertelope's room.
Cadderly recognized the tapestry on the back wall, to the side of the bed, the same one he had stolen so that Ivan could use it in making a replica of the drew crossbow.
"I have been waiting for you to come to me," he heard Pertelope say. The image of the room shifted and there sat the headmistress on the edge of her bed, dressed as always in her long-sleeved, high-necked black gown. Her eyes widened as she regarded the presence, and Cadderly understood that she saw him, with his rodent limbs, though he had left his corporeal form far behind.
"Help me," he pleaded.
Pertelope's comforting smile fell over him warmly.
"You have found Affinity? the headmistress explained, "a powerful practice, and not without its dangers."
Cadderly had no idea what Pertelope was talking about. Affinity? He had never heard the word used in such a way.
"The song is playing for you," Pertelope remarked, "often without your bidding." Cadderly's face revealed his startlement.
"I knew it would," Pertelope continued. "When I gave you the Tome of Universal Harmony, I knew the song would begin to play in your mind, and I knew that you would soon find the means to decipher the mysteries hidden within its notes."
"I have not" Cadderly protested. "I mean, things are happening around me, and to me" - he looked helplessly at his own limbs, translucent replicas of his corporeal form - "but they are not of my doing, not of my control."
"Of course they are," Pertelope replied, drawing his attention away from his polymorphed limbs. "The book is the conduit to the magical energy bestowed through the power of Deneir. You summon and guide that energy. It comes to your call and bends to your will."
Cadderly looked down helplessly, and doubtingly, at his deformed body. He knew Pertelope could see his problem, and wondered if Danica could as well, back on the rooftop in Carradoon. Those squirrel limbs flew in the face of what the headmistress was saying, for if Cadderly could control the magic, as Pertelope insisted, then why had he remained half a rodent?
"You have not learned complete control," the headmistress said to him, as though she had read his mind, "but you are still a novice, after all, untrained and with mighty powers at your fingertips."
"Powers from Deneir?" Cadderly asked.
"Of course," answered Pertelope coyly, as though Cad-derly's next remark would come as no shock whatsoever to her.
"Why would Deneir grant me such powers?" the young priest asked. "What have I done to warrant such a gift?"
Pertelope laughed at him. "You are his disciple."
"I am not!" Cadderly said, and he gave a horrified expression, realizing that he had offered that admission to a headmistress of his order.
Again, Pertelope only laughed. "feu are, Cadderly," she said, "feu are a true disciple of our god, and of Oghma, the brother god, as well. Do not measure fealty in terms of rituals and attendance to duties. Measure it by what lies in your heart, by your morals and your love. You are a scholar, in all your inquisitive mind and in all your heart, a blessed scholar. That is the measure of fealty to Deneir."
"Not according to Avery," Cadderly argued. "How often he has threatened to throw me out of the order altogether for my indiscretions concerning those rituals you so quickly dismiss!"
"He could not throw you out of any order," Pertelope replied. "One cannot be 'thrown out' of a religious calling."
"Religious calling?" Cadderly replied. "If that is what you must label it, then I fear I was never in the order to begin with. I have no calling."
"That's absurd," replied Pertelope. "You are as attuned with the precepts of Deneir as any person I have ever met. That, my young priest, is what constitutes a religious calling! Do you doubt the powers you have begun to unlock?"
"Not the powers," Cadderly replied with typical stubbornness, "but their source."
"It is Deneir."
"So you say," answered Cadderly, "and so you are free to believe."
"You will, too, in time. You are a priest of Deneir, a follower of a god who demands independence, the exercise of free will, and the exercise of intellect," Pertelope continued, again as though she had read Cadderly's mind. He had to wonder if Pertelope hadn't played through this scenario herself many years ago.
"You are supposed to question - to question everything, even the existence of the gods and the purpose of being alive," Pertelope continued, her hazel eyes taking on a faraway, mystical look. "If you would follow blindly from ritual to ritual, you would be no better than the cattle and sheep that dot the fields around Carradoon.
"Deneir does not want that," Pertelope went on, calmly, comfortingly, and looking directly back at the frightened young priest. "He is a god for artists and poets, freethinkers all, else their work would be no more than replicas of what others have deemed ideal. The question, Cadderly, is stronger than the answer. It is what accomplishes growth - growth toward Deneir."
Somewhere deep inside, Cadderly prayed that Pertelope was speaking truthfully, that the apparent wisdom of her words wasn't just the feeble hope of one as confused and desperate as he.
"You have been chosen," Pertelope went on, bringing the conversation back to more concrete terms. "You hear the song and will come, over time, to decipher more and more of its notes, to better understand yoy ilace in this confusing experience that we call life."
"I am a wizard."
"No!" It was the first time the he? peared angry during the conversation, did not immediately reply. "Your maf nature," Pertelope asserted. "Have yond those enchantments you priests casting" my's face.
Cadderly thought long and hard. In truth, everything magical he had done in some way, at least, replicated clerical spells. Even this Affinity was not so different from the shape-changing abilities exhibited by the woodland priests, the druids. But still, his powers were different, Cadderly knew.
"I do not pray for these spells," he argued. "I do not get out of my bed in the morning with the notion that I should be able to create light this day, or that I will find need to turn my arms into a squirrel's paws. Nor do I pray to De-neir, at any time."
"You read the book," Pertelope reasoned, stealing Cad-derly's building momentum. "That is your prayer. As far as selecting spells and memorizing their particular chants and inflections, you have no need. You hear the song, Cadderly. You are one of the chosen, one of the few. I had suspected that fact for many years, and came to understand just a few weeks ago that you would take my place."
"What are you talking about?" Cadderly asked, his near-panic only intensified by the fact that Pertelope, as she spoke, had begun to unbutton her long gown. Cadderly gaped in amazement as the headmistress peeled the garment off, revealing a featureless torso covered by skin that resembled the hide of a shark, covered not with skin, but with sharp denticles.
"I was raised from childhood on the Sword Coast," the headmistress began wearily, "near the sea. My father was a fisherman, and often I would go out with him to tend the nets. You see, I found affinity with the shark, as you have with squirrels - with Percival in particular. I came to marvel at the graceful movements, at the perfection of that oft-maligned creature.
"I already explained to you that Affinity is a practice that
is not without its dangers," Pertelope went on, giving a
TiioqpU, ironic chuckle. "You see, I, too, fell prey to the cha-
ing! Dtrse. Under its influences, I assumed my affinity with
"Not tiie safety, no practical restraints at all." bornness, "buttced to think that this wonderful woman, always a dear friend to him, had suffered by the curse that he had brought upon the library.