Robert Salvatore - Mortalis

One leap and he would have her. One great spring would put him over her, would flatten her to the ground at his feet, would lay bare that beautiful little neck.

One leap…

The weretiger held his place, conscience battling instinct.

The girl screamed for her mother and continued to run.

De'Unnero turned away, padding into the darker thicket. The hunger was gone now, for the girl, even for a deer, and so the creature settled down and willed himself through the change, bones popping, torso and limbs crackling and twisting.

It hurt-how it hurt! — but the monk pressed on, forcing out the tiger, fighting the pain and the killing instinct resolutely until a profound blackness overtook him.

He awoke sometime later, shivering and naked on the damp ground, the cold night wind blowing chill against his flesh. He got his bearings quickly and found his brown robes, then donned them and headed for Penthistle.

As chance would have it, the first person he encountered within the small cluster of farmhouses was the same little girl he had seen out in the forest, her arm now wrapped in a bandage.

"Ah, but there ye are," said her mother, a handsome woman of about forty winters. "We were needin' ye, Brother Simple. Me girl here lost her fight with a tree!"

De'Unnero took the girl's hand and gently lifted her arm up for inspection. "You cleaned the wound well? " he asked.

The woman nodded.

The monk lowered the girl's arm, let go, and patted her on the head. "You did well," he told the mother.

The monk headed for the house now serving as his home. He stopped just a few steps away, though, and glanced back at the little girl. He could have killed her, and, oh, so easily. And how he had wanted to! How he had wanted to feast upon her tender flesh.

And yet, he had not. The significance of that hit De'Unnero at that moment, as he came to understand the triumph he had found that day. Fear had forced him out of Palmaris after the fight in Chasewind Manor, after he had been thrown out the window by Nightbird. It was not fear of Nightbird or of the King or of the reprisals from the victorious enemies of Markwart, the monk realized. No, it was fear of himself, of this demanding inner urge. Once he had been among the most celebrated masters of St.-Mere-Abelle, the close adviser of the Father Abbot, the abbot of St. Precious, and then the Bishop of Palmaris. Once he had been the instructor of the brothers justice and had been touted as the greatest warrior ever to walk through the gates of St.-Mere-Abelle, the epitome of the fighting tradition of the Abellican Order. In those days, Marcalo De'Unnero had relied heavily on the use of a single gemstone, the tiger's paw; for with it, he could transform a limb, or perhaps two, into those of a great cat, a weapon as great as any sword. During Markwart's rise to unspeakable power, the Father Abbot had shown De'Unnero an even stronger level of the stone's transformational magic, and with that increase of intensity, the young master had been able to transform himself totally into the great cat, an unprecedented accomplishment.

But then something unexpected had happened. De'Unnero had lost the gemstone, or rather it seemed to him as if he had merged with the gemstone, so that now he could transform himself into a tiger without it-and often against his will.

That was really why he had run away from Palmaris. He was afraid of himself, of the murderous creature he had become.

It had been a wretched existence for the man who had once achieved such a level of power, despite the hospitality of the folk of Penthistle. Marcalo De'Unnero had feared that he would be forever doomed to travel through the borderlands of civilization, running from town to town whenever the killing urge overpowered him. He pictured himself in the not too distant future, fleeing across a field, a host of hunters from half the kingdom in close pursuit.

But now…

The ultimate temptation had been right before him-the smell of fear and blood, the easy, tender kill-and he had battled that temptation, had overcome it. Was it possible that De'Unnero had gained control over this disease?

If he could control it, then he could return to Palmaris, to his Church.

De'Unnero pushed the absurd notion away. He had murdered Baron Bildeborough, after all, and his escorts. He had wounded Elbryan, which had sent the man, weakened, into battle with Markwart, the wound that, as much as the Father Abbot's efforts, had truly killed the man. If he went back to Palmaris, what trial might await him?

"What trial indeed?" De'Unnero asked aloud, and when he considered it, his lips curled up into the first real smile he had known in more than half a year. There was no evidence implicating him in Bildeborough's murder, nothing more than the speculation of his enemies. And how could he be held accountable for anything that had happened at Chasewind Manor? Was he not merely performing his duty of protecting his Father Abbot? Were not Elbryan andJilseponie, at that time, considered criminals by both Church and Crown?

"What's that, Father? " the girl's mother asked, not really catching his words.

De'Unnero shook himself out of his thoughts. "Nothing," he replied. "I was only thinking that perhaps it was time for me to return to my abbey."

"Ah, but we'd miss ye," the woman remarked.

De'Unnero merely nodded, hardly hearing her, too lost in the intriguing possibilities his victory over the weretiger urge had presented to him this day.

"The Saudi Jacintha will take me," Brother Dellman reported to Abbot Braumin, the younger monk entering the abbot's office at St. Precious to find Braumin talking excitedly with Brother Viscenti. "Captain Al'u'met plans to sail within the week, and he was excited to be of service, so he said."

"And you discussed the price? " the new abbot asked.

"Captain Al'u'met assured me that the price has been paid in full by the new brothers of St. Precious, that our actions against the evil that was Markwart and our defense of the Behrenese of the docks more than suffice."

"A wonderful man," Brother Viscenti remarked.

"You understand your duties? " Braumin asked.

Dellman nodded. "I am to observe first, to try to get a feeling for the intentions of Abbot Agronguerre," he replied, "and then, on my instinct and judgment, I may inform the man that you and others plan to nominate him at the College of Abbots that will be convened in Calember."

"You are a messenger first, bringing word of the College and of the events in Palmaris," said Braumin.

"Likely, he has already heard," Viscenti put in, shaking his head. "Who in all the world could not have heard? "

Abbot Braumin smiled and let the point go to his excitable friend, though in truth he doubted that anyone in Vanguard had heard of the events in Palmaris in any more detail other than the unexpected death of Father Abbot Markwart. The Abellican Church would have been the only real messenger to that distant place; and even if St.-Mere-Abelle had sent a courier, no one there truly fathomed the implications of the events, and certainly no one there would have been so bold as to take sides in the budding philosophical war. But that was just what Braumin had instructed the wise and trustworthy Brother Holan Dellman to do: to take the side of the victors, to show that the good had won out over the cancerous evil.

"Treat Markwart's memory gently," Braumin urged Dellman yet again, "but foster no doubts concerning the fall of the Father Abbot-the fall from grace before the fall from life."

Dellman nodded, then turned as Brother Talumus entered the room.

"Go and accept the passage from Al'u'met," Braumin instructed Dellman. "Extend to him our profound thanks, and then prepare your thoughts and your belongings. Go with the blessings of Avelyn."