Johan too was changing. He hissed in agony as his form expanded and split and shriveled all at once. When, half-crazed by pain, he toppled to the barred floor of the cage, he clattered like a coin dropping on a table. Feebly he kicked stick-legs and thrashed as a white-hot searing burned his body like firebrands. Valiantly Johan struggled to maintain his sanity and wits, for he must escape once fully transformed.

Slowly, after seeming weeks of prickly pain, Johan's wracking subsided. Opening his eyes, he found the world reproduced a hundred times in tiny facets like a diamond. Images of jungle and wooden bars swirled, a hundred pictures moving in unison, a dizzying sensation. Experimenting, Johan moved three arms and found he could stand, then crawl. Poised on six legs, he tried to turn his head but could not, for he had no neck, just a gleaming black skull jointed to a glistening carapace.

Johan had become a beetle. A giant insect five feet long. Good. That suited.

Scuttling awkwardly, crawling on thin but strong legs braced on wooden bars, Johan scooted until his mandibles bumped wood. His beetle's jaws were almost a foot long and hard as blacksmith's tongs. Swinging his bulky head back and forth, Johan attacked the first wooden bar. Squeezing his jaw, he snipped green wood as easily as cutting a daisy. Shuffling sideways, he plied his crushing mandibles to snip the next bar and the next. A few more and -With a lurch, drop, and thud, Johan was free, dumped on the dirt beneath the prison cage. Tucking his legs close, Johan reached into his mental library and, mandibles wiggling, recited a disenchantment. Immediately he was wracked by more pain, but this agony was offset by the delicious sense of relief that the spell worked. The odds were small but real that, transformed into a non-speaking creature, he could never utter the reversal spell.

Since he was returning to his original form, the transformation went quicker. Within minutes Johan could sit up, roll to all fours, and stand, whole but shaken. Blinking, glad for normal vision and not a hundred refracted images, the sorcerer cast about to see if anyone witnessed his escape.

All was quiet except for the wasp-buzz of the tigers on the square. Both transformations had taken only a few minutes.

Johan looked for his twin guards. One huge beetle, black with only the vaguest stripes for decoration, twirled aimless circles not far away. Another beetle had driven itself into a thick bush as if to hide. Six legs scrambled stupidly to push deeper. Coolly, the mage picked up a fallen wurm-tooth spear and stabbed the circling beetle at the joint of head and carapace. Stricken, the insect collapsed then died as Johan twisted. Stepping, Johan drove the gory spear into the other beetle's soft hind end, ramming the shaft forward until the wurm tooth lodged in the head. That beetle twitched and stopped digging, then lay quietly.

Dusting his hands, Johan strode into the jungle along a rude path faintly outlined by tiger hair at the tips of branches. Once the village was left behind, so only darkness and the cool night air accompanied him, Johan turned.

West.

"What's happened?"

Faint cries carried on the night air. Two scouts guarded Jedit Ojanen, bound to a tree a mile from the village. He'd remain isolated, they'd said, until the moon was fully set and Johan properly executed and buried.

Yet more cries and a hideous wail of a tiger grieving set them all twitching.

"Terrent Amese!" rumbled one guard. "Could it be an attack?"

"You mean the Khyyiani?" asked the other.

"It's not the season." Jedit growled, still angry at his impotence. His hands and arms were swaddled in rope.

"Bite your tongue, Jedit!" One guard shook his spear in the prisoner's face. "We've had naught but trouble since you found that manling! Likely when you and he traipsed all over Efrava, you led a war party of Khyyiani straight to us!"

More cries from the village, more sobbing than fighting. Finally one guard said, "Go. I'll watch his highness."

The guard departed at a trot. The other paced, shifting his spear from hand to hand. Jedit looked at the moon just risen.

"If there's a raid," he said, "you should free me. The execution of the manling can wait-"

He jumped as something brushed his back, then realized it was a paw, small and soft. Unmoving, he blithered, "Uh, that is… Ruko would let me go."

One by one the ropes binding Jedit were severed by a razor claw. Jedit flexed his wrists. "They'll need every warrior in the village-"

"Will you belt up?" Torn between duties, the guard whirled on Jedit and was knocked cold by a fist like a sledgehammer.

"Hestia."

The small she-tiger stepped from shadows. "Jedit. I slipped away from my family. I had to see you. Something's gone horribly wrong in the village. People panic and wail."

Not knowing the problem, Jedit didn't know how to proceed, especially given his prisoner status. "I'll… circle around and keep out of sight."

"Go." Hestia's large eyes were moist by moonlight. "I fear I shan't see you again."

"You will," said Jedit. "I promise. Terrent Amese be my witness, I'll return."

For a moment, electricity crackled with a thousand things unsaid. Then Hestia grabbed Jedit's huge shoulders, pulled him close, and pressed her muzzle to his. To exchange breath was a tiger's kiss. She pushed him away. To not say goodbye was another custom.

Jedit loped off, veering west to circle the village and its queer, spine-chilling wails. Dashing through the jungle, eyes alert for bare footprints, Jedit covered miles in minutes. Yet his target was ridiculously easy to find. Of all things, Jedit heard three voices in the middle of nowhere.

At a wide spot in the trail, Johan faced Ruko and another tiger scout. Jedit assumed Johan had been led from the village to be executed by the two designated scouts. Yet the three conversed as calmly as neighbors gossiping in the marketplace. Slowing to a jog, Jedit advanced until all three turned his way.

The tiger-man rubbed his nose, mightily puzzled. The lone man showed no fear or apprehension of the scouts. By starlight, the man's bony face was luminous as a bleached skull, completely placid. Why didn't Ruko move to intercept Jedit?

"Johan. Ruko." Unsure of his mission or stance, Jedit blurted, "What of the execution?"

Ruko's face was blank. "Execution? Oh, it's been stayed. Johan and I are talking instead."

"Talk?"

In the darkness, Johan's black eyes were invisible, so his bone-white face seemed blind. He toyed with his enchanting stone. "Yes, we talk. People should be allowed to go where they will. No one should stop them. Isn't that true?"

"What?" asked Jedit. "What nonsense is this?"

"I wished to leave and did." Johan stared. "I met this patrol, and no one should be restrained against their will. Isn't that true?"

"True," echoed Ruko and the guard.

"Wait! Why the wailing in the village?" Jedit shook his head, whiskers shivering. His skull buzzed as if full of bees, making him dizzy.

"Oh," said Ruko, "someone died."

"No one important," added Johan.

The mage's brow began to ooze sweat. These tigerfolk had alien minds not easily subdued. Lucky there were only three, or Johan would fry his brain controlling them. Gasping, concentrating, he rattled to sink the hook.

"I go my way, and you go yours. Back to the village. That's reasonable, isn't it? Sensible? I gain my home, you yours. I go. Won't you agree?"

"Agreed," said Ruko.

"And I?" Jedit blinked amber-green eyes as a fog floated in. Queer on such a starry night.

"You?" Johan sucked wind for energy. "You go with me, by your own choice. To find your father. Jaeger will be glad. You come with me. All right?"