"Isn't that why Alasais needs Punishing Claws? I should be shaking in my boots and begging for mercy. But I don't seem to be very good at that," Anar admitted, and cracked a big smile in spite of himself. "I must have lost the last of my marbles."

"Actually, this city is in such a bubble, you're probably the only sane cat in here," quipped Aniallu. Then added very seriously. "You have no idea how glad I am that you've managed to retain your sanity. Sit with me."

Anar lowered himself to the floor next to her – slowly, as his legs barely obeyed him.

"Kad, be a dear, bring me a map and my book bag. No rush."

She waited for the half-elf to disappear behind a column, then said quietly.

"Anar, the truth is that most of what you know about Alasais, her Shadows, the world beyond the Curtain, probably even yourself, has little to do with reality. Speaking plainly, these things are nothing more than shameless fabrications of your... local priests."

"In other words, you are tal sianae, Alasais' Shadow, but not a Punishing Claw, 'liberator of souls unworthy of this world,' the scourge of Alae apostates? I've always feared an encounter with one of you," Anar admitted.

"You shouldn't be. It is true that I liberate creatures like you – those that reject their home world, but in a much more... humane method. I don't kill them, but simply help them relocate to a more suitable place. That, and to slough off the sensation of their own abnormality, inadequacy, wickedness and whatnot. Our ethos – if I may call it that – is to help a creature find itself and its place in the Infinite. That is it. The extent of our service to Alasais."

"That doesn't sound at all like Alasais... Like our Alasais."

"Oh, I've had it with your Alasais!" Aniallu rolled her eyes, leaning back on the column. "Whenever I stumble into one of her local statues, I can barely resist ripping the sculptor's arms off."

"You mean there really are... two?"

"Yes. One is real. The other is a forgery presented by your priests. The real Alasais had long turned away from Rual. The priests had taken advantage of this by distorting her image beyond recognition. Essentially, they had invented a new goddess of their own, in the name of which they now rule the city. And the incredible thing is," she chuckled sardonically, "their governance boasts universal approval, aside from you and Alasais."

"But if Rual had fallen out of favor with the goddess, why didn't she just... erase it from the face of the earth? Or at least put the priests back in their place?"

"Why should she bother?" Alu asked simply, and Anar didn't know what to answer...

Kad returned.

"Before we talk about lofty matters, let me first tell you who you were... before?" Aniallu offered, taking the bag from the slave.

The prince nodded.

"You were born in Briaellar a little more than three hundred years ago," the sianae began, but Anar immediately interrupted her.

"In Briaellar?! How could anyone be born there? We are told that you can only ascend to Briaellar after death, and even then only those that – "

"... had lived a truly righteous life," Aniallu finished for him. "I'm aware. Yet, to the chagrin of your mother and those of her ilk, that isn't so. Briaellar is a city just like any other. You can be born there, die there, or move there. Even if you're not Alae."

"Briaellar – our people's holy of holies – is populated by non-cats? Amialis had nearly cut off Kad's tongue once after overhearing him argue with one of her chambermaids that good slaves followed their masters to Briaellar after death – to continue serving them for all eternity."

"That's not surprising. Non-Alae Briaellareans are a sore spot for her. Everything about them irritates her, and their numbers most of all, since in Briaellar cats are outnumbered by non-cats seven to one."

"Why would you need so many slaves?" Anar blurted out.

"We don't have slaves. All those non-Alae are free citizens. Well, some aren't citizens, but all are free just the same."

"I find that hard to believe."

"That's understandable."

Aniallu reached into the bag Kad had brought, and produced a sheet of parchment folded several times. It ended up being so huge that Anar had to help Alu unfold it. By the time they were finished, the parchment became an old map that covered both their feet like a blanket.

"Look here. That's Briaellar – a dot on the map, like any other city," said Aniallu, pointing to a location at the parchment's center, where a tiny dot glimmered blue above a thin pearly needle. "Its only distinction lies in being constructed not on the ground but on a flying island shaped like a cat's eye. On this point your legends don't lie."

"If anyone local were to catch me with this map..." whistled Anar, making a throat-slash gesture with a claw to illustrate the point: Aniallu had been so laidback in her manner that it naturally rubbed off on him.

"Uh-huh. So let's not destroy their comfy illusions," winked tal sianae. "Ever since your mother had been forced to renounce the Rual throne, she's been dreaming about one of her children ascending it. Then she can return triumphantly and resume her reign as queen-mother. But you know this as well as I do," she pressed her lips together sympathetically. "Sadly, her older offspring proved unfit for the honor, being too much like their father, too... un-Rual-like. As for your uterine sister Nakar, though she possessed the requisite ambition, cunning and fanatical devotion to Alasais, even as a child her temper was becoming infamous. As she grew she would become totally unmanageable, and would die before sharing even a sliver of her power with Amialis."

"Only I was left," said Anar with a frown.

"Yes. But you were hardly drawn to the perspective of locking yourself away from the world with a bunch of fanatics. You wanted to travel, even considered working for The Wings of Twilight – a moving company – that you may see all of the Infinite. But you dared not utter your dreams aloud for fear of upsetting your mother, behaving like a proper Rual prince: reading holy books in the evening, and serving in the temple come morning."

"And she fell for it?" asked Anar suspiciously.

"Doubt it. I think she had planned on leveraging your son's love and sense of duty to mold you into whatever she pleased."

"I loved my mother?!" Anar stared at Alu in disbelief, as though she'd just accused him of devouring sacrificial animals.

"You felt sorry for her. And for good reason: she had been exiled from Rual, stripped of her crown and the ability to execute anyone who so much as looked at her sideways – who wouldn't be moved to compassion? I can't comment on now, but back then you might as well have come with a label: "do-gooder extraordinaire, extra sensitive edition.'"

"Do-gooder, eh?" Anar chuckled, trying the word on for size.

"Yep. That's what our Patriarch Selorn calls those who enthusiastically ruin their own lives, as well as those around them, in the name of some Great Good," Aniallu finished in a histrionic singsong. "Basically, you sought to make happy and every creature you stumbled into, regardless of whether they deserved it. And Amialis planned to take full advantage of it."

"And did she?"

"No. One fine day, without saying a word to anyone, you went and enrolled in the Agadar Academy of Magic. You fled, leaving our blessed Briaellar behind. And went here," Aniallu tapped her nail on a tiny circle nestled up to a mountain range curiously shaped as jaws. "Amialis was furious. She was ready to drag you back by the tail, but your father somehow managed to convince her to put off reprisal, but wait and see what came out of it first.

"But the Academy turned out to be exactly the kind of hotbed of freethinking radicalism that Amialis had suspected. The longer you studied, the more critical your mind became. You learned about life, about other creatures and their nature, as well as your own. You learned to argue your point – civilly yet persistently – not fearing anyone's displeasure. It's not that you became dismissive of others' feelings entirely, but your tendency to take mercy on them at any cost greatly diminished. And Amialis realized to her horror that the sole string she had planned on pulling was slipping away. With each passing day you were losing your utility. Naturally, she liked this development not at all, so she decided to bring you home before it was too late.

"That was when we met. You had just been informed about her arrival, and were dashing along the hallway to Rector Agadar to beg him to not let you go. I was walking the other way, carrying a stack of books. You knocked me off my feet, and started helping me to pick everything off the floor; then, amidst a flurry of excuses, blabbed about Amialis' plans."

"And you stood up for me? Why me? As my mother, she had the full right to do to me whatever she pleased."

"Under local law, perhaps. But not Briaellar law. You were old enough to decide for yourself where to live, what to study and whom to surround yourself with. I hinted to Amialis that if she didn't stop infringing on that right of yours, you could invoke another one and move to another family. For instance, to that same Patriarch Selorn from House an Al Emenayit. I was bluffing, of course, but she fell for it. And got out of there."

"Bluffing? Would he have been too scared to mess with her? Or was the problem with me?"

"Not at all. Sure, he would've groused for appearances' sake that I was throwing yet another helpless do-gooder on to his shoulders, but in the end he would give in to mercy. He'd say something like, 'Well, I suppose we'll take him in to sweep the portal hall, 'cause I doubt he's good for anything else.' Whereas inside he'd be giddy with joy – it's not every day that mages of your caliber come knocking at his gate... Especially considering that his house's best wizard is a crackpot. He collects his own corpses." An earthquake hit the expanses of Enhiarg sprawled out before Anar, as the sianae's foot shuddered with distaste. "But no, you wouldn't have agreed to betray your family like that – that was how you saw things back then."

"And then I lost sight of you. I spend very little time in Enhiarg, always off somewhere... But during one such visit, I learned that you had gone back to Rual two years prior! I didn't believe that Amialis had managed to get her way with persuasion alone, so I went to your father to investigate. And he assured me that the decision had been yours and yours alone."

"He was able to fool a tal sianae? How is that possible?"

"That's the thing – Krian cannot lie!" exclaimed Alu with notes of despair. "Not even a little bit. He was genuinely convinced that the blood of your mother's ancestors had awakened in you. And that you wanted to follow in their footsteps. He was terribly vexed by it, but decided not to stand in your way... And I thought the same. I had no doubt that you could always return to Briaellar if you wanted to. But you didn't. Which meant that your father had been right, and you had found a real home there. Thinking back, I do remember hearing something about three of your friends trying to break into Rual, convinced that you were being held there against your will... But they were caught and exiled from Enhiarg because of whatever crimes they had committed there.

"I couldn't possibly imagine that things were as bad as you've just told me! I've always known that Amialis was a real bitch, but to do this to her own son! I still can't fathom it! So, this is the chain with which she had shackled you to this hole. She knew that the closer you got to know Rual, the more desperate you would be to escape it, and all her plans to put you on the throne would go belly up. What a blow that would be to her ambitions! But as long as you were deluded into thinking that the world beyond the Curtain was even worse, you would strive to see the positives in what you already had."

Anar nodded.

"Although, it was probably more about ability than desire. Yes," Aniallu kept musing, "she realized that you were shrewd enough to learn the truth about the outside world sooner or later. And even if you didn't, your curiosity would eventually compel you to peek out of your native forest. As long as that was an option... I think that, first and foremost, she wanted to rid you of the 'perverse science of the infidels.'"

"I doubt it. Those memories were actually untouched. It's funny – I didn't know my name, but knew exactly what to do to don invisibility... or turn a snoop to stone," Anar raised his voice, having spied Kad hiding behind the column.

"And if you had to teleport to the adjacent chamber, how would you do that?" Aniallu asked suddenly.

Anar began to expound on the particulars of the spell, but stopped when the sianae shook her head regretfully.

"I also know another way," he offered.

"That's not it. It used to be that you didn't even need to cast anything to do it. You could jump from place to place or fly using only the power of thought, without resorting to magic in the standard sense of the word. It was an... innate talent, akin to my ability to heal wounds made by Alaean claws. Taking it from you was cruelty of the highest order. Like declawing a cat and yanking out its whiskers."

Anar listened with bated breath. There had been times when he awoke suspended from the ceiling, cuddling a chandelier's warm plafond. He had no clue what force had kept him in the air, despite his natural ability to discern the faintest traces of sorcery.

"When I stupidly shared it with mother, she stiffened with rage. I was sure she would slit my throat then and there."

"Did she not tell you anything at all?"

"She called it a disgrace, a mark of my past apostasy. She said that I had to fight the godless taint inside me lest it consume my soul. And not to tell anyone else under any circumstances."

"If only your father were here to hear this..." Aniallu shook her head, then hurried to change the subject, deciding that Anar had had enough mind-bending surprises for one day. "How did you even survive here?"

"Surviving wasn't the hard part. Living, on the other hand..." Anar ruffled the hair between his ears in a characteristic gesture, then scratched the back of his head as if he were getting a headache. "I woke up in some hall. It was empty, cold and dark, and distressingly quiet. Amialis was bending over me, dressed up as if going to a party. I kept looking at her, unable to remember who she was and why I felt so sickened by her triumphant demeanor. Somebody dressed in black loomed behind her. Either his ears were pressed back or he wasn't even an Alae. He asked if Her Holiness was pleased with the way he'd cared for her son. She replied, 'Extremely.' And left. I remember her tail being sprinkled with some kind of gold dust. I didn't know back then that gilding the tail was a privilege afforded to the heir's mother... A symbol that she had accomplished her goal. Yet, everything about her made my blood boil, as if she'd just spat in my face, and, while trying to figure out why, I realized that I didn't remember anything at all. Not even my name! I panicked and started in a random direction, but the hall had no doors, so I spent the next several hours thrashing from wall to wall, clawing them not so much out of fear but fury..."

Having been sent after Anar, Kad found him writhing on a stone ledge all the way up at the ceiling. His new master looked terrible, with dull eyes, tangled hair and bloodstained fingers. It took the slave a long time to persuade Anar – stupefied from exhaustion and pointlessly battling his delirium – to come down. No tales of his home's lavishness, no promises of honors awaiting him had any effect. The youth – shriveled in horror at the ceiling – looked like a bird that had miraculously escaped the claws of a predator.

"It was he who told me the 'happy' news: that, under our stupid law, Kor was to be succeeded by me, and not one of His Majesty's own kids. Kad was delighted, but for me his words sounded like a death sentence."

"It's remarkable. Amialis managed to take away your memories and images from the past, but not the feelings associated with them," whispered Aniallu.

"Right, something definitely went wrong there. Just as with my body. Apparently, she had decided to adjust my appearance to the local standards. When I woke up, I was shorter than I am now, my hair and fur were black," Anar twitched his "disgustingly non-Rual" ear the color of dark gold, "And my eyes couldn't change color."

"Let me guess: they were noble green?"

"Naturally. Just like hers," scowled Anar. "But not a year went by that I shot up and – "

"Faded," Alu suggested.

"Have I changed much since you saw me last?" asked Anar with a kind of strange tension.

"Extremely. But I don't think it's just Amialis' handiwork. Back then you were a typical Alae teenager: scrawny, awkward, with that 'I want to know everything!' look... open and bubbling with life. You had this... joyful smile that lent a gentleness to your face, counteracting the ominous mug it was already obvious you had inherited. Whether from your mother or father, I do not know – both have rather sharp features," added Aniallu, examining him with the businesslike air of an art historial (too businesslike, Anar might say.) "And now... if I weren't tal sianae, you would probably scare me. You've become so... imposing."

"I've had to work on myself," muttered Anar sourly. "Here, if you want even a scrap of personal space, you need to scare away a whole army of pestering cats: servants, priests, mentors, relatives, so-called friends – "

"And potential queens, as we already saw," Aniallu broke in, amused by the baffled expression on the prince's face.

"Them, too. I realized right away that reasoning with those fanatics was a fool's errand. Standing by your ideals, even more so. Far easier to pretend to be one of them. And, most importantly, not to upset mother," Anar flashed an ominous scowl, and Alu feigned like she was going to hide under the map. "I've always sensed that she's perpetually scared of me acting out... letting her down somehow."

It was precisely thanks to his mother's fears, manifesting in endless lectures and admonitions, that Anar had been able to snatch a glimpse of his pre-Rual self. And, speaking frankly, he didn't particularly liked what he saw. According to Amialis, he had been a weak-willed sickly scatterbrain – a dunce whose life had neither principles nor purpose. Of course, Anar hardly viewed his mother's words as gospel, but, as they say, where there are kittens, there's a cat.

The upshot was that, in pursuing two goals – to acquire greater influence, which meant greater freedom, and to prove to himself that he wasn't helpless – Anar presented Amialis with one pleasant surprise after another. She feared his naiveté, shortsightedness and gullibility – he responded by catching spies sent by their relatives in his own (and even in her!) retinue; she expected him to be open and frank like an idiot – he quickly learned to hide his emotions and began slyly manipulating the right cats; anytime he happened to desire something – a magical object, a palace, the rank of priesthood – he accomplished his goal with remarkable speed and efficiency. Others began to fear and respect him. Likewise admirable was his suddenly awoken piety – he could spent hours sitting before Alasais' statues, detached from the entire world, immersed in reverential contemplation of the goddess. Little did Amialis know that in those blissful hours thoughts of how to multiply the glory of the Mother of All Cats were the last thing on the mind of her wily spawn...