The Jargoon Pard (Witch World Series (High Hallack Cycle)) by Andre Norton

the moonlight that I whirled about, snarling.
    Just in time, I sighted the bared steel of a sword, knew that was what Maughus waited for, that I should attack him. However, though I might wear a new shape, my own mind was still in command. I would not play my cousin's game so easily.
    He was not alone. Darkly cloaked, the hood half slipping from her head, Thaney stood behind his shoulder. Her face was a wry mask of disgust.
    “Slay him!” Her hoarse whisper rasped in my ears.
    Maughus shook his head. “No, he must reveal himself as what he is—I am too well known for my dislike of him. I will have no man say my sword drips his blood because I would have his heritage. But you see the truth of it, sister. He is a shape-changer. We need only say that and men, in their present state of dreading all that may be manifestations of the Dark, will get rid of him for us.”
    He moved back, still holding the sword at the ready. The door slammed. I heard once more some bar drop across, prisoning me within.

Of the Wild Hunt and My flight Therefrom
    For a moment the beast was uppermost in me. I leaped for the door, crashing against it with bruising force. Whatever bar Maughus had set held stoutly. When I heard my own snarl, the sound put a curb to the animal part. What my cousin intended for me I could not guess, but that it would be a peril great enough to endanger perhaps even my life, I believed.
    No longer did I delight in my new body. I wanted out of it, back into the familiar shape that was truly mine. Yet I knew no spell, nor trick of ensorcellment, which would win that for me. Bitterly I realized how right Ursilla had been, my mother had been, in distrusting the belt. My mother had named me “fool.” Now, in my desperate plight, I laid a far harder name upon myself.
    What had happened was only too plain. Somehow— perhaps through the trader Ibycus—the Lady Eldris had learned the secret of the belt and made sure that it would be put into my hands. Thus she could well remove me from the path of her favorite. Because I knew only too well that what Maughus had said moments ago was the truth—a shape-changer had no good name among those of the Clans. Such a one was alien, one with the forest people, the halfling bloods that the wholly human never quite trusted.
    With those of the Keep people so worked upon already by the cloud of suspicion that had crept slowly to poison their peace, they would treat me as they had Lady Eldris's halfling son in the long ago—drive me into exile. But my lot would not be even as good as his, for I had no Werekin to seek out, no other shelter awaiting me.
    The belt—I lowered my head, looked at my furred body. Yes, beast form though I might wear, the belt was also still about me. I could not distinguish its fur well because it matched my own present hide. But the jargoon head shone bright and clear. Suppose I could rid myself of that binding? Would I regain man form so?
    However, though I hooked at the fastening with the claws of one paw, jerked and pulled at the buckle, it remained fast closed. The window? Dared I leap from the window, find a place to hide until moonset? That much lore I had learned from the Chronicles—that the full moon largely controlled such changes.
    I reared up on my hind legs, rested my paws upon the sill, crowded head and shoulders forward that I might stare down. My chamber lay in the second story of the Tower, the drop below was sheer and without a break. I was not yet used enough to my new body to attempt such a leap; and, as I stood so supported within the window frame, I heard a small sound from the direction of the chamber door.
    It required but an instant to drop to four feet again, pad across to listen. Had I really heard the stealthy withdrawal of the bar that held me prisoner? I was not sure.
    If the barrier was now gone, who had taken it? Maughus wishing to entice me out for his dark purpose? Or did I have some friend here who wished to upset my cousin's