The Tower of Sorcery

by James Galloway

  "This could be handy," Dar said in Arakite.

  "Like we'll have to keep secrets," Tarrin said in Arakite with a smile.

  "I know Shacèan," Dar told him. "Maybe I'll teach you that instead."

  "I don't see much use for it," Tarrin said. "I never thought I'd use this language, ever. Except to talk about mother in front of her with father without her understanding."

  Dar laughed. "If she's Ungaardt, she probably didn't appreciate it."

  "Mother does it to father too," Tarrin said. "I think it's a game with them. Mother doesn't know Arakite, and father doesn't know Ungaardt. I'm the one in the middle."

  "Must be a dangerous place," Dar said with a grin.

  "No, not really. It's just a game with them, so they never ask what the other is talking about."

  "Ah well."

  Tarrin looked around the room. "Dar, there's something about me you should know," he said in Arakite. "I think it's best to get this out of the way now, so you don't have a heart attack when you see it."

  "What?" he asked curiously. He raised an eyebrow as Tarrin started to take off his clothes.

  "I don't want this to go out of this room," he said.

  "It won't, I promise," he replied as Tarrin shed the last of his clothes.

  "This." Tarrin fixed the image of the cat in his mind and willed himself to change. The room went gray, as it did when he was in transition, and his body swiftly melted into the new form. When vision returned to him, he looked up at the now-gigantic Dar and meowed complacently.

  "Yaman!" he gasped, speaking the name of the patron God of Arkis. Then he made a curious scratching gesture with his right hand over his eyes, and made one small bow. It must have been religious in nature, Tarrin guessed. Maybe speaking his God's name was taboo or something. "Tarrin, is that you?"

  Tarrin nodded, sitting down calmly.

  "I heard stories about this, but I never thought to think about it. You can't talk, can you?"

  Tarrin shook his head.

  "But it's obvious you can understand me."

  Tarrin nodded.

  "May I?" he asked. When Tarrin nodded, Dar reached down and picked him up. "By the storm, you're heavy," he grunted as he shifted Tarrin into a comfortable position, then he started to scratch his ears idly. "You're cute like this," he said with a grin. He then put him down, and Tarrin resumed his own shape.

  "So if you see me like that in the room, don't have a conniption," Tarrin told him, bending down and retrieving his trousers. "Sometimes I like to sleep that way. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me away if you see me like that out in the Tower. There may come a time when I'll want to sneak around." He sat down and started pulling them back on. "Oh, if you see a white cat that looks alot like me, come find me and let me know immediately."

  "That would be this Jesmind, wouldn't it?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "I'll keep an eye out," he promised, then he yawned. "I think I'll go to sleep early, after you kept me up last night."

  "Sure, blame it all on me," he shot back with a smile. "But I think I could go for some sleep myself."

  Tarrin had discovered that the strange balls of light were called Glowglobes, and they were all over the Tower. Not a single candle was used anywhere. The secret to making them were lost over the years, as was so much that the Sorcerers had managed to achieve before the disastrous Breaking which had occurred two thousand years ago. Tarrin had heard that story from his father, who had heard it from a Sorcerer.

  The Breaking was a series of natural disasters that had ravaged the world from one end to the other. Fires, earthquakes, tidal waves, followed by disease and famine. It was a savage time for the world, and in the West, the ever-jealous Priests had managed to convince the people that the Breaking was the fault of the mysterious Sorcerers. In a climax of mindless fury, a mob of thousands and thousands had stormed the one and only center of learning for Sorcerers in the whole world, the Tower. Rather than defend the Tower and kill thousands, thereby destroying the reputation of the Sorcerers, the Keeper at that time, Valas Dansen, ordered the Sorcerers who were not in the Tower to hide themselves and keep the art alive. Then the Sorcerers in the Tower raised a mystical ward which blocked the mob for long enough to weave one more enchantment.

  When the ward lowered and the mob stormed the Tower, they found it empty.

  Totally empty. Not even the furniture remained. The Sorcerers had decided that rather than kill innocents, or allow themselves and their knowledge to be destroyed, they would simply vanish. And in vanishing, they would take themselves and every scrap of the knowledge that they had accumulated along with them. Eron had told him that to this very day, nobody knew what happened to the Ancients, as they were called, or where they went.

  The mob, thinking that it was some great curse laid on the place, fled in panic. And the Tower remained empty for over a thousand years. After the vanishing, Karas, the patron God of Sulasia, was incensed at his priests for their duplicitous destruction of the Sorcerers, whose Goddess, a goddess that had no name anywhere, was an ally. He stripped the priests of Karas of all their magical powers, and decreed that they would remain without magic for a period of one hundred years. And that was how it was. Without their magical powers, the priests of Karas were subjected to the humility of the common man, and so they were punished for their part of the deed.

  Things remained thus until Malin Trent, the Crusader, entered the Tower and called out to all his hidden brothers and sisters who practiced the forbidden art of Sorcery to return and dwell in the Tower in peace. Malin suffered serious challenges to his crusade to restore Sorcery, for the priesthood again took up their old war against the Sorcerers, whom they despised, calling Malin Trent a witch and a consorter with evil. Malin and those Sorcerers that did return to the Tower found themselves to be the objects of ridicule and scorn, and not a few outright attacks. One year after Malin reclaimed the Tower, and had persuaded some three hundred of his secreted brothers and sisters to join him in the open, the priests again carefully staged and incited a near-riot, whipping up the people against the Sorcerers to drive these new ones out just as the old ones were. The old ward that once stopped a mob was restored, for it was an ancient magic that was still in place and had not deteriorated over the centuries.

  In desperation, the Tower met in secret and reached an agreement with the King of Sulasia, Ulan the Wise. The Sorcerers would be permitted to return to their ancestral seat and return to their lives of study and contemplation. The Crown would protect the Tower and the order from the priests and the people. But in recompense, the King demanded that the Sorcerers perform certain tasks for the crown which their Goddess did not deem unsuitable, tasks that the order of Karas would not do themselves, for in their arrogance they felt themselves above the Crown. The Sorcerers would also rise up in defense of Suld itself, should the city ever be attacked. The treaty was sealed, and Malin Trent returned in secrecy to the Tower.

  After Ulan's army put down the riot and dispersed the people, the Tower quickly proved to the Ulan how incredibly useful they could be. Ulan had inherited a weak nation from his father, for with the punishment of the priests so long ago added to the taboo of housing the Sorcerers, Sulasia did not have the political or military power of its neighbors. Draconia, which was one nation at that time, was at that time preparing to invade Sulasia for its rich farming land and deep harbored city of Suld. The kingdom of Tharan, which had been to the east and on the land that Aldreth now stood upon, also was preparing to attack the weakened nation. In a concerted effort, the two nations invaded Sulasia and found undefended territory, for Ulan had pulled all his troops back to Suld, to defend the ancient and proud city against invasion. The two armies reached the vast plain on which Suld stood, and advanced in total confidence that the city was theirs for the taking.

  Bound by their treaties with the King, the Sorcerers of the Tower rose up and smote the armies with their magical power. Eron had shuddered at that point in the story, o
nly saying that the destruction wrought by the Tower was horrific. Neither army managed to get a single man to the walls of the city. The army of Tharan was totally annihilated, and the Draconian forces escaped with only one tenth of their total manpower. And that small fragment itself was destroyed when the Sulasian army flooded out of Suld and caught up with them on the south side of the Scar. The natural boundary proved to be the doom of the fleeing enemy, who, in their mad rush to get over to the safety of Draconia, broke the bridge under their weight and doomed those behind them. After the slaughter, Sulasia quietly marched into Tharan, whose king was killed at Suld, and annexed the entire nation. Ulan also captured and annexed the southern marches of Draconia below the rugged hills that marked the western edge of the SkydancerMountains.

  The priests of Karas were outraged at this new alliance, but there was nothing they could do. They had refused to be of service to the king, and in that rejection they had lost his ear. That place was now held by the Keeper, and so long as the Crown and the Keeper were allied, the priesthood could do nothing. They did, however, continue to try to turn the people against the Tower. But after a yet third attempt, one which the priests orchestrated from a veil of secrecy, Karas himself took notice of the behavior of his priests, and stripped them of their magic for a period of one year as a warning that such behavior would not be tolerated.

  That Glowglobe represented what the Sorcerers had lost after the Breaking, for the secrets of the Ancients had disappeared with them when they vanished. All of their accumulated knowledge was gone, and the hatred of the Sorcerers caused the destruction of nearly all of the knowledge they had gathered that had not been housed in the Tower. The eradication of knowledge had been so complete that literally nothing was left of the Ancients, only this ancient Tower which they had built, and the smallest of scraps of lore from old tomes and training that was passed down through the generations, training that deteriorated from the tremendous power of the Ancients, a power that was only now, after two thousand years, just beginning to be researched again. It was the driving force of the Tower now, to rediscover the power of the Ancients and return it to the world.

  A lofty goal, Tarrin though it. But grand, and noble, in its own way. In the thousand years since the return of the Sorcerers, they'd more or less stayed to themselves, opening the school in the Tower and forming a somewhat unfriendly alliance with the priests of Karas, by way of the Knights. The Knights were a militant order of the church of Karas, but were sworn and duty-bound, on command of the Crown, to defend the Tower itself and to protect and guard the Sorcerers whenever they left it. Arman the Just, the king who had made that decree, had done it to try to foment a favorable relationship between the two orders, but it had done little more than anger the priesthood and strengthen the Sorcerers. A Knight's oaths were to Karas, not the order of the priesthood, and defending the Tower and the katzh-dashi were their primary goals. They did perform service for the priesthood, but when and only when those duties did not come before their defense of the Tower and its inhabitants. They were a free-standing entity, related to the Church but not a true part of it, and that situation made every high priest of Karas chew on the carpet in frustration for the seven hundred years that the Knights had been in existence.

  And during all that thousand years, they had done almost nothing but study and research. Since his father was no Sorcerer, he didn't really know how far along they'd gotten in their quest to reclaim the power of the Ancients. But Tarrin was certain that they'd managed to make some gains, some discoveries. After a thousand years, that was almost a given. And it was what he would learn.

  Tarrin closed his eyes and thought about that for a while, half-dreams where he speculated about learning the power of Sorcery. Then he fell asleep.

  Chapter 8

  Tarrin was quite amazed as he stood in the Hall beside the other entrants into the Novitiate.

  This Selani was gorgeous.

  She was stunningly beautiful, with swarthy, creamy brown skin and exotic white hair that was so thick it was amazing, silky and very fine, and hung down to her backside in loosely curled waves of brilliant white. She had a face that artists would sell their souls to capture on canvas. She was ethereal, delicate, and quite exquisite, with her slender nose and high, arched cheekbones and almond shaped eyes that were so intensely blue that even the pupils had a bluish cast to them. Tarrin could readily admit that he had never seen any woman that could compare to the ethereal beauty of this Selani woman who stood before him. Her body was as perfect as her face. She was amazingly tall, only a bit shorter than Tarrin himself, who stood a head over most men. Her generous figure and shape were perfectly proportioned for her tall stature, and she had a figure that rivalled Jesmind's, the first woman he'd seen that could compare with his fiery bond-mother. And just like Jesmind, Tarrin's sharp eyes could see the definition of the muscles in what brown skin he could see, for she wore a baggy sand-colored, long sleeved shirt and a matching pair of pants. She may look slender and delicate, but this was one flower with steel for a stem. Selani were warriors, and she had a warrior's body. Her scent was metallic, almost coppery, a clear symbol of her non-human heritage, but at the same time it was very spicy and clean, and he found it to be quite appealing. Tarrin noticed idly that she only had four fingers on each hand. Three fingers and a thumb. And her hands were not malformed, nor was she missing fingers; that was how they were meant to be.

  She also had a look of aloof distance on her face. Elsa had said that she didn't like humans, but to Tarrin, it was more like a resentment at being in her current position. Tarrin had felt like that a few times, and that was exactly how he looked when he was in them. She didn't want to be here, and that was plainly visible.

  The little ceremony of induction into the Novitiate was dry and dusty, and Tarrin didn't even listen to the Keeper as she droned on about being there to learn, obeying their teachers and the Sorcerers and all that rot. He was considering the Selani. Tarrin had an intense interest in her, for some unknown reason. She looked aloof, but Tarrin saw under that, and to him, she looked alone. He thought that, if he approached her the right way, that they could become good friends. He wondered if that wasn't why he was so interested in her. She looked very lonely to him, and he didn't like to see anyone suffer like that. The days alone with nothing but his fear as he ran from Jesmind and the Goblinoids had put a soft spot in his heart to people in similar fixes. Here was a young woman taken very far from everything she had known and thrust into a sea of confusion, where nothing was comfortable or understood, and surrounded by people to whom she could not relate.

  After the little speech, the twenty or so new Novices were allowed to go sit down. Tarrin made a special note to sit next to the beautiful Selani woman, and once blessing was said, he turned to her. "My name is Tarrin," he told her. "I was told to show you the places in the Tower after class."

  "I was told of you," she said in a toneless voice, which was quite pretty. Her accent was thick, and it made her voice sound very exotic. It was almost as if she was trying to sing the words of the Common tongue. "I do not need to be guided. I can find my own way."

  "As you wish," he said in a carefully neutral voice. "Whatever makes you feel most comfortable."

  That word had the desired effect. She blinked those luminous eyes once and regarded him carefully. "You are devious," she said in a calm voice. "There is more of a cat about you than fur, strange one."

  "I meant no offense," he said. "You just look very unsettled. I meant to offer you friendship."

  "Friendship is a thing that is earned, not given," she told him abruptly. "But your concern for me touches my heart. I would accept your offer. We will go see these places after this class."

  And she spoke not another word. An Initiate gathered up the new Novices and escorted them to a large room with many chairs, all facing a small podium with a huge slate board behind it A small man with thinning brown hair and wearing a tight-fitting tunic and hose in the Sulasian style stood a
t the podium. "Good morning," he said as they were seated. "My name is Sheldin Brewer, and I will be your instructor in the subjects of history and geography," he introduced. "I know that some of you already know a good deal of history, and some of you know geography, but just be patient so that those who don't have a chance to catch up a bit."

  And so he began. Tarrin knew a goodly amount of history, thanks to his father, but this Sheldin touched on events and places that Tarrin had never heard of. He also knew just about everywhere, as he roughly sketched in the four continents of the Known World and the kingdoms and nations on which they stood, and described very briefly the continent across the sea which was the domain of the Wikuni. Although it was a dry subject, the man's light manner and keen knowledge of his material made the class actually enjoyable, and he was surprised when the man broke the class for lunch. "All of you are to sit together at the table directly in front of the Mistress of Novice's table," he instructed. "An Initiate will come and escort each of you to where you need to be after lunch. We will meet again in this room tomorrow after breakfast. Good day to you."

  "The man is learned," the Selani said in her calm voice as they walked back to the Hall.

  "Yes, he is," Tarrin agreed. "I'd expect him to try to pull you aside pretty soon," he said.

  "Why?"

  "I don't think he'll pass up a chance to learn about your desert," Tarrin told her. "Nobody but your people go there, so he'll jump at the chance to ask you about it."

  "It is our home," she said. "That is all there is to tell him."

  "True, but he'll still want to know," he said. "Men like that are driven by the hunger to learn."

  "It is a good quality," she observed. "There is honor in knowledge."