The Tower of Sorcery

by James Galloway

  "I've never had a God help me before," he shrugged.

  From seemingly nowhere, Tarrin almost thought he heard the impetuous stamp of a foot.

  "What was that?" Allia asked curiously.

  "Maybe it was thunder," Tarrin said. "The storm's still going on outside."

  "Ah. It is your decision, Tarrin."

  "Allia, I've already made up my mind," he said. "You're already like a sister to me, and I love you as much as my own family. I would be honored to formalize the relationship."

  She smiled broadly at him. "Maybe it was the Holy Mother's hand that guided me here," she said. "I am now glad beyond reason that I forced to come into the human lands, else I would never have met you."

  Tarrin reached up and put the palm of his paw against her cheek, swallowing up the delicate side of her face in his huge paw.

  And so Tarrin stumbled into his room late that night, with his shoulders throbbing, but feeling very good about the whole thing. Allia never told him that it would be her Holy Mother Goddess herself that would put the brands on him. She had reached out from wherever it was she was at and touched him with her power, and that had burned the symbols into his shoulders just the same way they appeared on Allia. The pain was part of the rite, an acceptance of the pains and trials that came with adulthood, and he'd been warned that to scream was unseemly, and that he had to remain still and now squirm, for the branding was not instantaneous. If one moved or flinched, it was an evasion of the duties of adulthood, and that person took a bad brand, and was ridiculed and scorned. Tarrin had a bit of an advantage there, for his Were-cat nature allowed him to endure quite a bit more pain than a standard human. He still nearly blacked out though, which, he'd discovered, was an honorable thing. Blacking out was not in his control, and it proved that the person being branded was strong enough to hold still even under such intense pain. People who blacked out, curiously, did not take a bad brand, even though they did move. Tarrin suspected that the Holy Mother Goddess had a great deal to do with that.

  Tarrin just worried that his regeneration would heal over the charred burn marks.

  "You're in late," Dar noted as he turned to look at Tarrin from the writing desk.

  Tarrin hunched over a bit, his tail drooping. Even putting himself in the water of the bathing pool hadn't eased the residual pain after the branding.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Allia branded me," he said shortly.

  "What?"

  "She asked me to become her brother, and I said yes. The brands were so that could happen. I couldn't be her brother until I was seen as an adult in the eyes of her people, and that meant I had to be branded. It meant alot to her, and to me."

  "You take friendship seriously," Dar said, getting up. "I'll go steal some ice from the cold room," he offered. "That should take most of the bite out of it."

  "I appreciate it," he said gratefully.

  He returned a bit later with a small bowl of ice, which was wrapped into a kerchief and applied to one shoulder at a time. The ice blissfully numbed his throbbing skin, and he leaned back on his bed, back against the wall, sighing in almost ecstatic relief.

  "That must have really hurt," Dar said.

  "It was worth it," Tarrin said. "I can't even begin to explain the relationship I have with Allia, Dar. It goes way beyond simple friendship. I've never had so deep a connection with anyone. We love each other about as much as two people can who aren't married."

  "Well, so long as it makes you happy, then I say congratulations," he said with a smile.

  "It's not like we're betrothed, Dar," Tarrin chuckled.

  "I know," he said. "But in its own way, it's just as profound, I think."

  "More or less, yes," he agreed. "I did more than profess love for her. I promised to be like her own brother in every way. And family can be just as close as married couples."

  "And in such a short time," he said. "What will your mother say?"

  Tarrin gave him a look, then laughed. "We said the same thing," he admitted. "We don't understand why we took to each other so quickly either. Maybe it was fate."

  "I don't believe in fate," Dar said with a smile. "It may have been the Gods."

  "I doubt that," Tarrin chuckled. "Like me being friends with Allia was so important that it was demanded by the Gods. Get real."

  Again there was that same sound, like the stamping of a foot. Tarrin sat up and looked around, and so did Dar. "See?" he said after a moment. "One of them is talking to us now."

  Tarrin gave Dar a look, then he laughed again. "Give one knock for no, two knocks for yes," Tarrin said in a spooky, melodramatic voice. He shifted the ice against his shoulder, wincing. "These should be healed by tomorrow," he said. "I really hope that the brands don't heal over. I don't like the idea of being charbroiled every time Allia wants to prove to someone I'm an adult."

  "At least you'd get used to it," Dar grinned.

  "Not that, I won't," he grunted. "I've never felt pain like that before in my life. Not even my transformation into this shape was half as painful, and that was so painful I blocked most of the memory of it from my mind."

  "That may be why the brands seem to be more painful," Dar said with surprising insight.

  "Perhaps," he said, putting the melting ice in the wet kerchief back in the little bowl. "In any case, I'm tired, and I think I'll go to sleep."

  "I'll turn down the lights."

  "Don't bother. I want to sleep the other way tonight, and the light won't bother me at all."

  Tarrin had an ulterior motive, of course. He didn't know if he'd have the same pain in the cat shape, and he was willing to try it and see. He undressed and changed form quickly, and, to his dismay, he discovered that the pain was just as present. He hobbled a bit, for he now had to support his weight on the branded limbs, but managed to curl up in a dark place under his bed and go to sleep.

  Wake up, something seemed to whisper to him. You have to wake up.

  Tarrin opened his eyes. It was dark in the room, and the sounds of Dar's breathing told him that his friend was sleeping. That was the only sound he heard. From outside the door, he could hear faint scraping noises, and then the sounds of a man breathing. Breathing that was a bit fast, Tarrin noted as he got up and padded out from under the bed, the pain in his forelimbs more or less shunted aside. He sat beside the door and hunkered down, smelling at the air drifting in from the other side. There were two human smells, both human men that smelled slightly of ale and prostitutes. And Tarrin could smell clearly the presence of steel, and of one other metal that took him a moment to identify.

  Silver. The only non-magical substance other than fire or acid that could do him real injury.

  His ears laying back, Tarrin listened intently as the two began to whisper.

  "Is this the right room?" one asked.

  "I'z be certain o' that," the other whispered back in a bizarre accent Tarrin had never heard before. "This'n be the right room, rightly so. Remember now, we'z can't kill the critter with nothing but this here sword," he instructed his companion. "It don't like silver, none at all. Now you'z be getting that magic trinket out and ready, so's the critter don't be a' hearin' us open the door. The boss done say that if we wake it up, it'll right fast send parts of us'n all over the room."

  Tarrin changed form silently, his eyes flat and his ears laid back. They were here to kill him. But they didn't know that he was already awake. The thought that they were there to try to kill him filled Tarrin with a sudden rage, a rage that he fought desperately to control. For the first time in a very long time, the Cat in him rose up and tried to take control. He knew it was futile to try to outright resist it, for when it was his life in jeopardy the Cat called in a voice too powerful to deny. He had to try to channel the rage, focus it, to keep from totally snapping and going into a berzerking rage that would put innocents in danger.

  "Are you's ready with the trinket?" the man whispered. Tarrin's sensitive ears pinpointed exactly where that voice had
come from. And that was the man with the silver weapon, the weapon that represent the threat to his life.

  Tarrin took stock in the door, measuring it carefully. Then he balled up a fist, reared back, and punched his paw through the door.

  His paw opened the instant it was through, and his aim had been true, for the palm of his paw came into contact with a nose. His fingers closed around that head, wrapping more than well enough around it to get an unbreakable grip, and then he yanked the man back through the door. Tarrin noted that where his hand going through the door curiously made no noise at all, there was a sudden, loud tearing snap as the door was shattered from the force of Tarrin's pull, a sound accentuated by the shriek of the man in Tarrin's clutches. It was a small man, thin and wiry, wearing dirty townsman's clothing and with a silvered sword in his hand. The sight and smell of that weapon made Tarrin's eyes go totally flat.

  Grabbing hold of his wrist with his other paw, Tarrin closed his fist.

  The man's scream was cut off with horrifying abruptness, for he had no mouth with which to use, and no brain with which to direct the mouth that was not there. Tarrin's fingers drove into the skull and the brain, his inhuman strength digging down and under and then crushing everything that had been below the man's forehead, shattering bone and liquifying flesh. Blood and worse spurted out from between Tarrin's fingers as his fingers closed inside the man's head, literally tearing off the man's face. The other man looked into the door in shock as the dead man fell away from Tarrin, a hideous gaping hole where the front of his head had been, and blood and bits of flesh dripped and oozed from between Tarrin' fingers as he watched the body fall to the floor.

  The man shrieked in abject horror and turned to flee, but Tarrin was on him before he could take a single step. He tackled the man and sent him sprawling to the floor, quickly getting on top of him and putting a paw on his chest to hold him down, and then opening his other paw, allowing what was left of the other man's face to drop from his grip. The man stared in desperate terror at the bloody paw raised over his head, claws out, with bits of flesh, bone, and brain dangling from the fur and from the claws. Tarrin's eyes glowed from within with an unholy greenish radiance that made the man squeak once he beheld them, and his face was twisted into a snarl of fury that almost made him like a raging beast. Tarrin very nearly killed him out of rage, but he managed to maintain at least some semblence of sanity. This man had been hired to kill him. Tarrin wanted to know who had done it. "Who sent you?" Tarrin asked in a hissing voice that made the man go very still. "Who sent you?"

  "I-I can't say!" he wailed. "They'll kill me!"

  "If you don't, I'll make you beg to die," Tarrin told him in a voice so evil that the man tried to sink through the floor to get away from him. "I'll gut you like a pig and drag you around by your entrails until you feel like talking." Tarrin lowered his paw, driving the tips of his claws into the skin of the man's belly. He squealed and writhed, then screamed in pain as Tarrin sank a bit more of his claws into the man's flesh.

  The man bellowed as Tarrin slowly twisted his paw, digging the claws in deeper. "It was a Wizard!" he said in a high-pitched voice. "I don't know his name! Belleth knew it!" Tarrin twisted his claws. "Kravon!" he shrieked. "I work for Kravon!"

  Then Tarrin felt a coldness at his back. He turned around, ignoring the many Novices that had opened their doors to see what the commotion was about. The shadows behind him seemed to coalesce, and then two slits of pure green radiance appeared. The unearthly cold told him all he needed to know.

  It was a Wraith.

  The man looked over Tarrin's hip at the apparition, and then he screamed a scream of such terror that it chilled Tarrin's blood. He did himself grievous injury as he suddenly thrashed against the Were-cat, whose claws were still sunk in his belly, but in his wild panic he felt not a whit of pain. The Wraith advanced with shocking speed on them and reached out. Tarrin knew that the touch of a Wraith was the cold of the grave, and it meant death. Even in his rage, he was still lucid enough to know when to bolt. He sprang away from the conjured creature, trampling the man under him in his flight. The man, bleeding freely from his ripped stomach, stared at the Wraith in terror, his body paralyzed by fear, watching that insubstantial hand.

  Even as it sank into his chest.

  The man made a single gurgling sound and arched his back, and then he moved no more. He remained in that hideously twisted position even after the Wraith withdrew its hand from his chest. The Wraith took one look at Tarrin, and then it simply vanished.

  Control returning to him, Tarrin and a few other Novices warily approached the dead man as others screamed hysterically, and more than one Novice cried out or was noisily sick. The man's skin was blue, and the eyes were open and glazed.

  The man's body was frozen solid.

  Tarrin shivered when he felt the cold radiating from the frozen corpse, then he heard Dar moan and start retching. Tarrin had not left the other one in very presentable condition. Elsa charged out of her door wearing only a nightshirt and brandishing her axe, then stopped when she saw the nude Were-cat standing over the frozen corpse. "What happened?" she demanded hotly.

  "This one and the one in my room tried to kill me," Tarrin said in a cold fury, panting to keep control of himself. The Cat was howling for blood, and it wanted to punish the ones who had dared try to take his life. It just wanted to destroy things at the moment, to vent its rage on whatever was handy, but Tarrin's rational mind wouldn't allow that. Such a mindless display of violence would solve nothing. But it still wasn't easy.

  Elsa glanced into his room, which now had no door. She shivered a bit. "What did you do to him?" she asked, then she glanced at the blood and flesh still hanging from Tarrin's right paw. "Nevermind, I think I know," she said in a bit of a weak voice. "Tarrin, go down to the baths and wash off all that blood. Take Dar with you."

  "Alright," he said tightly. Dar still coughed a great deal as they left for the baths, Tarrin stalking the halls unclad in a fury as Dar followed behind carrying Tarrin's robe. Down in the bathing chamber, Tarrin dropped into the pool and started cleaning off his arms and paws. He was a bit surprised at the amount of blood he had on him; it was even spattered on his face and chest, and smeared over his torso. He'd stepped through a pool of it, and bloody footprints. Dar sat on a chair with his head in his hands, leaned over and still coughing a bit here and there.

  "Are you alright?" Tarrin asked as he climbed out of the pool.

  "Yeah," he said weakly. "Just imagine waking up to see something like that," he said with a weak chuckle. "I don't think I'll ever eat meat again."

  "Sorry, but he tried to kill me," Tarrin said. "And I doubt they would have left you alive either."

  "I know," he said. "But why did you have to--do that?"

  "It seemed appropriate at the time," he said. "I didn't even think about it."

  "Are you alright?"

  "I'm fine, Dar," he said. "I thought I was dead when I saw that Wraith. I'm just lucky it wasn't after me."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Wraiths are conjured up for a specific purpose," Tarrin told him, repeating what Dolanna had told him so long ago. "That's all they'll do, what they were conjured to do. That one was conjured to kill that man before I could get him to talk," he said with a growl. "All I got was--"

  Tarrin's heart seized in his chest when a faint trace of an old scent touched his nose. He bowed down and sniffed delicately at the stone, trying to block out the strong smells of the mineral-rich water. The scent of her passage was still on the stones. Jesmind had been in the bathing chamber. A whirlwind of conflicting emotion welled up in him at that scent, and most primary of them all was fear. He feared Jesmind more than anything else in the world, because he knew, beyond any doubt, that she was there to kill him. And unlike most in the Tower, she was very capable of doing it. It was almost an ironic twist that she would show up so soon after he'd nearly been killed. It was like an omen.

  "Dar," he said in a hushed v
oice.

  "What?"

  "Get up. We have to get out of here."

  Dar looked around. "What's wrong?"

  "Jesmind is here," he said in a quiet, forboding voice. "We have to get back to where there's people."

  Dar scrambled to his feet, his eyes darting in all directions, handing Tarrin the robe and rushing after him as Tarrin made quickly for the stairs. They mounted the base of the staircase, but Tarrin stopped dead when a silhouette came around a corner and stood at the top. A silhouette with a tail. His heart froze in his chest, and then it was replaced with a calm, almost unemotional void. He had nowhere to run, and that meant that he would have to fight.

  She came down step by step, slowly coming into the light. She was wearing the same white tunic and canvas breeches, which were a bit frayed and torn, but they were clean, just like her. Her eyes were glowing from within with that greenish aura, two slits of pure evil in the shadows, which were a clear indication of her fury. "It's been a very long time, Tarrin," she said in a deceptively mild voice.

  "Not long enough," Tarrin growled, his ears laying back and his own eyes igniting from within.

  "I hope you enjoyed your time here," she said, her claws coming out, "because you're out of it!"

  And with that, she dove off the steps and slammed shoulder first into the startled Tarrin's chest, driving them both back down the stairs.

  Both of them were Were-cat, and they both had the same abilities. Tarrin and Jesmind both knew exactly where they were in relation to the ground, and the stairs, so while they tumbled down they both fought to put the other under when they hit the bottom. Tarrin lost that fight, coming down right on the back of his head, but he almost instinctively kicked up and out as hard as he could. With his back on the floor, it gave him a brace, and Jesmind was hurled up and over his head. He rolled to his feet as she tucked in midair, tumbling end over end several times before lightly landing on her feet some distance away. Tarrin had time to rip the rope holding the robe closed and yank it off before she got set again, shedding the constricting garment and not giving her anything to grab onto except his hair. He flung that robe in her face as she lunged at him, covering her head and upper torso, then he ducked down and let her sail past him. Her tail hooked his ankle as she passed, and it almost yanked his leg out from under him. He managed to keep his feet, but it instantly stopped her forward momentum, putting her in claw's reach of him. Even without seeing, she raked her wicked claws right across his chest, digging extremely deep furrows into him, furrows that went all the way to the bone. Had she hit him lower, he realized instantaneously, she'd have disemboweled him.