The Tower of Sorcery

by James Galloway

  "I'll be alright."

  "I think you will," she smiled. "But it doesn't really change things, cub. You're still Rogue, even if you have good reasons to be. Like I told you, we have laws. I'm going to try to have someone else come and take my place as your bond-mother, but I'll warn you right now. The next Were-cat you see may be here to kill you. You should treat her like an enemy until she proves she is your friend."

  "Alright."

  "But I'm not your enemy, my cub," she said, putting her paw on his shoulder. "Not anymore. You may still hate me, but I wanted you to know that. I'll never lift a paw against you again."

  Tarrin put his paw over hers. "Thank you," he said simply. "That's one less thing to worry about."

  "It's just temporary, cub," she warned. "I'll have to tell the others what happened. Like I said, I'll try to arrange for another bond-mother, but I may not succeed. So watch your back. Now, I have something to ask of you."

  "What?"

  "I want to deepen your bond," she said.

  "My what?"

  "When I bit you, you became a Were-cat," she said matter-of-factly. "That formed a bond between us. But among our kind, we can develop bonds with each other through blood. The bond I have with you now is very shallow, because you were human when it was made. It was enough for me to find you and know you were alright, until they put that damned collar on you. It's interfering with the bond."

  "What is a bond?"

  "It's very complicated, cub. I've been alive for five hundred years, and I still don't understand the specifics of it. The short of it is that it will let me know where you are, and if you're alright," she replied. "Because I'll have a small part of you inside me, I'll know where and how the rest of you are. But that collar is inhibiting it. I want to deepen it, so that I can find you after I've finished with what I have to do. I swear to you right now, cub, that I won't tell anyone where you are unless they're being sent to help you. I won't help them track you down and kill you. This way, if I can get you help, I can send that help right to you, no matter where you are."

  When speaking in the manner of the Cat, it was impossible to lie. That was why Tarrin believed her. Tarrin had hated and feared his bond-mother, but she was right. A part of him had always trusted her, taken comfort in the fact that she was always close by. Though his logical mind screamed out against it, the instinctive part of him believed her, believed in her, trusted her.

  "What do I have to do?"

  "Just let me bite you," she replied with a smile. "That's all."

  "Well, I guess that I can do that," he replied.

  They stopped, and she put a paw on the side of his neck. "Now just hold still," she said aloud, "and trust me. It may hurt. I have to bite deep."

  "Alright."

  She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips, then lowered down and bit him on the side of the neck. Her long, sharp fangs sank deep into the side of his neck, hitting an artery. It did sting like fury, but there was no icy numbness like there had been the first time. But as quickly as the fangs drove into him, they pulled away. He could feel his blood flow through the two puncture wounds, but only for a second, for they closed quickly.

  He didn't feel any different when she rose up and looked at him. She had a thin line of blood running from the corner of her mouth, which she licked away. But her eyes were soft and reassuring. "There," she told him. "It's that simple."

  "Now what?"

  "Now, we talk," she said. "I don't know you well, my cub. Not as well as I should."

  "Whose fault is that?"

  "Ours," she said calmly. "I only have today, and most of it is gone."

  "How are you going to get out of here? I know you know that we're trapped in here."

  "Give me more credit than that," she smile. "I've been coming and going for the last three days."

  "How?"

  "There's a trick to it," she said. "Don't even ask how, I couldn't explain it to you. I can't even show you. Just trust me. But you're wasting what little time I have, cub. Tell me about Aldreth, and your parents."

  "Why do you have to go?"

  "Don't ask silly questions," she berated him.

  "It's not silly from where I'm standing."

  "Maybe not, but I don't have time to explain it," she replied. "I'm not here to talk about me. I'm here to get to know my cub better, before I have to leave him to fend for himself."

  It was late, well past midnight. Jesmind stood in Tarrin's room, putting her shirt back on, more than aware of the scent of the Selani, fresh and on the far side of the door.

  Seducing him hadn't been in the plan, but she wasn't sorry that it happened.

  Tarrin was, was nothing like she thought. She had thought him out of control, walking the edge of insanity. He was. But it wasn't for the reasons that she thought. She had believed it was the Cat driving him mad, but the Cat was only the instrument and not the hand pushing it. If he were removed from the Tower, from the situation that was slowly and inexorably driving him mad, he would be well. His very demeanor was so much different from that young, scared, trusting cub that she had met so long ago. He had become hard, grim, almost fatalistic. She couldn't blame him for the changes, but she understood what those changes meant. He was slowly losing his humanity, and if it did not stop, he would go mad. What could not destroy him quickly would destroy him bit by bit, slowly eroding away that which made him what he was, destroying the young innocent boy and replacing him with a savage, ruthless monster.

  The Cat had nearly driven him mad, and now the Tower itself was trying to finish the job.

  Oh, it wasn't the Tower itself, it was the situation. Tarrin was living in fear, and if he were human, it may be something that he could deal with. But he had the Cat with him now, and the Cat was changing Tarrin's usual reactions to such things. What was the danger now was Tarrin's conscious mind, because he would make the decisions that would turn him into a ruthless monster.

  Blinking, she settled the shirt over her lean stomach, then marched deliberately for the door that adjoined Tarrin's room with the Selani's. She knew the Selani was awake, and was fully aware of what was going on. And the Selani didn't disappoint. She stood near her own door in the small room, wearing nothing but a nightshirt, and holding two slender swords in her hands. Her look was one of grim determination, and it seemed to Jesmind that she had been torn between charging in there and saving Tarrin from her, or trusting in Tarrin's judgement and not interfering.

  Jesmind would need that trust.

  It was something that, unfortunately, she could do little to help him with aside from taking him out of the Tower. But she couldn't do that now. Things had changed, and taking him back was no longer an option. She couldn't force him, and she was in no condition to fight. She had only one thing to say to the Selani, which she did as the woman stared defiantly at her. "I'm leaving," she told her bluntly. "Watching him is now your responsibility. Keep him alive, Selani. If you let him get killed, I'm going to hunt you down and take your hair for a bellpull."

  And then she left the Selani before she could respond.

  Creeping through the north tower in the dead of night, the female Were-cat avoided guards and Sorcerers with an ease that would make the greatest master thief envious. She crept across the Tower grounds and entered the main Tower itself, her delicate nose following a faint scent trail set down some hours before. It was faint and deeply covered by a multitude of other scents, but her exceptionally sensitive sense of smell followed that smell of human and lavender and silk and ivory quite easily. She moved in utter silence, her large padded feet making not even a whisper of sound on the stone of the floor, her white fur seeming to absorb the darkness and merge with the shadows created by the glowglobes. She flitted from shadow to shadow, hallway to hallway, moving through the Tower like a ghost, raising not a whisper of sound or flicker of motion to alert those that moved around her, totally oblivious to her passing.

  In all the Tower, there was but one human that Jesmind would e
ven come close to trusting. She reached that person's door not long after entering the Tower, using a single claw to throw the latch and entering the small, elegantly appointed room of the human woman that had taken in her cub in her absence and protected him as best she could.

  Dolanna's eyes opened when Jesmind's shadow fell over her, blocking the light from the small window that let the cool air of the waning summer into the room. Those large, dark eyes betrayed no fear, and the Sorceress made no overt moves. She simply stared up at Jesmind with calm eyes, assessing the Were-cat's motives. Not much could rattle the Sorceress, Jesmind had come to discover over the months of watching her cub from the shadows.

  "And what brings you past my door at this hour?" Dolanna asked in a calm voice.

  "Don't push it," Jesmind told her. "I still can't believe that I'm doing this."

  "Doing what?"

  "Trusting one of you," she spat. "But my cub trusts you, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt."

  "And what, may I ask, would you need my trust for?" she asked calmly and to the point.

  "Something is going on," she said bluntly in reply. Dolanna sat up as she looked down at her, those large, dark eyes calm and attentive. "The Tower wants something out of him, Sorceress. It's so obvious, even he has noticed it."

  "You give little credit to him," she said.

  "Oh, I give him alot more credit than you think," she retorted, "but Tarrin's a backwater country boy thrown into a viper pit. He's not used to seeing intrigue and backbiting, and it is credit to say he's noticed something that he's really never seen before."

  "I stand corrected," Dolanna replied mildly. "And why does this bring you to my door?"

  "Because there's alot more going on here than just some errand that Tarrin can run for the Tower," she said. "Tarrin made mention of the fact that they brought Allia and the little Wikuni in as well, and all three of them seem to have alot of attention from the Keeper and the Council of Seven."

  "I have noticed that, yes," Dolanna agreed. "I think it is because the difference in culture demands that all three of them be given close scrutiny."

  "No," Jesmind snorted. "They're collecting them for a reason, and they don't seem to be too picky about how they get them."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Remember when you caught me?" she asked. "Remember that collar that was around my neck?"

  Dolanna nodded, and her eyes were beginning to look troubled. "It was magical in nature," she said. "You were being controlled."

  "That's right," she spat. "And it was a Sorcerer that put that damned thing around my neck."

  "How do you know this?"

  "All of my kind have a touch of Druidic magic in us," she replied. "Some more than others. My own Druidic power rates about at the level of pond scum, but I can tell the difference between a Priest's chant, a Mage's spellcasting, and a Sorcerer's weaving. I tell you right now, woman, that one of you put that collar on me. One of you set me loose in Tarrin's bedchamber. I don't know if they wanted him dead or just wanted him to be Were, but there was no accident about it. I remember specifically being sent after him. I rather think that they wanted him dead, myself. That he survived was a stroke of the wildest luck. When he turned Were, they just added him to the other two. An added bonus."

  Dolanna was quiet for a moment. "Why do you bring this to me?"

  "Because only a fool wouldn't know that something's going on," she said. "Since I think that whoever caught me sent me to kill him, it makes me wonder why half of you Sorcerers want to train him, and the other half want him dead." She crossed her arms and looked down at Dolanna grimly. "I know you, Sorceress. My cub is alive because of you. I know that you are very attached to him. Well, I have to leave, so I won't be here to protect him anymore. So you have to find out what's going on, and protect him from whoever's trying to get rid of him."

  "You are aware of much more than I expected," she said with a sigh. "I happen to know that Tarrin is indeed being trained for a very special task. I do not know what this task is, but I have been given instruction from the Keeper herself that he is to be trained as quickly as humanly possible. As to the attacks on him, that I do not know. I do know that the Keeper somehow knows who is behind it, but she would never share such knowledge with me. I am not, as they say, in the inner circle. My involvement in this begins and ends with Tarrin."

  "So, the Tower wants him alive, and someone else inside the Tower wants him dead," Jesmind surmised. "Now, the big question is why. What makes my cub so important?"

  "His power, probably," Dolanna said. "I tell you this, Jesmind. That boy is the most powerful Sorcerer I have ever seen. When he is trained, his raw power will be unrivalled on this world. It would take a full Circle to stop him. My guess is that he is being trained to undertake a mission that only someone with his power could complete."

  "And some other group is trying to stop it?" Jesmind asked.

  "I would assume so," Dolanna replied.

  "It almost washes, but not quite," the Were-cat snorted. "If that were so, then what about the others? Are the Selani and the little mouse as strong as he is?"

  "No," Dolanna replied. "The Selani is not strong at all in the gift. The Wikuni shows considerable potential, but she is not even close to Tarrin's raw power."

  "Then what do they have to do with it?"

  "They are non-human," Dolanna replied. "That is the only thing that links them together."

  "So, we have a big hole," she said. "And it's going to be up to you to fill it, woman. I won't be here."

  "You have given up on Tarrin?"

  "No," she replied. "He's still my cub, and he always will be. But I can't stay here anymore. I'm going to go home and try to arrange to have someone else come and teach him what he needs to know, but I may not be able to. The others may decide that he's too old to be taught, and simply decide to have him killed."

  "Others? Which others?"

  "We don't all run naked through the forest and howl at the moon," she snorted. "Well, not all of us, anyway. The woodland folk all live by a set of laws, and we Were-cats are part of it. Those laws are why I tried to kill my cub. I didn't want to do it, but I had no choice. It's still against our law, but I hope I can convince them that he's not too far gone. There are few enough males as it is, killing one just because he had to come here first would be a crime."

  "The Fae-da'Nar," Dolanna said with a smile. "I have heard many stories of that most secret society. I even managed to learn some of your laws, from a Were-wolf."

  "Yes, I know that Were-wolf," she said dismissively. "Doesn't it seem awfully convenient that the one Sorcerer that just happens to have experience in dealing with Were-kin just happens to be the one that finds a fledgling Were-cat on her doorstep?"

  "I asked the very same question myself, when it ocurred," she replied smoothly. "I considered it coincidence before. Now, I do not think I am so certain."

  "Good. Someone in this Tower is trying to kill my cub, Dolanna. I can't be here to protect him, so I want you to help do that for me, until I can get someone over here to take my place."

  "So," Dolanna said with a smile, "this means that he is no longer your enemy?"

  "He never was," she grunted. "He made me angry, but among our kind, angry doesn't really count. I've tried to kill my own mother. And I meant it at the time. It's the way we are." She turned around a moment. "It's him," she grated. "When I was watching him from a distance, I saw the young cub I saw when I first found him, and I'd give up on taking him down as a Rogue. But when I tried to talk sense into him, he would get me so mad all I wanted to do was wring his neck. That cub has got a very sharp tongue."

  "That is, interesting," Dolanna said with a light laugh. "He swears that it is you." Jesmind turned around again, giving the Sorceress a curious look. "I have heard very much the same thing, but from him. He once told me that he called you his 'far friend', meaning that the further away you were, the more he liked you. It was when you talked to him that he became
angry with you. And I think he still has trouble forgiving you for turning on him."

  "I never turned on him," she said heatedly. "He knew what he was getting into--"

  "You gave him no choice, Jesmind," Dolanna interrupted, climbing out of bed. "He was desperately afraid that he was going to accidentally hurt you with his Sorcery. Did he tell you what happened before he left Aldreth, before he met you?" Jesmind shook her head. "His sister, who is also tremendously gifted and is only thirteen years old, had an accident. She would have killed me with her Sorcery, had I not been ready for just such an accident. The accident has left a very deep impression in Tarrin's mind. I think it is why he is having so much trouble using his power. He is so frightened of hurting someone with his power that he is afraid to touch it. When you flatly refused to bring him here, he decided to leave. Not because of you, but to protect you from his power."

  "He never told me that," Jesmind said in quiet reflection.

  "Tarrin's heart is deep. He would go to great lengths to bring comfort to total strangers. To hurt people is totally against his nature."

  "Yes, that's the problem," she grunted. "That's the other thing I came to talk to you about."

  "What?"

  "You have to get him out of here," she said. "This place is killing him bit by bit. The Tarrin I see now isn't the same cub that walked through those gates. He's turning hard, and if something isn't done, he'll become feral. He's already half feral now. It won't take much to make him feral permanently."

  "Feral?"

  "It's a term we use," she replied. "To us, it means savage, or vicious. More than a few of us are like that. We may be intelligent, but we're still part animal. If you beat an animal long enough, it turns mean, and it will never trust anyone again. That can happen to us too. If he's put through too much in this pit, he'll never trust another soul when he finally walks out those gates. He'll be feral. He'll only trust those people that he trusted before he turned feral, and when they're gone, that's it. He'll run into the forest, and noboby will ever see him again."