"The Initiates? It's their rank," he replied. "Except the ones that wear brown. Initiates who wear brown aren't Sorcerers, they're just the advanced people in the school. They're here in the Tower too, in the levels above the library."
"Which way will you go?"
"I don't know yet," he said. "All I've learned so far is history and geography, and they've taught me about fifty different ways to add two and two together," he said ruefully. "But they haven't given me the Test yet." He led Tarrin down another passageway. "I'm not entirely sure which way I want to go. Seeing the Sorcerers here, it's made me interested in what they do. But if I do end up learning Sorcery, it's bound to make my parents very mad. They're paying alot of money to send me here. But, on the other hand, if I do have talent, they don't have to pay anymore," he said with a smile.
"Hmm," he mused. "My parents weren't quite so lucky. They made me come here."
"The Test?" he asked.
Tarrin nodded.
"I didn't know they tested Wikuni."
"I'm not Wikuni, and I wasn't like this when they tested me," he told him.
"I wasn't sure," he admitted with a short laugh. "I know alot of Wikuni from when my parents bargain with them, and you don't look like any Wikuni I've ever seen. But you look almost like one. I thought maybe you were a deformed Wikuni."
"No," he assured him. "I'm a Were-cat."
"Truly?" he said in wonder. "Then none of the stories I've heard of the Were-people are true, are they?"
"Probably not," he said. "Well, the part about biting is true," he added somberly.
"That's how it happened?"
He nodded. "It was just one of those dumb things," he said. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." That much was true, to a certain degree. If he'd chosen another bedchamber, it would have been Walten, or Tiella. Or maybe even Faalken or Dolanna. Or maybe nobody.
"You took it better than I would have," he said. "I'd still be screaming."
"I'm over that now," he said. "It's actually not that bad, once you get used to it."
"I'd rather not find out," he said.
"Smart man," Tarrin agreed. "The getting used to it is not pleasant."
"I didn't think it would be." They went through a door, and entered a huge room, much like a grand hall. There were tables and benches aligned in orderly rows in the center, with a single table on a raised dais on the far end of the room. There were already a great many people in the room, and almost all of them were sitting quietly at the tables, where a myriad of different foods sat and waited. The smells of them made his stomach growl. Sitting at the table on the dais were several men and women wearing assorted dresses, shirts, doublets, and robes, but Elsa was seated firmly in the center of the table facing the assembled Novices. Dar led them to the closest empty seats, and he had them sit down fast. "Anyone standing once the Mistress starts the meal prayer is sent away hungry," he explained in a very low whisper.
Tarrin nodded calmly, taking in the nervous reactions of the other Novices seated near and around Tarrin. They all couldn't help stare at him, but they tried to make it inconspicuous. He decided that ignoring them would be the best thing to do. Not an arm's reach away, a large platter of roasted ham sat, almost taunting him. It was a tremendous act of will not to reach out and take it.
"Everyone stand!" Elsa's booming voice called across the hall. All the Novices stood respectfully and bowed their heads. Tarrin endured a short little speech from Elsa, where she invoked the blessing of some Goddess on the meal, but Tarrin didn't listen to her. He was more interested in hearing her voice stop than he was listening to her speak. When the Novices began to take their seats, he realized that Elsa had stopped talking. He sat down with Dar, and when he saw several people reach for platters of beef, or pork, or a bowl of potatos, he knew that it was time to eat.
He graciously let everyone else take what they wanted off the platter he was eyeing, then he reached out and took the entire platter. "Anyone else want any of this?" he asked pointedly, holding it out. When nobody answered, he pushed his own plate away and set the platter in its place. He looked at the small-handled fork by the plate with a bit of annoyance, and instead used the large serving fork that was on the platter. It had a handle large enough for him to use. The knife too was too small, but the claw on the index finger of his free hand was more than capable of being a substitute for a knife. The razor-sharp tip of his claw neatly sliced up the meat to his liking, then he used the serving fork to get it to his mouth. Someone poured fresh, chilled milk into a pewter mug that was beside him, and then that person moved down to do the same with Dar's mug. He was more interested in the food, however, and he managed to finish off the entire platter of roasted ham, which had enough ham on it to feed five. Dar gave him a rather wild look as he pushed the platter away and took a drink of milk. "Do you always eat that much?" he asked.
"Not always, but I'd been moving without eating much before I got here," he replied. "I'm just catching up on missed meals."
"I can understand that," he said, going back to his own meal.
Tarrin could almost feel the energy of the meal surge into him as he sat there drinking his milk and waiting for Dar to finish. Now that his body had more raw material to work with, he was very certain that he'd not look even half so thin by dinnertime. He was looking forward to the studies with Sevren; he was curious just what his body was capable of doing. This ability to restore lost body tissue was most interesting. But then again, he felt that he should have known it would do that. Something in the back of his mind, he thought it was the Cat, told him that he could grow back missing limbs, except for his head, and even regrow lost teeth and claws. It was part of the regenerative capabilities inherent with his kind.
And, he realized, it was the reason they didn't age. The regeneration healed them of the effects of time, repairing any damage brought on by the marching of the seasons. That was only logical, he realized calmly as he sat there. The effects of time were not natural; well, they were natural, but they were not the natural state of his body, and that was how his regenerative ability maintained him. An older him did not fit into his body's imprint of itself, and so it was corrected by regenerative healing.
Tarrin was only seventeen. He hadn't lived long enough to be able to appreciate the profound concept of living until someone killed him, maybe for thousands of years, but he was wise enough to know that he wasn't old enough. It was something that he would have to think about in the time to come, something to ponder.
After the meal, Dar took Tarrin around the Tower. They went to the Library, the scribing chamber, out on the grounds, to the huge garden behind the Tower, then they walked along the highly polished black tiles of what was known as the Heart of the Goddess, a massive open space in the exact center of the Tower that ran from the base right up to the top. While they walked, they talked. Dar was an earnest young man with high goals and ideals, but they didn't include what his family wanted from him. He was an accomplished artist, and he wanted to pursue that, while his family thought it was frivilous. He also wanted to learn. He was wildly curious about the world, and he almost didn't want to leave the Tower, to leave the vast Library, which was one of the largest and most complete in the world. They strolled along the black tiles around the edge, near the wall, as Dar confided certain things to Tarrin that he knew the young man had not told other people. Dar and Tarrin seemed to just connect, and he realized that he already considered the young Arkisian a close friend. The Cat in him liked Dar just as much as the human did. In the base of the floor, in a huge design, was the shaeram, the geometric star-in a star-in a circle design that was the symbol of the order. It was done much differently than the medallions he'd seen, and that pointed some things out to him. The medallions were a four-pointed star with concave sides inside a six-pointed star. This symbol resembled that six pointed star, but instead of a star it was six individual triangles laid out corner to corner, third point out, all contained within the circle. Each triangle was a
different color. They were red, blue, a shade of purple like violets, orange, yellow, and a lighter shade of purple that was obviously a different color. The circle encircling them was green, and the concave four-pointed star within was white. The design had to be about fifty paces across, taking up about three quarters of the floor.
Tarrin felt…strange. There was something in this vast chamber, but he couldn't quite put his claw on it. It hovered right on the edge of his consciousness, almost like something that rested just at the edge of his vision, a sound that was so faint that he couldn't tell if it was real, the phantom of a scent in his nose. "Do you feel that?" he asked Dar quietly, almost reverently.
"Sometimes I do," he replied. "There's something in this place, but the Sorcerers won't tell me what it is. I think it has something to do with magic. Not many people come in here, so I like to come in here alot and think."
Tarrin advanced into the huge open area, still trying to understand the extremely vague sensation he was feeling. His pads made no noise on the black tiles as they crossed the boundary and set foot on the green of the surrounding circle of the symbol. Tarrin felt that unusual sensation more strongly as he advanced into the middle of the huge room. He looked up into the soaring void that rose up over them, an enclosed area that went up so high that he could just barely make out the ceiling so far above. Tarrin put a paw out in front of him, because he could almost see a something coalescing in front of him. As he moved closer, it seemed to be more distinct.
When his paw crossed the invisible barrier above where the green circle ended and the red triangle began, something strange happened. A faint, ghostly radiance appeared around Tarrin's thick fingers, and it swirled and eddied like water between and over them. At the touch of that visible light, Tarrin's fingers tingled angrily, pins and needles that were almost painful, yet seemed to go through his fingers as well as around.
"Amazing!" Dar murmured, standing beside him. "It never did that to me."
Tarrin put his entire paw in, feeling the tingles, watching the light ghost up and around his paw. It was almost like water; whatever it was was definitely flowing, from the floor up towards the ceiling so high above. "Put your hand in," Tarrin told him in a wondrous voice. "Don't just put it in, feel what's there."
He did so, closing his eyes. After a moment, while Tarrin put his other paw in and played with the swirling, smoky radiance, Dar's eyes snapped open. "I feel…tingles," he said. He put his other hand out, and then tendrils of ghostly smoke-light started wisping out from under Dar's hands. "Incredible!" he whispered as it became stronger. "I can feel it!"
Tarrin raised a foot, to take a step inside.
"I wouldn't do that," a voice called from behind.
They both whirled around. The woman standing before them was very, very tall, and she was almostly achingly beautiful. Her skin was bronze colored, but her hair was a brilliant, fiery red. A most unusual combination. She wore a daring, low-cut red silk dress, and had a figure that most women would kill for. Dar instantly bowed to the woman, and Tarrin clumsily did the same. Her hard green eyes swept over them quickly, then she walked up to them. She stepped between them and put her hand out, over the barrier, and Tarrin watched it as it reached into the same area where he had been. "You have no idea what you're doing," she said in a hard voice, "and that can kill you if you're not careful."
Her hand suddenly erupted into a white fire, which spread over her palm, and licked up from under her cupped hand. She removed her hand from the place, and the white fire was still in her palm, dancing and weaving in the air. Tarrin could feel the heat from it; it was real fire. It was pure white, but it was real. "This place, I don't think it's safe for either of you. You'd best not come here again."
Swallowing, Tarrin looked at the fire. Why hadn't it done that for him? Like she said, it was something he had no knowledge of, but he just had to know. "What is it, Mistress?" he asked.
"It is Sorcery," she said simply. "It's something you haven't learned yet. But from what I just saw, it's something that both of you will learn," she added with an appraising look at Dar.
Dar positively beamed.
"Just don't get creative," she said. "Before you even try to use Sorcery, there are many things you have to learn. It's way too easy to kill yourself if you don't know exactly what you're doing."
"I know," Tarrin said absently thinking back to Jenna and her explosive experience with the power of Sorcery.
"Now get on with both of you," she said shooing them away with a hand as the fire winked out from the other. "I suggest you not come back here until you've learned more about the power of Sorcery."
They left her with hurried bows, almost running from the vast chamber. Only when they were clear of her did they start whispering fervently. "You will be a Sorcerer!" Tarrin whispered to him, as Dar said "that was absolutely incredible!"
Dar looked over his shoulder. "That was Ahiriya," he told Tarrin in a hushed tone. "She sits on the Council of Seven."
"Ahiriya?" Tarrin asked. That was also the name of a Goddess, the Elder Goddess of Fire.
"I know, she almost looks the part, doesn't she?" Dar said with a grin. "She sits in the Fire seat on the council and everything. She has just as much of a temper too. She's the last person in the Tower you want to have mad at you."
"The Fire seat?"
"The council, it has six members," he explained. "Each one is the seat of one of the six spheres of Sorcery. Air, earth, fire, water, the mind, and the power of the Goddess. The Keeper is the seventh. They rule the Tower."
"I remember that much," he said. "I just didn't know they called themselves that, that's all."
"You'll learn most of that in the first week or so of the Novitiate. That's about all they talk about. Rules, rules, rules, and just how deep you bow to which person. I think it's a bit silly, myself," he grunted. "Back home, you bow to the king, but that's about all. We're kinda informal about that kind of thing."
"You sound like a noble," Tarrin said.
"Well, my father is a Margrave," he admitted. "That's a rank something like a Baron here in the west, but there are no lands that go with the title. It's like a landless noble."
"A landless noble?" Tarrin asked.
Dar nodded. "He earned it about fifteen years ago. The king needed something done badly, and my father managed to do it for him. He gave my father the title in thanks."
"Hmm," Tarrin sounded.
"We don't take it seriously, anyway," he said. "My family earns money through the spice trade, so we don't really need land."
"My father said that Novices work when not in class," he said.
"We do," he said with a wince. "I got very lucky. They wanted you to know your way around, so I have the afternoon off to show you the Tower."
"What do you usually do?"
"Scrub floors, scrub walls, scrub pots and pans, scrub scrub scrub," he said with a face. "I swear, when I get out of here, I'll never so much as look at another scrub brush as long as I live."
Tarrin laughed. "You should work on a farm," he said. "You do the same things every day, over and over. As soon as you finish it, it has to be done again. It's very monotonous."
"Sounds like torture," he said.
"You get used to it," Tarrin said. "I didn't mind most of the chores. It was something to do." He looked down at his paw idly. "Besides, we had a small farm, and there were four of us, so there wasn't a huge amount of work. We had alot of free time."
"What did you do with it?"
"Hunted, roamed around in the forest, that kind of thing," he said. "My father was a Ranger, so he taught me all about the woods. My mother's Ungardt, so I learned all about fighting from her. That's more or less what I did with my free time."
"I sat and learned numbers, then learned how to cheat spice dealers," Dar said with a grin.
"Must have been boring."
"You have absolutely no idea." He looked around. "Let's go back outside. It's a nice day, and if any Sorcerer decides
they need something, they can make us do it. We're the mules in the Tower, and idle mules irritate many of the Sorcerers for some reason."
Tarrin laughed. "Outside sounds like a good idea."
The sky was clear, with the Skybands cutting across the blue in their dull white colors. They went to the massive garden behind the Tower proper, where numerous Novices toiled in the meticulously arranged gardens with gardeners and Initiates supervising them. The garden was in its early summer bloom, and it was a sea of colorful flowers divided by red brick walkways. There were several fountains among the large sections of roses and tulips and numerous other flowers, and they stopped at each one and gazed on the beautiful sculpture that often spouted streams of water. There was also a huge hedge maze behind the flower gardens, and the two of them wandered the pathways of that huge maze for almost the entire afternoon, going well past the point where the pathways were neatly tended.
"Things are getting ragged," Dar noticed.
"I don't think they come in this far," Tarrin replied.
Dar laughed. "Maybe we'll come across the skeleton of the last person who did," he joked.
"It's certainly large enough to get lost in," he said.
"Do we even know where we are?" Dar asked a bit uncertainly.
"I know where I've been," he assured him. "I can smell our trail, so we can just follow that to get out."
After a while, though, Tarrin was getting aggravated. They'd followed every single possible path, and yet they still hadn't found the center. "There has to be a way in," he growled.
"As rough as these hedges are," Dar said, pushing away a branch that quite nearly grew across the entire path, "The way to it may have grown over."
"I think you're right," he agreed. "Let's start looking for holes in the hedge."
After about half an hour, they found it. It was indeed overgrown, and so badly that it literally looked like a wall. They pushed through it, walked down a short path that was similarly choked, and then they found themselves standing in the center.
The hours were worth the effort. There was a fountain in the middle of the large grassy clearing, a fountain that was bright and clean despite the obvious years of neglect. There was a statue in the center of the pristine marble fountain, a statue of a woman of indescribable beauty. The stone was unweathered, and it seemed to literally capture the sparkle in the eye of the long-haired, nude figure. The sculpture was so incredibly detailed that Tarrin could see the individual strands of hair flowing down the back of the statue's shoulders. It stood on a pedestal in the center of the fountain, where small spouts of water filled the small center area with the sound of happily splashing, bubbling water. The figure was in a delicate feminine pose, and its arms were outstretched, as if welcoming them into the clearing. The clearing itself was neat and clean, despite the obvious fact that nobody came into it anymore, with several rose bushes growing to each side of a single solitary bench that sat in front of the fountain. There was a red brick path around the fountain, widened around the bench, running under their feet towards it.
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