The Tower of Sorcery f-1

by James Galloway

  He passed her without comment or acknowledgement, and he heard her stop and turn around. "Hey!" she snapped, her words echoing loudly in the muffled silence of the fog.

  Tarrin stopped, but did not turn around. "What?" he asked in a calm, quiet voice.

  "It is customary for people of your station to bow," she said in a grating voice.

  "My station," Tarrin said in a calm voice. He didn't like the way that this was going. He could see now that if he didn't take a stand immediately, he would have no peace with her. The Wikuni was going to be in his class today, and that meant that there would be long hours of enforced companionship with her. He decided that it was best for his own sanity to put her down now, and put her down hard. "My station is whatever I decide it to be," he told her in a grim voice, turning around. His irritation lit his eyes from within with their unholy greenish aura, making them look as twin pools of utter evil in the ghostly light of the fog. "And I'm going to tell you something right now, little Wikuni. I have no patience for people like you. Stay out of my way, and I'll stay out of yours. But if you get on my nerves, I'll make you regret it."

  "I'd like to see you try," she snapped. "I'm the Princess of Wikuna! You-"

  Without hesitation, Tarrin snapped forward like an arrow launched from a bow. Before the Wikuni could even flinch, he had her by the bodice of her Initiate dress. She made a squeak of shock that cut off what she was going to say as his fingers closed on the material, then he yanked her towards him by that precipitous handhold. She grabbed his wrist in both hands and rained curses and demands on him as he dragged her towards the main Tower wordlessly, at a pace so fast that he was half dragging the foxwoman behind him. He entered the Tower with her in tow, dragged her down the main stairs, and entered the baths with her feet dragging along the stones and her grip on his wrist the only thing keeping him from ripping the front of her dress away. There were three people in the baths, two women and a man, all three of them in the bathing pool at discrete distances from one another. All three stopped cleaning themselves and watched as Tarrin dragged the hapless Wikuni by the bodice of her dress, right up to the edge of the pool. At the end where the water hissed and steamed.

  The Wikuni shrieked in terror when she realized what Tarrin was going to do. She let go of his wrist and tried to pull away from his grip, willing to sacrifice her dress, but by then it was too late. Tarrin's other paw closed around the base of her tail, something that would not come off easily. Hoisting her up by her bodice and her tail, he took a little shimmying step, and then heaved her into the middle of the hottest part of the bathing pool.

  She landed in the water face first, making a spectacular splash, then she broached the surface like a boulder fired from a catapult. She charged towards the cooler water with whimpering cries streaming from her mouth, her fur clinging to her skin and making her look like a drowned rat. Tarrin watched her with emotionless eyes as she managed to reach a temperature that was bearable more than painful, and that was when he was fixed with the most baleful glare he'd ever seen in his life. Had he still been human, it may have taken him aback, but he had no fear of her, so it had no venom. "You are going to be so sorry you did this to me!" she promised in a hissing voice.

  "This was your warning," Tarrin replied in a voice so cold that it stole the venom out of her eyes. "I am not a simpering human, Wikuni, and I'm not one of your subjects either. Whoever you are means nothing to me. If you irritate me, I'll kill you. I'll do it without a second thought. Treat me like something not worth your effort one more time, and I'll rip off your tail and hang it on my wall as a trophy. Talk to me like you did again, and I'll hang you off the fence and skin you. And I'll make sure you live long enough to see your own pelt. Do I make myself abundantly clear?"

  Staring at him in horror, she could only give a slight nod.

  "Good. I hate repeating myself."

  She suddenly erupted into a bawl of tears, but he tuned out her sobs and stalked away from the pool. Wondering when he'd become so hard. He'd only meant to make it clear that he would brook no attitude from the girl, and then he was suddenly threatening her life.

  He knew that the time away had been good for him, but even then he knew that he was nowhere near in complete control. That little episode was a very impacting reminder of that fact. He still had to be very careful of himself, else he would do something that he would truly regret later.

  On the other hand, the Wikuni would have probably taken anything less to be empty words. At least now, she understood exactly how he felt about her attitude.

  The entire affair managed to spoil the exuberance and anticipation he'd been feeling. Muttering to himself, he stalked up the stairs, in the direction of the kitchen, intent on claiming the breakfast he had left his room to get in the first place. He stopped when a glimpse of red hair shown ahead of him, a thick shock of hair the color of fire disappearing up the staircase. He fully well remembered, with a bit of a shiver, the last time he had seen a redheaded woman on the steps leading from the baths. Memories of that nightmarish encounter were dim, but the emotions behind them, emotions to which he was susceptible considering his months in cat form, made his ears go back and made his heart flutter in his chest. Advancing slowly and carefully, he knelt at the base of the steps and stared up their length, up to where they slowly began to turn to the left, his nose sifting through the myriad scents left on the stone by countless feet. Only those that were freshest had any meaning to him, and none of them were Jesmind. In fact, her scent was nowhere around. Could it have been someone else? Jesmind's hair color was odd, but not unique. He had not seen anyone else in the Tower with quite that shade of fire red hair, but that didn't mean that there wasn't another one.

  But his nose didn't lie. Nobody had been on the steps in the last half an hour, except for himself. He puzzled over that for a moment. How could the woman with the red hair have went up the steps, and not left a scent? Even if her feet had never touched the ground, the traces of her scent would still be drifting in the warm, muggy air. Especially since the air circulated down the stairs; he could feel it against his face. He was downwind, and yet there was no scent at all.

  Tarrin debated what to do. There was another set of stairs leading out of the baths, on the far side of the chamber, so he wasn't pinned into going in this one direction. But he was curious about who, or what, he had seen, something that left behind no trace of its passage. Jesmind was good, but there was no way she could have done that.

  The sound of sloshing behind him told him that the Wikuni had dragged herself out of the bathing pool. He could hear her panting, almost as if to keep control. Yet she didn't say a word. She was either too frightened of him-no, it had to be that. He didn't credit her with enough sense to be otherwise.

  Not caring to be brained from behind by an indignant wet Wikuni, Tarrin advanced up the steps cautiously, claws out, his every sense straining to know what was around the slight bend in the staircase as it rose up to the ground floor. There still was nothing, only his own scent going down. When the landing came into view, he again saw only the briefest flash of red, a lock of hair disappearing around the corner. He rushed up to that spot and stared down the hallway. It was a hallway that led into the center of the Tower, towards the Heart, and there was not a single doorway between the stairs and the ornate iron gate that marked the Chamber of the Heart. There was nowhere for the mysterious figure to go, and yet she, or he, vanished without a trace. Without any trace at all, for there was no scent on the stone that was even a day old. Nobody went into the Chamber of the Heart without a good reason.

  Tarrin could think of only two things. Either his eyes were deceiving him, or whatever it was had no scent.

  If his eyes were deceiving him, then they were doing it again. Tarrin could see faint movement behind the iron gate marking the end of the hallway, a flash of red and white behind the intricate iron scrollwork, iron wrought into the shape of the shaeram on each of the two iron gates. Just like the red and white of Jesm
ind's hair and shirt. It wasn't like Jesmind to sneak around like this. If Jesmind wanted to talk to him, or to fight, she would have come right out and got him. He seriously doubted that she wanted to fight, but if she did, then maybe she was trying to bait him into ambush. Curiously detached, he realized that he needed to find out exactly who, or what, that was, to see if it was friend, foe, or other.

  It only took an instant's thought to form his awareness around the shape of the cat, and then his body flowed into the form as his vision blurred. He heard a startled gasp behind him, down the stairs, but he ignored it as he crept on utterly silent paws up the hallway, which was lit with glowglobes like all hallways within the Tower proper. He reached the iron gates, then slunk down on his belly and looked through a hole in the ironwork by the base, looking into the large room.

  The room was empty, except for Jesmind. She was standing with her back to him, her thick mane of wild red hair flowing down her back and around her shoulders, bunching up against the base of her tail. A tail that swished to and fro in a reflexive, rhythmic pattern. Her paws were clasped behind her back in a relaxed manner, and she was staring at the strange place in the middle of the chamber, staring upwards at the ceiling so incredibly high above.

  Tarrin saw immediately that all was not what it appeared to be, because Jesmind had no scent.

  It was not Jesmind, he was certain of that. It could not be her, no matter how much it looked like her. Because she-it did not have a scent.

  "I know you're there, Tarrin," the figure called. It sounded like Jesmind's voice, even down to the undertones of impatience in the timbre. "You don't have to hide from me. You know me better than that. If I wanted to fight, I'd have attacked you while you were busy with the walking throw-rug."

  It was very convincing. Very convincing. But it was not Jesmind. Tarrin changed form absently, taking a step back. He had no idea who or what that was, but since it was somehow pretending to be Jesmind, he didn't want to risk trying to find out more. Yet maybe he could find out more.

  "What do you want, Jesmind?" he asked acidly.

  "To talk."

  "The last time you said that, you tried to rip my head off."

  "Times change, Tarrin," she said. Tarrin's eyes narrowed. Jesmind didn't call him by his name. She called him cub. "I've been thinking. I make the offer to you one last time, Tarrin, but this time, you don't have to leave. I talked to the Keeper the other day, and she explained how, dangerous, this Sorcery business can be if you're not trained. I can teach you what you need to know while you're here."

  Clever. Just what he would want to hear out of her mouth. Tarrin reached out with his senses, closing his eyes and taking in the air deeply through his nose, straining with his ears. He could hear the Wikuni behind him, advancing curiously, could hear her breathing. No such sound emanated from the chamber before him. The smell, the feel of that Conduit thing that Ahiriya had described tingled along his skin, but he could discern no scents of anything alive inside the chamber, nor could he hear anything.

  A scent. Yes, there was a scent. A smell of…ozone. Like the smell of lightning after it strikes. And there was a sound coming from the room, but not of breathing. More like the sound of a distant wind, the sound of air pushing against air. Both were very faint, almost negligible, but they were there.

  "Wikuni," he said calmly, quickly, aware that she stood right behind him, "give me your slipper."

  "What? I-"

  "Don't argue!" he snapped in a sibilant hiss. "Just give it to me!"

  Lifting a foot with a mutter, she reached down and removed her slipper, then handed it to him. "I don't see what-"

  She cut herself off as Tarrin reared back and then threw it into the room with considerable force, squeezing it through a hole in the gate, and managing to strike the figure square in the back. The throw had enough to stagger the form forward, until its foot crossed the line and into the dark circle that marked the boundary of that Conduit Ahiriya said was there.

  It gave a keening cry, like the sound of wind howling through the treetops, a horrid sound that made Tarrin's ears stand straight up, then try to fold in on themselves to block it out. Then the form of Jesmind vanished in a whirlwind of dark clouds. But the whirlwind seemed to falter, as the magical power inside the Conduit charged whatever it was that had been hiding behind Jesmind's appearance. The magical energy rushed into it, making it glow, and showing Tarrin its form. It was some kind of odd creature seemingly made out of the air itself, and its shaped altered wildly as it writhed and convulsed in the magical vortex that was the Conduit. It gave another keen, until a sudden blast of wind lashed out from inside the glowing area as the figure itself discorporated.

  Shielding his eyes from the sudden hot wind, he heard the Wikuni gasp behind him as the hot wind passed them by and blew faint dust down the hall. "What was that!" she demanded in a slightly shocked voice, a voice held under tight control.

  "I don't know," Tarrin replied.

  "How did you know it wasn't, well, whatever it was?"

  "It had no scent," he replied calmly.

  She blinked, giving him a curious look. Tarrin noticed that those amber eyes were clear and totally lucid. They were…calculating, and they took in Tarrin from top to bottom, as if by that one glance, the Wikuni could work out the inner motives of his deepmost self. As if she was reassessing her opinion of him. Her look made him do the same thing. This Wikuni was more than she appeared.

  "What in the Pit was that?" a voice called. Tarrin and the Wikuni both turned to look, to see two of the three from the baths, the man and the blond woman, standing in the hallway with towels wrapped around themselves.

  "We don't know," the Wikuni said in her normal imperious tone. "Some kind of glowing ball thing got our attention, so we came down here to look at it. When we got here, it gave off that horrid sound and then just popped."

  "Strange," the woman hummed, tapping her lower lip with a delicate finger. "I-nevermind, you're Initiates. I'll be able to find you. I'll be asking you about this later today, when I have a chance to find you. I want to know what that sound was."

  "Why not now?" the Wikuni demanded in an impetuous tone.

  "Because I'm standing here wearing a towel," she replied. "And that's Mistress to you, Initiate."

  "M-Mistress," the Wikuni said gratingly, having to all but wrap her mouth around the word.

  "Now go get out of that wet dress, and for the Goddess' sake, comb out your fur," she ordered. "You look like a drowned rat."

  The Wikuni stamped her foot with a huffing sound escaping her lips as the two Sorcerers went back down the staircase. "I do not look like a drowned rat!" she said hotly.

  "Actually, you do," Tarrin said in a calm voice, totally devoid of amusement.

  "Well thank you, mister messenger!" she snapped at him. "It's your fault I'm standing here getting dye in my fur!"

  Tarrin glanced at her, a sneaking suspicion dawning in his mind. "You can drop the act," he said. "I saw your eyes. There's no way you can be that smart and that stupid at the same time."

  She seemed about to give him what-for, then she scratched the back of her head and laughed ruefully. "You can, if you pay attention to what you're doing," she relayed in a calm, conversational tone. "Most people wouldn't catch a slip that small. And I usually wouldn't make such a slip, but you surprised me."

  "Slip?"

  "Why, I'm the Brat Princess," she told him with a cheeky grin. A grin that showed her very sharp teeth. "Didn't you know that?"

  "It seemed fairly obvious to me," he drawled, "but I don't see the need for it."

  "You would, if you understood the situation," she sighed. "It is something of a secret, Tarrin. I spent a great deal of time convincing everyone I'm an empty-headed shill. I don't need you to go behind me and ruin that."

  Nothing sparked Tarrin's curiosity more than a mystery, and here was a living one. The thought that she had to act like a brat intrigued him to no end, and his mind whirled with possible explana
tions. "We have time," he said.

  "I'm wet and look a drowned rat," she chuckled. "I don't have as much time as you. Sunrise isn't far off, and I have to be ready. We'll talk-oh yes, we'll talk, but it will have to be later. Just promise me that you won't give me away."

  "I won't," he said. "After the dunking I gave you, you have a perfect excuse to avoid me. So there won't be any more slips."

  "True. I like the way you think," she agreed with that same toothy grin. "In fact, I'll absolutely loathe you for what you did, but since you're so, well…"

  "Direct?"

  "Yes, direct. That's the word I needed. Since you're so direct, I'll be too afraid of you to push things. The Brat Princess is a whining self-centered poppinjay, and she likes to hurt people that slight her, but she's a coward. She wouldn't risk you hurting her." Even her manner was different. Tarrin could see it in her, how she moved. She moved with a stately confidence that belied the impression that he had of her, although there was a certain tension in her, as if she was afraid to act true to her real nature in front of him. She was obviously able to submerge herself in her role as the Brat Princess so completely that she could literally take on an entirely new set of mannerisms. This was not a spoiled whining little egotistical brat. This was an intelligent, cunning, calculating young woman that seemed a bit haunted and somewhat defensive. No doubt for the reasons that she pretended to be so much less than what she actually was.