The Tower of Sorcery f-1

by James Galloway

  "Nothing, just hedgerows," Allia replied. "It's like there isn't a courtyard."

  "Allia, the courtyard is too large," Keritanima protested. "You have to be able to see it."

  "Maybe not," Tarrin said cautiously.

  "What?"

  "Maybe they can't see it," he said.

  "Tarrin, how could they miss something like that?" the Wikuni demanded.

  "Maybe it doesn't want to be seen," he said after a brief hesitation. "There's something magical about that place, Kerri. I think all three of us agree to that." Both of them nodded in agreement. "So maybe the place hides itself. It's obvious that nobody knows that it's there. Or at least nobody bothers to visit it."

  "You mean that someone or something went out of its way to create a place that nobody can find?"

  "I found it," Tarrin said calmly. "Maybe it's just someplace that a human couldn't find. Maybe a Sorcerer used a weave from the flows of Mind that hides the place, and since I'm not human, it didn't affect me."

  Keritanima gave him a very penetrating look, then she snorted. "I don't think I like where this is going, so I think I'll drop it," she told him tersely.

  "Why not?"

  "Alright, since you want to press it, think a minute. Allia said she couldn't see the place from the top of the Tower."

  "That's right," Allia said. "I couldn't see anything."

  "So, Allia isn't human," Keritanima pointed out. "So there goes that theory. I can't explain it, and I don't think I want to know how, but I'll accept that something is hiding that place."

  Tarrin thought that he knew, but he wasn't sure if he should tell them. Even his friends knew his sanity was tenuous, and if he started claiming that he had spoken with the Goddess of the Sorcerers, they'd probably go running for the Keeper. And he really wouldn't blame them. He was pretty sure that she kept the courtyard hidden, but he didn't know why, and he wasn't sure why she allowed him to find it.

  "Alright, but do we want to depend on that?" Tarrin asked. "My parents live in the city. I'm going to go visit them tonight. If I ask, they'll probably let us bring the booty there."

  "No," Keritanima said. "The Priests may be able to track it down with magic if we hide it in the city. But I'll bet my furry tail that their magic won't penetrate the Ward surrounding the grounds, so they won't know where to look to find what we steal."

  "That's a very good point," Allia agreed. "If we have to live with the Ward, we may as well use it in our favor for a change."

  "Just so," Keritanima agreed with a smile.

  "Well, I was going to tell you this later, but since you're here, it may as well be now," Tarrin began. "I went to the library where they hold all the real books on magic, Kerri, and your idea of researching may come up empty."

  "Why?"

  "Because the Ancients wrote everything down in the language of the Sha'Kar," he told her. "Nobody knows it anymore. Jula told me that the Tower already has almost everything the Ancients knew in their library, but there's nobody left that can read it."

  Keritanima scratched her muzzle absently. "So they lied in the lesson where they said the Ancients took everything with them."

  "Probably not," Allia said. "They very well may have. What the Tower managed to gather is probably the books that the Ancients missed. It may be everything they knew, and it was just copies of what was already here."

  "True," the Wikuni agreed. "So, it's a bust?"

  Tarrin nodded. "Everything of importance to the Ancients was written in Sha'Kar, I was told."

  "That's not what I was after, Tarrin."

  "No, but Jula's talk made it apparant that the katzh-dashi had already tried what you wanted to try," he told her. "She described the Sha'Kar from what she said were records left behind that they could read. I think that's a pretty good indication that they'd researched as much of the Ancients as they could too, because she said the Lorefinders have been trying to break the code of the Sha'Kar writing for a thousand years."

  "Hmm," the Wikuni pondered, eyes dropping to the floor as her fox ears ticked reflexively. "I think you're right, brother dear," she said absently. "I didn't know about the Sha'Kar books."

  "I didn't either. I think the Tower keeps them a secret," Tarrin replied.

  "That, or it's something that nobody talks about," Keritanima added. "I've noticed that there are alot of things that people don't talk about around here." She stood up. "That makes the cathedral that much more important," she announced. "More and more, it looks like almost everything we'll be able to use will be what we can take out of there."

  "If there's anything in there at all," Tarrin added.

  "Don't be a pessimist," Keritanima chided.

  "You shouldn't pin all our hopes on a cloud," Tarrin returned.

  "I'm not, believe me," she said. "If we can't find anything useful in the cathedral, then we're just going to run. We'll have to take our chances."

  "You keep talking more and more about running," Allia noticed.

  "That's because I have no intention of going back to Wikuna," she said bluntly. "It's either the throne or the grave for me, and the throne will lead to the grave. I have a much better chance here."

  "You're Wikuni, Kerri," Tarrin said. "That makes you very easy to find."

  "True, but I'm getting as far away from the sea as possible." That sounded as unnatural as one could get to Tarrin. Wikuni were born on the deck of a clipper, and to ply the seas and trade was all that their race lived for. "My father's reach shortens considerably once you lose sight of the sea. Besides, the only place we can go to escape the Tower is Allia's desert. The Selani are the only people that can protect us."

  "I'll not have my father challenge the Tower until I know there's a good reason to run," Allia warned her. "You may be casual with my people, but my clan will be taking a very serious risk in harboring us if the Tower wants us badly enough. You forget, you're talking about an order that can send the weather itself to attack my people. My people can't fight the wind."

  "Allia, as far as I'm concerned, we already have reason enough to run," the Wikuni replied. "It's blatantly obvious that they want something from us. They didn't bring us here just in the interests of interracial peace. They want something from us, and it must be bad, because they won't tell us what it is. You don't withhold information unless that information threatens your plans. If this task wasn't anything serious, or it wasn't dangerous, we'd have already been thoroughly prepared for it long before we took our first crack at touching the Weave." She sat back down again irritably. "I have the very strong feeling that we're being offered up like sacrificial lambs to further the Tower's goals, and I'm a girl that's learned to listen to her gut. It's saved me more times than I can conveniently count. That tells me right there how bad the Sorcerers want it. To put me in danger risks a war with my father, and no kingdom that borders the sea is insane enough to get into a war with Wikuna. And you, Allia, if your father found out that they killed you for their own ends, I have no doubt that the Selani would Call Council and pour over the Sandshield like a tidal wave of destruction."

  Both Tarrin and Allia were quiet for a very long moment. Keritanima was right. If this task wasn't dangerous, they would have extensively prepared them for it. A soldier that fully understood the objectives of the mission stood a much better chance of successfully completing it. And the Tower was going to an awful risk. If Damon Eram or Allia's father found out that their daughters were being trained for a suicide mission, the destruction would reach staggering levels, because those forces would have to take Sulasia apart to get at the Tower itself. Wikuna and the Selani were two of the forces in the Known World that no nation wanted to cross, because they had a very long reach.

  "I don't know about you two, but I don't want to be here when they decide to choose one of us," she told them bluntly. "I have the feeling that Tarrin will be their choice, but if he should fail, one of us would be next. I've lived too long to get killed by something that I never intended to cross paths with in the
first place."

  The attention of half the world is fixed directly on your shoulders, Tarrin remembered the Goddess saying. Yes, he would be their choice. But for what?

  "I can't argue with your logic," Allia said finally. "So I'll have to admit that it would be a risk I would allow my father to take. And after we tell my father about what went on here, he'd certainly protect us. He did not send me here to become a pawn in the Tower's games."

  "The only part I can't figure out is you," Keritanima said, pointing at Tarrin. "You're the one part that doesn't fit. And I want to know why."

  "How do you mean?" he asked in confusion.

  "Because how you ended up here doesn't make sense," she said directly. "One thing we all share is that we're all non-human. But you started out human. That link between us falls apart when I try to figure out why the Tower brought you here."

  "It was bad luck that Jesmind-"

  "No," she cut him off. "You told me that Jesmind was controlled. Someone sent her after you, and I've seen you fight. You wouldn't have stood a chance against her as a human, controlled or not. She would have ripped you in half the instant she got her claws into you."

  "I didn't let her get her claws into me," Tarrin flared. "I held my own long enough for Dolanna to get there and use Sorcery on her." He grabbed his left arm almost unconsciously, the arm Jesmind had bitten.

  "I'll grant you that," Keritanima said. "But you said yourself that them getting you as well as us was blind luck. I don't think so now."

  "Why?"

  "Because, brother dear, they'll choose you," she said with penetrating eyes. "I believe in luck, but this is luck that would make Bekir herself look twice." She got up again and began to pace. "You're a black sheep, Tarrin," she began. "You ended up non-human by accident. You're not important, you're just a farmboy from a backwater frontier village."

  "Well thank you very much," Tarrin said acidly.

  "Brother, you mean the world to me, but I'm looking at the big picture, not my view of it," she said with a disarming smile. "You are a nobody, Tarrin. You're not important. Or you weren't important before Jesmind sank her fangs in your arm. That's when you became important. Me and Allia, we share certain commonalities. We're both royalty, and we're both non-human by birth and upbringing. You don't fit in with us. You're a human in a non-human's body. Sure, you're not human now, but you were born human, and you still try to act human. Maybe that's what makes you so important, or maybe it was indeed just raw blind luck. Either way, the Tower will use you, and they know why. I want to know too."

  "That doesn't explain why you think Jesmind was sent after me," Tarrin said bluntly. Keritanima was starting to jump around, and he couldn't quite follow her line of thought. She tended to leave things out when she was talking her way through a problem, so he focused on the part he did understand.

  "Because of the one thing that does link us all, Tarrin," she said. "We were born as royalty. You were born with royal blood, even if you were brought up as a country bumpkin. You're the son of a clan-chief's daughter. If you didn't know, an Ungardt clan-chief is a king. That makes you a prince. I don't think the others in your party have that distinction."

  Tarrin gaped at her.

  "You know what I think happened?" she said. "I think they set Jesmind loose on you to infect you, not to kill you. And then they were going to collect you up and train you to do the same thing that the Tower wants us to do, because the rumor and information I've gathered so far points to something that more than the Tower knows, something that's important enough for kingdoms to fight wars over. But you ended up in the Tower instead of with them, whoever they are, and when they realized that, they did their best to kill you. The reason that they almost specifically came after you is the same reason why I'll believe that you'll be chosen for this task. We don't come anywhere near you, Tarrin. Not in strength, fighting ability, survivability, or power in Sorcery. You're the logical choice, and that's why the ones that don't have you want to kill you so badly."

  Tarrin stared at her in shock. He had no idea what to say, no idea what to do. It all rang true with an awful clarity, and there was a logic to it that he could not deny.

  "But now that you're having trouble controlling your power, they'll get unpredictable," Keritanima added. "They'll bend you backwards trying to get you to do it right. And they'll want it now. Just be careful, Tarrin. As soon as they think that you can't get your power under control, the Tower is going to try to kill you. You're much too dangerous a weapon to be allowed to leave here alive, because they know that they will snap you up and try to get you to do whatever it is that they want done. So even if you can't control your power, make them believe that you can. It'll only extend your own life."

  Tarrin was both awestruck and dumbfounded. Everything that she said fit in with everything that had already happened, and they were motives that explained alot of what had already happened to him. Even he had wondered at how he survived the fight with Jesmind. Keritanima could be right; maybe the collar around her neck prevented her from killing him. One of the few things he remembered about the nightmarish fight was her poised to kill, the pose that she was locked into when Dolanna wrapped her up. He had no idea if that blow would have been delivered now, because she did follow through with a blow meant to kill at the very beginning, when he'd woken up to see her trying to rip out his throat. Was she there to kill him, or to turn him Were? It was a chaotic jumble in his mind, and he struggled to remember something, anything, about the fight that would tip the scales for one side or the other. But it was a blank. He had blocked the majority of the fight from his mind, because of the intense pain he sensed he had endured both in the fight and in the subsequent transformation. Because he wasn't sure, then Keritanima's offering had some merit. It did explain the attacks, and it also explained the Goddess' cryptic remarks about his importance. But the attacks could also be explained with Jesmind being sent to kill him, and for mainly the same reasons.

  Keritanima trusted her instincts. Tarrin had learned that lesson as well. He wasn't sure about all of it, but something in what Keritanima had said clicked within him. What she said made sense. He didn't know if it was right, but it made more sense than anything else he'd come up with. He had no idea how she could so fluently and quickly reach those conclusions, but it made him realize just how intelligent the complicated little Wikuni really was.

  It was at that moment more than any other that he realized that his very life was being held in the slender Wikuni's manicured little paws. And that he trusted her with it explicitely.

  She had literally bowled him over with her observations, and had left him speechless. Sudden rage coiled up in him at the thought that someone may have done this to him, had had Jesmind turn him Were just to make him suitable to complete some form of task. It sent him flying into the highest type of rage he could hold without losing himself to his animal instincts. How dare they destroy his life! What right did they have! If that was the case, then whoever did would pay, and pay dearly. He would have absolutely no mercy. Allia's hand came to rest on his shoulder, and that was when he realized he was actually trembling with rage. His mind whirled with possibilities, but the same icy discipline that kept him from going crazy when he found out he'd been turned Were again clamped down on his mind, forcing him to calm down and think rationally. Emotion was tossed aside, and a steely layer of cold reasoning took control of him. "Either way, Kerri, it makes one thing very clear."

  "What?"

  "We can't leave until we have a better understanding of what's going on," he said. "We have to know what we're up against before we try to get away from it, and as much as we can find out about what's going on. Who they are, how many there are, what they may do if we run, and how bad they want to follow us. We may need to know in order to escape."

  "That's what I intend to do," she said. "I have to think about what you told me for a while. I have to make new plans. Oh, yes, Tiella bathes at the second bell, so you should go talk to her in th
e morning. That's what I came in here to tell you in the first place, and I'm running out of time. I'm sure that Jervis' men realize that I'm not in the maze, and they're probably looking for me."

  She came over and licked the side of his cheek with her fox-like tongue, her version of a kiss, then took Allia's hand warmly. "Keep him from gnawing on the furniture, shaida," she said in an outrageous voice that broke the tension.

  Allia laughed, and Tarrin chuckled ruefully. "I will do my best," Allia said in a completely insincere serious voice. "Take care, and be careful."

  "I'm always careful," she said, her tail swishing back and forth as she quickly went to the door, opened it, looked both ways, then scurried out.

  "That was eventful," Allia said carefully. "I think she's hit some truth, but not all of it."

  "I think so too," Tarrin said in a somber voice. "I think so too."

  "Well, it won't do you any good to sit in here and brood. We have an appointment, if you remember."

  "Yes, I remember," he said. "We'll go as soon as it's dark."

  "Good. The time with your family will do you good. This place isn't good for you, deshida. It keeps you too nervous."

  "I have a good reason to be," he said, leaning back onto the bed.

  "Then let's go take it out on the practice field," she said. "It's been too long since we worked out, and a little exercise will do your mind good."

  "I think you're right," he agreed. "I need to find my staff. I lost it in the fight with that thing, and nobody's returned it yet."

  "Someone has to have it," she said. "Let's go find it, and then we'll go onto the field."

  They were two ghosts flitting through the darkness, and despite the very heavy patrolling and human presence, they passed through the Tower grounds like shadows.

  Moving with absolute silence, Tarrin and Allia crept along the buildings and through the clearings with guards all around them, moving confidently and quickly between gaps in their patrols. Allia was Selani, and they had developed hiding and the ways of stealth quite beyond the human ideas of it. She proved she was everything her race was said to be by keeping up with the Were-cat as he moved on padded feet that made no sound, using his ears and nose to ferret out the position and direction of the guard patrols so they could more easily work around them. Because he had been trapped there, Tarrin knew the grounds better than most of the guards, and he knew where every nook and cranny was that would allow the Selani to hide herself from sight. Tarrin simply changed form, and used his small cat body as a disguise. At a distance, the guards couldn't tell Tarrin from any of the other cats that roamed the grounds.