"My name is Tarrin Kael," he replied. "I was supposed to be coming with a Sorceress named Dolanna Casbane, but we were separated on the way here. If you could send someone to go get her, she can explain everything."
"I'm afraid I don't know all my sisters by name," he said dubiously. "Initiate, what is your name?" he asked the young woman.
"Tryla, Master," she replied obediently.
"Tryla, go to the Council of Seven and tell them of this development," he ordered. "Report that this visitor is looking for Dolanna Casbane. When you are done there, come back to, that room," he said, pointing to a door a bit down the hall. "We will be waiting there."
She curtsied to him, then turned and hurried down the stairs.
"Wendall, go to the kitchens and fix a very large tray of food. And bring some wine. Bring it back to us. Make sure it has plenty of meat," he ordered.
"Yes, Master Sevren," he said with a bow, then he too rushed off.
"You look about half starved," the Sorcerer noted with an appraising eye at Tarrin. "We can eat while we wait."
"If you can stand the way I smell, I'd be happy to have you at the table," Tarrin said with a rueful look.
"You must have had a rough time," he said. "Come, let's go sit. You can tell me more while we eat and wait. It looks to me like you're having enough trouble standing."
"To be honest, Master Sevren, this wall is about the only thing holding me up," he admitted with a chuckle.
Sevren offered out his arm to the Were-cat, who took it after only a moment's hesitation. He led Tarrin into the room, which was an almost exact copy of the bedchamber in which Tarrin had slept. These had to be guest quarters of some kind. They sat down at the table, and Tarrin yawned and stretched in his seat. "So, what was bringing you to our Tower?" Sevren asked curiously. "We don't get many of the Woodland folk here."
"You know what I am?" he asked in some surprise.
"I'm familiar with your kind, but I've never met a Were-kin before," he admitted.
"Well, it's not that I was coming here for any serious reason," he said, then he recanted some of the story of their trip from Aldreth. He didn't really talk about Jesmind. What he felt for her, and what had happened still seemed too private to discuss with a total stranger. But despite being a stranger, Tarrin rather liked Sevren. He was a calm, thoughtful man that had quickly eased most of Tarrin's fears with a few simple words and one act of kindness. Offering to help Tarrin into the room had told him much of what made up the sober looking man, and Tarrin could honor and respect that about him. That was why Tarrin told him anything at all.
He absorbed what Tarrin had to say. "If you don't mind, I may study some of the outward effects of your transformation," he said. "I know it sounds like I want to study you like a bug, but you have to admit that this is a good chance to learn. And what we discover may help someone else that has this happen."
"No, I really don't mind all that much," Tarrin told him. "I know what it was like for me, and I'd rather not have anyone have to go through it," he said with a shudder. Being used to it still didn't mean that he liked it. One could get used to a missing arm, but that was no reason to lop one off. "If I can help make it easier on them, then I don't mind at all."
"That's a good lad," he said with a smile.
The door opened, and three women entered, flanked by two armed guards, with the Initiate behind them. Two of them were unknown to him, but the third, dressed in a dark blue silk dress, was Dolanna. Tarrin smiled broadly and stood, ignoring the other two women to accept Dolanna's hand as she reached him. He stared into her eyes for a moment, then pulled her close and embraced her. She coughed and wheezed, then said "Tarrin, I need my ribs in one piece" in a gasping voice.
"I'm sorry, I'm just glad to see that you're alright," he said. "Are Faalken and--"
"They are all well," she assured him. "Tiella and Walten have already entered the Novitiate. Faalken has returned to the Academy, where he instructs pupils when not accompanying me." She pushed him away slightly. "Tarrin, may I present the Keeper," she said, motioning.
The woman to which she motioned was a very small woman, even smaller than Dolanna herself. She had dark hair, nearly black, that was streaked in a few places with silver, and was as petite as she was short. She was more handsome than she was pretty, just coming into her middle years, but in her dark eyes Tarrin saw a hardness that came with being a ruler. He could almost smell the aura of power around the small woman, an aura that made her seem to be much larger than she actually was. She wore no badge of her rank, only a simple silk dress in a modest brown, but it was obvious just looking at her that she was a woman of great power and importance. Those hard eyes took Tarrin in in a single glance, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable standing there in his filthy clothes.
"You're as thin as a stick," she noted in a clear, strong voice.
"Running for your life can do that, ma'am," he replied calmly. Tarrin didn't like this woman. He wasn't sure why, but he did not. It was a gut feeling, an instinctive reaction, but he did not like her.
"So I've been told. Well, you've made it, young one, and we can all be happy of that." She sat down at the table, and the other woman followed her. She was a rather tall woman with black hair and very pale skin, wearing a yellow silk dress that was cut rather low in the front. Silk seemed to be the fabric of choice in the Tower among the ladies. The woman had a very pretty face, and was obviously very young, but her dark eyes were expressionless. It gave Tarrin the chills to look into them. It was like looking into the eyes of a corpse. "Because you look about ready to fall over, we'll put off formally admitting you into the Novitiate for two days, so you can rest a bit and get back some of your strength," she told him. "Until then, feel free to look around, but you're not to leave the Tower grounds. Although you're not officially a Novice yet, you should start abiding by the rules that all Novices follow. I've sent for Elsa Gaarnhold, the Mistress of Novices. Where you sleep and what you'll need will be her responsibility. She'll also provide you with some new clothes and show you where things are."
The young man Sevren had sent for food returned with a tray heavily laden with roasted chicken and goose. Tarrin's mouth started watering the instant the smell of it touched his nose. "A good idea," she remarked, standing up. "I'll leave you to your meal, young one. I'm sure you'd like to stay, Dolanna, so please do so."
"Thank you, Keeper," Dolanna said quietly.
"Elsa should be along in a while. Just wait here for her." They all stood, and then the Keeper and the dead-eyed woman with the yellow dress left without so much as a word.
"Strange," Sevren said calmly.
Tarrin didn't waste any time. He sat down at the table where the young man had set the tray and attacked the food with a vengence. The young man left, and Sevren and Dolanna sat down at the table with Tarrin. Sevren and Dolanna exchanged polite introductions, and Tarrin offered each of them something off the tray.
"Thank you," Dolanna said, pouring glasses of wine for each of them. Tarrin wondered how the man knew to bring more than two glasses. "Tarrin, what happened after we separated? I have been worrying for you."
"It's a very long story, Dolanna," he said between bites. "To make it short, I ran into Jesmind."
"Jesmind?"
"Her," he said calmly.
"Ah. She came to find you?"
"She'd been following us the whole time," he replied. He gave Sevren a cautionary glance. "Sevren, I just met you, but I think I can trust you. Promise me that what you're about to heat goes no farther than this room."
"You have my word, my boy," he said immediately.
"She didn't know who collared her," he told Dolanna. "She can't remember anything that happened while it was on her neck. The only reason she knew about me was because you took off the collar with her in sight of me."
"I hope that it was not a bad occurrance," she sighed.
"It is now," he grimaced. "She was taking me back into the Frontier. I kept trying to convince
her to come to Suld with me, but she wouldn't hear of it. So I ran away from her. And she was not happy about it."
"I feared as much," she said in a heavy voice.
"She's going to try to kill me, Dolanna. There's no doubt in my mind. She's decided I'm a Rogue because I refused to learn what she has to teach me, and that means that I'm marked. The people here should know that Jesmind will come here, and when she does, she'll try to kill me."
"I will let the Keeper know. She will be the one that will have to take steps."
"That's why I'm in such sorry condition," he said. "I wasn't sure if she was right behind me, but I wasn't about to take the chance. I've been running almost constantly for the last fifteen days or so. Dinner was whetever I could find during a ten minute stop to rest."
"Well, you have made it, my dear one," she said with a gentle smile, putting her hand over his paw.
"Only just," he sighed. "The entire forest north and west of Suld is literally crawling with Goblinoids. Maybe someone should be told about that. There may be enough out there to come down and attack a fair sized town."
"That should be passed along," Sevren noted.
"There were also humans around trying to kill me," he told her. "I was almost done in by a little rat of man with a sling. I found out that someone was paying a reward for dead bodies of anyone even remotely resembling a Wikuni travelling on the High Road. I just hope no innocent Wikuni were killed."
"Dear one, Wikuni almost never leave sight of the sea," she told him. "They are almost married to the ocean. That is why Wikuni are so rare outside of harbor towns."
"What else did the man tell you?" Sevren asked.
"Not much. I killed him pretty soon after I shook off getting hit in the head with the rock," Tarrin shrugged. "I wasn't exactly thinking straight, else I would have grilled him for more before I killed him."
Tarrin missed the slightly worried look Sevren passed to Dolanna, and her very slight gesture to leave it be.
"Have you been having the dreams?" she asked.
"No," he replied. "Jesmind did teach me a little bit before we split. She taught me how to make them stop. That's at least one good thing that came of it." He put down a stripped goose leg bone. "She also taught me how to shapeshift. It's actually pretty easy."
"Did she teach you anything else?"
"Not really," he replied. "We were only together a few days, and we spent alot of that trying to sneak around the Goblinoids that were all over the place." He decided not to tell her about the night they'd spent together. That was too private, even to discuss it with Dolanna. "What happened after the Wyvern sunk the ship?" he asked.
"There were several casualties among the crew," she replied. "We helped them as best we could, and then we took another ship south. It was a very uneventful trip after you left us. That leads me to believe that you were the reason for it."
"I was," he said. "Whoever it was that's after me certainly didn't stop after the Wyvern. I spent most of my time running from Jesmind and dodging Goblinoids at the same time."
"Are you sure that they were after you?" Sevren asked. "I'm assuming here that by Goblinoid you mean more than one race. They don't usually cooperate."
"These were," he replied. "I saw a Dargu tribe meet with a Waern tribe, and the chieftans spoke without drawing weapons. That's not right, because Waern consider Dargu a delicacy. They're working together. And that means that there's someone that's telling them what to do that they fear more than they hate the others."
"A very grim suggestion," he said, stroking his chin in thought. "I think that the King should know about this. A coordinated horde of goblinoids could storm any city in Sulasia, except for Suld." He picked up a slice of beef. "They may decide to pick a few cities in their leisure time."
The door opened, and a huge woman entered. She was wearing a pair ofblack trousers and a brown shirt, and her long, thick blond hair was done up in a simple braid that was as thich around as Tarrin's wrist, and reached almost to her backside. Her face was strong but very handsome, and she had a sword belted at her waist. There was no doubt that she was Ungaardt. Tarrin stood and eyed her calmly as she closed the door and approached them. "Vasra guhn," Tarrin greeted. Tarrin had been taught the language of the Ungaardt by his mother. They used it often, especially since Eron had never gotten around to learning it.
"Vasra dughus," she noted with surprise. "What clan?" she asked in the Ungaardt tongue.
"Vashtalla," he replied. "You?"
"Emden," she replied.
"We are cousins," Tarrin noted, holding out his paw to her. "Greeting, cousin. Honor to Dallstad."
"Honor and glory," she replied, clasping his wrist in a strong grip. "It's nice to meet someone with manners," she said in the common tongue, grinning. "You're Ungaardt under that fur, and dirt."
"Half," he admitted. "My mother is of the blood." "Of the blood" was the way the Ungaardt referred to themselves.
"You look Ungaardt," she noted clinically. "You take after your mother. You are also of the blood, no matter who your father was. A good thing for you."
"I'm happy with it," he said. Ungaardt were a very arrogant people, and just agreeing with her was the easiest way to keep the peace.
"But you're also a Novice, and I'm the Mistress of Novices. Don't expect any preferential treatment just because we're cousins," she said in a steely voice.
"I don't expect any," he replied.
"Good. I'm going to take you to the Novice quarters," she told him. "We'll get you some clean clothes, give you a room, and I'll show you where you can bathe."
"Yes!" he said fervently.
"You are a bit fragrant," Dolanna noted.
"Dolanna, if I smell that bad to you, just imagine how I smell to me," he told her.
She laughed. "Yes, that nose is very much a liability, is it not?" she asked with a smile.
"At the moment, yes," he said with a grunt.
"As of this moment, she's Mistress Dolanna," Elsa said bluntly. "And you're a Novice, just like any other Novice. Come along, Tarrin, and we'll get you washed and dressed."
"Yes, Mistress Elsa," he said calmly. He'd kiss a Dragon for the chance to take a bath.
"Dolanna, you can see him later," Elsa instructed her.
"I'll talk to you about arranging time with Tarrin," Sevren told her. "He's agreed to let me do some studies."
"As long as it doesn't cut into his class time, we'll talk about it," she told him. "Let's get moving, Tarrin."
The halls of the Tower were wide, and they were all lit by those softly glowing globes. From as far as he could tell, they simply hovered in midair near the ceiling. Another thing that he noticed was that the floors were carpeted out in the halls. That was unusual, and it had to be frightfully expensive if every hall was like this, considering the awesome size of the building. They went down stairs quite a ways, all the way to the ground floor, and he saw that the carpeting did indeed stop. The hallways in the sector of the Tower to which she took him were just as wide, but there were many, many more doors set into the walls. The floors and walls were absolutely spotless, and not a cobweb could be found anywhere. There were also many people. They were universally young, in their mid teens, from pale, tall Ungaardt to stocky Dals to swarthy Arkisians. Even one or two olive-skinned people from the Free Duchies between Shacè and Arkis. They were wearing either plain white wool dresses or white wool shirts and brown wool trousers. They all wore exactly the same kind of leather shoes. They all stared at Tarrin in shock, and more than one shrank away from him as Elsa led him deep into the domain of the Novices.
"These are the halls of the Novices," she told him as they walked along. "There are three levels above this one also. My office door is at the end of this hall. Pray that you're not called in there." She pointed down a side hall. "At the end of that hall is the Novice Hall," she said. "It is where you will eat, and it is also where you will gather for any assemblies called for the Novices. The classrooms where you will receive yo
ur instruction are on the third and fourth levels. I'll have someone else show you all the little things. For right now, we're going to worry about the main things."
They stopped in front of a door. "This will be your room," she said. He noticed that it was within sight of the plain wooden door with her name on a wooden plaque which was nailed to the door. She was keeping him well within her sight. "You will have a roommate, Tarrin. We are not treating you any differently than any other Novice. Right now, he's probably in class." She opened the door. Inside the surprisingly large room were two narrow beds, both neatly made, with a strong, sturdy chest at the foot of each bed. Each bed also had a stand to the side of it, and there was a small writing table, with one chair, between them against the far wall. There were two pegs on the wall on each side of the room, and on the right side, one peg was occupied with a plain wool robe, and the other had a brown cloak hanging from it. Tarrin saw that hanging on the wall on the right side were pieces of paper with very elaborate sketches. Many of them were the towers and buildings of the compound, but there were also several sketches of people. One of them, he saw, was Elsa. And it was remarkably well done. Whoever had done them had a natural talent for art. "See how clean this room is?" she asked. "It had best stay this way. Now then, let's go see the Quartermaster and get you clothing."
The Quartermaster was on the second level, in a large room that was filled with shelves, those shelves holding assorted items and articles. The Quartermaster himself was a small wiry man, approaching his golden years, with a bald pate fringed with gray hair. His face was drawn, as thin as he was, but Tarrin saw that he moved with a spry step that belied his advanced years. he wore a simple brown coat over a white shirt, with brown trousers, and he had several stick pins stuck to the sleeves of his coat. He had several Novices and similarly young people with colored shirts or dresses rather than white. Those, he'd managed to deduce, were Initiates, in the step above the Novices. "Madam Elsa," he greeted in a scratchy voice, eyeing Tarrin warily. "What can I do for you?"
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