The Tower of Sorcery

by James Galloway

  Chapter 9

  He had no idea how long he had wandered.

  Tarrin was padding slowly beside a pile of reeking garbage in a narrow, crooked back alley, so exhausted that he could only move one leg at a time. He had ran all night, in his cat form, running from the horrors that he had almost carried out, running from himself.

  He wanted to die. He wished to the Gods that Jesmind had taken his life back in Torrian, that he would have just laid there and let her rip out his throat. The guilt of his crime had crushed all will and hope from him, and it was as if his life was over. But that had not happened, and the Gods had not answered his prayer and struck him dead, so he was going to have to do it himself. Suld had a nice deep harbor. A walk off the pier would end his agony, would forever silence the animal, the monster, inside him.

  The only problem was, he was lost.

  Suld did not gently slope down towards the sea as most port cities did. It was a slightly hilly area in a natural harbor, and the land rose and fell in very gentle waves that had no definite direction. The stench of the city blocked out the smell of the sea, and his very small size prevented him from seeing it. And he had no idea at all of where he was.

  The irony of it almost made him laugh. He couldn't even kill himself right.

  He dragged himself along several streets, wandering aimlessly with his head down and his tail dragging the ground, until he could go no farther. He was on a wide street in a classier part of town, where iron fences separated well kept lawns and gardens from the street and from each other, and where large houses rested on sizable plots of land. It was dawn, and already many carriages, horses, and pedestrians were going about their daily business. He needed to stop, to rest, but he couldn't do it here. He would be disturbed, and the last thing he wanted was to be disturbed.

  He wriggled himself between the iron bars of a fence and crawled up under a well manicured shrub. It was dark, and cool, and peaceful there. A fitting place, a quiet place. A place to reflect. He was too numb now to feel the pain, there was only the memory, the sight of his mother starting at him in fear, the knowledge that had he not been stopped, he would have taken the life of one of the people on that world that he would die for. His family had come to find Tarrin, but they had found the beast that lurked within him, the beast that he could not control. He would die before he hurt his family.

  And he had to die to make sure that he didn't.

  He would sleep. Close his eyes and let the slumber take him, hold him, keep him sedate and calm, keep him from hurting anyone else. He would lay down under that excellent bush, and he would sleep.

  And he would remain so until he was dead.

  He collapsed under the bush unceremoniously, too tired to even make himself comfortable. Then he closed his eyes, and dreamless oblivion engulfed him.

  He was only vaguely aware of the hands on him until he was totally surrounded by them. The scent of a very young human filled his nose, one whose hair smelled of lilac, and his nose and fur were being held against a very soft fabric. Linen, maybe, or silk.

  "Aww, what happened to you, little kitty?" a piping girl-child's voice called, as a tiny hand started petting him. "You smell like you were chased through a garbage pile." Tarrin remained limp in her arms, eyes closed, even though he was awake. He really didn't care. It was as if anything that was done had no meaning for him, and he drifted in his own world of unfeeling numbness. He could hear, and understand, but it had no importance to him. If she petted him, he did not care. If she took him by the head and broke his neck, so much the better.

  "Aww, you must be sick," she said, compassion in her voice. "Don't you worry, little kitty, I'll take care of you."

  He felt himself being carried, and then a door was opened. "Mother, look what I found in the garden," she said brightly.

  "Janette!" came a shocked gasp. "You take that, that creature back outside this instant!"

  "But she's sick, mother!" the child protested. "And she's lost, and all alone. She must be scared half to death."

  "Is it even alive?" she asked suddenly.

  "She's breathing," the girl told her mother confidently. "I think she just needs a warm place to sleep and some food, and she'll be alright."

  "No!" the woman said adamantly. "I will not have that animal in my house."

  There was a brief pause. "Then you take her," the little girl said with surprising firmness in one so young. "If you throw her out, she's going to die. And I won't do that."

  It was a devastatingly effective tactic, it seemed, for Tarrin was shortly thereafter bathed and put on a soft pillow, with a small coverlet put over him to keep him warm. The little girl stayed right beside him, filling his nose with her scent, scratching his ears and petting him, crooning soft words to him. Her gentle, sing-song voice disrupted his attempts to return to the oblivion he so badly wanted, but he refused to open his eyes, or so much as move. To do so was to recognize life, abandon his will to end his life, and it was hard enough supressing the Cat's instincts, the foremost of which was the instinct of self-preservation. He would lay there until he died; the little girl was just dragging out his wishes.

  The little girl proved to be a stubborn opponent. Long after most children would have lost interest, the little girl was still there. She refused a call to lunch, and then another call to dinner, staying by him, reading to him, petting him and trying to coax him into activity. She ignored the maids, the butler, and even her own mother's firm command to "leave that creature be and come eat your dinner". She stubbornly stayed by him, even when her father came into her room.

  "Your mother said you found a cat, and you won't eat your dinner," he said in a firm voice.

  "She needs somebody with her, father," she said maturely.

  The coverlet was pulled from him. "But she's asleep, pumpkin," he argued. "You should let her sleep and come down and eat your supper."

  "She may be asleep, but she's all alone in a scary place," the little girl told her father. "I don't want her to be sad. You don't get well when you're sad. You told me that yourself."

  "Uhm, yes, well," he floundered, unable to counter her argument. "She's wearing a collar," he remarked. Tarrin felt a tug on the black metal collar around his neck, the transformed shaeram. "I'll ask around and see if anyone has lost a cat. If we can get her home, maybe she'll get well faster. And you can eat your dinner."

  Dinner was brought up to the little girl, who managed to outlast her parents on that score. He could smell roasted beef just in front of his nose, but his desire to be no more was so strong that even the primal force of hunger could lift him from the pillow.

  As Tarrin's will ebbed away, even his will to die, he retreated farther and farther into himself, fleeing from the pain, finding the oblivion he so desperately sought inside his own mind. He found an easier way, a simpler way, to find peace. He opened his mind to the Cat, and allowed its awareness to join with his seamlessly, completely. The Cat knew only of now, that moment. The past and the future were irrelevent, meaningless to it. It was the now that mattered, and in that eternal now, Tarrin could find peace, refuge from the pain, from the guilt, from the agonizing, nightmarish memories of what he had done.

  Tarrin had feared his instincts, loathed them, tried to control them. He found peace by surrendering to them. And in that surrender, the sentient being that was Tarrin was suspended, pushed by the wayside, taking up that dark place in their mind where the instincts had once lurked. It was dark there, and there was only the impressions of senses, a vague awareness of reality...and there was no pain. Caught up in the eternal now that was the way of the thinking of the cat, there was no past, no pain from the past, no future, no fear of what it would bring. There was only now, and in that now, there was no pain.

  In that instant, that eternal now, Tarrin was the observer, the lurker, and the Cat was the one in control.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes.

  The room was a large, airy one, full of light and brightness and cheer. He was on a l
arge bed, propped on a pillow. It was warm, and safe, and he felt secure in his surroundings. A plate of meat was sitting just away from his nose, but he was so weak that he could not fight off the coverlet to reach it. The Human in him knew the words that were the things he could see, could understand the sounds that the human made, and he used that knowledge. He was a pragmatic creature; though the Human seemed both alien and a part of him at the same time, he had no fear of it, and was not afraid to allow its greater understanding of things guide it.

  The little human made a bevy of delighted sounds when she saw his open eyes, sitting down beside him and hand-feeding him the much needed meat. He felt safe in the presence of the little human, safe and protected, as safe as he would feel curled up against his mother's stomach.

  That thought caused a pang of hurt through the Human in him, but he could not understand why.

  He accepted the little mother's preening sedately. He was warm, and safe, and there was no hurt or hunger. He was content. He closed his eyes and purred his contentment.

  However much he wanted unfeeling sleep, the reality of life would not allow Tarrin to slip away.

  Tarrin's attempt to submerge himself into the Cat had worked, but only up to a point. He too shared the Cat's eternal now of existence. In mere hours, he lost his feelings against the memory of what happened, and that was what caused his rational mind to flow back up from the darkness. What was past was past, and it was of no moment.

  That first night, as Janette slept contentedly with him laying at the foot of her bed, Tarrin's rational mind rejoined the Cat in the world of the outside. Unlike his attempts to quell or control the Cat, the Cat welcomed his awareness as a brother, and made room for him in the forefront so that they both may live the life that was theirs. It was a poignant lesson to his rational mind, about how badly he had misjudged the instincts that were inside him. They were not all evil and destructive. He still didn't trust himself, but he had come to the conclusion that, so long as he was not put in a position where he would be challenged, he would be content.

  And living out his life as a little girl's pet seemed to him to be an excellent way to go about it.

  The Cat didn't mind; all it was worried about was food, shelter, and protection, and those existed in this place.

  It was perfect. It fulfilled all his physical needs while providing him a place to create a new life for himself, a life free of the pain and guilt that had nearly destroyed him. Janette's house was a good place to hide, and it was a place where he could find a simpler existence, free of the pressures and failures of his past.

  The next morning, the matronly, gray-bunned maid opened the door and called to the girl, waking her up. She yawned and stretched, then looked right at Tarrin. "Good morning, little kitty," she called, reaching down and picking him up. Tarrin decided that he rather liked being held and cuddled, because the girl's touch was surprisingly gentle, and there was a selfless giving love in her touch that was impossible to ignore.

  In her nightclothes, she trudged down the stairs to the small room where her parents were taking their breakfast. The mother flashed the daughter a stern look the minute she noticed her. "Do you have to carry that creature around?" she demanded.

  "She doesn't know her way around yet," Janette countered artfully. For such a young girl, not even ten, she seemed to know exactly what to say to play her parents like a lute. "And besides, she was sick yesterday. I don't want her getting tired."

  "I think the cat can walk on her own, pumpkin," her father said, trying a different tactic. "And it's important for animals to exercise while they're getting well. It makes them get well faster."

  "Really?" she said. "Then I'll take her out into the garden after breakfast."

  "That may be a good idea," he said.

  "Maybe it will run away," the mother murmured under her breath to her husband.

  "I think I'll call you Shadow, little kitty," the little girl said with a smile, handing him a piece of breakfast sausage.

  "Don't get too attached to her, pumpkin," the father warned. "I'll ask around and find out who owns her today. She may be going home."

  "Then I'll go visit her," she said diffidently.

  But the trip "home" never materialized that day. It was spent with the little girl coddling him outrageously, walking with him around the gardens, and inside it was a game with a little wooden doll tied to a string. Despite having a human awareness, the Cat in him absolutely could not resist attacking that little wooden doll, and Janette was inexhaustible in her desire to drag it for him. They played like that for hours and hours, until a call to dinner interrupted the game.

  The humans ate as Tarrin laid sedately by the fireplace in the main room. He was content. And he was content to stay where he was as long as he could.

  "What do you mean, you can't find him!" the Keeper, Myriam Lar, raged to her Council. It was the day after Tarrin's flight from the Tower. The Keeper had already made some very grim plans for Jesmind, though from what she'd managed to piece together, it wasn't really anyone's fault. Jesmind happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even Tarrin's parents agreed that she had made no attempt to fight, only to try to reason with Tarrin. "That weave was to hide him from his enemies, not to hide him from us!"

  But Tarrin's disappearance was of the most dreadful concern. They needed him. Allia wouldn't be enough, they needed him. And now he was out in the city, either trying to kill himself or trying to kill everyone he could get his paws on. Either way, it was a dangerous and deadly situation.

  "The tracking weaves we spun into the amulet aren't working, Keeper," Amelyn Storm, the Mind seat, said bluntly. "We don't know why. We know they're still active, but we can't get a direction out of them. As to the non-detection, that's working, and working too well. It's blocking some of the indirect weaves we've been trying to use to find him. We never expected to have to rely on them to find him," she said quickly to head off the comment. "That's what the tracking weave was for."

  "Has anyone tried weaving a spell to find the Adamantite that the amulet is made of?" Koran Dar, the Amazon Air seat, offered in his quiet voice. Koran Dar was the youngest of them, but he was a very wise man, and his voice was heeded when he bade to speak.

  "I tried that," Darrian Goldaxe, the Dal Earth seat, growled in his rocky voice. If anyone could find a metal, it was Darrian, who was much like the earth, and the Earth-God for whom he was named. He had a special affinity for metals, which was the main reason he sat on the Earth Seat. "I think the Were-cat's magical nature is masking it."

  "That's possible," Ahiriya grunted. She too was named for a Goddess, the Goddess of Fire. It was amazing to the Keeper how some parents just seemed to know what their children would be when they were born...or maybe the children, with such important names, drifted towards the significance of them. "That may also be why our finding weave isn't working."

  "Keeper," Amelyn said quietly, "we should leave open the option of finishing him. If he goes on a rampage, he could kill hundreds of people."

  "Then let him," she growled. "He's too important, Amelyn. That Death spell was only set in place should he fall into the hands of the katzh-maedan. If he leaves the city, then we may have to use it, but not until then."

  "As you decide, Keeper, but keep in mind that he may already be mad. And I can't undo his madness."

  "I'm aware of the limitations, Amelyn," Myriam said. Because Tarrin wasn't human, it rendered him almost totally immune from Mind weaves woven by those not of his race. It had to do with thought; since he wasn't human, he didn't think in the same way that humans did, and that made his mind closed to those weaves that the Mind affluents used. But in this case, that was a liability. It removed the Tower's options of simply controlling him through Sorcery, or curing or holding off his incipient madness.

  "With all due respect, Keeper," Jinna Brent, the fox-faced Shacèan Water seat said in her accented voice, "but Tarrin, he may not be the one, no? It could still be the Selani, or the Wiku
ni. Or maybe one we have not found."

  "I'm almost positive it's him," she said, tired of this old argument. "What little information we have to go on fits him almost perfectly."

  "But he is too much trouble, no? Already he causes us grief. Maybe another would do, yes? The woman Were-cat, she is still here. It would not be hard."

  "And are you going to volunteer?" Myriam asked icily. It was answered with silence. "Tarrin had a very strong mind, and it seems like it was too much for him. How powerful do you think your will is, Jinna? Amelyn? Koran Dar? Nathander?" She crossed her arms under her breasts. "You all know that the one has to be powerful in Sorcery, and if it's not him, then it might have to be one of us."

  "Better him than me," Darrian growled.

  Myriam grunted. "Have the city guards tripled," she said. "Have them look for him, and for any stray black cats they find. He has to be hiding somewhere in the city, and we have to find him before he either goes berzerk, kills himself, or tries to flee."

  Tarrin was more or less adopted into the house of Tomas the merchant, his wife Janine, and their daughter Janette, because Tomas the merchant couldn't find the missing owner. There was also Nanna the maid, Dernan the butler, and Deris the cook, and the uncountable ladies that made up Janine's social circle.

  It was a large house, with three stories and a basement, filled with expensive furniture, silk buntings, and intricate tapestries, and where Arakite rugs laid thickly on the floor. It was the domain of Janine the wife, and she ran it like a little general. Everything had a place, and it was kept in strict order. Even the dust was strictly arranged by size and consistency before Nanna had a chance to come by and sweep it up. At first, Janine the wife had no idea where Tarrin would fit into that order. He was a cat, after all, and she had real fear for her expensive tapestries and curtains. But Tarrin solved that problem by remaining as inobtrusive to the suspicious woman as possible. He stayed almost exclusively with Janette, and any time he and Janine the wife shared company, he was careful to remain sedate and quiet. He did not claw the furniture or rip up the tapestries. He did not soil the carpets, and he was the picture of gentility when Janine the wife was entertaining her silk-clad lady friends, playing Tarok or stones. Dernan the cook, Nanna the maid, and most of the ladies absolutely adored Tarrin, and that seemed to grind Janine the wife's gears somewhat. The one thing he absolutely would not do was so much as scratch Janette. Even in his semi-aware state, he understood the calamity that would befall the little girl, should he bite her. So in their long, endless games, he was very, very careful not to even scratch her by accident. If she got too close in the game, he would stop. He would not lick her, nor would he let her anywhere near him either during or after his grooming of himself. He took no chance whatsoever that even the most fleeting contact with his spittle would transform her. He wouldn't put anyone else through the torment he'd suffered, the torment that put him in the house in the first place.