The Tower of Sorcery

by James Galloway

  More. The Cat could control the power, but it couldn't allow it to build up, because not even the Cat could stop that mad influx of magical energy from flowing into him. If that happened, it would destroy him from the inside out. He had to expend that power, almost as fast as it built inside him.

  Raising his eyes to the ceiling, Tarrin's entire body became engulfed in the wispy white energy as he gathered in the power he needed to use his magic to free himself in one mighty blow. He wove together a chaotic weave of Fire, Air, Earth, Confluence, and Divine power, adding the flows of Water and Mind just so they could be present within the weave of High Sorcery, and give the weave the true power of which it was capable. That weave built inside him, burning him with its power, its purity, scouring away his pain and replacing it with the true might, the majesty, the awe of the Goddess and her Weave.

  He was one with the power, and he would use that power.

  A low growl in his throat built quickly into a scream that seemed to go in harmony with the shimmering sound caused by the aura of magic around him, as he built up the power, the will, the rage to unleash his magic, to accept the searing, beautiful pain of High Sorcery and use the gift granted him by the Goddess to free himself from the prison of his enemies.

  Then the weave was suddenly unleashed in the direction of his pointing paws, driving into the ceiling. It moved at speeds that transcended imagination, searing through the rock and mortar above him, burning through the layers of natural stone and earth, and vaporizing a hole through the floor of the crypt above. It continued on, blazing a hole through the crypt's ceiling, through the floor of the Nave, through the ceiling of the Nave, and up and into the heavens.

  Allia watched Keritanima run, but she immediately understood that it was not cowardice. She heard the Wikuni shout for them to lower the Ward, and Allia felt it when it was done. The Weave flowed back into its normal place within the cathedral, the strands returning to their rightful places within the Nave. Allia didn't quite understand why her sister was so rash. Lowering the Ward was allowing the priests access to their magic!

  And then Allia felt a weave of horrific power form, manifest, and then disperse in the blink of an eye. The entire Cathedral shook and shuddered in the aftermath of that incredible weave, and a loud boom rocked the floor beneath them, making the stone groan and squeal as it settled back into place. What power! She had never felt its like, never dreamed that anything like that could be done! She could feel it below them, a power twisting the very Weave itself, drawing it towards it as it built up power to do something else.

  That was Tarrin! Nobody, not even a circle, could make the Weave do that!

  "Get back!" she suddenly screamed in fear. She could feel it build, and build, and build, and she realized with horror that Tarrin was about to do something serious. And he was directly under her feet! "Holy Mother, everyone get back!"

  Allia pushed Darvon out of the way, and the others scattered just as a strange light appeared in the floor. And then a beam of pure, intense, blinding white light erupted from that spot, splitting the air in a loud shattering scream that caused Allia's ears to start bleeding. It burned through the floor in an instant, then travelled up and through the ceiling of the Cathredral to travel towards the heavens. It sustained itself for no more than two heartbeats, but it made absolutely everyone within the Cathedral drop to the floor and scream in fear and terror.

  The light faded to its blinding incandescence, but remained as a painfully bright shaft of pure white light that illumunated the Nave as if someone had pulled the sun into the chamber. Allia winced against that painful brilliance, then her mouth dropped when the silhouette of a humanoid being appeared within that radiance, fading enough to show the outline of a long tail. Even with the light, Allia could see that he was absolutely covered in blood. From head to foot. And he had arrows sticking out of him!

  "Tarrin!" Allia screamed in surprise, joy, and fear, shouting over the pulsating, choral shimmering sound emanating from that bright light. She feared her brother at that moment.

  Floating within a cushion of his own power, Tarrin rose from the molten tunnel created by his weaving, raised into the Nave of the Cathedral of Karas, utter fury making his face a twisted mask of rage. Incandescent white eyes, blazing from within with the power of High Sorcery, locked on the pulpit where Irvon stood. The fat cleric stared at Tarrin in pure horror, unable to move, unable to act, unable to do anything but watch.

  A black ball of sizzling power formed in his paw, crackling with electrical energy, as Tarrin built a weave of Confluence and Divine energies, with only token flows of the other spheres added to give the weave the power of High Sorcery. That black ball swallowed up the light, dimming it around him, sucked up the light into its utter black depths, even pulled the air into it. Tarrin gave the priest a merciless, snarling shout, and then hurled it at him. The priest, paralyzed by his own fear, could only stand there and watch as his doom hurtled towards him.

  It struck him in the face, and where it touched him, it sucked everything inside it. Irvon's head contracted, pulling into that ball, bone splitting and spraying blood into the air, blood which stopped flying outward and fell back into the black ball. Irvon's body began to be sucked into the small ball, crushing down and into the small thing, no larger than a child's toy, yet pulling the entirety of the fat priest's corporeal form inside. The gloriously decorated and gilded pulpit too crushed under the magical force of that black ball, breaking asunder and following Irvon's body into its unimaginable black depths. The ball hovered in midair a moment, hovering over where Irvon and his pulpit once stood, and then it simply vanished.

  Tarrin whirled around within his shaft of light, and his eyes fell on Allia. That face, that beautiful face, was like a slap in the face to him. It declared to the Cat beyond any measure that he was indeed free. Allia was near him, Allia would protect him. She would gather him up and carry him to safety, because he knew that as soon as he let go of the Weave, he would fall unconscious. He has pushed himself too far. The Cat looked at its sibling, its sister, and it rejoiced, fading back into the background of Tarrin's mind, allowing his consciousness to regain control.

  Tarrin looked on Allia with pure horror in his eyes, and then those eyes rolled back into his head.

  The light rising up from the floor of the Nave wavered, and then it vanished. Tarrin's inert body crashed to the floor, unmoving, leaving an entire church full of awed, terrified observers to stare at him in shock.

  Chapter 20

  He had no idea where he was.

  He only knew that he was clean, dressed in a soft cotton nightshirt, and the room held traces of the scents of Allia and Keritanima.

  He was alone, and the room was illuminated by a single candle, burned well near to the nub. His body still ached, but it was a faint pain, distant and weak, and it would soon be gone. He felt extremely weak, and it was an effort to sit up in the bed and put his back against the headrest. His tail was tingling from where he was laying on it.

  The manacles. They were still on his wrists. Nightmarish images swirled around the dark corners of his mind, images of what he had done while out of control. He couldn't remember details, but he knew that he had killed many people. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, but he was so weary that he knew that in his current condition, he wouldn't care if he destroyed an entire kingdom. He was just too tired, too numb. He knew that he would have to reckon with what he had done later, but at that moment, he was still in shock. It wasn't the time. Physically, he wasn't much better off. He had been healed, or he had healed himself, but it had left him so weak that he could barely move. He felt a bit dizzy any time he moved his head, and there was a light fuzz over his consciousness that demanded he return to sleep. But where the body was willing, the mind was not. A tremendous amount had happened, and his mind couldn't reconcile with putting it off until later.

  He had snapped. Really snapped, not just lost his temper. It was exactly what Jesmind had been talking a
bout, something she said would happen eventually, no matter how careful he was. He had never felt so helpless in his life. That much, he clearly remembered. The Cat had kicked him aside like a misbehaving pet and taken full control of him, and he watched himself acting and reacting through eyes he could no longer control. He still couldn't recall specifics of what happened, but something deep inside told him that he didn't want to know. He did remember killing. Many, many people. That much was clear, but not how many, and how, and where he was. He only remembered searching for a way out, and killing anyone who got in his way.

  Leaning forward, he put his paw to his cheek and rested his elbow on his knee, freeing his tail and feeling an angry buzz flow down it with the restoration of blood into the appendage. He didn't remember much of what happened after being freed of the collar, but he remembered everything before that with perfect clarity. Was this Firestaff what the katzh-dashi wanted from him? Jula had mentioned it. That Tarrin had the power to defeat the Guardian and claim it, and that it would bring back someone named Val. He had never heard of it before. What was it, anyway? It seemed logical that this Firestaff thing was what everything was about. But why keep it a secret?

  He just didn't know enough about it to really know what to think. He had only heard that one reference. But he did remember her talking about some group named the ki'zadun. The Black Network. The name, Tarrin had not heard, but the title was somewhat common knowledge. They were a large organization of men and women devoted to ruling the entire world. They were rumored to be supported by the Black Kingdom, Stygia, one of Sharadar's closest neighbors and oldest enemies. It was reputed that the Witch-King of Stygia was the ultimate leader of the organization, using them as a covert army to spread his influence throughout the world. But whether that was true or not, Tarrin did not know. It was, after all, only rumor and gossip, tales told around the parlor on stormy winter nights.

  Could Kravon be a member of that network? That was the only name that Tarrin had ever gleaned out of his would-be assassins.

  Tarrin winced slightly, and a growl issued from the back of his throat. Jula. He didn't know if he got her, but she was going to pay. He trusted her! He trusted her enough to turn his back on her, and she drove the proverbial dagger into it! It was a betrayal at a high level in his mind, and a part of him had been permanently hardened against trusting others. He knew the term for it. Feral. But he didn't care. He would never trust anyone like that again unless they proved themselves to him beyond absolutely any shadow of a doubt. He would not let that happen again, no matter what. Even if it meant sleeping with his back to the wall for the rest of his life. Nobody would imprison him again! Just the thought of it sent a cold chill through him, and he felt the Cat rouse from its corner in his mind and assess possible threat to its freedom. The Cat was still active, still vigilant so soon after it had taken control, sezied his body to do what his conscious mind could not, or was not doing fast enough.

  As soon as he was well enough, he was going to find her, and make her pay for what she did to him.

  Looking down at his left paw, he flexed it a few times. It felt...odd. It was fully functional, just like his right paw, but there was a strange fuzzy sensation about it, and it felt curiously weak. He spotted the problem. The manacle on his left wrist was slightly bent, and it was pressing against an artery. He clutched the heavy steel cuff in his other paw and squeezed carefully, bending it back into a more comfortable position.

  He stopped and looked at the manacles, his eyes distant. They had bound him with those manacles. Chained him to a wall and taken away his freedom. They represented the one thing that he feared over all others, the physical manifestation of his greatest fear. And it was something that he was terrified that he may forget some day. There was nothing that Tarrin desired more than freedom, nothing that he would not do to keep it, preserve it, or reclaim it. His freedom represented everything that he was, both as a person and as a Were-cat. The manacles represented everything that he could become. He had killed. Killed many people. Not even he knew how many, but he had the feeling that his memories of his actions would indeed slowly return to him. He had become the one thing he had always feared he would become. He had turned into a monster even worse than any Troll that ever lived, and it was all because they had taken away his freedom.

  Never again. It would never happen again. And every day, those manacles would be there, on his wrists, their weight reminding him what price his freedom cost him, and they would never let him forget.

  Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the headboard, feeling his ears bend a bit between his skull and the rough wood.

  Never again.

  The door opened, and the light from beyond touched his eyes. He opened them and found Allia entering quietly, holding a cup of some steaming liquid. She was alone. She wore a pair of leather breeches and a cottons shirt, and her shaeram hung visible about her neck, resting on the soft gray cloth. She didn't say anything at first, she only smiled at him warmly and sat down at the edge of the roughly made yet solidly constructed bed. She looked directly into his eyes, her own serious and searching, and then she handed the cup to him wordlessly. It smelled of chicken and salt.

  "Where is everyone?" he asked weakly.

  "Waiting outside," she replied, putting a hand against his forehead. "We thought it best for me to come in first."

  "Why?"

  "Because we weren't sure who we would find when you woke up," she said gently, but her words were blunt. It wasn't Allia's nature to evade things. "You were completely out of control, my brother. We didn't know if passing out would return your mind to you. But I see it did."

  He nodded, taking a sip of the hot broth. It tasted sweeter than the rarest wine to him. "Not too quickly," she warned as he started to gulp it down, ignoring the burning of his tongue and throat.

  "What happened?" he asked in a small voice. "I don't really remember anything."

  "You fought your way back to us, deshida," she told him, patting his shoulder. "You--" she closed her eyes. "You used Sorcery the likes of which has not been seen in eons. You very nearly killed me with it."

  He gave her a stricken look, but she only smiled at him. "There is no blame anywhere, brother," she assured him. "You gave us plenty of warning to get out of the way."

  "I don't remember any of it," he said in a frightened tone.

  "There wasn't much to remember," she said. "You blew a hole up to the Nave, then you rose up and killed the high priest with Sorcery. I think he had a special meaning to you. Your choice of death for him was...exotic."

  "Irvon," he spat, trying to sit up. "He had me thrown in a dungeon cell! He had to pay for that!"

  "He paid, brother, he paid dearly," she assured him.

  "Where are we, sister? I've never seen a room in the Tower like this." Not even the Novices' rooms were quite that small. It only had room for the bed and a single washstand, which had a tiny chest tucked underneath it. There was just the door, with no windows, and the walls were a featureless, ragged gray stone with no decorations to break up their monotony.

  "We are not at the Tower," she hissed. That surprised him. "We will never go back there!"

  "What's the matter? Didn't they send the Knights to get me back?"

  "No, we arranged that," she said hotly. "The Tower has no honor!"

  That was serious. "What happened?" he asked.

  "Dolanna discovered a terrible truth about the Tower, my brother. It is something that you may not want to know."

  "Allia."

  "I would think twice, my brother. In your current condition, it may send you back into a rage."

  "Right now, Allia, I couldn't rage myself out of this bed," he told her. "Better get it overwith now, while I can't do anything about it."

  She sighed. "Dolanna discovered that it was not your enemies that sent Jesmind to kill you. It was the Tower, and they sent her to infect you. Deshida, the Tower deliberately turned you Were."

  Tarrin gaped at her,
his heart lurching. But in his weakened condition, it couldn't lurch that much. He felt shock, disbelief, betrayal in that proclomation, but it also followed a twisted logic that had gnawed at him for months. He should not have survived against Jesmind. Now he knew why he did. They had sent her in there to fight, to make it look good, but ultimately only to bite him and then leave him. He added that horrible truth to the great weight looming over his mind, something to work out when he felt more prepared to deal with it.

  But it did expand his plans for vengeance. The Keeper wasn't going to get away with ruining his life. He was going to make her pay for it.

  "Whoever took you used the same collar the Tower used to control Jesmind," she added. "It was stolen from their vaults some days ago."

  "Jula," he hissed, his ears laying back. "It was Jula."

  Allia gave him a surprised look. "Jula? But she is your friend!"

  "She was lying," he hissed. "She was lying all along. They have to catch her, sister. I don't want to have to chase her across the West to kill her."

  "Save that talk for when you are stronger, my brother," she told him. "You need to lay back down and sleep. Dolanna used a weave on you that will allow you to recover your strength much more quickly than usual, but even with that, it will take time. We didn't know if you would survive long enough to get you to safety. I have never seen you so wounded. It hurt me to see it."