The next day, Tarrin and Allia walked out onto the training grounds wearing their practice clothing. For Tarrin, it was his old leathers. For Allia, it was the same sand-colored baggy clothes which she had worn the day before. She'd worn Novice clothes that morning, and looked distinctly uncomfortable in them. She was wearing the trousers rather than a dress, and when he asked her why, she laughed in his face. "Selani do not wear such ridiculous things," she told him. "It would tangle my legs when I fight."
After a quick consultation with each other over the rules of the sparring match, they faced off to quite a crowd of Knights and apprentices looking on. They had never seen a Selani face off against an Ungaardt before. The rules they'd chosen were what Allia called "child's rules". Tarrin didn't want to hurt her, since he was so much stronger than she was, so he'd insisted.
What he didn't gamble on was that he had to hit her in order to hurt her. She was wildly, impossibly fast. He'd never seen anyone who could move with the blinding speed with which she evaded his attacks. Tarrin himself was fast, inhumanly fast because of his Were-cat nature, but she was even faster than him. Tarrin was quickly put on the defensive, using every block and evade tactic he knew to keep her blurring hands and feet away from his sensitive parts. The unfamiliarity of his own body worked against him, as he struggled to work the forms that he knew around his new body, but facing an opponent like her was no time to experiment, so he simply tried as best he could to defend himself against her using what he knew and his natural speed and agility. They helped, but her own speed and agility neutralized that advantage, and his promise to pull punches eliminated his strength advantage. With no advantages over her, he was facing someone more adept in her style of fighting than he was in his, and the pummelling he endured proved it. But, after a while, he had to concede that he had never been as good as she was, even when he was human. Allia could give his mother a good fight. He would have paid money to see them face off against one another.
After about an hour of getting beaten like a dog, Tarrin started to come to understand her moves, and started anticipating her attacks. She used set, specific forms, and once he identified them, he could predict which move she would flow into next. It still didn't help much, for her speed allowed her to change moves in mid-attack. She beat him almost at will, punching and kicking him almost anywhere she pleased for that first hour, until he managed to mount enough of a defense that her attacks could no longer find him. That look of light amusement dissolved into a set look of concentration as she had to start working to get past his defenses. She could still do it, but it wasn't nearly as easy as it had been before.
Tarrin came to understand why the Selani were so deadly at that point. Had this been a real fight, and had he not been a Were-cat, she probably would have killed him by now.
"Enough of this play," she said. "Now we spar for real."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean that we do not pull punches," she said.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said.
"You will not, trust me," she said with a challenging smile.
"Alright, they're your bones," he shrugged.
One hit was all it took. Tarrin knew that. He had not used his full strength in their earlier spars. He blocked a side kick with a forearm with enough power to knock her off balance, and then he put a foot right in her belly. He did not pull the punch. Allia folded around his foot and was knocked backwards a few spans, then she sat down heavily on the ground, wheezing and gasping for breath with both hands to her belly. Tarrin knelt by her and put a gentle hand to her belly. He didn't feel anything wrong there; he'd just knocked the wind out of her.
"Goddess!" she said in a choked, breathless voice. "What did you hit me with?"
"My foot," he said calmly. "I'm alot stronger than I look, Allia. I tried to warn you."
"So you did," she wheezed. "I will listen to you next time."
Two instructors and a Sorceress came over. "Are you alright?" one of them asked.
"I will be in a moment," she said in a breathless voice. "You pack quite a punch, friend Tarrin."
"Maybe too much of one," the instructor said. "It will be very hard to train you when you have such a strength advantage."
"I can be careful," Tarrin said.
"It isn't the same," the man said. "You have to learn by doing, and doing your best. If you pull punches in training, you'll not learn as well as you could."
"I think that the Tower has something that could even things," the Sorceress said. "I'll make a few inquiries. I believe that we have a magical object that will augment the user's strength. Would that make it right to train him?"
"Would that give the wearer the same resilience as Tarrin?" the instructor asked. "Great strength does more than let you hit hard. It also gives you the ability to absorb blows. It has to be the same."
"I had never considered that," Allia confessed, speaking in a more normal voice. "We are a strong people, but we teach that speed can overwhelm power. Speed is more important than power."
"I've always believed that you need a balance of the two," the man told her. "Speed alone and power alone aren't enough. You need both. You'll find that most of the toughest men are also among the strongest. You can use that power to defend as easily as to attack."
"That's what the Ways teach," Tarrin told him, helping Allia to her feet. She put a hand delicately to her belly, but said nothing. The Sorceress stepped forward and put her own hand on Allia's stomach. The Selani looked about ready to kill the woman, but said nothing. "You've got a very nasty bruise forming here, and that blow injured the muscles in your abdomen. You're going to be very tender unless you let me heal this," she said.
"Then do so," Allia said in a calm voice, a voice that Tarrin could tell was tightly controlled. The Sorceress put her hand under Allia's baggy shirt, and Tarrin felt that sensation of drawing in again. Allia sucked in her breath at the icy touch of Sorcerer's Healing.
After that, Tarrin looked up. "It's getting late, and this is a good place to stop."
"Yes," she said. "I learned much today. I became overconfident, and I paid the price," she told him, putting her hand on her stomach. "I underestimated you. Tomorrow I will not do so again."
Tarrin winced. She'd beaten him almost at will all day. He'd gotten in that one shot because she didn't know the nature of her opponent. He had no doubt that she wouldn't approach him the same way again.
"But I am impressed. Your Ungaardt Ways are effective, but I can tell that you feel uncomfortable with them."
"I wasn't this way when I learned," he told her. "I'm still getting used to it."
"Yes, that would change things, would it not?" she observed. "I will train you in the Dance," she said. "They are more suited for you than your Ways, anyway. And I will teach you a civilized tongue," she added. "If we are to be friends, then we should be able to speak in a way that pleases us both."
"I won't mind," he told her.
"My language is not easy to learn," she warned.
"If we have anything, Allia, it's time," he said.
"Very well. Then let us begin now. Greetings. Azra shan."
Tarrin's life settled into a daily routine at that point, as he became settled into life in the Tower. The trials of the road faded from his worries, but the ever-present threat of Jesmind never went far from his mind. In the morning before breakfast, his time was spent with Dar, as they talked, and dreamed, and did the things that friends did. Tarrin liked the dark-skinned young man a great deal, for he was witty, friendly, and was very intelligent and mature for his age. Tarrin had no doubt that Dar would succeed at whatever he decided to do with his life, because he was so smart. After breakfast, and for the majority of the day, he belonged to Allia. Dar didn't seem to mind the Selani monopolizing Tarrin's time, for he'd listened and understood when Tarrin explained to him that Allia had nobody else. Dar himself had many other friends among the Novices, but Allia had only Tarrin. Just like him, the others were afraid of her. They fear
ed her because she broke one boy's arm for patting her on the backside during dinner. Allia did not like to be touched by strangers, and much like Tarrin, she was not afraid to make it well known in any manner she chose.
After lunch, Tarrin and Allia went to the field, to train. That was, Allia trained Tarrin. She was quite a master of her fighting art, which she called ji'shen, which meant "the Dance" in the Selani tongue. They did indeed have an aritfact to even things between them, a pair of gloves made from a Troll's hide, which granted the wearer the proportionate strength of a Troll. The gloves smelled absolutely hideous, and the time he was on the field taught him how to ignore his nose as much as he learned the flowing, viper-like forms of Allia's fighting style. While they fought, Allia continued to teach him the words of the Selani tongue. Tarrin was a very bright young man, but he had a special talent for languages. He picked up on her native tongue quickly, and she was amazed at how precise his memory was. She only had to explain something to him once, or tell him the meaning of a word once, and he remembered it.
After they trained, they both found a way to slip away before dinner, and they met again in the hidden courtyard in the middle of the hedge maze. There, she continued teaching him not only her language, but a very complicated hand-gesture language that her people had created, so that they could communicate without speaking. It was technically a violation of her sacred vows to teach him that, she admitted, but she had no doubt that it would never go past him. She had placed her trust in him, and he in her.
They would then go to dinner, and afterward, they would retire to the baths. At that time of the evening, they were literally deserted. It was not even staffed by Novices. Here, his training yet continued, or they simply talked.
They were there on that rainy summer evening, listening to the rumbles of thunder that filtered through the thick walls of the Tower. Tarrin was laying on the stone on his belly, arms folded up under his chin, eyes closed as he enjoyed a backrub from his companion. The fact that both of them were nude, and that she was sitting on his backside, never occurred to either of them.
It was strange, how they had come together, he mused silently as her delicate yet strong four-fingered hands worked a knot out of his muscle. They shared a friendship that had become shockingly deep in an amazing amount of time. Much as he'd started to feel about Jesmind, Tarrin knew in his heart that he could trust his white-haired friend with absolutely any secret, and that it would go no further. He had told her secrets, things that he'd never told another person, not even Dolanna. She was the only living being aside from himself and Jesmind that knew what had happened between them. The whole story. He confided his deep-most private self to her, and she helped him talk out many of the strange impulses and feelings he had from time to time, which were extensions of the Cat which was inside him.
"Keep your tail still," she chided.
"What?"
"Keep your tail still," she repeated. "I'm sitting on it, and every time you move it, it presses up against-"
"Alright," he cut her off, and she laughed her silvery little laugh. In that respect, she was even worse than Jesmind ever was. She would talk about things that would make him die of mortification without so much as batting an eyelash. Where Jesmind would not do it in public, Allia would. He didn't want to know what his tail was doing, because she'd give him an explicitly graphic description of the whole thing. The fact that he was not ashamed of his body, yet he could still be embarassed by talk, amused her greatly for some reason. "I swear, sometimes you're worse than a wife," he said.
"We should be married, with what I've let you touch," she told him in the Selani tongue. Unlike her stiff, formal way of speaking when she used the human language, her mode of speech in her native tongue was much more relaxed. Although he didn't have the accent quite down, and he didn't know all the words, he did speak enough of it to understand her when she used it.
"You asked for it," he shrugged.
"So I did," she acceded. "But you really should be careful of your claws. I had trouble sitting down for three days after that."
"I said I was sorry," he snorted.
"And you think I'll forgive you so quickly? I may need a favor someday," she teased.
"You could have asked to be healed."
"And how would I explain claw scratches there?" she asked. "You know they'd start asking questions, Tarrin. What we do in private is our own affair, and they have no right prying."
"But we don't do anything."
"Precisely," she said.
"Sometimes I don't understand you at all," he said sourly, putting his head back down.
"Let's just say that I think that if they thought we were lovers, they would separate us. And I don't think either of us would permit that." He knew she wouldn't. He was all Allia had here. She almost clung to him and his friendship, surrounded by people who were either afraid of her or treated her like a laboratory experiment. Tarrin and Allia both had to endure endless interruptions from assorted Sorcerers, asking endless questions. One even asked to take a sample of their blood. The katzh-dashi's endless quest for knowledge was an admirable trait, but when that endless part was directed right at him, he found the whole matter to be very annoying. Tarrin was her only friend, the only person she felt comfortable enough to talk to. She was acquainted with the Knights on the field, but didn't really consider them to be friends. Faalken once confided that everyone thought that she considered herself better than everyone else.
Well, in a way, she did. She had an aire of superiority about her, that was true, but it was not arrogance, it was more like a knowledge that she could kick anyone's backside in the Tower without working up a sweat. Her own people were a very proud race, and they did consider themselves above the humans. But that was a natural trait; every race considered itself better than all the others. It was only basic nature. Tarrin caught himself sighing alot and saying "humans" in that same condescending tone that Jesmind had used. But she never acted that way to Tarrin. To her, he was an equal, a comrade, a good friend.
"I've been meaning to ask something," he said.
"What?"
"Why are there so many different ways to say 'friend' in Selani?" he asked.
"Well," she said, "that is because there are different levels of honor associated with each," she told him. "A visitor of another clan who is received with honor is a shih or shai, depending on if it is male or female." Selani had different forms of words when addressing women or men. It was the only language Tarrin had heard of that did that, and that made it very complicated. "A passing acquaintance in the clan is a shina or shaina. A friend is a shida or shaida. A very close, dear friend who is not of your own family is a bashida or bashaida. The closest form of the word is the Brother in all but Blood, or Sister, depending. That is deshida or deshaida. It is a serious taboo to use the wrong form."
"Is that so?" he mused. "Well, if we have to use the term we feel in our hearts, then I must call you deshaida," he said.
She was quiet a moment, then he heard her sniffle a bit. "Tarrin, I am honored," she said in a quiet, emotional voice. "But if you would be my brother, then you must accept the rites of my people," she warned in the human tongue, so there would be no mistake of translation.
He urged her to get off of him, and they sat down by the water's edge, their feet dangling in the hot water. Tarrin looked at her, and his eyes never really failed to go her shoulders. On each shoulder, she carried a single brand. On her uppermost left arm, it was a circle with a line through it and a crescent just inside the circle and over the line. She said that the circle and crescent were the symbol of her clan, and the line through it was the mark that denoted her status as the blood of a clan-chief. On her uppermost right, she carried a sword-on-spear symbol that she said was the holy symbol of her Goddess.
"Would you be willing to truly become my brother, a brother in all but blood?" she asked.
He didn't even have to think about it. "Of course I would," he told her. "You're very importan
t to me, Allia. You and Dar are the only things that keep me from going crazy here."
"There is more to it than that," she warned. "You would be bound under the Oaths. For you, that would mean very little, for you have no true clan chief. But it would put you somewhat under the dominion of my Holy Mother Goddess, for you would have to swear an oath to obey her will."
"What would she want of me?" he asked curiously.
"I would have to ask her," she said.
Tarrin gaped at her a bit. "You've never told me you talk to your Goddess," he said.
"Don't you?" she asked, lapsing back into Selani.
"Not really," he said. "Karas is the God of the Sulasians, but he's never spoken to me."
"The Holy Mother has a more intimate relationship with her people that most Gods, deshida," she told him. "If I pray, she will answer. I must pray and ask her guidance on this. She may not accept someone not of the Blood."
What startled him was that she clasped her hands together at her breast and closed her eyes. Obviously, she meant to do it that moment.
Tarrin wondered at her request while she was silent. Even though it hadn't even been a month, Tarrin already felt that he was that close to her. She was the older sister he didn't have; to his surprise, he found out that she was thirty-seven years old. Selani aged at a slower rate than humans. Among her people, thirty-seven was barely of marrying age. As long as it didn't mean consigning his soul to an unknown God, he was more than willing to make her happy by accepting the oaths of her people. Tarrin wasn't a overly religious person, since neither of his parents were very serious about it themselves, but he started getting edgy when his soul was in the balance of things.
After a while, she opened her eyes. "The Holy Mother will accept you," she said with a smile. "She likes you, actually," she said with a gentle smile. "She is very thankful to you for being so good to me. She also said that since I am violating my oaths in teaching you what you should not know, that you had best be made a brother of the Blood. She was quite put out with me over that," she said with a depressed look in her eyes.
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