Tower of Sorcery

by Fel

  Tarrin was sitting at the table, watching Eron and Elke dancing on the Green while Jenna checked the arrows she'd used in the archery contest for damage, when the knight's voice called out. "What brought an Ungardt to such a secluded place?" he asked curiously, walking up to them. Tarrin saw that the Sorceress was with him, looking at the siblings with her penetrating gaze.

  "She married father," Jenna piped in simply. "Father wanted to live here, and mother came with him. She says it's warmer than home."

  "I would think that it is," the Sorceress said in a mild, calm voice, touched with amusement. "You are brother and sister?"

  "Yes ma'am," Tarrin replied respectfully.

  "I can see the resemblence," she said.

  "Not many people can," Jenna said impishly.

  "On the contrary, I cannot see how someone could not see that you share common blood," the woman countered. She reached into the bodice of her blue dress, and withdrew an amulet made of ivory. It was rather unusual, Tarrin noticed, a circle holding a six-pointed star inside it created by two triangles resting over each other in opposite directions. And inside the six-pointed star was a four-pointed star, its points going in the four compass directions, with concavely curved sides. At the center of that inner star was a small diamond. "Do either of you know what this is?" she asked.

  "It's an amulet," Jenna replied.

  "Not what it is, child, what the symbol means," the woman elaborated.

  "No," they both said, almost in unison.

  "It is the symbol of my order," she told them, pulling the chain over her head and holding the ivory object in her hand. "We call it the shaeram. It represent the seven spheres of Sorcery. Earth, air, fire, water, the power of the mind, the power of the Goddess, and the seventh sphere, which is the power of confluence."

  "Con-flewence?" Jenna repeated. "I've never heard that word."

  "It means the power of joining, of unity," she said with a smile. She held out the amulet to them. "Here, take it. Hold it in your hands, and tell me what you feel."

  Jenna took the ivory amulet and silver chain, holding it in her hands and looking at it. "Ouch!" she cried, almost dropping it before grabbing it by the chain. She quickly pawned it off to Tarrin.

  "What's the matter?" Tarrin asked quickly.

  "It's hot!" she said loudly.

  "Hot?" Tarrin said. He put his hand near the amulet. "I don't feel any heat," he said, then he put his hand on it. The instant he did so, it felt like he'd grabbed a piece of stock out of Master Karn's forge. "Ahh!" he hissed, yanking his hand back and shaking it violently to cool it. "How do you wear this thing without getting branded?" he asked the Sorceress crossly. Jenna was blowing on her fingers, giving the woman a baleful look.

  "Here, let me see," she said calmly. Jenna presented her hands. Her fingers were red and blistered. "By the Goddess!" the woman said under her breath. "Here, you too, Tarrin Kael," she said, in a commanding voice. Tarrin held out his hand.

  His skin was severely blistered wherever it touched the ivory.

  "It burned you," she breathed in surprise. She put her hand over Tarrin's seared fingers, and Tarrin suppressed the desire to yank it away when he felt something flow into his hand. The throbbing pain eased, and then was gone, washed away by some sort of sensation that was warm and icy at the same time, and not entirely pleasant. She let his hand go, and he gawked at it. His fingers were smooth, pink skin, and showed no signs that anything had happened to them.

  "How did you do that?" he asked in shock as she took Jenna's hands in her own. Jenna yelped and tried to pull away, but the woman's hands were like steel, holding them in an iron grip.

  "My name is Dolanna Casbane, a katzh-dashi," she said formally. "What I just did is called healing, and with practice, it is something that both of you will be able to do someday."

  They both just stared at her.

  "The young one is a bit too young," the knight said.

  "No matter," she replied. "I am amazed that neither of them have done anything. She needs instruction before she has an accident." She put the ivory amulet back around her neck, tucking the device back under her bodice.

  "What are you talking about?" Tarrin asked.

  "Both of you, you have tremendous potential," she said, pursing her lips. Then she noticed the slightly confused looks she was getting. "Both of you have the natural talent to be Sorcerers, to be katzh-dashi," she explained. "Tremendous potential. The shaeram burned you. I have never seen that happen before."

  Jenna looked at her a bit fearfully. "What does that mean?"

  "That means that both of you must come to the Tower of Six Spires, in Suld, and undergo formal training," she replied. "Soon. Now."

  "Now?" Jenna said. "I can't just leave! My parents wouldn't let me, and I don't want to go!"

  "Jenna," Tarrin soothed, "calm down." Then he looked at the small woman expectantly.

  "There is no need to look so surprised," she said gently. "Nor is there reason to be frightened. I will speak to your parents, and let them know what has happened. Then we will all sit down somewhere quiet and discuss what must be done."

  Tarrin put his arm around Jenna, who had begun to cry, then he pulled her into his arms and comforted her, his own mind tumbling around a numb sensation. "It was wrong to just blurt it out like that, Dolanna," the knight berated as the pair left.

  "I was surprised," she said a bit ruefully, and then their voices were lost in the din. He didn't notice the knight stop and look back at them.

  "But I wanted to be a knight," he said numbly, putting his chin on the top of his sister's head.

  They had been missing quite a while. Tarrin was still sitting with Jenna at their table, but the sun was creeping very lowly down along the western sky. His parents and the woman had been missing for hours. Tarrin still held Jenna very close, for though she had stopped weeping, she wasn't yet ready to give up on the feeling of comfort and security she was receiving from his embrace. Tarrin wished that someone would do the same for him.

  Sorcery. Although his father had many times told tales of the Sorcerers of Suld, Tarrin had never really paid much attention to them. His father had worked with them in the past, and his stories and impression of them was very good. Tarrin had been raised to believe that Sorcerers and Sorcery were good things, and that the katzh-dashi deserved to be treated with honor. But never, even in his wildest fantasies, had he ever considered the possibility that he would be capable of using Sorcery. That was a power for special people, the people in the stories. Although it existed, he never dreamed that it would affect him so personally.

  Poor Jenna. All her life, since she'd started to grow into a woman, all she wanted was to find a good man, marry, and settle into a life of blissful domesticity. She had no desire to leave the village, much less travel all the way across Sulasia and go to the Tower in Suld. And she was only thirteen. They had no right to take such a young girl from her parents. And though Tarrin had always wanted to leave, being a Sorcerer was not the life that he'd imagined for himself. He wanted to be a knight. Sorcery was a totally alien concept to him.

  The others seemed to sense that something was wrong with the Kaels, but they did not intrude. Tarrin thought somewhere in the back of his mind that they knew that this would happen to some family. Every time a Sorcerer arrived, parents began to worry about ever seeing their children again. Last year, Timon Darby was taken to learn Sorcery in the Tower, and Leni Darby, his mother, had moped around, not speaking a single word, for over three months. Timon had visited last month, and he looked well from the glimpse that Tarrin got of him. What made it seem so bad was that the Sorcerers wanted both of them, that his mother's sense of loss would be that much worse with having to let go of both her grown child and her adolescent child.

  "Tarrin?"

  Tarrin turned. Elke Kael was standing there with his father and the Sorceress, the knight standing a bit behind them. It was obvious that his mother had been crying. Eron looked somber and serious.

>   "Mother!" Jenna cried, flying from Tarrin and burying herself into her mother's arms. She started crying again, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed into Elke's wool shirt. Elke stroked her hair and held her close, crooning soft words to her daughter.

  "Child, there is nothing to be afraid of," Dolanna said calmly.

  Jenna pushed away from her mother, her eyes burning with something that Tarrin guessed was pretty close to hatred. "Get away from me!" she shouted. "I don't want to go! I don't have to!"

  "Child," Dolanna said, but Jenna cut her off. Jenna raised both her hands, and Tarrin felt the most unusual sensation, a sensation of drawing in. Except it was Jenna who was drawing whatever it was. He could feel something, it, flow into his sister like a flood.

  "Leave me alone!" she screamed. Suddenly, pure fire erupted from Jenna's hands, and it roared at the Sorceress like a wall of blowing dust before a tornado. The fire simply stopped when it reached the woman, coalescing into a fiery ball in front of her. Then it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  Jenna stared at her hands in shock.

  "That is why you must learn, child," Dolanna said firmly. "With your power, you could quite possibly destroy the entire village. But you are right. We cannot make you go."

  "Dear, you don't have to go," Elke said softly, putting her hand on her shoulder. "Dolanna agreed to send someone here to teach you. You're too young yet to leave, but they can't just let you go around like this. You could hurt yourself."

  "I don't have to leave?" she asked in a small voice.

  "No," Elke said with a gentle smile. "When you're older, you will have to go to their tower, but not until you're older."

  "Mother!" she said with a sob, crushing into Elke's arms again.

  "She will learn much better in a place more comfortable for her," Dolanna said to Elke calmly. "We have not had one as young as she with the kind of power that she possesses. In such a special case, certain exceptions must be made."

  "What about me?" Tarrin asked.

  "You, my young one, you will be going with us," she told him. "We are leaving tomorrow. And you will not be alone. Two other young ones will be going with us. Tiella Ren, and Walten Longbranch. I believe you may know them."

  "Tiella? And Walten?" he said in surprise. Tiella was the herbalist's apprentice, learning the uses of herbs for healing. Walten was the son of the village carpenter, a tall, rather shiftless young man more fond of sleeping than working.

  "When we return to Suld, I will send one of my brothers or sisters here, Mistress Kael," the woman continued. "As per our agreement, the instructor will reside in your home, so that he or she can be close to Jenna." She turned and looked at Tarrin. "Do not feel that going to the Tower is the end of all," she told him. "It is not required for you to become katzh-dashi. If you decide that the life of the order is not for you, then we will teach you what you need to do to control your power, and then you may be on your way to pursue your own life. But if you do wish to remain among us, I am certain that someone with your raw power and potential would find a position of respect and importance among us."

  Tarrin nodded quietly, thinking back to what Jenna had done, and what he had felt. It had frightened him, but at the same time, it felt....wonderful. Like life flowing into him for the first time. Was that how Sorcery felt when it was used? Tarrin was a curious person, and his appetite had been whetted by that strange sensation. He suddenly found that he wanted to know more about what it was about.

  "There is little time to chat," she prompted. "Tarrin, you must go home and pack for the journey, but you may only bring what I tell you. You may bring enough clothing for the journey. You may bring a knife for utility, you may bring any books that you own, and you may bring some of your personal belongings, such as a razor. Anything that you use in your day to day life. You may bring weapons, but not weapons of war. Your staff and your bow are acceptable, but a sword or axe is not."

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Because novices come to the Tower carrying only what they need, and you will not need weapons," she told him simply. "You will need these items during the journey, so they will not be taken from you when you arrive. But you will be expected to put them away, and not touch them while there. If you were to bring a sword, it would be taken from you and held, and then returned to you when you leave."

  "Alright," he said. Despite it not being what he wanted, that short touch on something larger was like a seed growing inside him. Even though he still didn't want to be a katzh-dashi, he found the idea of learning more about the sensation he experienced to look better and better to him.

  "You will return to the village after packing," she told him. "You will spend the night in the inn, so we may get an early start on the day."

  "Wylan said you can borrow one of the inn's horses," Elke told him. "Go ahead and go get your things. Make sure you get enough clothing for a month-long journey. We'll be staying here tonight too, so bring back a change of clothing for all of us."

  "Alright, mother," he said.

  "Well scoot!" she said, shooing him away.

  "Be back soon," he promised.

  He went to the inn first, and after talking to the wiry, nervous-looking Wylen Ren, Tiella's father, he was on a horse trotting back down the large trail that led to the secluded Kael farm. It didn't take very long to get there, and he tied the horse to the porch rail and ran inside. He had a leather pack for when he went hunting, made by his mother, and he used that to pack up enough clothing for one month on the road. He also added in his shaving razor and soap, then got his small cooking pot he used when hunting and filled it with various odds and ends that he felt he may need. He got his pouch that had his sling and a variety of sling stones and metal sling bullets, metal cast-offs of Master Karn's forge that he formed into little balls for a sling. That way he profited off the leftover metal. The knife he'd won in the staff competition went on his belt, and two slender throwing daggers were tucked into his boots, one on each side. Eron had taught him how to throw daggers, and these were balanced for throwing. A third also went on his belt, on the other side. He rolled up his outdoor bedroll, a thick mat filled with down and scraps of wool to form a pallet-like mat, with two heavy wool blankets and a small pillow rolled up inside it. When travelling on the road, it was almost guaranteed that they'd spend some nights outside.

  He came down out of the loft and went to the storage room, and got his tent. It was a small tent, made only for one or two people, but it was perfect for camping outside. He then picked up three extra quivers of arrows for his bow, and took it all outside and started lashing what he couldn't wear or carry on the saddle.

  He stopped, and looked at the house, and he realized that it would be the last time in a while that he would see it. He went back in and went back up to his room, looking around just once more. He'd lived in this room for the last ten years. His eyes came to rest on a section of wall that was slightly different than the others, where he'd accidentally ran his staff into the wood and made a big hole. It had happened in the winter, and his father had made him sleep in the room with the hole to the cold outside for two days until he could get it patched. He stood on the bed, and reached up into the rafters running along the top of the attic, feeling around. He found the small wooden box, then grabbed it and pulled it down. When he was younger, he always used a chair on the bed to get up there, and hide this box. His secret box, full of all the things that a young boy thought were important. Many things had been into and out of this box, some of them even alive. He opened it after sitting on the bed.

  Inside were four things. A large tooth of some animal, the sharp fang nearly as long as Tarrin's hand, a brilliantly glittering piece of quartz crystal he'd once found out along the streambed of Two Step Creek, a twisted nugget of pure gold, also found along the creekbed, and the wing. It was a large gossamer wing, looking like the wing of a dragonfly. But this dragonfly would have been nearly a span long. The wing was a bit longer than Tarrin's hand, thin and delicate looking
, but Tarrin knew it was very hard and rather tough. It would also bend before it broke. It was translucent, and when one looked through it, it scillinted and reflected in all the colors of the rainbow. Tarrin had often spent hours gazing at the wing, mesmerized by the colors, and dreaming about what animal or creature had once owned it. Tarrin had found it out in the woods when he was eight years old. It was the first thing that had went into the box, and it was the only thing that had been in the box the entire time he'd kept the box. The wing was the reason he had the box; he wanted to hide something that incredible, put it where nobody could find it. He had owned it longer than anything else, and it was very special to him.

  He didn't want to leave the box here. It was as much a representation of his life here as it was a possession. It had been filled with his most secret secrets through the years, and the child in him didn't want anyone else to come along and find it. He remembered Dolanna saying he could bring personal effects. Well, this was the most personal effect he had.

  He packed everything back into the box carefully, and then used scraps of wool from his mother's work room to pad the contents. They'd never been jostled around, and he didn't want to run the risk that age would make the wing brittle. After making sure that everything was well protected, he closed the box and set the tiny latch on the front. The box had been a gift to him from his mother, and she'd always wondered what had happened to it. Tarrin had let her believe that he'd lost it. He went back out to the horse, noticing that it was starting to get dark, then packed the box deep into his pack, where it wouldn't have to be removed to get at anything else. Then he locked the front door, got on the horse, and hurried back to the village before it got too dark to ride.

  It had been a quiet, emotional night. Tarrin had spent most of the night with his family, just sharing their company this one last time before he left to go to Suld. It wasn't an unhappy time. As the hours went by, the excitement of doing what he had always wanted to do began to take hold of him, and Tarrin's leaving was something that the family was already prepared to face. He was up well past a reasonable hour, listening to Jak Longbranch, Walten's brother, playing his lute and talking. Tarrin's departure had quickly circulated around the village, and everyone in the inn stopped by to wish him good luck at one time or another.