Tower of Sorcery

by Fel

  "She didn't tell me that," he said.

  "She probably didn't want to worry you," he said, sitting down and pushing the mug of milk towards him. Then he opened the pouch and poured the stones out onto the board. "She probably want you to only think of one thing at a time. I can't argue with it, but I prefer a more direct method of doing things. You want white or black?"

  "I'll take black," he said as he moved away from the window. He looked at the chair a moment, then managed to figure out how to sit down in it without pinching his tail behind him. He did it by turning the chair around and straddling it, crossing his arms over the back, which was now in front of him.

  "Kind of hard, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Sorta," he said. "So far, all the tail's done is move by itself. I can't figure it out."

  "Practice," Faalken shrugged. "It'll give you something to do while you're waiting for me to lose."

  "I'll do that," he promised.

  Faalken was a good stones player, so there was a considerable amount of time between moves. Tarrin took that time looking back at his tail when he wasn't studying the board, sensing what he felt when it moved, what he felt when he touched it, and how it felt as it moved through the air. He took all these sensations and started picking through them, until he thought he had a good idea of where the muscles were, which ones were which, and what he had to do to get some reaction out of it. Reaction that wasn't reflexive, anyway. He sucked in his breath and tried to make it stop moving.

  And got nothing for his trouble.

  Furrowing his brow, he tried again, but still there was nothing.

  He decided that he was going at this the wrong way. Instead of making it stop, he decided to make it move the way he wanted it to. He watched it sway back and forth of its own volition, studying what he was feeling in combination with what he was seeing. "Your move, Tarrin," Faalken prompted. Tarrin turned around and studied the board for a few minutes, and placed a stone on the board, then went back to watching his tail. After a few more minutes, he thought he had it. Instead of making it stop, Tarrin tried to make it stick straight out.

  And it did.

  He was a bit amazed. Straight, his tail was longer than his leg, over half the length of his body, nearly three quarters of it. A good span of it would drag the ground if it went limp. When it was moving, and looped and curled, it didn't look that long. Tarrin tried something else, bringing his tail around his body. It didn't move smoothly, but it did manage to curl around his side. It was very flexible, he noticed. It kept wanting to go back to what it was doing, and that made it hard to keep control of it.

  "Having fun?" Faalken asked.

  "This isn't easy," Tarrin told him. "It has a mind of its own." Tarrin let it slide up his side, feeling the fur slide by even as the tail felt his shirt ghost by, then slipped it over his shoulder and wrapped the good span of extra tail around his neck. The tip just made it past the edge of his other shoulder. He wondered how strong it was. If it had the same inhuman strength he did, then it would actually be a rather formidable surprise. It may even support his weight.

  "Not bad," the knight said. "Your move."

  Tarrin put a stone down on the board. "I was wondering how that creature got up to your room," Faalken said.

  "With these," Tarrin replied, showing Faalken his claws. "As strong as she was, she could have driven the tips into the stone and climbed up that way. I think I could do it."

  "Probably," he said, "but are you sure she was that strong?"

  "Faalken, she threw me across the room with one arm," Tarrin told him. "She was strong enough."

  "Are you sure that happened?"

  "Would you like a demonstration?" Tarrin asked him testily.

  "As a matter of fact, I would," he said, standing up. "I'm curious about this, and it'll give you the chance to come to understand yourself a little better."

  Tarrin stood up, got in front of the shorter, stocky man, grabbed him by the upper edge of his breastplate, and hauled him into the air. Tarrin held him at arm's length up and out, letting Faalken's feet dangle well off the floor. Tarrin looked up at him calmly as Faalken's eyes bulged a bit, and he grabbed Tarrin's wrist with both hands reflexively. "And this isn't even much of a strain," Tarrin told him. "I can throw you, if you'd like."

  "I get the idea," Faalken said, a bit weakly.

  Tarrin set him down on his feet gently, then Faalken grinned at him.

  Tarrin gave him a look. "You did that on purpose," he accused.

  "Yes," he said. "Dolanna told me about you, about what the change did to you. I wanted to see if you were aware of it yourself. Now then, it's my move."

  They played five more games in relative silence, with occasional idle chatter, and Tarrin practicing with his tail, and then with voluntarily moving his ears. The ears were easier and harder at the same time; it didn't take him long to figure out how to move them, but they instantly moved towards any sound on their own. They'd often take off on him in the middle of an attempt to move them, when Faalken made a sound. Tarrin couldn't have had anything better. It was a sense of normalcy to him, and the burly knight did everything he could to make Tarrin feel at ease. He never stared, never blinked, never flinched, even when Tarrin accidentally touched him. What Faalken couldn't understand was that the instincts in Tarrin's mind had forced the acceptance of the change onto him, that, despite it only being hours since he'd awoke to discover himself altered, he had already come to accept it as a new part of his life. Not to be pined over and fretted about, but to be learned and overcome. He was still determined to go to the Tower, to go on with his life. This just changed things. He doubted that he could get into the army like this, but he was sure that he could find something to do, something where this would make very little difference. There was so much of his life that was now thrown up in the air. And this afternoon of playing stones made everything seem like it would work itself out.

  There was a knock at the door. "Who is it?" Faalken called. Tarrin didn't know who it was either; the faint scent coming under the door wasn't Dolanna, and hers was the only other man-scent he knew.

  "It's Arren," came the reply.

  "My Duke, come in," Faalken said, a bit nervously.

  The door opened, and the middle-aged Duke Arren entered the room. He was dressed in a black doublet and hose, the doublet with silver thread embroidered into the shape of a hawk on the front. His eyes were a bit tired, and he just waved them off when both of them moved to rise in his presence. "There's no need for any of that," he said. "Tarrin, I'd like to apologize--"

  "My Lord, there's nothing you could have done," he cut him off. "Nothing you could have done would have stopped her, even if you knew she was coming. There's no blame to be taken. I'm not dead, you know. I'll learn to deal with this."

  "I'd have to agree with you," he said, pulling the third chair over to the table and sitting down. "She killed twelve men escaping from the cells. Twelve men, and two of them were the best fighters I had."

  "They had no idea what they were dealing with, my Lord," Tarrin said. "The only reason I survived was pure, sheer luck. And Dolanna." He looked at his hands. "I rather prefer living like this to being dead, so if this is price I pay to keep living, then so be it."

  "You're rather calm about this," Arren said.

  "I don't have time to run around screaming in apoplexy," Tarrin said dryly. "I have better things to do."

  "He's part Ungardt, Duke Arren," Faalken reminded him.

  "Ah, yes, that famous Ungardt no-nonsense stoicism," he mused. "If it were me, I would be running around screaming," he admitted.

  "No," Tarrin said quietly, "you wouldn't. It's hard to explain, but part of it makes you accept it. I've only been like this for a few days, and only one of those awake, but it's like I've been like this all my life," he said quietly. "I do have trouble making these new parts move, but they feel like they've always been there. This feels....right to me. If I were turned back to a human, I'd feel like, like I lost a part o
f myself."

  Arren looked at him soberly. "An intriguing side effect," he mused.

  Dolanna's scent touched him just as he heard her voice. "The Tower will want to study him," she said from the doorway. She'd bathed, and was wearing a clean dress. The dark circles under her eyes were gone, and she moved with that familiar crisp precision that he knew her to have. "But on the other hand, he will have a chance there to better learn how control his animal half. It is a controlled environment, where the stimulus that could make him lose control can be contained and separated from him."

  "Dolanna," Arren and Tarrin said together. "How do you feel?" Tarrin added.

  "I feel rested," she replied. "How do you feel, young one?"

  "Refreshed," he replied. "Strong. The meal did wonders for me."

  "I rather thought that it would," she told him, taking his hand as he stood. Her small hand was swallowed up in his huge hand-paw. She turned his hand over and touched the back of it with her other hand, feeling the short, silky black fur that covered it. "How does it feel?" she asked.

  "It feels...like this is the way I'm supposed to be," he told her soberly.

  "That is very good," she told him confidently. "The harder you fight against it, the harder it is to control it. Part of the key to controlling it is to allow it to try to guide you, but not to control you. There is a delicate balance in that, and that is what you will have to learn."

  "If I ignore it, it starts to scream at me?" he asked.

  "Precisely," she said with a smile. "You do not want it to do that." She looked at them all. "We will be leaving tomorrow at dawn," she said. "Tarrin, I have had all of your clothes altered so that you can wear them."

  "Uh, Dolanna, what am I going to do?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well, am I riding a horse?"

  "I would imagine so," she replied. "You must face the public at some point, Tarrin. You cannot live your life in this room. It is best to get it over and done with at the outset, so that it is not a fear that nags at you."

  "I guess," he sighed, staring at his hand.

  "Let's take it a step further," Arren said. "Tarrin, you will dine with us tonight," he ordered. "I've told my people what happened to you. Let's put you out where you can see that people aren't going to scream in panic. They may stare, but that's about all."

  "A good idea," Dolanna agreed.

  "What time is it now?" Tarrin asked.

  "Nearly sunset," Faalken replied.

  "We'll be dining in about an hour," Arren told him.

  "I guess, my Lord," Tarrin said dubiously.

  "Well, we have time for one more game of stones," Faalken urged.

  "Then we'll leave you to that," Arren said. "Come, Dolanna, you and I have some catching up to do."

  "Indeed. I will send a handservant to fetch you at dinnertime," Dolanna told them, and the pair exited as Tarrin and Faalken bowed.

  They sat back down and started a new game, but Tarrin's mind wasn't much in it. The idea of going into a public place was admittedly frightening, but on the other hand, it was necessary. Like Dolanna had said, he wouldn't be living in this room his entire life. He'd thought to himself that he was going to have to learn how to live with this startling new change...well, going to eat in the main hall would certainly qualify as learning. He wondered if he and Dolanna were rushing things a bit, but on the other hand, considering what had happened, maybe they weren't going fast enough. The only way for Tarrin to learn, learn how people would react, learn about himself, was to do. And sitting in the room didn't teach him much. Still, the concept of it was frightening. He couldn't shake the vision of a gang of men suddenly turning on him with swords, calling him a monster. He knew that it wouldn't happen, couldn't happen, but the thought was there nonetheless, and nagging fears were rarely rational or logical.

  It was both with anxiety and anticipation that he stood when there was a knock at the door. A slim, pretty young girl with dark hair opened the door. She gave a slight start when she saw him, but her expression remained open and cordial. "My Lords, Duke Arren is calling all to dine," she announced.

  "I was losing anyway," Faalken said sourly, standing up. "We'll be along in a moment," he told her.

  "I will inform his Grace," she said with a little bob of a curtsy, then she departed.

  "Dolanna doesn't take no for an answer, does she?" Tarrin asked sagely, noting her comment to report their status to the Duke.

  "I've yet to see her do it," Faalken grunted, putting his sword belt back on. "Let's go eat."

  Tarrin stepped out into the hall with trepidation. The smells outside were all man, criss-crossing each other maddeningly along the corridors to such an extent that the individual scents blurred into a musky, slightly unpleasant miasma. The smells of food were in the air as well, faint but present. The candles in sconces on the walls seemed bright to his eyes, and he could hear the faint steps of people all around. Faalken stepped out into the hall behind him and closed the door. "That way," he pointed, and they started out.

  About halfway down the hall, a scent unlike anything Tarrin ever smelled touched his nose. It was so striking in its utter perverse nature. Where most people gave off the smell of life, this smell was the smell of death. Of evil. Tarrin had no idea how he knew that, but he did. He felt his ears lay back on his head, and he instantly assumed a wide-footed stance. In that instant, he got his first taste of the animal within him. At the smell of that evil, it reared up in his mind and flooded his consciousness with impressions and urges to seek out the source of it and destroy it. It was unnatural, the scent, otherworldly, the antithesis of everything that was gentle and good, against life itself. As a creature of nature, tied to it with mystical bonds that transcended human comprehension, the existence of the evil was an abomination, and it had to be destroyed.

  Tarrin put a hand to his head, trying to clear away the homicidal impulses, but it was far from easy. He did what Dolanna said, listening to them but not letting them control him, and not ignoring them.

  "What's wrong?" Faalken asked. "Are you alright?"

  "There's something here," he said in a low, growling voice, still fighting to keep from charging off and killing whatever it was. "Something evil."

  "I can smell it," he said in a low voice. He looked down the hallway, into the shadows near the stairs, and he noticed that the shadows were a bit too dark. Had he not had eyes so sensitive to light, he would never have noticed the discrepancy. At that instant, the instincts howled in his mind, and he barely supressed the notion to charge. "It's up ahead, in the shadows past the stairwell."

  "I don't see anything," Faalken said back.

  Tarrin grabbed a candle off the wall in an innocuous move, then suddenly hurled it ahead with terrific force. The candle passed directly through those shadows, and they seemed to swirl around the speeding candle as it passed through, like smoke, rippling and reverberating in a blatantly visible pattern.

  "Shadows don't do that," Faalken said flatly, drawing his sword.

  But the swirling shadow simply vanished without a sound, and the death-stench evaporated like mist. Tarrin looked around in confusion, hardly believing what his nose was telling him. "It's gone," he said in surprise.

  "Can you still smell it?"

  "No, when it disappeared, the smell just disappeared too," he told him.

  "Let's go tell Dolanna about this," he said, ramming his sword home in its scabbard.

  Tarrin's nervousness about going into public was banished by this new feeling of anxious fear. If it could appear as quickly as it disappeared, it could be on them before either could blink if it appeared close enough. Tarrin kept every sense open and scanning, looking for any trace, smelling for the faintest whiff, anything, that would give them a split-second's warning. He was so wrapped up in it that he stopped in surprise when they entered the main hall.

  The hall was a grand affair, over one hundred paces long and about seventy-five paces wide. The floor was filled with table, and those
tables were occupied. The smell of it almost bowled him over as a tidal wave of scents stacked one on another assaulted his nose. The murmuring roar of the more than hundred people in the hall confused his ears, and the torches and candles burning in the room gave off myriad shadows that tried to draw away his eyes. Numerous dogs prowled around the tables and among the rushes, sometimes fighting among themselves for the largest scraps thrown from the tables. The general din quieted significantly as the people became aware of him, staring at him and whispering among themselves.

  Much to his surprise, he stood up tall and straight and stared back at them until they all looked away.

  He had no idea where that came from. Perhaps that too was the instincts, the Cat, at work.

  He pondered at it while Faalken led him across the room, the eyes of the hall following him as discreetly as they could manage. He was vaguely aware of the song in his mind, the murmuring sounds that represented the Cat, aware that it was growing stronger inside him. He hadn't realized that it could be so strong so fast; Dolanna had said that she had contained it, dulled its power so that Tarrin would have a chance to get used to it gradually. If it was this strong now, he shuddered to think of how strong it would be when it was contained no longer. But there was no failure in this struggle. Dolanna had already warned him that if he failed to control the Cat, it would drive him mad. And some part of himself knew it too.

  They reached the Duke's table, on the raised dais at the end of the hall where his ruling seat usually stood. There were seven people seated at the table. Arren, Dolanna, Walten, Tiella, and three other people that Tarrin didn't know. Two of them were middle aged men much the same age as Arren, one wiry and thin and the other with the same wide-shouldered stockiness that said he was used to wearing armor. The other person was a woman. She was rather young, with sharp, strong features, more handsome than she was pretty. Her hair was a chestnut brown, and she was wearing a rather elegant gown. Arren stood and welcomed them in a loud, calm voice, then offered them seats at his table. Tarrin watched Tiella and Walten carefully for a moment, watching them gape at the change in him. But, to their credit, neither of them flinched or looked away. Tiella even smiled slightly.