James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

Staring at him in horror, she could only give a slight nod.

"Good. I hate repeating myself."

She suddenly erupted into a bawl of tears, but he tuned out her sobs and stalked away from the pool. Wondering when he'd become so hard. He'd only meant to make it clear that he would brook no attitude from the girl, and then he was suddenly threatening her life.

He knew that the time away had been good for him, but even then he knew that he was nowhere near in complete control. That little episode was a very impacting reminder of that fact. He still had to be very careful of himself, else he would do something that he would truly regret later.

On the other hand, the Wikuni would have probably taken anything less to be empty words. At least now, she understood exactly how he felt about her attitude.

The entire affair managed to spoil the exuberance and anticipation he'd been feeling. Muttering to himself, he stalked up the stairs, in the direction of the kitchen, intent on claiming the breakfast he had left his room to get in the first place. He stopped when a glimpse of red hair shown ahead of him, a thick shock of hair the color of fire disappearing up the staircase. He fully well remembered, with a bit of a shiver, the last time he had seen a redheaded woman on the steps leading from the baths. Memories of that nightmarish encounter were dim, but the emotions behind them, emotions to which he was susceptible considering his months in cat form, made his ears go back and made his heart flutter in his chest. Advancing slowly and carefully, he knelt at the base of the steps and stared up their length, up to where they slowly began to turn to the left, his nose sifting through the myriad scents left on the stone by countless feet. Only those that were freshest had any meaning to him, and none of them were Jesmind. In fact, her scent was nowhere around. Could it have been someone else? Jesmind's hair color was odd, but not unique. He had not seen anyone else in the Tower with quite that shade of fire red hair, but that didn't mean that there wasn't another one.

But his nose didn't lie. Nobody had been on the steps in the last half an hour, except for himself. He puzzled over that for a moment. How could the woman with the red hair have went up the steps, and not left a scent? Even if her feet had never touched the ground, the traces of her scent would still be drifting in the warm, muggy air. Especially since the air circulated down the stairs; he could feel it against his face. He was downwind, and yet there was no scent at all.

Tarrin debated what to do. There was another set of stairs leading out of the baths, on the far side of the chamber, so he wasn't pinned into going in this one direction. But he was curious about who, or what, he had seen, something that left behind no trace of its passage. Jesmind was good, but there was no way she could have done that.

The sound of sloshing behind him told him that the Wikuni had dragged herself out of the bathing pool. He could hear her panting, almost as if to keep control. Yet she didn't say a word. She was either too frightened of him-no, it had to be that. He didn't credit her with enough sense to be otherwise.

Not caring to be brained from behind by an indignant wet Wikuni, Tarrin advanced up the steps cautiously, claws out, his every sense straining to know what was around the slight bend in the staircase as it rose up to the ground floor. There still was nothing, only his own scent going down. When the landing came into view, he again saw only the briefest flash of red, a lock of hair disappearing around the corner. He rushed up to that spot and stared down the hallway. It was a hallway that led into the center of the Tower, towards the Heart, and there was not a single doorway between the stairs and the ornate iron gate that marked the Chamber of the Heart. There was nowhere for the mysterious figure to go, and yet she, or he, vanished without a trace. Without any trace at all, for there was no scent on the stone that was even a day old. Nobody went into the Chamber of the Heart without a good reason.

Tarrin could think of only two things. Either his eyes were deceiving him, or whatever it was had no scent.

If his eyes were deceiving him, then they were doing it again. Tarrin could see faint movement behind the iron gate marking the end of the hallway, a flash of red and white behind the intricate iron scrollwork, iron wrought into the shape of the shaeram on each of the two iron gates. Just like the red and white of Jesmind's hair and shirt. It wasn't like Jesmind to sneak around like this. If Jesmind wanted to talk to him, or to fight, she would have come right out and got him. He seriously doubted that she wanted to fight, but if she did, then maybe she was trying to bait him into ambush. Curiously detached, he realized that he needed to find out exactly who, or what, that was, to see if it was friend, foe, or other.

It only took an instant's thought to form his awareness around the shape of the cat, and then his body flowed into the form as his vision blurred. He heard a startled gasp behind him, down the stairs, but he ignored it as he crept on utterly silent paws up the hallway, which was lit with glowglobes like all hallways within the Tower proper. He reached the iron gates, then slunk down on his belly and looked through a hole in the ironwork by the base, looking into the large room.

The room was empty, except for Jesmind. She was standing with her back to him, her thick mane of wild red hair flowing down her back and around her shoulders, bunching up against the base of her tail. A tail that swished to and fro in a reflexive, rhythmic pattern. Her paws were clasped behind her back in a relaxed manner, and she was staring at the strange place in the middle of the chamber, staring upwards at the ceiling so incredibly high above.

Tarrin saw immediately that all was not what it appeared to be, because Jesmind had no scent.

It was not Jesmind, he was certain of that. It could not be her, no matter how much it looked like her. Because she- it did not have a scent.

"I know you're there, Tarrin," the figure called. It sounded like Jesmind's voice, even down to the undertones of impatience in the timbre. "You don't have to hide from me. You know me better than that. If I wanted to fight, I'd have attacked you while you were busy with the walking throw-rug."

It was very convincing. Very convincing. But it was not Jesmind. Tarrin changed form absently, taking a step back. He had no idea who or what that was, but since it was somehow pretending to be Jesmind, he didn't want to risk trying to find out more. Yet maybe he could find out more.

"What do you want, Jesmind?" he asked acidly.

"To talk."

"The last time you said that, you tried to rip my head off."

"Times change, Tarrin," she said. Tarrin's eyes narrowed. Jesmind didn't call him by his name. She called him cub . "I've been thinking. I make the offer to you one last time, Tarrin, but this time, you don't have to leave. I talked to the Keeper the other day, and she explained how, dangerous, this Sorcery business can be if you're not trained. I can teach you what you need to know while you're here."

Clever. Just what he would want to hear out of her mouth. Tarrin reached out with his senses, closing his eyes and taking in the air deeply through his nose, straining with his ears. He could hear the Wikuni behind him, advancing curiously, could hear her breathing. No such sound emanated from the chamber before him. The smell, the feel of that Conduit thing that Ahiriya had described tingled along his skin, but he could discern no scents of anything alive inside the chamber, nor could he hear anything.

A scent. Yes, there was a scent. A smell of…ozone. Like the smell of lightning after it strikes. And there was a sound coming from the room, but not of breathing. More like the sound of a distant wind, the sound of air pushing against air. Both were very faint, almost negligible, but they were there.