James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"You know the city pretty well?" Tarrin asked.

"Fairly," Elke replied.

Tarrin wrote a set of directions on the paper, using the Ungardt language. He slipped it to Elke, who read it quickly, reached it over to the lamp, and then burned it. "When you get there, tell the owner of the house that you're friends of Shadow," he told her in Ungardt. "He'll know what that means, and he won't turn you away." He closed his eyes, memories of Janette and the orderly house of Janine the wife flooding through him.

"I take it that they're friends of yours?"

"More than friends. If they remember me, anyway."

"Oh, you mean that they're them ?"

He nodded. "Be nice to them, mother."

"Of course," she snorted. "Why shouldn't we stay here?"

"If you two don't stop that, I'm going to get surly," Eron said waspishly. Eron couldn't speak Ungardt.

"Hush," Elke commanded her husband absently.

He glared at her, but said nothing. "Something's going on here, you know that," Tarrin told her. "I don't know, but I get the feeling that what happened yesterday is going to make things tense here for a while. It would probably be a good idea for you to be somewhere where nobody knows your name, if you understand my meaning."

She gave him a penetrating look, and finally nodded. "Maybe you're right," she said. "But Jenna-"

"I think Jenna has enough control of herself not to have an accident, at least for a ride or two," Tarrin said. "She can continue after things have a chance to settle down."

"I think you have a good point," Elke said after a moment.

"Well, I'd better get moving before they send a posse after me," Tarrin said, reaching down and patting his father's shoulder. "I'll come visit in a couple of days. You'd better get better, father."

"If I don't, your mother will kill me," he said with a smile.

"Nothing like motivation," he teased, then he squeezed his sister gently again. "Time for me to go, Jenna."

"Be careful, Tarrin," she said, letting go of him and going around the bed to sit beside her mother.

Without thinking, Tarrin reached out to his mother and put his paw under her chin, cupping it. After thinking about what he wanted for a moment, he touched the Weave and quickly wove together the proper flows of fire, water, earth, and divine energy, then released them into her. Elke's hair suddenly grew at a shocking rate, quickly extending well past her waist. She scrubbed furiously at her scalp for a second, then felt the weight of it.

Tarrin felt something different about it this time, something strange, and something that scared him. That tremendous power that he remembered from the day before seemed to be right there , and it all came at him in a sudden flood that took him quite by surprise. He almost didn't remember how to sever himself from his own power, because it came at him in a flood that he couldn't hope to choke off or control, and it happened to him so fast that he didn't even have time to think about what to do to stop it. Just as the day before, severing himself had been a reflex action, a defense against what he was feeling. He wouldn't be able to let go of the Weave, he sensed that, so he had to cut himself off before he lost control. He blinked, trying to understand what had happened.

He had touched the Weave, but when the Weave noticed it, the Weave had tried to touch him .

She stared at Tarrin in surprise, but he only smiled at her, covering his sudden shock at what had nearly happened to him. Losing it in front of Jula was not a good idea. "You don't look natural without your braid," he told her, standing up. "Be well, mother. I'll see you soon."

"How did you do that?" she asked.

"I've been healed so many times, I should know how it's done by now," he said in a rueful tone, shrugging. "But I really have to go. I'll see you soon."

"Be well, my son," she replied.

After taking her hand, he was quickly out and away. Out in the hall, he allowed himself to slump against the wall, paw to his head. He felt drained, as if the sudden influx of power had taken his own strength with it. What happened? By the end of that first day when he first could touch the Weave, he could easily manage to flow of power. But that had been…more, different. It wasn't the same as it had been before his fight with the Doomwalker.

"Let's talk about it, Tarrin," Jula's voice called from the door. The slender, pretty blond came up to him and touched him on the cheek, and he felt gentle warmth flow into him. "I felt a sudden, radical inflow of power, and then it cut off. You didn't mean to do that, did you?"

"I, no, I didn't," he said. He didn't know Jula well, but the few times that he had spoken with her, she had always left him with a good impression. The only katzhi-dashi he even came close to trusting was Dolanna, but Jula was right here, and she already seemed to suspect. He had no reason not to talk to her. Besides, he did like her a little bit. She was like Dolanna and Sevren, not too stuffy or full of herself. "I had touching the Weave down, but," he closed his eyes. "I think getting caught in that Conduit changed something inside me. I felt the power of the Weave, and then it tried to fill me. It came out of nowhere, and I almost couldn't cut myself off."

"I certainly wouldn't have been able to," she said in a grim tone. "It's a good thing you did. What else felt different?"

"Nothing," he replied after a moment's consideration. "Everything felt the same. Touching the Weave, building up the power to weave, and then the initial weaving. But after I let the weave go, the power just roared at me like a charging lion. I have no idea where it came from."

She stared at him for a long moment. "I really don't have an explanation for you, Tarrin," she said. "But this is something that you'd better tell your instructor, and maybe even the Council of Seven. Perhaps the Conduit injured your ability to control the power, but not anything else."

"No, I can still control it," he said. "Whatever it was, it came from outside , from the Weave. It," he began, closing his eyes and remembering the feeling, "it was as if the Weave reached out and grabbed me. It, reacted to me touching it."

"I've never heard of that before," Jula said, "but then again, I've never heard of alot of things that are possibly true. You need to go rest, Tarrin. That may be the best thing for you right now. Rest, and don't try to use Sorcery again until you feel completely whole. And for the Goddess' sake, don't do anything without a Sorcerer there to help you in case it gets away from you."

"I will, I promise," he replied sincerely.

"Now scoot, Initiate," she said with a teasing voice, patting him on the hip. "That's an order."

"Yes ma'am," he chuckled, standing up from the wall and then padding down the passageway. Something about what happened frightened him, frightened him considerably. Something was different, inside. He could feel it. He only had an active awareness of his own power for half of a day, but the natural way that it felt allowed him to understand how things had felt before. Though the Weave still felt natural, the fact that he could sense it, almost see it, told him that things were not as they were before.

Too many things.

Tarrin sat in the courtyard at the center of the maze, cross-legged on the ground in front of the stone bench, picking at the fur on his ankle and thinking quite deeply. It was midafternoon, and though nobody had tried to come and get him and talk to him, nobody quite knew where he was. He figured that Jula ran to the Council the instant Tarrin was out of her sight, and he didn't feel like being examined like a lab rat. So instead of going back to his room, he shapeshifted and slinked off into the garden. He had learned quite a while ago that he attracted alot of attention when he moved around-most Novices and Initiates hugged the walls when he passed by-but a black cat was almost completely ignored. There were veritable legions of cats on the grounds, some were pets, and the rest were strays that were fed and used as a deterrent against mice. And Tarrin fit in with them quite easily, giving him the ability to move around without everyone staring and pointing at him. Sometimes it got on his nerves, sometimes it reminded him of how out of place he was among the younger, more normal Initiates, but mostly it made sure that everyone knew where he was almost at all times.