James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

Too many things were happening, and they were coming too fast. He laid back and stretched out on the grass, looking up at the cloudy sky. The wind was raw and cool, a signal that summer was over, though the gardens were still green and lovely. The clouds obscured the sky, heavy, laden gray clouds that cast a murky pall over the land. The type that always threatened rain, but never carried out on the promise. They fit his mood at the moment, for he had no idea what to do now.

The first was what had happened to him in that Conduit. It had changed him, somehow. He'd only had half a day to be happy that he finally figured out how to make contact with the Weave, and now the Weave was hostile to him. He'd tried many, many times to touch with Weave without it backlashing on him, but it happened every single time. It was as if the Weave were trying to trap him within it, and it was filling him with more power than he could safely contain. And every time he did it, trying to cut himself off from it became more and more difficult. He knew that doing it along was crazy, almost suicidal, but he had to know, and he didn't want the katzh-dashi to interfere. The last time he tried, the time that made him stop, the Weave nearly fried him from the inside out before he finally managed to sever himself from it. He wasn't going to try that again. He had just discovered his power, and then it was put out of his reach. And what made it deadly was it was right there , the sword he could pick up at any time and use to chop off his own head. Maybe Jula was right, maybe the accident had somehow damaged or injured his capability to use Sorcery. Perhaps it would come back, perhaps it wouldn't but it didn't change things right now. And the short term was starting to look like it was going to be absolutely critical to his very survival.

The second was the Doomwalker. He had been expecting another attack, but he hadn't considered that it would also go after his sister. She was a strong Sorcerer, but he had absolutely no idea of why it would go after her. Other than simply to punish him, to taunt him with that information should it start to lose the fight. But that hadn't been an issue. He was warrior enough to know when he had his kiester kicked. Jegojah, it called itself, had cleaned up the floor with him. Tarrin got in some licks, but the Doomwalker had never been put in a very bad position. It had used Tarrin's momentary rage against him, and had displayed an outstanding fighting ability. If that weren't bad enough, it could also use magic, and knew how to use it. If he hadn't have been knocked into the Conduit, Tarrin would have lost. He could admit it without feeling bad, because no matter how good one was, there was always someone better.

It still didn't make much sense. Jegojah had brought more than enough to the table to deal with him, and Tarrin had the feeling that it knew it. So why attack Jenna? Why risk destruction by attacking a little girl, who happened to be protected by two of the nastiest fighters in Aldreth, maybe even all of Sulasia, and no less than two Sorcerers? It didn't make much sense. But then again, nothing made sense to him because he didn't know what was going on.

And that was the third problem. The fight, and what had happened to him, may interfere with Keritanima's plan. He hoped not, because it was getting to the point where absolutely had to find out what was going on. Everyone around him was acting on information that was being kept from him. He was certain that the string of seemingly illogical events were all connected by a common thread. For him to know what to do, he had to find out as much as he could about what was going on around him. Why he was so important, what made him so important, and what part his sister, Allia, and Keritanima played in it.

The fight with the Doomwalker had disrupted everything, and he realized that there had been several of those. They were trying to kill him, but they were succeeding in disrupting his plans with the attempts. Jesmind, who could not have changed his life any more without killing him. The attack by the Wyvern that separated him from Dolanna and the others. The Wraith, who very nearly killed him, and caused them to raise the Ward that trapped him in the Tower. And now the Doomwalker, who had caused him to somehow injure his ability to use Sorcery. He wasn't sure if that was a good observation, but that was the way it seemed to be working out.

He had no idea what to do now. He was becoming afraid of trying to touch the Weave, and if he couldn't use his power, he had the strange feeling that he may become expendable to the Council. He had no idea what they wanted him for in the first place. He was starting to expect a washtable to attack him. They'd thrown just about everything else at him, and mostly through sheer luck, he'd managed to survive. They had to be running out of ideas.

He missed Jesmind. She had such a simple way of looking at things. For her, everything was black or white, and she didn't lie, and she also took everything everyone told her for the truth. Until she realized it was a lie, anyway, and then she got violent. If only the world could be like that for him. Everything good or bad, right or wrong, friend or foe. Not enemies that turned out to be friends, and potential enemies pretending to be friends, and everything in between. He felt quite overwhelmed at the scope of the machinations going on around him, and he suspected that there were many more beyond his ability to see. He was a simple village boy, raised for a life in the regimented order of the army. Not this . Adjusting to being Were had been almost more than he could handle, and what was going on around him just seemed out of his reach. He didn't feel in control, like he was a pawn on a lanceboard, waiting for the next player to pick him up and move him.

He rolled over and started picking at the grass, experiencing the power of its scent, feeling it between his pads. Such a small thing, yet it could live almost anywhere, and it was very tough. If you cut it, it grew back. If you killed it, more grass just took its place. It softened the ground, kept it from washing away in the rain, and it made things beautiful. And all it wanted in return was a little sunshine, a little water, and some fresh air. He could definitely relate to the grass. He wanted out of the Tower. He wanted a little sunshine, a little water, and some fresh air himself. Preferably in some dark, untouched forest, well away from the human lands, where he could live free and unfettered by how others saw him.

But was he willing to let people cut him, try to kill him, to get it?

Grass had it easy, he decided. But then again, what choice did it have?

Nothing for nothing, his mother always said. If you put in nothing, you got nothing in return. There would be a dark forest and simple living, but he would have to work for it. And that meant enduring what was happening to him now, getting it overwith so he could find his little den somewhere nice. Closing his eyes, he put his chin on the back of his paw, listening to the sound of the wind rustling the hedges, rose bushes, and the grass, feeling it in his fur, on his skin, smelling the scents of the Tower, of people, and of the city beyond that was carried upon it. Grounded in his senses, Dolanna had said. He had to agree. What the Cat couldn't sense, couldn't see, it wasn't important to it. There was no now but now, no place but here, no time but that in which it lived. A serenity of selective amnesia, where the past was forgotten, the future didn't exist, and the whole world existed only in its own territory.

Sometimes cats had it easy too.

There would be no losing himself in the Cat again. Not now. Things were too important, and they were happening way too fast.