James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

Tarrin leafed through the book, and found a blurry patch in one corner. "What is this?"

"I guess it was an illustration, or drawing," Jula replied. "The magic the Lorefinders use literally copy the contents of one book into another. They already know what the forms of the letters look like, so they can make those sharp and clear. But the illustrations are another matter. Since they don't know what they are, they can't copy them clearly. So they get copied just as they appear in the old books."

"Why does this happen?"

"Age," Jula shrugged. "Time eats away the ink, the pages wear away, any number of things. That's why we don't even know what the Sha'Kar looked like. There are no surviving drawings, illustrations, or paintings of them."

"Aren't they described in a book?" Jula shook her head. "Why not?"

"Would you describe a pair of pants in a book of history? A flower? A spoon?"

"That's a silly answer."

"No, it's not. Those are common everyday things, things we expect would be around two thousand years from now. Why waste time describing something everyone has already seen?"

Tarrin thought about it. "Oh," he finally realized. "Everyone back then knew what a Sha'Kar looked like, the way everyone today knows about the Wikuni."

"Precisely. So they never really went into depth about them. All the books about the Sha'Kar were written in their language, and we can't read them. All we've managed to find out about the Sha'Kar is that they were a very human-looking race, just a bit taller than humans on the average, and were frail and delicate beings. They also had large eyes, and some in the Tower think that they may have had pointed ears."

The description sounded a little like Allia, up until the "frail and delicate" part. Allia was by no means frail and delicate. She only looked delicate, because she was so beautiful. Maybe the Selani and the Sha'Kar were very, very distantly related.

"When alot of people in the Tower saw Allia, they thought that maybe the Selani and the Sha'Kar shared some kind of common ancestor," Jula told him, mirroring what he was thinking. "I think they've already put Sha'Kar books in front of her to see if she could read them."

"She didn't tell me about that."

"I guess she didn't think it was very important," Jula told him. "And since they're still working to break the language, I guess that means it didn't work."

"I guess not."

"So, why are you in here?" Jula asked. "You should be in class."

"My instructor had to talk to the Council, so I was given the rest of the day off," he replied. "She told me to come up here and read instead. But she didn't tell me what to read."

"I suggest that you start with Studies On Efficiently Spinning Weaves ," she told him. "It was written by a Sorcerer named Walina about a thousand years ago, but her techniques on weaving spells are still fundamental principles taught to all our students. She was a real trailblazer."

"Where can I find that book?"

"It's that big book they keep on the pedestal in the entrance hall," she smiled. "But you can get another copy over there. Nobody's allowed to touch the original." She pointed to a shelf across from the Lorefinders, just behind the circular desk that served as the main station for the librarians. "You should just ask the librarians, Tarrin. Tell them what you're interested in, and they'll send you right to it."

"I wasn't sure they'd let me have important books, since I'm just an Initiate."

"Tarrin, this library is for any who can touch the Weave," she told him. "You have as much right to be here as the Keeper herself." She glanced around. "Well, it's about time for me to get back to what I was doing. I'll see you later."

"Later," Tarrin mirrored, standing up with her.

Walina's book was very interesting. She described the raw forces that the Sorcerer was working with when they were touching the Weave, and then went on to discuss techniques of weaving flows that expanded on simple spellcraft. Techniques like knotting a weave so it would sustain itself for a while without having to be maintained, and layering one so that a second weave would activate after the first unravelled. Sorcery was limited in that there was no such thing as permanent spells for them, except when using Ritual Sorcery. All their magic lasted only as long as the Sorcerer concentrating on it. The effects of that magic could be permanent, like healing, but the magic itself was not. Knotting a weave made it draw on its own magic for a while, depending on the complexity of the weave and how well the knot was made. But even a knot only lasted a while before the weaves naturally untied themselves. Layering, Walina wrote, required tremendous skill to use, because placing one weave inside another without them interacting took considerable skill. Tarrin could see why. His own knowledge of Sorcery was somewhat limited, but his own short experience with it told him that flows loved to interact. To weave them in such a way that they wouldn't interact wouldn't be easy.

He was interrupted by someone knocking on the table, and he immediately scented Allia and Dar. He looked up in surprise, and realized that he'd been reading, totally absorbed, for the entire afternoon. "I wondered if you were awake," Dar said with a chuckle. "That must be some book."

"Actually, it is," Tarrin replied. "How did it go for you?"

"Boring," he grunted.

"How was your day, sister?" he asked Allia.

"They have started teaching me weaves," she replied. "I still cannot touch the Weave half the time, but they seem to be rushing me."

He only gave her a terse nod. He already had a good idea why. "Wait here a second," he told them, standing up. He went over to the librarian's station, where two small, older women busily sorted through a large number of books. They were sisters, from their scent, and had similar brownish, leathery skin and graying brown hair. They wore dresses of a pearly gray, made of a good wool by the smell of them, and were both well made and well maintained. "Excuse me, but can I borrow this?" he asked, holding up the book he was reading. The woman looked up at him, and to her credit, didn't so much as flinch when she realized who was talking to her.

"Let me see it," one of them said, holding out her hand. Tarrin gave her the book, and she glanced at the cover and opened it. "Yes, you can take this one with you," she told him. "Just write your name down on this sheet of parchment," she instructed, hastily scribbling the name of the book in a column on the right. There were alot of names and alot of book titles on that sheet of parchment. She turned it around and offerred the quill pen she was using to him.

Tarrin took the small pen between two large fingers, struggling with it a bit. His body was very handy and he felt comfortable in it, but his oversized paws were simply incapable of some things. One was handling the tiny quill pen with enough delicacy to be able to write legibly. He had the agility and dexterity, but to try would probably break the pen. Such a delicate thing put between his fingers would most likely break, no matter how gentle he was trying to be. He solved the problem by taking on his human hands, feeling the ache instantly shoot through his knuckles and fingers as soon as claws were replaced by nails, and he quickly scrawled his name down on the page. It wasn't very pretty, because the shooting pain made it difficult to write with elegance, or even efficiency.

"You need to work on your penmanship, Initiate," she said in distaste, looking at the writing.

"That's the best I can do," he told her bluntly, letting his paws come back. He cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers, working out the pain. "At least until you have a pen that fits in these paws."

"Alright, I can accept that," she said with a straight face. "You have to either bring the book back or check it out again in three days. Don't be late."