James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"I won't," he said, putting the book under his arm and then going back to his friends.

Lounging in his room, Allia sitting on the bed behind him, playing idly with his tail as she read from a book given to her by her instructor, Tarrin puzzled through the book written by this Walina. Even though he'd had so little practical instruction in Sorcery, alot of what the woman wrote made alot of sense, and it went beyond the tricks she wrote about. The woman seemed to have a fundamental understanding of the Weave that went quite beyond that of the normal Sorcerer. She explained the flows and their power, the act of using Sorcery, even the mysterious seventh sphere in terms that Tarrin could easily understand.

Though Dolanna had already told him, Walina's writing drove home the very significant point that Sorcery was the magic of life. It represented the six basic forces that affected mankind: earth, air, fire, water, the power of the gods, and the human mind's intelligence and drive, and in a more esoteric way, the human will. It also encompassed the seventh sphere, that which held all the others together, and the power of this seventh sphere was limited only by the ability of those who tried to use it. Where the other six spheres represented single forces, the seventh was both its own unique power and a power that comprised the other six, at the same time. It was all six, and none of them. That didn't make much sense to him, and Walina didn't explain it. She wrote that it was a paradox, a living representation of the mysterious ways in which the world worked, ways incomprehensible to mortal minds.

Because it was the magic of the world, it was limited to the world. That meant that Sorcery had no effect on things and creatures that existed outside of Sennadar's natural order. Tarrin already knew what that meant; the creatures conjured up by Wizards. They weren't of this world, they were brought in from somewhere else. Sorcery existed in a balance between the other four orders of magic, where each was checked by another's power, and itself held yet another in balance. Walina explained that there were no physical or magical rules for why this was the case, only that it had to be something set forth by the Elder Gods, the ten gods of creation who represented the primal forces of the universe. Sorcerers could disrupt the magical spells of Wizards and Priests by cutting them off from the Weave, for the magic they utilized had to travel through the Weave to reach them, despite the fact that it originated from a place not of the Weave. Sorcerers could also create Illusions, something which only they could do. Sorcerers, in turn, could be choked off from the Weave by Druids, who had the power to alter nature itself, and the Weave was a natural part of the world. Wizards could Conjure creatures from beyond Sennadar, and had the most versatile type of magic. There were thousands of researched magical spells for use by the Wizards, waiting to be learned and used by them. And since Arcane magic, the magic of the Wizards, was a learned skill and not a natural ability, anyone with sufficient intelligence could learn its secrets. This made the Wizard both the most common form of magic-user, and the most versatile. Priests could perform true healing and cure diseases, something that Sorcerers couldn't even come close to matching, and they could disrupt Druidic magic by using their power to call on their patron God to isolate the Druid from the power of nature which was at his command. A Sorcerer's healing was a very limited and crude form of healing when compared to the granted power of the priest. There was a bit of overlapping. Both Sorcerers and Priests had healing capability, and Wizards could casts spells called phantasms that made people believe that something was real when it was not, which was a shortcut to the power of Illusion. And though only Wizards could conjure beings from outside the world, which were the most powerful of creatures, all four orders of magic had the capability to summon types of beings and creatures particular to their orders. Priests could summon forth spiritual forces called Avatars which were minor physical manifestations of the God's power in the world, and therefore would help the priest, and the priests of the twin gods of death, Dakki and Dakku, could speak to the souls of the dead to gain information. Both Sorcerers and Druids had the power to call forth beings called Elementals , creatures comprised entirely of one of the four elements that existed in nature. They would obey Druids without question, but they did not like Sorcerers, and would resist any orders given to them by a calling Sorcerer. Druids could also directly summon forth beings of nature to act in the defense of the Druid. Tarrin himself fell into that category; if a Druid made such a summons, and he was in range to hear the call, he would be compelled magically to respond. Tarrin was human-born, but Were-cats were Were, and all Were were creatures of the land.

Sorcery was the only order where magic was not permanent for the most part. Only spells woven in Ritual Sorcery, utilizing the seventh sphere, were truly permanent weaves, and they usually tended to be Wards and the enchantment of mundane objects with magical capabilities. But, on the other side of the coin, Walina wrote that Sorcery was the most powerful of all four orders, for three simple reasons. Firstly, that a Sorcerer could stop the magic of Wizards and Priests. That Druids could stop them was generally not an issue, due to the fact that Druids were an even rarer breed than Sorcerers. Secondly, that only Sorcerers could combine their power in linked circles, which magnified their power tenfold. And thirdly, because a linked circle, using High Sorcery, could directly control the weather. Not even Druids could accomplish that feat, because the weather was the most powerful natural force there was, and no one Druid had that much power. Walina wrote that some suspected that the Sorcerer's inability to create permanent weaves was a check placed on their power, but she herself considered it simply a natural function of the Weave itself. Spells woven from the Weave were not natural, and flows pulled from strands always tried to return to them, which made weaves unravel. Tarrin had to agree with that.

It seemed pretty complicated, but Walina wrote that she firmly believed that if a Sorcerer understood how all types of magic worked, it would help him or her in dealing with the magic of the Weave. Tarrin wasn't so sure about that, but everything else he'd read so far seemed to make sense, so he'd take the author at her word.

The door opened, and both of them looked up to see Keritanima almost fly into the room, then slam the door behind her and lean against it. There was a wild look in her eyes, and she had a few crumpled sheets of paper in her furred hand. Tarrin was about to say something to her, but then he realized that her obvious panting was making no sound, and that he hadn't heard her bump up against the door. She also didn't have a scent.

"Ker-" Allia began, but he cut her off with a quickly waved paw.

The door opened again, going through the Princess. Or, Tarrin realized, through her Illusion. The real Keritanima strode in calmly, shutting the door, with a very wide grin on her face.

"That was an illusion?" Allia asked in surprise.

Keritanima nodded, her eyes bright and her grin evil. "Pretty good, isn't it?" she asked brightly in Selani. As always, when she wanted to talk about something imporant, she spoke in Selani. That told Tarrin her visit wasn't entirely a social one.

"It wasn't making any sound, and it doesn't have a scent," Tarrin told her critically.

"Spoilsport," she said with a teasing smile, sitting down on the chair by the small desk. "You and me are the only two with noses that sensitive, and I didn't weave in the spell to create the sounds. I have too much trouble weaving more spells than one at a time." She pulled her hair away from her face. "But it'll do wonders driving Jervis and his men crazy. I've already sent them chasing after an image in the maze, then I just walked away wearing the illusion of a human."