James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

As the door squealed closed, Tarrin looked down the dank passage. It was pitch black, and unlike the first one, this one was filled with cobwebs and smelled heavily of mold and stagnation. Keritanima touched the Weave and created her little ball of light again, and it illuminated a rubble-strewn passage with an uneven floor, the skeletal remains of rats and other creatures, and thickly covered in cobwebs.

"This is a good sign," Keritanima said. "Maybe the priests don't know about the hidden chamber."

"How could they forget?" Tarrin asked. "They're right on those plans you got."

"It took me a while to find those, Tarrin, and how often do these men look at the plans?" Keritanima asked calmly. "As long as the place isn't crumbling around them, they probably never think of looking at things like engineering plans. Maybe they just stopped using this section, and it was forgotten over the years. Remember, brother, the cathedral is almost five hundred years old."

"I didn't know it was that old," he said.

She nodded. "Let's move. Time's wasting."

It was slow going, because they had to tear down cobwebs and avoid stepping on things that crunched . The passage was in disrepair, and the slick floor, littered with debris, made footing treacherous. They turned into a side passage, and went down a flight of dilapidated stairs that took them underneath the cathedral's main level. The passage ended in a slimy stone door with a pull ring. Keritanima pulled on it, and it opened into a similarly eroded passageway. It lacked the cobwebs and the dead rats, but it did have the crumbling mortar in the walls. Tarrin felt a strange twinge as they entered the new passageway.

"The door is secret from this side," Keritanima noted curiously. "I wonder why."

"Who knows?" Tarrin asked.

"This passage shows signs of recent travel," Allia said, pointing to a bootprint in the dank lichen decorating a stone on the floor.

"Let's hope we don't find whoever made that," Keritanima said. "This way," she pointed, and they started in the same direction as they bootprint had gone.

The passageway turned twice, and ultimately led to a large door bound with a bolt and two chains, and it was locked three times. They also found the owner of that boot. It was a lone priest, by the tattered remains of a black robe decorating the skeletal body, looking to be long dead. Long enough for mold to grow on the bones. There was no sign as to what killed the man. It was as if he simply died when he reached this place.

The twinging Tarrin felt was stronger, and he realized that it was coming from the door. He reached out with his senses, and could almost feel the magic tied up into the door. Keritanima had just knelt by the door, and was reaching out for the first lock with a pick in her hands.

Tarrin pulled her away from the door hurriedly, making her sit down hard on her own tail. She gasped and glared at him, but didn't shout. "What did you do that for?" she demanded in a harsh whisper.

"The door is magical," he warned her. "It may be trapped."

Keritanima gave him a speculative look, then he felt both her and Allia touch the Weave and assense the door. "There is a very, very old spell on it," she agreed. "Hundreds of years, by the way it settled into the stone."

"Perhaps the spell is a trap, and it killed that man," Allia surmised.

"Lula never taught me how to unravel the spells made by priests," Keritanima said, a bit helplessly. "How do we go about it?"

"I think I have an idea," Tarrin said. He had to do this fast. Reaching out, he touched the Weave and almost immediately struck. Others had tried to cut him off from the Weave enough for him to have an understanding of how it was done, so he wove together a spell consisting almost entirely of Divine Power, Fire, and Mind, and then he unleashed it on the door. The weave surrounded the door, and then it hardened into a barrier that choked the enchantment off from the Weave. The spell didn't get its power from the Weave, but it received it from its source through the Weave, and that gave him a way to disrupt it. The same way a Sorcerer could block the powers of a priest, Tarrin attacked the permanent spell placed on the door in the exact same manner.

The door shimmered and then went dark at the same time that Tarrin's paws suddenly exploded into radiance, the white wispy aura that denoted the use of High Sorcery, and he found himself struggling against an onslaught of power. It was even more this time, more and faster and harder, and it was only him fully expecting what was coming that allowed him to tear himself away, cutting himself off from the Weave. He still suffered a backlash, a backlash severe enough to disturb the air around him and send a short gust of wind to pull at the clothes of his sisters. A backlash that put him on his knees, panting heavily as he tried to find some coherent thought.

"What was that?" Allia asked.

"That was High Sorcery !" Keritanima gasped. "Tarrin, how did you do that?"

"I can't help but do that, Kerri," he panted. "It's the problem I'm having."

"No wonder the Council is in such a twist," she said in awe. "I thought you were just having a problem with control, but you just did something Lula said was impossible for one person!"

"Let's save this for later," he said, managing to get back to his feet. "The weave I put on the door isn't going to hold forever. When it weakens, the spell on the door will come back, so let's get it open before that can happen."

"You didn't destroy it?"

Tarrin shook his head. "I don't know how," he said helplessly. "But I do know how to cut people off from the Weave. That's what I did to the door. The barrier I wove around it will sustain itself, but only for a few minutes, so move, sister! You don't have all day!"

She nodded, and was working on the first lock immediately. She got it open, then opened the second in a matter of seconds, but the third turned out to be challenging. She hastily prodded and picked at it, then one of her tools snapped audibly. She cursed and pulled another from her bracer, her hands moving with steady precision even as the seconds ticked away. When Tarrin felt the weave blocking the door began to unravel, he took a step towards the kneeling Wikuni. "Kerri, hurry!" he said in a strangled tone. "It's almost broken!"

"Got it!" she said, pulling the lock off and backing away just as the barrier collapsed, and the door shimmered with magical light.

Keritanima blew out her breath, then she laughed ruefully. "Well, that was interesting," she said in a playful tone. Touching the Weave, she wove together a spell of air that allowed her to move things with Sorcery. The bolt of the door turned and pulled free of the wall, then she used weaves of solid air to push the door open without touching it.

"Why didn't you pick the locks using that?" Allia asked.

"Pick locks with air weaves?" Keritanima asked. "Do you have any idea how precise and delicate you have to be to pick a lock without jamming it?"

"Then I guess you can't," Allia shrugged.

"Now it's a challenge, sister," Keritanima grinned. "I'll find a way to do it."

Tarrin helped Keritanima back to her feet, and the fox Wikuni pulled off the robe and swished her tail a few times. "Now let's see what's worth protecting with a magical trap," she said with a twinkle in her amber eyes.

The interior was dark and surprisingly dry, and Tarrin sensed that magic kept the room thusly. The room held only one thing, a large bookshelf that stood alone in the center of the room, and was loaded with books and scrolltubes. About fifty books, all bound in black leather, and some twenty or so scrolltubes on a small stand on the top shelf. Each tube looked to be made of ivory. Thick dust was covering the books, tubes, and the shelf, and prints formed in the dust on the floor as the trio moved into the rom. There was nothing else in the room.