James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"You're daft, woman!" the guard snapped back. "What would a katzh-dashi be doing attacking his own guards?"

"Idiots," Keritanima growled. "Allia, I'm going to follow the trail. I want you and Binter to go over to the far side of the grounds, to my Marines. Binter, I want you to order them to fall in and prepare for possible action. If Tarrin didn't leave by choice, and whoever made him leave still has him, we'll make them pay in blood for it. If Tarrin was taken by a Sorcerer, then we may need some serious reinforcements."

"I will not leave you undefended, Highness," the massive Vendari said bluntly.

"You have to, Binter," she replied. "I don't have time to go get Miranda, and I need my men to be ready now ."

"I will go get Miranda," Allia said. "Binter will not leave you unguarded, sister. It goes against his honor."

Binter nodded simply. No more needed to be said.

"I will go get Miranda, and have her prepare your men," Allia promised.

"Alright. I'll meet you on the Knights' training field. Have Miranda form my men up there. If it does come down to a fight, I'd like to invite the Knights to join it."

"I will," she promised. She reached out and gave her sister a quick embrace, then left them and ran on swift feet back towards the North Tower.

Miranda was still talking to the ferret Wikuni when Allia entered, and she was not about to be patient. She pushed the slim male aside, his black furred face looking like a mask over his eyes, and put herself firmly in front of the cute little mink Wikuni. "Keritanima is following Tarrin's trail off the grounds," she announced. "She bade me to come to you and have you form up her Marines on the training grounds of the Knights."

"What?" Miranda challenged.

"We do not know if Tarrin left voluntarily. If he did not, then Keritanima wants to be ready to sally out and reclaim him, by force if necessary."

"Slow down," Miranda said. "What happened?"

"There was another scent in Tarrin's room, a female that Keritanima does not know. I believe she suspects that this female either lured Tarrin out, or forced him. The trail leaves the Tower grounds. We found several dead guards at the gate where they left, and they were all killed by Sorcery."

"That's not Tarrin's style," Miranda mused. "Tarrin would have simply killed them hand to hand. Maybe it was Dolanna?"

Allia shook her head. "Keritanima has met Dolanna. She would know Dolanna's scent."

"You're right," she said, tapping her little pink nose absently. "I'll go ready the Marines. Allia, maybe this is something that the Council should know. They may have an agenda for Tarrin, but that means that they need him alive. They'll help."

"I, do not know how to contact them," Allia said helplessly.

"Then go find Dolanna," she suggested. "If there's one katzh-dashi you can trust, it will be her."

"I will," she said. "I know where Dolanna's room is."

With a living mountain trailing behind her, intimidating everything and everyone out of her way, Keritanima made good time along the slush-covered streets of Suld, following a very faint trail that glowed on the cobblestones before her. The traffic on the streets had partially muffled the weave she was using, which translated a scent's presence into visible light. The weaker the scent, the weaker the glow, and Tarrin's scent had been partially destroyed by the passage of people, wagons, and animals. But it was enough for her to slowly, painstakingly follow the fragmented trail, finding where it started again every time it vanished, slowly working them across the city.

It took nearly an hour, and Keritanima attracted a good deal of attention from the pedestrians. Mainly because she would not get out of anyone's way. When she had Binter overturn the cart of a merchant that angrily demanded she get out of the middle of the street, it caused more than a few of the curious to follow her at a discreet distance. The slender little Wikuni and her awesome bodyguard turned into the head of an informal procession that crept across the city streets of Suld, following something so strange that none of the followers had the faintest idea what she was doing. But Keritanima paid them no mind. She knew that this was it. It was over. And she didn't care.

There was no way she was going to be able to explain this . Keritanima arguing logically with guards, issuing sharp commands, possibly even leading her troops, these were not things of which the Brat was capable. But the Brat was only a figment of her imagination, where Tarrin was a very real part of her life, and he may need her. He had been so kind to her, being her friend, taking her in, giving her a feeling of peace and security that she had never felt before. She loved him, deeply, and the very thought that someone may have kidnapped him, and that they may be hurting him, raised an immense towering fury in her that made her want to smash the life out of the people with her bare hands. The Brat had been created to protect her, and right now, someone else needed her protection more.

Keritanima followed the trail into a courtyard, across some grass, over a waist-high iron fence, and then into a building. She looked up to see where she was, and almost had a heart attack.

The trail entered one of the servant's entrances to the Cathedral of Karas.

"Impossible!" she gasped. "Impossible!"

"What is this place, Highness?" Binter asked.

"It's the Cathedral of Karas!" she said in dismay. "Why here ?"

"Why not?"

She glared at him, then stepped back and raised her hands. She wove together a very powerful weave, a weave she wasn't supposed to know, and sent a magical wave of probing Mind flows through the cathedral. The weave was designed to seek out conscious minds, to locate and count the number of sentient beings in an area. Mind weaves usually didn't affect members of other races, but this one didn't affect the mind, it simply registered the presence of active sentience. The Weave could also disseminate between different types of sentience, which allowed the user to discern if the people touched by the weave were of the same race.

Keritanima counted nearly six hundred people either in the cathedral, or far below it. Only three of those contacts registered to her as normal, meaning that those were Wikuni. The rest of them were not Wikuni. Keritanima realized with some dismay that she couldn't tell if one of them was Tarrin.

Changing tactics, she sent another weave of a similar type out, searching for shaerams . There couldn't be that many of those in there. Every shaeram had a tiny touch of the Goddess in them, for they were her holy symbol, and that resonance would respond to her magical probing.

Again, she was dismayed. There were sixteen shaerams either inside or underneath the cathedral. Keritanima had no idea if they were being worn, or simply being kept in drawers, and she had no idea which was Tarrin's.

She smacked herself. How stupid! Searching for shaerams to locate the touch of the Goddess was fine, but there was a way she could search for him using the same technique that would prove it was him!

Tarrin had the holy symbol of Fara'Nae branded to his shoulder, and it had just as much magical presence as a shaeram !

Victory! The holy energies of Fara'Nae's symbol reacted to her searching weaves of Divine energy, searching out Divine emanations of a specific type, that matched the very same emanations that came from the brand on her own shoulder. Tarrin was the only one that had that peculiar signature, unless they were holding a Selani.

Tarrin was almost two hundred feet below the cathedral.

Subterranean passages? What secrets did the cathedral hold that weren't on her plans?