James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

Dar blushed.

"What?" he asked. "It's just stone, Dar. I don't think it cares if you look." Tarrin stopped himself. Where did that come from? That sounded just like Jesmind. Had those short days changed him so much?

"Well, it's still improper."

"Don't be such a prude, Dar," he said. "With all the art I saw in the room, I would think that you could appreciate the art of this, even if she is nude."

"Yes, well, I can appreciate the art," he said, "but it's almost too life-like. If you touched that statue in the wrong place, I think it might slap you."

Tarrin rather bluntly placed the palm of his paw against the area of contention. Dar choked a bit, and then he laughed. "No slap," Tarrin said.

"You're fearless," Dar told him.

"No, I'm just not afraid of a piece of marble," he replied.

"Well, you couldn't have touched it in a more sensitive place," Dar said.

"Yes I could have, but the statue was carved with her legs too close together," he said.

" Tarrin !" Dar hissed. "That's nasty!"

"And you've never thought of doing it yourself?" he asked pointedly.

"Yes, well," he said, clearing his throat and turning a bright shade of red. "I never thought to do it to a piece of stone."

"Now you're thinking the right way," Tarrin said, leaving the statue and wading back across the fountain.

"You don't think the same way we do," Dar deduced shrewdly.

"No, I don't," he said calmly. "What I consider modest and improper isn't the same as what you do, Dar. It has to do with what I am." Again, he marvelled at how much like Jesmind he sounded. "This is a very nice place," he said. "That's the most beautiful fountain I've ever seen, and the whole thing is pretty. I could live in here."

"I wonder who keeps it like this, since the opening is so overgrown that it's hidden," Dar wondered aloud.

" Somebody has to," Tarrin agreed. "This place would be a jungle if it wasn't tended. But there are no human smells in here. Not even a trace of one," he told him. "Nobody has been in here in weeks, maybe months. And that's too long for it to look like this."

"Maybe the place is magic," Dar said.

Tarrin considered that, and then he thought about the way he felt in the huge chamber Dar called the Heart of the Goddess. But that same feeling wasn't here. But there was a different feeling here…a feeling of peace . That was the only way to describe it. Standing there, staring at that beautiful statue, Tarrin coudln't deny that there was something very special about this place, something that made him feel very much at peace.

"I don't know about magic, but this place is very special," he said in a quiet voice. "Maybe it's a good thing that nobody really comes here."

"Yeah," he agreed. "They'd just mess it up."

They sat down on the bench and stared at the exquisite statue for a long time. They didn't speak. Talking was unnecessary. They both simply contemplated the statue, her arms held out in a gesture of welcome, the look of gentle caring on her face.

"It's getting late," Dar said, looking at the dimming sky. "We probably missed dinner."

"It was worth it," he said calmly.

"It was," he agreed.

"We should go. They may be looking for us, and they won't find us here."

"Yes. We should remember that. This might be a nice place to get away from it all."

Tarrin glanced around at the clearing. "Yes, it would be," he said. Looking up, he could see that the hedges didn't conceal the center from the vast height of the main Tower. But from that height, one would need a spyglass to see who was down here.

They went back to the Novice quarters, and Tarrin considered the fountain. It was a beautiful place, and it was indeed very well hidden. It was the perfect place to go when he didn't want to be bothered.

"Let's see if we're not too late for dinner," Dar said.

"You go ahead," he said. "I need to do something."

"Alright. See you in the room. I'll try to sneak something back for you."

"Thanks," he said.

He immediately went to the Library. He wasn't too late to keep his appointment with Dolanna. The library was a vast place, a chamber that took up almost every span of available room on one side of the Tower. It went from the inner wall to the outer wall, took up two levels, and probably took up enough room to house about three hundred people. The floor was lined with bookshelves, and each one was piled heavily with books. There was a set of steps on each side of a large statue of some robed man with long hair and no beard, leading to a half-upper level with even more bookshelves. In the exact center of the lower floor, up against the wall that separated the central core of the tower, was a circular desk behind which sat the Master Librarian and two or three of his scholar attendants, who were responsible for keeping the Tower's vast wealth of books in a neat and orderly fashion. Tarrin hesitated to let one of those librarians pass, pushing a wooden cart stacked with books that were to be replaced on the shelves.

Ignoring the several curious looks, Tarrin squatted down and put his nose close to the floor. There were a multitude of scents all jumbled together on the floor, but he knew precisely which one he was looking for. He had to check two other likely places it would be until he found Dolanna's scent, sharp and strong and fresh. After that, he simpy followed it. It went up the stairs and into a dark corner of the huge library. She was sitting at a solitary table behind a large, dusty bookshelf, where a single one of those glowing globes hovered over the table to provide light.

He sat down across from her at the small table quietly. She looked up from the book she was reading, then carefully looked in either direction for eavesdroppers. "Thank you for coming, Tarrin," she said.

"What did you want to see me about, Dolanna?" he asked.

"Nothing earth-shaking, my dear one," she said with a smile. "I simply wanted to talk to you about your journey to the Tower. I felt that there some things that you did not wish to talk about in front of Sevren."

"Not a whole lot," he told her. "Me and Jesmind, we, uh, got very, you know, uh-"

"I understand," she said quickly. "I had assumed as much."

"Why?"

"Because, my dear one, that is a very effective way for a woman to control a man," she said.

"That's not why it happened," he said.

"Then what did occur?"

Tarrin explained to her the social peculiarities of the Were-cats, as it was described to him by Jesmind. Dolanna simply nodded. "Yes, that is logical," she said. "I should have expected as much. I keep falling into the trap of thinking of you and the other Were-cats as thinking in a human manner."

"No, we don't," he said soberly. "Here lately, I've really noticed it. I've changed, Dolanna."

"How so?"

"I'm starting to think almost the same way Jesmind does," he told her. "I used to be nervous about undressing in public. Right now, Dolanna, I could strip and walk across the library without batting an eyelash. It just doesn't seem the same as it once did." He shuddered slightly. "I find it very easy to kill," he added.

"What else?"

"Just little things, Dolanna, mostly along those lines," he said. "I think the time with Jesmind opened my eyes to that other side of me, and now they're starting to communicate. Jesmind told me that I was ignoring it. Well, I'm not doing that anymore. And it's doing it without me knowing about it. When I was in the baths, I realized that my ideas about being nude changed. It wasn't until then."

"It is your instincts," she told him. "They are starting to merge with your conscious mind. Tarrin, it is what is supposed to happen, and it is a very good sign. You do not seem to be having any problems integrating them together, which is also very good."