James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"What?" he asked curiously. He raised an eyebrow as Tarrin started to take off his clothes.

"I don't want this to go out of this room," he said.

"It won't, I promise," he replied as Tarrin shed the last of his clothes.

"This." Tarrin fixed the image of the cat in his mind and willed himself to change. The room went gray, as it did when he was in transition, and his body swiftly melted into the new form. When vision returned to him, he looked up at the now-gigantic Dar and meowed complacently.

"Yaman!" he gasped, speaking the name of the patron God of Arkis. Then he made a curious scratching gesture with his right hand over his eyes, and made one small bow. It must have been religious in nature, Tarrin guessed. Maybe speaking his God's name was taboo or something. "Tarrin, is that you?"

Tarrin nodded, sitting down calmly.

"I heard stories about this, but I never thought to think about it. You can't talk, can you?"

Tarrin shook his head.

"But it's obvious you can understand me."

Tarrin nodded.

"May I?" he asked. When Tarrin nodded, Dar reached down and picked him up. "By the storm, you're heavy," he grunted as he shifted Tarrin into a comfortable position, then he started to scratch his ears idly. "You're cute like this," he said with a grin. He then put him down, and Tarrin resumed his own shape.

"So if you see me like that in the room, don't have a conniption," Tarrin told him, bending down and retrieving his trousers. "Sometimes I like to sleep that way. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me away if you see me like that out in the Tower. There may come a time when I'll want to sneak around." He sat down and started pulling them back on. "Oh, if you see a white cat that looks alot like me, come find me and let me know immediately."

"That would be this Jesmind, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," he said.

"I'll keep an eye out," he promised, then he yawned. "I think I'll go to sleep early, after you kept me up last night."

"Sure, blame it all on me," he shot back with a smile. "But I think I could go for some sleep myself."

Tarrin had discovered that the strange balls of light were called Glowglobes, and they were all over the Tower. Not a single candle was used anywhere. The secret to making them were lost over the years, as was so much that the Sorcerers had managed to achieve before the disastrous Breaking which had occurred two thousand years ago. Tarrin had heard that story from his father, who had heard it from a Sorcerer.

The Breaking was a series of natural disasters that had ravaged the world from one end to the other. Fires, earthquakes, tidal waves, followed by disease and famine. It was a savage time for the world, and in the West, the ever-jealous Priests had managed to convince the people that the Breaking was the fault of the mysterious Sorcerers. In a climax of mindless fury, a mob of thousands and thousands had stormed the one and only center of learning for Sorcerers in the whole world, the Tower. Rather than defend the Tower and kill thousands, thereby destroying the reputation of the Sorcerers, the Keeper at that time, Valas Dansen, ordered the Sorcerers who were not in the Tower to hide themselves and keep the art alive. Then the Sorcerers in the Tower raised a mystical ward which blocked the mob for long enough to weave one more enchantment.

When the ward lowered and the mob stormed the Tower, they found it empty.

Totally empty. Not even the furniture remained. The Sorcerers had decided that rather than kill innocents, or allow themselves and their knowledge to be destroyed, they would simply vanish. And in vanishing, they would take themselves and every scrap of the knowledge that they had accumulated along with them. Eron had told him that to this very day, nobody knew what happened to the Ancients, as they were called, or where they went.

The mob, thinking that it was some great curse laid on the place, fled in panic. And the Tower remained empty for over a thousand years. After the vanishing, Karas, the patron God of Sulasia, was incensed at his priests for their duplicitous destruction of the Sorcerers, whose Goddess, a goddess that had no name anywhere, was an ally. He stripped the priests of Karas of all their magical powers, and decreed that they would remain without magic for a period of one hundred years. And that was how it was. Without their magical powers, the priests of Karas were subjected to the humility of the common man, and so they were punished for their part of the deed.

Things remained thus until Malin Trent, the Crusader, entered the Tower and called out to all his hidden brothers and sisters who practiced the forbidden art of Sorcery to return and dwell in the Tower in peace. Malin suffered serious challenges to his crusade to restore Sorcery, for the priesthood again took up their old war against the Sorcerers, whom they despised, calling Malin Trent a witch and a consorter with evil. Malin and those Sorcerers that did return to the Tower found themselves to be the objects of ridicule and scorn, and not a few outright attacks. One year after Malin reclaimed the Tower, and had persuaded some three hundred of his secreted brothers and sisters to join him in the open, the priests again carefully staged and incited a near-riot, whipping up the people against the Sorcerers to drive these new ones out just as the old ones were. The old ward that once stopped a mob was restored, for it was an ancient magic that was still in place and had not deteriorated over the centuries.

In desperation, the Tower met in secret and reached an agreement with the King of Sulasia, Ulan the Wise. The Sorcerers would be permitted to return to their ancestral seat and return to their lives of study and contemplation. The Crown would protect the Tower and the order from the priests and the people. But in recompense, the King demanded that the Sorcerers perform certain tasks for the crown which their Goddess did not deem unsuitable, tasks that the order of Karas would not do themselves, for in their arrogance they felt themselves above the Crown. The Sorcerers would also rise up in defense of Suld itself, should the city ever be attacked. The treaty was sealed, and Malin Trent returned in secrecy to the Tower.

After Ulan's army put down the riot and dispersed the people, the Tower quickly proved to the Ulan how incredibly useful they could be. Ulan had inherited a weak nation from his father, for with the punishment of the priests so long ago added to the taboo of housing the Sorcerers, Sulasia did not have the political or military power of its neighbors. Draconia, which was one nation at that time, was at that time preparing to invade Sulasia for its rich farming land and deep harbored city of Suld. The kingdom of Tharan, which had been to the east and on the land that Aldreth now stood upon, also was preparing to attack the weakened nation. In a concerted effort, the two nations invaded Sulasia and found undefended territory, for Ulan had pulled all his troops back to Suld, to defend the ancient and proud city against invasion. The two armies reached the vast plain on which Suld stood, and advanced in total confidence that the city was theirs for the taking.

Bound by their treaties with the King, the Sorcerers of the Tower rose up and smote the armies with their magical power. Eron had shuddered at that point in the story, only saying that the destruction wrought by the Tower was horrific. Neither army managed to get a single man to the walls of the city. The army of Tharan was totally annihilated, and the Draconian forces escaped with only one tenth of their total manpower. And that small fragment itself was destroyed when the Sulasian army flooded out of Suld and caught up with them on the south side of the Scar. The natural boundary proved to be the doom of the fleeing enemy, who, in their mad rush to get over to the safety of Draconia, broke the bridge under their weight and doomed those behind them. After the slaughter, Sulasia quietly marched into Tharan, whose king was killed at Suld, and annexed the entire nation. Ulan also captured and annexed the southern marches of Draconia below the rugged hills that marked the western edge of the Skydancer Mountains.