James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"Goddess!" she said in a choked, breathless voice. "What did you hit me with?"

"My foot," he said calmly. "I'm alot stronger than I look, Allia. I tried to warn you."

"So you did," she wheezed. "I will listen to you next time."

Two instructors and a Sorceress came over. "Are you alright?" one of them asked.

"I will be in a moment," she said in a breathless voice. "You pack quite a punch, friend Tarrin."

"Maybe too much of one," the instructor said. "It will be very hard to train you when you have such a strength advantage."

"I can be careful," Tarrin said.

"It isn't the same," the man said. "You have to learn by doing, and doing your best. If you pull punches in training, you'll not learn as well as you could."

"I think that the Tower has something that could even things," the Sorceress said. "I'll make a few inquiries. I believe that we have a magical object that will augment the user's strength. Would that make it right to train him?"

"Would that give the wearer the same resilience as Tarrin?" the instructor asked. "Great strength does more than let you hit hard. It also gives you the ability to absorb blows. It has to be the same."

"I had never considered that," Allia confessed, speaking in a more normal voice. "We are a strong people, but we teach that speed can overwhelm power. Speed is more important than power."

"I've always believed that you need a balance of the two," the man told her. "Speed alone and power alone aren't enough. You need both. You'll find that most of the toughest men are also among the strongest. You can use that power to defend as easily as to attack."

"That's what the Ways teach," Tarrin told him, helping Allia to her feet. She put a hand delicately to her belly, but said nothing. The Sorceress stepped forward and put her own hand on Allia's stomach. The Selani looked about ready to kill the woman, but said nothing. "You've got a very nasty bruise forming here, and that blow injured the muscles in your abdomen. You're going to be very tender unless you let me heal this," she said.

"Then do so," Allia said in a calm voice, a voice that Tarrin could tell was tightly controlled. The Sorceress put her hand under Allia's baggy shirt, and Tarrin felt that sensation of drawing in again. Allia sucked in her breath at the icy touch of Sorcerer's Healing.

After that, Tarrin looked up. "It's getting late, and this is a good place to stop."

"Yes," she said. "I learned much today. I became overconfident, and I paid the price," she told him, putting her hand on her stomach. "I underestimated you. Tomorrow I will not do so again."

Tarrin winced. She'd beaten him almost at will all day. He'd gotten in that one shot because she didn't know the nature of her opponent. He had no doubt that she wouldn't approach him the same way again.

"But I am impressed. Your Ungaardt Ways are effective, but I can tell that you feel uncomfortable with them."

"I wasn't this way when I learned," he told her. "I'm still getting used to it."

"Yes, that would change things, would it not?" she observed. "I will train you in the Dance," she said. "They are more suited for you than your Ways, anyway. And I will teach you a civilized tongue," she added. "If we are to be friends, then we should be able to speak in a way that pleases us both."

"I won't mind," he told her.

"My language is not easy to learn," she warned.

"If we have anything, Allia, it's time," he said.

"Very well. Then let us begin now. Greetings. Azra shan ."

Tarrin's life settled into a daily routine at that point, as he became settled into life in the Tower. The trials of the road faded from his worries, but the ever-present threat of Jesmind never went far from his mind. In the morning before breakfast, his time was spent with Dar, as they talked, and dreamed, and did the things that friends did. Tarrin liked the dark-skinned young man a great deal, for he was witty, friendly, and was very intelligent and mature for his age. Tarrin had no doubt that Dar would succeed at whatever he decided to do with his life, because he was so smart. After breakfast, and for the majority of the day, he belonged to Allia. Dar didn't seem to mind the Selani monopolizing Tarrin's time, for he'd listened and understood when Tarrin explained to him that Allia had nobody else. Dar himself had many other friends among the Novices, but Allia had only Tarrin. Just like him, the others were afraid of her. They feared her because she broke one boy's arm for patting her on the backside during dinner. Allia did not like to be touched by strangers, and much like Tarrin, she was not afraid to make it well known in any manner she chose.

After lunch, Tarrin and Allia went to the field, to train. That was, Allia trained Tarrin. She was quite a master of her fighting art, which she called ji'shen , which meant "the Dance" in the Selani tongue. They did indeed have an aritfact to even things between them, a pair of gloves made from a Troll's hide, which granted the wearer the proportionate strength of a Troll. The gloves smelled absolutely hideous, and the time he was on the field taught him how to ignore his nose as much as he learned the flowing, viper-like forms of Allia's fighting style. While they fought, Allia continued to teach him the words of the Selani tongue. Tarrin was a very bright young man, but he had a special talent for languages. He picked up on her native tongue quickly, and she was amazed at how precise his memory was. She only had to explain something to him once, or tell him the meaning of a word once, and he remembered it.

After they trained, they both found a way to slip away before dinner, and they met again in the hidden courtyard in the middle of the hedge maze. There, she continued teaching him not only her language, but a very complicated hand-gesture language that her people had created, so that they could communicate without speaking. It was technically a violation of her sacred vows to teach him that, she admitted, but she had no doubt that it would never go past him. She had placed her trust in him, and he in her.

They would then go to dinner, and afterward, they would retire to the baths. At that time of the evening, they were literally deserted. It was not even staffed by Novices. Here, his training yet continued, or they simply talked.

They were there on that rainy summer evening, listening to the rumbles of thunder that filtered through the thick walls of the Tower. Tarrin was laying on the stone on his belly, arms folded up under his chin, eyes closed as he enjoyed a backrub from his companion. The fact that both of them were nude, and that she was sitting on his backside, never occurred to either of them.

It was strange, how they had come together, he mused silently as her delicate yet strong four-fingered hands worked a knot out of his muscle. They shared a friendship that had become shockingly deep in an amazing amount of time. Much as he'd started to feel about Jesmind, Tarrin knew in his heart that he could trust his white-haired friend with absolutely any secret, and that it would go no further. He had told her secrets, things that he'd never told another person, not even Dolanna. She was the only living being aside from himself and Jesmind that knew what had happened between them. The whole story. He confided his deep-most private self to her, and she helped him talk out many of the strange impulses and feelings he had from time to time, which were extensions of the Cat which was inside him.

"Keep your tail still," she chided.

"What?"

"Keep your tail still," she repeated. "I'm sitting on it, and every time you move it, it presses up against-"

"Alright," he cut her off, and she laughed her silvery little laugh. In that respect, she was even worse than Jesmind ever was. She would talk about things that would make him die of mortification without so much as batting an eyelash. Where Jesmind would not do it in public, Allia would. He didn't want to know what his tail was doing, because she'd give him an explicitly graphic description of the whole thing. The fact that he was not ashamed of his body, yet he could still be embarassed by talk, amused her greatly for some reason. "I swear, sometimes you're worse than a wife," he said.