James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"She doesn't know her way around yet," Janette countered artfully. For such a young girl, not even ten, she seemed to know exactly what to say to play her parents like a lute. "And besides, she was sick yesterday. I don't want her getting tired."

"I think the cat can walk on her own, pumpkin," her father said, trying a different tactic. "And it's important for animals to exercise while they're getting well. It makes them get well faster."

"Really?" she said. "Then I'll take her out into the garden after breakfast."

"That may be a good idea," he said.

"Maybe it will run away," the mother murmured under her breath to her husband.

"I think I'll call you Shadow, little kitty," the little girl said with a smile, handing him a piece of breakfast sausage.

"Don't get too attached to her, pumpkin," the father warned. "I'll ask around and find out who owns her today. She may be going home."

"Then I'll go visit her," she said diffidently.

But the trip "home" never materialized that day. It was spent with the little girl coddling him outrageously, walking with him around the gardens, and inside it was a game with a little wooden doll tied to a string. Despite having a human awareness, the Cat in him absolutely could not resist attacking that little wooden doll, and Janette was inexhaustible in her desire to drag it for him. They played like that for hours and hours, until a call to dinner interrupted the game.

The humans ate as Tarrin laid sedately by the fireplace in the main room. He was content. And he was content to stay where he was as long as he could.

"What do you mean , you can't find him!" the Keeper, Myriam Lar, raged to her Council. It was the day after Tarrin's flight from the Tower. The Keeper had already made some very grim plans for Jesmind, though from what she'd managed to piece together, it wasn't really anyone's fault. Jesmind happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even Tarrin's parents agreed that she had made no attempt to fight, only to try to reason with Tarrin. "That weave was to hide him from his enemies, not to hide him from us !"

But Tarrin's disappearance was of the most dreadful concern. They needed him. Allia wouldn't be enough, they needed him. And now he was out in the city, either trying to kill himself or trying to kill everyone he could get his paws on. Either way, it was a dangerous and deadly situation.

"The tracking weaves we spun into the amulet aren't working, Keeper," Amelyn Storm, the Mind seat, said bluntly. "We don't know why. We know they're still active, but we can't get a direction out of them. As to the non-detection, that's working, and working too well. It's blocking some of the indirect weaves we've been trying to use to find him. We never expected to have to rely on them to find him," she said quickly to head off the comment. "That's what the tracking weave was for."

"Has anyone tried weaving a spell to find the Adamantite that the amulet is made of?" Koran Dar, the Amazon Air seat, offered in his quiet voice. Koran Dar was the youngest of them, but he was a very wise man, and his voice was heeded when he bade to speak.

"I tried that," Darrian Goldaxe, the Dal Earth seat, growled in his rocky voice. If anyone could find a metal, it was Darrian, who was much like the earth, and the Earth-God for whom he was named. He had a special affinity for metals, which was the main reason he sat on the Earth Seat. "I think the Were-cat's magical nature is masking it."

"That's possible," Ahiriya grunted. She too was named for a Goddess, the Goddess of Fire. It was amazing to the Keeper how some parents just seemed to know what their children would be when they were born…or maybe the children, with such important names, drifted towards the significance of them. "That may also be why our finding weave isn't working."

"Keeper," Amelyn said quietly, "we should leave open the option of finishing him. If he goes on a rampage, he could kill hundreds of people."

"Then let him," she growled. "He's too important, Amelyn. That Death spell was only set in place should he fall into the hands of the katzh-maedan . If he leaves the city, then we may have to use it, but not until then."

"As you decide, Keeper, but keep in mind that he may already be mad. And I can't undo his madness."

"I'm aware of the limitations, Amelyn," Myriam said. Because Tarrin wasn't human, it rendered him almost totally immune from Mind weaves woven by those not of his race. It had to do with thought; since he wasn't human, he didn't think in the same way that humans did, and that made his mind closed to those weaves that the Mind affluents used. But in this case, that was a liability. It removed the Tower's options of simply controlling him through Sorcery, or curing or holding off his incipient madness.

"With all due respect, Keeper," Jinna Brent, the fox-faced Shacean Water seat said in her accented voice, "but Tarrin, he may not be the one, no? It could still be the Selani, or the Wikuni. Or maybe one we have not found."

"I'm almost positive it's him," she said, tired of this old argument. "What little information we have to go on fits him almost perfectly."

"But he is too much trouble, no? Already he causes us grief. Maybe another would do, yes? The woman Were-cat, she is still here. It would not be hard."

"And are you going to volunteer?" Myriam asked icily. It was answered with silence. "Tarrin had a very strong mind, and it seems like it was too much for him. How powerful do you think your will is, Jinna? Amelyn? Koran Dar? Nathander?" She crossed her arms under her breasts. "You all know that the one has to be powerful in Sorcery, and if it's not him, then it might have to be one of us."

"Better him than me," Darrian growled.

Myriam grunted. "Have the city guards tripled," she said. "Have them look for him, and for any stray black cats they find. He has to be hiding somewhere in the city, and we have to find him before he either goes berzerk, kills himself, or tries to flee."

Tarrin was more or less adopted into the house of Tomas the merchant, his wife Janine, and their daughter Janette, because Tomas the merchant couldn't find the missing owner. There was also Nanna the maid, Dernan the butler, and Deris the cook, and the uncountable ladies that made up Janine's social circle.

It was a large house, with three stories and a basement, filled with expensive furniture, silk buntings, and intricate tapestries, and where Arakite rugs laid thickly on the floor. It was the domain of Janine the wife, and she ran it like a little general. Everything had a place, and it was kept in strict order. Even the dust was strictly arranged by size and consistency before Nanna had a chance to come by and sweep it up. At first, Janine the wife had no idea where Tarrin would fit into that order. He was a cat, after all, and she had real fear for her expensive tapestries and curtains. But Tarrin solved that problem by remaining as inobtrusive to the suspicious woman as possible. He stayed almost exclusively with Janette, and any time he and Janine the wife shared company, he was careful to remain sedate and quiet. He did not claw the furniture or rip up the tapestries. He did not soil the carpets, and he was the picture of gentility when Janine the wife was entertaining her silk-clad lady friends, playing Tarok or stones. Dernan the cook, Nanna the maid, and most of the ladies absolutely adored Tarrin, and that seemed to grind Janine the wife's gears somewhat. The one thing he absolutely would not do was so much as scratch Janette. Even in his semi-aware state, he understood the calamity that would befall the little girl, should he bite her. So in their long, endless games, he was very, very careful not to even scratch her by accident. If she got too close in the game, he would stop. He would not lick her, nor would he let her anywhere near him either during or after his grooming of himself. He took no chance whatsoever that even the most fleeting contact with his spittle would transform her. He wouldn't put anyone else through the torment he'd suffered, the torment that put him in the house in the first place.