"He also demanded them to send the message again, to make sure they got it correctly. After they confirmed it, he went into one of his rages. He replied that he didn't send me here to learn Sorcery, and even though he understood the need for me to learn how to control it, that I'd better be getting the education the Tower promised to give me. He told Jervis that if they didn't take me out of the Initiate and put me in normal classes, he'd drag me back home."
"That," Tarrin said after a moment, "could be a problem."
"Slightly," she grunted.
"How long do you think it's going to take for them to make that decision?" Allia asked.
"It's going to depend on how effective the Tower is at stalling," Keritanima replied. "They obviously want me in the Initiate, and they'll play their own game to keep me there. It's going to be a dance between the Crown and the Tower until one of them blinks. After that, things will definitely happen. So this means that we have to act before things get dangerous enough to slow us down."
"We're moving up?" Tarrin asked.
Keritanima nodded. "I want to go visit the cathedral in three days," she told him. "And we can't be delicate about it, either. It's going to be an old fashioned robbery, Tarrin. We're going to steal anything we can carry out of there that'll be useful to us." She put the papers on his desk. "And because that will cause a row, we can't keep it anywhere obvious. So I'd like you to steal a good waterproof tent and several chests, and try to sneak them into the courtyard inside the maze. We'll cover the chests with the tent canvas and camoflage it so anyone looking in from the top of the Tower can't see it."
"They can't see it anyway," Allia told her. "I've been to the top of the Tower, and the courtyard isn't visible from it. You can't even see the statue."
"As tall as it is, I'm surprised," Keritanima said sincerely. "I'd have thought that anyone could just look right down into it. What can you see?" she asked curiously.
"Nothing, just hedgerows," Allia replied. "It's like there isn't a courtyard."
"Allia, the courtyard is too large," Keritanima protested. "You have to be able to see it."
"Maybe not," Tarrin said cautiously.
"What?"
"Maybe they can't see it," he said.
"Tarrin, how could they miss something like that?" the Wikuni demanded.
"Maybe it doesn't want to be seen," he said after a brief hesitation. "There's something magical about that place, Kerri. I think all three of us agree to that." Both of them nodded in agreement. "So maybe the place hides itself. It's obvious that nobody knows that it's there. Or at least nobody bothers to visit it."
"You mean that someone or something went out of its way to create a place that nobody can find?"
"I found it," Tarrin said calmly. "Maybe it's just someplace that a human couldn't find. Maybe a Sorcerer used a weave from the flows of Mind that hides the place, and since I'm not human, it didn't affect me."
Keritanima gave him a very penetrating look, then she snorted. "I don't think I like where this is going, so I think I'll drop it," she told him tersely.
"Why not?"
"Alright, since you want to press it, think a minute. Allia said she couldn't see the place from the top of the Tower."
"That's right," Allia said. "I couldn't see anything."
"So, Allia isn't human," Keritanima pointed out. "So there goes that theory. I can't explain it, and I don't think I want to know how, but I'll accept that something is hiding that place."
Tarrin thought that he knew, but he wasn't sure if he should tell them. Even his friends knew his sanity was tenuous, and if he started claiming that he had spoken with the Goddess of the Sorcerers, they'd probably go running for the Keeper. And he really wouldn't blame them. He was pretty sure that she kept the courtyard hidden, but he didn't know why, and he wasn't sure why she allowed him to find it.
"Alright, but do we want to depend on that?" Tarrin asked. "My parents live in the city. I'm going to go visit them tonight. If I ask, they'll probably let us bring the booty there."
"No," Keritanima said. "The Priests may be able to track it down with magic if we hide it in the city. But I'll bet my furry tail that their magic won't penetrate the Ward surrounding the grounds, so they won't know where to look to find what we steal."
"That's a very good point," Allia agreed. "If we have to live with the Ward, we may as well use it in our favor for a change."
"Just so," Keritanima agreed with a smile.
"Well, I was going to tell you this later, but since you're here, it may as well be now," Tarrin began. "I went to the library where they hold all the real books on magic, Kerri, and your idea of researching may come up empty."
"Why?"
"Because the Ancients wrote everything down in the language of the Sha'Kar," he told her. "Nobody knows it anymore. Jula told me that the Tower already has almost everything the Ancients knew in their library, but there's nobody left that can read it."
Keritanima scratched her muzzle absently. "So they lied in the lesson where they said the Ancients took everything with them."
"Probably not," Allia said. "They very well may have. What the Tower managed to gather is probably the books that the Ancients missed. It may be everything they knew, and it was just copies of what was already here."
"True," the Wikuni agreed. "So, it's a bust?"
Tarrin nodded. "Everything of importance to the Ancients was written in Sha'Kar, I was told."
"That's not what I was after, Tarrin."
"No, but Jula's talk made it apparant that the katzh-dashi had already tried what you wanted to try," he told her. "She described the Sha'Kar from what she said were records left behind that they could read. I think that's a pretty good indication that they'd researched as much of the Ancients as they could too, because she said the Lorefinders have been trying to break the code of the Sha'Kar writing for a thousand years."
"Hmm," the Wikuni pondered, eyes dropping to the floor as her fox ears ticked reflexively. "I think you're right, brother dear," she said absently. "I didn't know about the Sha'Kar books."
"I didn't either. I think the Tower keeps them a secret," Tarrin replied.
"That, or it's something that nobody talks about," Keritanima added. "I've noticed that there are alot of things that people don't talk about around here." She stood up. "That makes the cathedral that much more important," she announced. "More and more, it looks like almost everything we'll be able to use will be what we can take out of there."
"If there's anything in there at all," Tarrin added.
"Don't be a pessimist," Keritanima chided.
"You shouldn't pin all our hopes on a cloud," Tarrin returned.
"I'm not, believe me," she said. "If we can't find anything useful in the cathedral, then we're just going to run. We'll have to take our chances."
"You keep talking more and more about running," Allia noticed.
"That's because I have no intention of going back to Wikuna," she said bluntly. "It's either the throne or the grave for me, and the throne will lead to the grave. I have a much better chance here."
"You're Wikuni, Kerri," Tarrin said. "That makes you very easy to find."
"True, but I'm getting as far away from the sea as possible." That sounded as unnatural as one could get to Tarrin. Wikuni were born on the deck of a clipper, and to ply the seas and trade was all that their race lived for. "My father's reach shortens considerably once you lose sight of the sea. Besides, the only place we can go to escape the Tower is Allia's desert. The Selani are the only people that can protect us."