He stopped gawking like a tourist and studied the surface of that huge central spire, easily visible even from that distance to his light-sensitive eyes. He saw what he wanted, a balcony some hundred spans off the ground. That was his way in.
He sprinted silently across the open ground to the smaller tower, then circumnavigated it with an eye out for torches. Once he was on a line with that balcony, he ran across the open area between the two towers. He stopped at the base of it, and it loomed over him. For an irrational moment, he thought it was about to fall over on him, as he looked up to see where the balcony was. he squelched the squeak of surprise at that idea, then, after a few quick looks for wandering patrols, he put his claws into the stone. He didn't want to be discovered hanging off the wall. That would be very inconvenient.
The tower's stones were made of some kind of white marble or granite, and they didn't even have so much as a scratch on them. They fit together so tightly that Tarrin had trouble finding creases to stick his claws, and Tarrin realized that there was no mortar between the blocks. It had to be magic holding the unimaginably huge construction together. It was slow going up the side of the wall, because of the tight fitting stones and no wear which would have given him places to put his claws. It took him nearly an hour to clambor up the one hundred or so spans, and he nearly fell twice. Sweating, exhausted, and with his belly trying to gnaw a hole through his skin, Tarrin got his fingers around the base of the guardrail around the balcony. He hauled himself up onto the balcony with main force, then stopped and got his breath back while looking down over the large open yard at the base of the tower.
He'd made it.
Now he had to get inside. Turning to the door to the balcony, Tarrin turned the latch in his oversized paw and felt the door open. It made no sound, but the glass paned door was pushing up against the drapes that had been drawn over it. He pushed it out as quietly as he could and slithered in through the opening. He found himself in a rather large, lushly appointed bedchamber, complete with a slumbering occupant. It was a woman, by her scent, but there wasn't enough light in the room for him to get the best of looks at her. She stirred slightly as Tarrin closed the door to her balcony. Tarrin wanted to be caught, but he decided that being caught in a woman's bedchamber was not the best way to go about it.
He padded across her carpeted floor as silent as death, then snuck through the door on the opposite wall after opening it to make sure that it wasn't a closet. He found himself in a large hallway that curved very gently to one side, which was illuminated by curious globes that hung from the ceiling, globes that gave off a milky white light, but no obvious heat.
There was nobody to be seen. He couldn't even hear anyone.
He yawned. He wanted to be captured, but there was nobody about to go to the trouble. He was exhausted, and hungry, and filthy, but the only one of those he could remedy was the exhaustion. He'd find some quiet, dark place to lay down for a while, then he'd let himself get caught in the morning, when there were people awake.
It took him only a few minutes to find an empty bedchamber. From the smell of it, this chamber wasn't used by anyone, so he was rather sure that nobody would bother him until he was awake and good and ready to be captured. He took no notice of the room other than its empty smell, then flopped down heavily on a soft feather bed. He didn't care if his filthy clothes were dirtying the covers. He'd made it. He was in the Tower of Sorcery.
Now he felt safe.
Tarrin fell immediately into a deep, dreamless slumber, a look of calm contentment on his face.
To: Title EoF
Chapter 7
Tarrin awoke slowly, and for a moment, he forgot where he was. He was warm and content, and the early summer sun washed through a partially curtained window. As he awoke he wondered why mother hadn't woken him up before now. But the tingling sensation in his tail from where he'd been laying on it brought him back to the present, as did the gnawing hollowness in his belly. He was still filthy and half starved, but at least he was warm and safe. That almost made up for it.
It was an effort to get out of the soft feather bed. Tarrin saw that he was in a very lushly appointed bedchamber, very much like the one that he'd came in through the night before. It had the soft bed, two nightstands to either side of it, a chest for clothes at the foot, a stand for a washbasin, a writing desk in the corner, and an armoire to hang clothes that were too delicate to be folded. There was a small tea table in the corner by the glass-pane door that led to another balcony. The walls were adorned with tapestries, one a simple geometric design that was pleasing to the eye and the other a scene depicting a solitary knight riding his charger across a grassy meadow. He stood by the bed for a moment, feeling a bit dizzy from having to exert himself. Now that he'd made it, he was allowing himself to feel every little ache and feel the weakness of several days with almost no food.
Now to the business of getting himself captured. It was going to be an easy affair, he was certain. All he had to do was go out into the hall and just wander around until he crossed paths with someone. That someone could almost certainly tell him where to go, or maybe that person could direct him to Dolanna. Either way, he would be more than satisfied. He had no idea if Dolanna even knew he was still alive, and he wondered if she was worrying about him. He'd been too busy with Jesmind, and then with getting away from Jesmind, to even consider what had happened to his friends after he'd left them on the other side of the river. He hoped that they'd not had the same trouble he'd had with Goblinoids, and that their trip to Suld was a quiet one.
Taking a deep breath, Tarrin went up to the door and opened it. Not even approaching the farmers had been quite so difficult. Mainly because he was starving when he approached the farmers, and hunger dulled much of the fear of encountering people. Despite his newfound comfort with what he had become, he was still very much insecure about how others would react to him, and he found himself to be desperately afraid that people would want to have nothing to do with him now that he was no longer human. Tarrin was used to being alone much of the time, but before he always had his family. Now he had nobody, and that frightened him more than a little. Being alone in a crowd was the worst way to be alone, because one had a whole group of people around to remind one of just how alone one was.
The hall was quiet and deserted. Tarrin could smell traces of human scent, which were rather fresh. Though the hall was empty now, people did come down it with fair regularity. He had a choice of left or right. Since it really didn't matter to him which way to go, Tarrin went in the direction that seemed to have the stronger human smell, which was to the left. The hallway curved ever-so-gently to the right, so he couldn't see very far down it to look for people.
Tarrin's first encounter in the Tower was almost by surprise. It was with a rather small woman wearing a simple gray dress with a white apron over it. She was obviously a maid or servant. She came up the hall in the direction that he was walking, and stopped dead when she saw him. He was about to greet her, but she gave out a shrill scream that hurt Tarrin's ears, turned the other way, and ran for all she was worth.
Tarrin sighed audibly, and then he couldn't help but laugh. All the trouble he'd gone through to get here, and now nobody wanted to talk to him. He couldn't get himself caught.
He didn't smell the two humans until they were nearly up the stairs that descended to his right. They were both young, not even twenty, and it seemed obvious to Tarrin that they had come in response to the woman's scream. There was a young man and a young woman. The young man was wearing a pair of simple brown wool trousers and a blue shirt, and the young woman was wearing a plain red dress, devoid of any adornment. They were both attractive young humans, the man with brown hair and dark eyes, and the woman with black hair and grayish eyes that stood out. They both gaped at him in shock, then they too turned to run back down the stairs.