Tarrin laughed. "You should work on a farm," he said. "You do the same things every day, over and over. As soon as you finish it, it has to be done again. It's very monotonous."
"Sounds like torture," he said.
"You get used to it," Tarrin said. "I didn't mind most of the chores. It was something to do." He looked down at his paw idly. "Besides, we had a small farm, and there were four of us, so there wasn't a huge amount of work. We had alot of free time."
"What did you do with it?"
"Hunted, roamed around in the forest, that kind of thing," he said. "My father was a Ranger, so he taught me all about the woods. My mother's Ungardt, so I learned all about fighting from her. That's more or less what I did with my free time."
"I sat and learned numbers, then learned how to cheat spice dealers," Dar said with a grin.
"Must have been boring."
"You have absolutely no idea." He looked around. "Let's go back outside. It's a nice day, and if any Sorcerer decides they need something, they can make us do it. We're the mules in the Tower, and idle mules irritate many of the Sorcerers for some reason."
Tarrin laughed. "Outside sounds like a good idea."
The sky was clear, with the Skybands cutting across the blue in their dull white colors. They went to the massive garden behind the Tower proper, where numerous Novices toiled in the meticulously arranged gardens with gardeners and Initiates supervising them. The garden was in its early summer bloom, and it was a sea of colorful flowers divided by red brick walkways. There were several fountains among the large sections of roses and tulips and numerous other flowers, and they stopped at each one and gazed on the beautiful sculpture that often spouted streams of water. There was also a huge hedge maze behind the flower gardens, and the two of them wandered the pathways of that huge maze for almost the entire afternoon, going well past the point where the pathways were neatly tended.
"Things are getting ragged," Dar noticed.
"I don't think they come in this far," Tarrin replied.
Dar laughed. "Maybe we'll come across the skeleton of the last person who did," he joked.
"It's certainly large enough to get lost in," he said.
"Do we even know where we are?" Dar asked a bit uncertainly.
"I know where I've been," he assured him. "I can smell our trail, so we can just follow that to get out."
After a while, though, Tarrin was getting aggravated. They'd followed every single possible path, and yet they still hadn't found the center. "There has to be a way in," he growled.
"As rough as these hedges are," Dar said, pushing away a branch that quite nearly grew across the entire path, "The way to it may have grown over."
"I think you're right," he agreed. "Let's start looking for holes in the hedge."
After about half an hour, they found it. It was indeed overgrown, and so badly that it literally looked like a wall. They pushed through it, walked down a short path that was similarly choked, and then they found themselves standing in the center.
The hours were worth the effort. There was a fountain in the middle of the large grassy clearing, a fountain that was bright and clean despite the obvious years of neglect. There was a statue in the center of the pristine marble fountain, a statue of a woman of indescribable beauty. The stone was unweathered, and it seemed to literally capture the sparkle in the eye of the long-haired, nude figure. The sculpture was so incredibly detailed that Tarrin could see the individual strands of hair flowing down the back of the statue's shoulders. It stood on a pedestal in the center of the fountain, where small spouts of water filled the small center area with the sound of happily splashing, bubbling water. The figure was in a delicate feminine pose, and its arms were outstretched, as if welcoming them into the clearing. The clearing itself was neat and clean, despite the obvious fact that nobody came into it anymore, with several rose bushes growing to each side of a single solitary bench that sat in front of the fountain. There was a red brick path around the fountain, widened around the bench, running under their feet towards it.
"It's beautiful," Dar whispered.
Tarrin couldn't answer. He approached the rim of the fountain and boldly stepped up onto the lip, then waded through the ankle-deep water. He went right up to the life-sized statue and stared at its intricately detailed face, a beautiful face with elegant cheekbones and almond shaped eyes under very delicate brows. Tarrin reached out and put his paw on the cheek of the statue, just to make sure that it was really stone. Never had he seen such unbelievably detailed sculpture. For an irrational moment, the statue's exquisite figure reminded him of Jesmind, and he wondered if she somehow had something to do with it.
"What are you doing?" Dar asked.
"It's really stone," he told him. "You can see the hairs in her eyebrows."
"It's almost embarassing," Dar said.
"What?"
"That's not all the hair the sculpter made," he said delicately.
Tarrin looked down. "You can see each hair in that too," he said.
Dar blushed.
"What?" he asked. "It's just stone, Dar. I don't think it cares if you look." Tarrin stopped himself. Where did that come from? That sounded just like Jesmind. Had those short days changed him so much?
"Well, it's still improper."
"Don't be such a prude, Dar," he said. "With all the art I saw in the room, I would think that you could appreciate the art of this, even if she is nude."
"Yes, well, I can appreciate the art," he said, "but it's almost too life-like. If you touched that statue in the wrong place, I think it might slap you."
Tarrin rather bluntly placed the palm of his paw against the area of contention. Dar choked a bit, and then he laughed. "No slap," Tarrin said.
"You're fearless," Dar told him.
"No, I'm just not afraid of a piece of marble," he replied.
"Well, you couldn't have touched it in a more sensitive place," Dar said.
"Yes I could have, but the statue was carved with her legs too close together," he said.
"Tarrin!" Dar hissed. "That's nasty!"
"And you've never thought of doing it yourself?" he asked pointedly.
"Yes, well," he said, clearing his throat and turning a bright shade of red. "I never thought to do it to a piece of stone."
"Now you're thinking the right way," Tarrin said, leaving the statue and wading back across the fountain.
"You don't think the same way we do," Dar deduced shrewdly.
"No, I don't," he said calmly. "What I consider modest and improper isn't the same as what you do, Dar. It has to do with what I am." Again, he marvelled at how much like Jesmind he sounded. "This is a very nice place," he said. "That's the most beautiful fountain I've ever seen, and the whole thing is pretty. I could live in here."
"I wonder who keeps it like this, since the opening is so overgrown that it's hidden," Dar wondered aloud.
"Somebody has to," Tarrin agreed. "This place would be a jungle if it wasn't tended. But there are no human smells in here. Not even a trace of one," he told him. "Nobody has been in here in weeks, maybe months. And that's too long for it to look like this."
"Maybe the place is magic," Dar said.
Tarrin considered that, and then he thought about the way he felt in the huge chamber Dar called the Heart of the Goddess. But that same feeling wasn't here. But there was a different feeling here…a feeling of peace. That was the only way to describe it. Standing there, staring at that beautiful statue, Tarrin coudln't deny that there was something very special about this place, something that made him feel very much at peace.