He just wondered how long their giving moods were going to last.
The meal to which they went at lunch looked more like a banquet, given the number of people that were there. All his friends were there, naturally, but there were also others there. Ianelle attended with her Council, and Jenna's Council was also present. There were a few Sorcerers Tarrin didn't know there that Dolanna told him he had known, the Lord General of the Knights, an elderly man named Darvon, and a few of the Knights with which they said he'd been very good friends, and there was also a merchant family from town present that Tarrin was told were very, very good friends of both him and his family. Tarrin couldn't remember any of them except the little girl, Janette. Seeing her brought several flashes of memory to him, the strangest of which was looking up at her like she was some kind of a giant. The little girl, about nine or so with dark curly hair and wearing a very fancy lace-lined satin dress, invoked any number of very unusual feelings in him, a powerful protectiveness paramount among them. Tarrin knew that he looked at Janette like a daughter, like a member of the family, but he couldn't remember why he felt like that, when he met her, or how long he'd known her.
Tarrin felt a little lost again as name after name was given to him, face after face passed by him that he was told he had once known, yet now couldn't remember any of them except Janette. He sat rather firmly entrenched between Kimmie and Jesmind, and the two Were-cat females made him feel rather stifled. He felt again the loss of his memory as he looked out over the many people, knowing that he'd once known almost all of them, knowing that he'd once known the Tower grounds like the back of his hand. It was a strange feeling to see them, to know that he'd once known them, but have no memory of them. It was a helpless feeling, an aggravating feeling, and those were feelings that Tarrin did not feel often at all.
But the others didn't let him dwell on it too much. During and after the meal, they came over and talked with him, smiling and acting in a reassuring manner, trying to make conversation without bringing up the past. It wasn't easy for them, and it was plain on their faces that the way he acted now was much different from the way he'd acted before. It seemed to puzzle them somewhat… they'd been ready to see him as a human and knew he'd lost his memory, but a change in personality was something that they hadn't expected. They did cope, however, trying to be light and chatty, but without his memory, there was little they could really talk about outside his impressions of the Sha'Kar and the Tower and the weather. And those subjects got old after a while.
At least he wasn't the main focus of attention for long. The Sha'Kar present stole the thunder from Tarrin, at least among the human Sorcerers, and after they came to talk to him, they invariably ended up with the Sha'Kar. Sapphire too attracted a great deal of attention, for though she looked like a rather exotic human, just about everyone in the Tower knew that she was actually a dragon. Sapphire had come over early in the meal and told him that she'd been given a very nice room, and she was going to remain as a biped, as she called it, so as not to panic the city and also because it was much easier for her to move around the Tower grounds in a form for which the grounds and structures had been designed to accommodate. She still had had no luck in magically tracking down her two youngest children, but she was still trying.
After the meal, Jenna basicly thumbed her nose at her secretary, Duncan, who was rattling a sheaf of papers for her to deal with meaningfully and took Tarrin out on a tour of the grounds. They went alone, and as she showed him around, from the gardens to the kitchens to the library to the Heart, the center of the Tower, to the training grounds of the Knights, they talked. She told him all about everything that had happened to her and their parents during the time he'd forgotten, told him about the tutor that had died in a Troll raid on Aldreth, and their move to Suld. Then she told him about her time in Ungardt after the Doomwalker attacked them, her getting to know their mother's side of the family, and then her crossing over and becoming a Weavespinner. Then she described the move back, the battle at Suld, and her eventual rise to power as the Keeper of the Tower in Suld.
"We all thought that Myriam was really sick," she explained as they walked along the pristine pathways of the gardens, a place that was much cooler than the other parts of the Tower. Jenna had told him that a magic spell was placed over the gardens that kept them at a level temperature all the time, making them delightfully cool in the summer and nice and warm in the winter. "She lost alot of weight and she looked really pale, and she was coughing all the time. After she stepped down, she told me that her sickness was just a spell that Duncan had cast on her to make her look sick, and give her a valid reason to step down. It was as much a surprise to me as it was everyone else when she literally hand-picked me to succeed her."
"I didn't think it worked like that."
"It doesn't," Jenna chuckled. "The Council is supposed to choose the next Keeper, and the Council did object. But then the Goddess manifested directly in the Council chambers and told them in no uncertain terms that I was her choice. Nobody objected after that."
"It must be amazing, having a god talking to you that way," Tarrin mused.
"Mother doesn't really seem like a god most of the time," Jenna said as she ducked under a low branch from a cherry tree that was hanging over the path. "She seems more like a friend than a god. It makes it really easy to talk to her, and in a way, I guess it makes it easier for me to follow her orders."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, if she came down with flashes of lightning and all that fanfare, I'd be too afraid of her," she explained. "She's more personable than that, but I never forget that she is the Goddess. It's hard to explain."
"You obey her because you love her, not because you're afraid of her," he said sagely, then he blinked. Why did he say that?
"Exactly," she agreed. "So, what's it like?"
Tarrin knew what she meant. "I really can't say," he replied. "Since I don't remember anything from before, I don't have anything to compare it to."
"I guess I should have realized that," Jenna chuckled.
"What's it like being Keeper?"
"Well, everyone bows to me all the time, and that annoys me," she said. "And you wouldn't believe how much paperwork there is to do. I never dreamed how much time I'd spend sitting at a desk reading papers. Kings and queens may rule the land, but the paper rules them ."
"Ban paper."
Jenna laughed. "I've been sorely tempted, but then Duncan would be dropping stone tablets on my desk, and that would murder the finish."
Tarrin chuckled. "Imagine trying to store them."
"I'd have stone tablets stacked up like bricks," Jenna said, holding her arms before her to emphasize the image. "They'd fill up my office until I had nothing but a little hole in the stone."
"You could build little houses out of them. Not only would you be storing your records, you'd be housing the homeless."
"At least until I needed it back," Jenna laughed.
"What exactly do you do as Keeper?"
"Well, most of it is just diplomacy," she answered. "I answer flowery letters from kings and queens with similarly flowery replies. Sometimes I have to go to the palace and talk to the regent, because of the treaties between Suld and the Tower, and the rest of it is just administration of the Tower. I have to direct the Sorcerers in their tasks, which is kinda silly since they already know what to do, and I send Sorcerers out on missions out into the countryside sometimes."