The Keeper leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes. The lunch bell had just sounded on the grounds, and the Council looked a bit harried. It was real work for them to use their power to control Tarrin's, so he could do what the Lorefinders asked. "I think this is a good stopping point," she said. "We've made real progress today."
"Yes," a dark-haired Sorceress, Lilenne, said. She was the Mistress Loremaster, the lead of that organization of knowledge-seeking katzh-dashi. She was a Shacean, with a thin, graceful neck and a swallow's eyes. She was pretty, but there was a sharpness to her features that Tarrin found a bit unnerving. She looked like a bird of prey. "We have made good progress, yes? I think we can find a control solution for you, Tarrin. Maybe something that you can even use for yourself to give you more time, yes."
"I'd appreciate it," Tarrin said sincerely. "I can't learn if I can't use the Weave, and I can't get out of here if I can't learn."
"Yes, well, a solution, we will work on that for you, yes. Have no worry. I notice you use our library."
"It's a good way to study what I can, Mistress."
"A good attitude, yes," she said with a hawkish smile. "Come to the library tonight. A book, I will give to you, on High Sorcery. Maybe it will help."
"Is that wise, Lilenne?" the Keeper asked.
"High Sorcery, it is his domain, Keeper," she replied calmly. "If he can access it alone, then he should learn as much about it as possible, because nobody will be there to help him. Mistakes, it will help him avoid them. Best he be armed with everything he can, yes?"
"You're the Lorefinder, Lilenne," Amelyn told her. "We will accede to your judgement in the matter."
"Tomorrow," she told Tarrin, looking at him, "be here at sunrise. We will keep working."
"Yes, Mistress Lilenne," he said respectfully.
"You are excused, Initiate," the Keeper told him. "You have done well today."
"Thank you," he said, scooting off the table.
It wasn't as long as he thought it would be, but he definitely felt it. He was tired, both from effort and from fear. He was afraid of Sorcery, because he knew what was waiting for him if he was flooded. That pain was something nobody could ever get used to, and it was pain that he would avoid at all costs. Only if threatened with more pain than he would feel tearing himself away from the Weave would he subject himself to that kind of punishment. The morning of feeling it right on the edge of him had exacted a toll, and he felt drained by the time he walked out the door.
He thought about the Goddess' riddle for him, and its solution. So she had worked a way around the restriction for her people, but why was it so important to him that she would send him off to find out why? It really didn't make much sense. After all, he never intended to become katzh-dashi, and it wasn't like that would do him any good anyway. Maybe she was just testing him, to see how observant or how smart he was. Maybe she wanted him to know for some other reason, something that he couldn't comprehend. The Goddess was obviously trying to carefully set him up for something, but unlike the katzh-dashi, he trusted the Goddess. If she wanted him to do something for her, he probably would.
Miranda's wise words about a person occassionally having to give up personal need to fulfill the needs of others rang in his mind for some reason. Maybe the Goddess needed something from him, and because he was one of her children, he would have to try to fulfill it for her.
Maybe everything she was doing, and everything around him, was preparing him for the choice that she said he would have to make. And that choice would involve whose needs he would strive to fulfill.
The thought occupied his mind as he went to the kitchens and fixed himself a plate for lunch, then sat down in the small Inititate's dining hall and pondered on it. Because he was so preoccupied, Dar managed to sit down at his table before he scented or noticed the young man, and that startled him. His claws were out and halfway across the table before the young man flinched, but they stopped well short of his nose.
"Don't do that!" Tarrin gasped as he pulled his paw back. "Never sneak up on me, Dar! It's dangerous!"
"I didn't realize you weren't paying attention!" Dar objected. "By the Scar, Tarrin, you're hard enough to sneak up on as it is, and I've seen what you do when you're surprised! Do you think I'd do it to you on purpose?"
Tarrin gave him a look, then laughed ruefully. "No, I guess you wouldn't," he agreed. "How is class?"
Dar gave a sour sound. "It's like trying to grab smoke," he complained. "I can feel it out there, but I just can't seem to find it."
"It was the same for me," he said. "Just stick with it. It'll come to you."
"I hope so. It's aggravating. And Keritanima doesn't help. She makes it look easy."
"Huh?"
"She was standing in the hall practicing her weaves as we came down the hall to our practice rooms," he complained. "She's only just begun the Red, but she throws weaves around like a full katzh-dashi. It's really annoying."
"Kerri is, special," Tarrin chuckled. "I think she's a natural."
"That's what my teacher calls her," Dar agreed. "But she uses the term daughter for some reason. She always calls Keritanima 'that lucky daughter'. I'm not sure what it means."
"Me either," Tarrin told him. "The katzh-dashi use alot of strange terms that only they understand."
"No doubt," Dar grunted. "I talked to Allia this morning."
"Oh? And where is the wound?"
Dar laughed. "She's not like that anymore," he grinned. "She looked haggard. Did you keep her up last night?"
"We were doing something," he said calmly, but the direct look in Tarrin's eyes made Dar nod knowingly.
"Speaking of something, I also talked to Tiella this morning too," he said. "I think there's something wrong with her."
"Why do you say that?"
"She's beet-red," he said. "Does she have a chill?"
Tarrin laughed. "No, she has a little problem with modesty," he replied. "She likes you, and it mortifies her that friends see her without any clothes on."
"Is that all?" he asked. "We have communal baths in Arkis. I'm not used to that kind of a reaction."
"She's from a little, very straight-laced and highly moral village, Dar," he said. "Just seeing a woman's bare knee is a scandal retold for years there."
"How barbaric. Were you like that?"
Tarrin shook his head. "My mother is Ungardt, and my father is from Suld. They're a bit more cosmopolitan, so even before this happened," he said, holding up his paw, "I had a little more open viewpoint about that kind of thing."
"Strange," he mused.
"Truly," Tarrin agreed.
"She likes me, you say? We barely know each other."
"She's a good judge of people, Dar," he said mildly.
"I must say, she's very cute. I wonder if I could convince her to go for a walk in the garden with me."
Tarrin didn't say anything, and Dar missed his grin. "What did she have to say?"
"Not much," he replied. "She hasn't found anything out about what you asked her to find. Not yet. She said that they've been too busy to really say anything to her."
That, Tarrin could understand. "Well, at least she's keeping me posted," he said.