Inside were four things. A large tooth of some animal, the sharp fang nearly as long as Tarrin's hand, a brilliantly glittering piece of quartz crystal he'd once found out along the streambed of Two Step Creek, a twisted nugget of pure gold, also found along the creekbed, and the wing. It was a large gossamer wing, looking like the wing of a dragonfly. But this dragonfly would have been nearly a span long. The wing was a bit longer than Tarrin's hand, thin and delicate looking, but Tarrin knew it was very hard and rather tough. It would also bend before it broke. It was translucent, and when one looked through it, it scillinted and reflected in all the colors of the rainbow. Tarrin had often spent hours gazing at the wing, mesmerized by the colors, and dreaming about what animal or creature had once owned it. Tarrin had found it out in the woods when he was eight years old. It was the first thing that had went into the box, and it was the only thing that had been in the box the entire time he'd kept the box. The wing was the reason he had the box; he wanted to hide something that incredible, put it where nobody could find it. He had owned it longer than anything else, and it was very special to him.

He didn't want to leave the box here. It was as much a representation of his life here as it was a possession. It had been filled with his most secret secrets through the years, and the child in him didn't want anyone else to come along and find it. He remembered Dolanna saying he could bring personal effects. Well, this was the most personal effect he had.

He packed everything back into the box carefully, and then used scraps of wool from his mother's work room to pad the contents. They'd never been jostled around, and he didn't want to run the risk that age would make the wing brittle. After making sure that everything was well protected, he closed the box and set the tiny latch on the front. The box had been a gift to him from his mother, and she'd always wondered what had happened to it. Tarrin had let her believe that he'd lost it. He went back out to the horse, noticing that it was starting to get dark, then packed the box deep into his pack, where it wouldn't have to be removed to get at anything else. Then he locked the front door, got on the horse, and hurried back to the village before it got too dark to ride.

It had been a quiet, emotional night. Tarrin had spent most of the night with his family, just sharing their company this one last time before he left to go to Suld. It wasn't an unhappy time. As the hours went by, the excitement of doing what he had always wanted to do began to take hold of him, and Tarrin's leaving was something that the family was already prepared to face. He was up well past a reasonable hour, listening to Jak Longbranch, Walten's brother, playing his lute and talking. Tarrin's departure had quickly circulated around the village, and everyone in the inn stopped by to wish him good luck at one time or another.

He'd spent some of that time talking to Dolanna, and to Faalken, the knight. He'd asked them about Suld, and they'd spent quite a while describing the city, one of largest and grandest cities in the Twelve Kingdoms. Dolanna described the Tower, with its six smaller towers surrounding the huge central tower, which rose over the city like a tree in a meadow, how the grounds were surrounded by a magical fence, and enclosed enough land to put ten Aldreths inside comfortably. The Tower was home to more than the Sorcerers. The knights had their academy on the grounds as well, and the Tower ran a school for educating those willing to pay for it. Everyone in the school was considered a Novice, although only a handful out of each major class had the spark to be Sorcerers. Tower educated people had quite an edge on others, so many rich nobles and merchants sent their children there to be educated and gain that edge.

Faalken described the city in a bit more detail, like the massive, grand, breathtaking Cathedral to Karas that was in the center of the city, and the Eight Fountains, one at each compass point, beautiful sculptures set in fountains, many of them rigged to spray water. The most famous was the Fountain of Swans. There were many other landmarks in the city, like the Black Tower, a tower that was once home to a wizard, and now was a cursed place. Many came to look at it, enjoying the perverse thrill of catching glimpses of the hideous things that roamed the tower's halls, and occasionally appeared on the balconies. Faalken had told him that they couldn't leave the tower, but that anyone that went into the tower was putting his life in his own hands. Dolanna had called the things trapped in the tower Demons, and she said that it was the hands of the Gods themselves that trapped them inside.

Dawn came early, but Tarrin was already awake to greet it. He was dressed and packed when Dolanna knocked on his door. She gave him a cursory glance when she saw him fully dressed. "Do you often sleep so little?" she asked.

"I don't sleep too much, no," he replied.

"That will work to your advantage at the Tower," she told him with a smile. "Get your pack and come downstairs. We will eat, and then be off."

Tarrin picked up his two packs, a personal one and one for a pack horse, and then went downstairs. His father was already up, sitting at a table with the knight as Wylan Ren set down plates of fried eggs and bread and bacon. "Morning, Tarrin," Wylan said with a smile as he passed. "I'll bring you some breakfast."

"Thanks, Master Wylan," he said, then he set down his packs and sat beside his father.

"Morning, son," he said. "Sleep well?"

"Well enough," he replied. "You?"

"Your mother kept me awake pretty much all night," he said ruefully. "You warmed up to the idea of going much faster than she did." He took a bite of bread. "Now that you've had a night to think about it, what do you think?"

"I, I think I'd like to know more," he said. "I don't know if it's what I want to do with my life, but looking into the possibilities won't hurt me."

"That's a good attitude," the knight, Faalken, told him. "A man set in stone will break before he can bend." He leaned back in his chair some. "You know, maybe I can convince the Tower to let us borrow you for a while," he thought aloud.

"Borrow?"

"You're Ungardt trained," he said. "There's alot we could learn from our northern neighbors. They fight better than most I've seen. They're not the wild savages people make them out to be."

"Definitely," Tarrin said. "They work very hard to be that good."

Faalken nodded. "I think all the screaming and craziness is more show than anything else. They have a reputation for it, so they have to maintain it." He grinned suddenly.

"A predictable opponent is a defeatable one," Tarrin quoted from his mother's many sayings.

"I see you learned your lessons well," Faalken said shrewdly.

Wylan Ren brought him a platter, and also weak ale for everyone to drink. "Uh, Faalken, I need to ask you about the horse," he said.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Dolanna bought one of the inn's horses for you."

"Well, that's nice and all, but I don't ride very often," he said. "I'm bound to get saddle sore."

"I'm sure Dolanna will take care of it if you start getting raw," he assured him.

"That's a relief," he said, cutting into the eggs.

Dolanna came down with his mother, and they ate breakfast quietly and quickly. Just about the time that Tarrin finished his breakfast, Tiella Ren staggered down the stairs. Tiella was a pretty girl, fifteen years old and with blond hair and blue eyes. She was very petite, even shorter than Dolanna, but had a very generous figure. She was one of the most sought after girls in the village. Every boy in Aldreth sighed and staggered a bit when Tiella Ren walked past. Tarrin had probably talked to Tiella more than any girl in the village, because she was very smart, and she knew that Tarrin didn't have a real interest in her in the way the other boys did. Although she was very pretty, Tarrin thought of her as a friend, not like that. She was wearing a plain wool travelling dress, one of her older ones so that the brown dye had faded, divided at the skirt for riding. She too had a pack with her.