"She married father," Jenna piped in simply. "Father wanted to live here, and mother came with him. She says it's warmer than home."

"I would think that it is," the Sorceress said in a mild, calm voice, touched with amusement. "You are brother and sister?"

"Yes ma'am," Tarrin replied respectfully.

"I can see the resemblence," she said.

"Not many people can," Jenna said impishly.

"On the contrary, I cannot see how someone could not see that you share common blood," the woman countered. She reached into the bodice of her blue dress, and withdrew an amulet made of ivory. It was rather unusual, Tarrin noticed, a circle holding a six-pointed star inside it created by two triangles resting over each other in opposite directions. And inside the six-pointed star was a four-pointed star, its points going in the four compass directions, with concavely curved sides. At the center of that inner star was a small diamond. "Do either of you know what this is?" she asked.

"It's an amulet," Jenna replied.

"Not what it is, child, what the symbol means," the woman elaborated.

"No," they both said, almost in unison.

"It is the symbol of my order," she told them, pulling the chain over her head and holding the ivory object in her hand. "We call it the shaeram. It represent the seven spheres of Sorcery. Earth, air, fire, water, the power of the mind, the power of the Goddess, and the seventh sphere, which is the power of confluence."

"Con-flewence?" Jenna repeated. "I've never heard that word."

"It means the power of joining, of unity," she said with a smile. She held out the amulet to them. "Here, take it. Hold it in your hands, and tell me what you feel."

Jenna took the ivory amulet and silver chain, holding it in her hands and looking at it. "Ouch!" she cried, almost dropping it before grabbing it by the chain. She quickly pawned it off to Tarrin.

"What's the matter?" Tarrin asked quickly.

"It's hot!" she said loudly.

"Hot?" Tarrin said. He put his hand near the amulet. "I don't feel any heat," he said, then he put his hand on it. The instant he did so, it felt like he'd grabbed a piece of stock out of Master Karn's forge. "Ahh!" he hissed, yanking his hand back and shaking it violently to cool it. "How do you wear this thing without getting branded?" he asked the Sorceress crossly. Jenna was blowing on her fingers, giving the woman a baleful look.

"Here, let me see," she said calmly. Jenna presented her hands. Her fingers were red and blistered. "By the Goddess!" the woman said under her breath. "Here, you too, Tarrin Kael," she said, in a commanding voice. Tarrin held out his hand.

His skin was severely blistered wherever it touched the ivory.

"It burned you," she breathed in surprise. She put her hand over Tarrin's seared fingers, and Tarrin suppressed the desire to yank it away when he felt something flow into his hand. The throbbing pain eased, and then was gone, washed away by some sort of sensation that was warm and icy at the same time, and not entirely pleasant. She let his hand go, and he gawked at it. His fingers were smooth, pink skin, and showed no signs that anything had happened to them.

"How did you do that?" he asked in shock as she took Jenna's hands in her own. Jenna yelped and tried to pull away, but the woman's hands were like steel, holding them in an iron grip.

"My name is Dolanna Casbane, a katzh-dashi," she said formally. "What I just did is called healing, and with practice, it is something that both of you will be able to do someday."

They both just stared at her.

"The young one is a bit too young," the knight said.

"No matter," she replied. "I am amazed that neither of them have done anything. She needs instruction before she has an accident." She put the ivory amulet back around her neck, tucking the device back under her bodice.

"What are you talking about?" Tarrin asked.

"Both of you, you have tremendous potential," she said, pursing her lips. Then she noticed the slightly confused looks she was getting. "Both of you have the natural talent to be Sorcerers, to be katzh-dashi," she explained. "Tremendous potential. The shaeram burned you. I have never seen that happen before."

Jenna looked at her a bit fearfully. "What does that mean?"

"That means that both of you must come to the Tower of Six Spires, in Suld, and undergo formal training," she replied. "Soon. Now."

"Now?" Jenna said. "I can't just leave! My parents wouldn't let me, and I don't want to go!"

"Jenna," Tarrin soothed, "calm down." Then he looked at the small woman expectantly.

"There is no need to look so surprised," she said gently. "Nor is there reason to be frightened. I will speak to your parents, and let them know what has happened. Then we will all sit down somewhere quiet and discuss what must be done."

Tarrin put his arm around Jenna, who had begun to cry, then he pulled her into his arms and comforted her, his own mind tumbling around a numb sensation. "It was wrong to just blurt it out like that, Dolanna," the knight berated as the pair left.

"I was surprised," she said a bit ruefully, and then their voices were lost in the din. He didn't notice the knight stop and look back at them.

"But I wanted to be a knight," he said numbly, putting his chin on the top of his sister's head.

They had been missing quite a while. Tarrin was still sitting with Jenna at their table, but the sun was creeping very lowly down along the western sky. His parents and the woman had been missing for hours. Tarrin still held Jenna very close, for though she had stopped weeping, she wasn't yet ready to give up on the feeling of comfort and security she was receiving from his embrace. Tarrin wished that someone would do the same for him.

Sorcery. Although his father had many times told tales of the Sorcerers of Suld, Tarrin had never really paid much attention to them. His father had worked with them in the past, and his stories and impression of them was very good. Tarrin had been raised to believe that Sorcerers and Sorcery were good things, and that the katzh-dashi deserved to be treated with honor. But never, even in his wildest fantasies, had he ever considered the possibility that he would be capable of using Sorcery. That was a power for special people, the people in the stories. Although it existed, he never dreamed that it would affect him so personally.

Poor Jenna. All her life, since she'd started to grow into a woman, all she wanted was to find a good man, marry, and settle into a life of blissful domesticity. She had no desire to leave the village, much less travel all the way across Sulasia and go to the Tower in Suld. And she was only thirteen. They had no right to take such a young girl from her parents. And though Tarrin had always wanted to leave, being a Sorcerer was not the life that he'd imagined for himself. He wanted to be a knight. Sorcery was a totally alien concept to him.

The others seemed to sense that something was wrong with the Kaels, but they did not intrude. Tarrin thought somewhere in the back of his mind that they knew that this would happen to some family. Every time a Sorcerer arrived, parents began to worry about ever seeing their children again. Last year, Timon Darby was taken to learn Sorcery in the Tower, and Leni Darby, his mother, had moped around, not speaking a single word, for over three months. Timon had visited last month, and he looked well from the glimpse that Tarrin got of him. What made it seem so bad was that the Sorcerers wanted both of them, that his mother's sense of loss would be that much worse with having to let go of both her grown child and her adolescent child.

"Tarrin?"

Tarrin turned. Elke Kael was standing there with his father and the Sorceress, the knight standing a bit behind them. It was obvious that his mother had been crying. Eron looked somber and serious.