The Rossem Project

A Perfect Day - Part 5

     Leaving the temple, Lirenna made her way to the enchantment building. It was the building in which most of the valley's junior female wizards had their rooms, rooms that would in all probability be their homes for only a few years before they moved back out into the big, wide world to continue their careers. Most of the wizards who made the valley their permanent home were old and retiring from active life, returning to take up a teaching post in their declining years, and many of these moved into one of the castles and mansions that stood upon the steep and craggy slopes of the mountains ringing the valley where they could be assured peace and quiet, away from the noise and bustle of hundreds of busy, hardworking apprentices. For temporary residents, though, a small cluster of rooms could usually be found in one or another of the University buildings, and the wizard would squeeze him or herself into these.

     Entering the building, Lirenna stopped a pretty girl she passed in the corridor to ask where she could find Tassley Kimber. The girl said she’d just seen her going to her rooms with a young man and probably wouldn’t want to be disturbed. Lirenna smiled sweetly and asked for directions anyway, saying she’d go later, when hopefully she would be free. The girl was happy to comply, and Lirenna then turned to leave the building. As soon as the girl had gone, though, she turned again and headed in the direction she’d given.

     It took nearly twenty minutes for Lirenna to find Tassley's rooms in the maze of rooms, staircases and corridors that was the enchantment building, and she could only speculate as to the building's original purpose. She followed a narrow twisting corridor around several bends and turns and squeezed up a flight of stairs so narrow that even her willowy figure was brushing the bare stone walls on either side. She followed another corridor whose stone floor was so old that centuries of use had left a low rut along the centre and passed a classroom in which a hapless male 'volunteer' was having enchantments cast upon him by one after another of the giggling female students under the stern, watchful gaze of a crusty old wizardess. Lirenna felt a powerful surge of nostalgia as she peeped in through the window, but forced it firmly down. She was here on serious business.

     Finally, she climbed a steep spiral staircase that wound its way up one of the towers that stood at the four corners of the building. From here she had a wonderful view of the whole valley, and under other circumstances she would have paused a few minutes to gaze out in wonder. Instead, she crept up to the door that stood at the very top of the stairs and pressed her sensitive shayen ear to it, listening carefully.

     Her sharp shayen hearing picked up the sounds of two people breathing, soft and regular. The sound of people in a light sleep. Lirenna grinned in satisfaction and looked furtively back down the staircase. Someone was moving way down near the bottom, but there was no activity higher up, so she quietly turned the doorhandle, pushed the door slowly open and slipped inside.

     Tassley's apartment consisted of three rooms occupying the conical peak of the tower, and the door opened into a small but cosy looking living, reception room whose dominating item of furniture was a large, padded sofa, worn a lot more at one end than the other and with two squashed down depressions in the cushions. Tassley's lab robe was draped casually across the back of a chair, and the room was filled with the faint scent of perfume. There were very few personal items in the room, very little to give any idea of Tassley's lifestyle and interests, but then that sofa just about said it all really. There was no need for any more clues as to Tassley's favourite hobby.

     Lirenna hardly glanced at the reception room as she passed through it, though, and completely ignored the small toilet, moving around the circular wall that contained the central stairwell to the bedroom/washroom. The room was only just big enough for the single bed and the small washbasin, which carried a permanent magical charge that filled it with hot, soapy water whenever a word of command was spoken. A number of toilet items stood on a small shelf above the bowl and below a mirror, all the usual things that young women use to make themselves more attractive and desirable, but amongst them was a cutthroat razor. The large kind used by men, not the smaller kind that women sometimes used to shave their legs.