The Grey Tower

Valalin walked down the corridor towards the classroom which he had been told to go to. The instructions had came to him at breakfast in the form of a small slip of paper which another Soldier had passed to him. The orders on them have been clear. He was to report to this room immediately after breakfast. He didn't know what it was about and the only thing which the other Soldier had known was that it was the Master of Soldiers who was summoning him. That was not a good sign although the fact that it wasn't to the office of the Master of Soldiers was reassuring, but only a little.

As he walked he subconsciously finger his black coat at the though of being a Soldier. He had heard many of the other young men complain about the coats they had to wear although he himself quite like them. The black colour of them was what he accustomed to and the familiarity of the colour had helped him in his first couple of days here.

As much as he didn't like to admit it he had been homesick during his first few days. It was illogical to feel sad simply because you were in a different place but that logic hadn't changed the reality of it. Part of it had been leaving the people who had raised him and who, for most of his life he had considered his parents, in spirit if not in blood. It hadn't even been his real parents he was leaving but still he had missed them. They had raised him and he felt more towards them than he did to his real parents who were now just a memory in his mind. He still missed them occasionally but it was more a kind of longing for real parents, to have been a normal child, than him missing them for who they were. He had been young when they died and so had never gotten the chance to get to know them as people. They had simply been their, he had taken them for granted and then they had been snatched away from him in the fire. That terrible, burning fire...

He snapped himself out of his reverie just as he walked past the classroom. He took a quick half step back and turned to enter the room.

It was a plain room like most of the rooms in this section of the tower were. There was a window on the other side of the room which looked out over the grounds. It helped break up the monotony of the room. There was a sturdy looking wooden desk with a chair behind it and another chair sitting opposite it in front the desk. The desk and chairs were positioned so that the person behind the desk was in the corner of the room. All the others chairs in the room had been pushed to the edge of the room leaving the middle open.

Given that Jaryd’s entire existence was buried in highly classified work, when it came time to check on the latest group of new soldiers, he chose to arrange those meetings outside his study. One such meeting, with a man named Valalin, he had arranged to have in a classroom high in the Indigo sector of the Tower. The man had not been at the Tower long so it seemed unlikely his training had progressed far, but a small assessment might be worthwhile.

On the specified day the Master of Soldiers turned into the appropriate corridor just in time to see his student go into the classroom. With a slight smile on his dark face, the red-clad Asha’man strolled after, entering the room a minute or two after the soldier.

“Greetings,” he said, and the boy turned to look at him. Jaryd gave him a once over, amused once again that even one of the Cairhinin, notorious for their lack of height, stood taller than he. He looked around the room thoughtfully as he walked past his student. Instead of sitting in the chair obviously intended for his use, the Asha’man chose to take a seat in one of the other chairs and waved for Valalin to join him.

“Have a seat wherever you’re comfortable,” he said. “You seemed well enough last time we parted ways- how has life at the Tower treated you since then?”