everyone else take what they wanted off the platter he was eyeing, then he reached out and took the entire platter.  "Anyone else want any of this?" he asked pointedly, holding it out.  When nobody answered, he pushed his own plate away and set the platter in its place.  He looked at the small-handled fork by the plate with a bit of annoyance, and instead used the large serving fork that was on the platter.  It had a handle large enough for him to use.  The knife too was too small, but the claw on the index finger of his free hand was more than capable of being a substitute for a knife.  The razor-sharp tip of his claw neatly sliced up the meat to his liking, then he used the serving fork to get it to his mouth.  Someone poured fresh, chilled milk into a pewter mug that was beside him, and then that person moved down to do the same with Dar's mug.  He was more interested in the food, however, and he managed to finish off the entire platter of roasted ham, which had enough ham on it to feed five.  Dar gave him a rather wild look as he pushed the platter away and took a drink of milk.  "Do you always eat that much?" he asked.
	"Not always, but I'd been moving without eating much before I got here," he replied.  "I'm just catching up on missed meals."
	"I can understand that," he said, going back to his own meal.
	Tarrin could almost feel the energy of the meal surge into him as he sat there drinking his milk and waiting for Dar to finish.  Now that his body had more raw material to work with, he was very certain that he'd not look even half so thin by dinnertime.  He was looking forward to the studies with Sevren; he was curious just what his body was capable of doing.  This ability to restore lost body tissue was most interesting.  But then again, he felt that he should have known it would do that.  Something in the back of his mind, he thought it was the Cat, told him that he could grow back missing limbs, except for his head, and even regrow lost teeth and claws.  It was part of the regenerative capabilities inherent with his kind.
	And, he realized, it was the reason they didn't age.  The regeneration healed them of the effects of time, repairing any damage brought on by the marching of the seasons.  That was only logical, he realized calmly as he sat there.  The effects of time were not natural; well, they were natural, but they were not the natural state of his body, and that was how his regenerative ability maintained him.  An older him did not fit into his body's imprint of itself, and so it was corrected by regenerative healing.
	Tarrin was only seventeen.  He hadn't lived long enough to be able to appreciate the profound concept of living until someone killed him, maybe for thousands of years, but he was wise enough to know that he wasn't old enough.  It was something that he would have to think about in the time to come, something to ponder.
	After the meal, Dar took Tarrin around the Tower.  They went to the Library, the scribing chamber, out on the grounds, to the huge garden behind the Tower, then they walked along the highly polished black tiles of what was known as the Heart of the Goddess, a massive open space in the exact center of the Tower that ran from the base right up to the top.  While they walked, they talked.  Dar was an earnest young man with high goals and ideals, but they didn't include what his family wanted from him.  He was an accomplished artist, and he wanted to pursue that, while his family thought it was frivilous.  He also wanted to learn.  He was wildly curious about the world, and he almost didn't want to leave the Tower, to leave the vast Library, which was one of the largest and most complete in the world.  They strolled along the black tiles around the edge, near the wall, as Dar confided certain things to Tarrin that he knew the young man had not told other people.  Dar and Tarrin seemed to just connect, and he realized that he already considered the young Arkisian a close friend.  The Cat in him liked Dar just as much as the human did.  In the base of the floor, in a huge design, was the shaeram, the geometric star-in a star-in a circle design that was the symbol of the order.  It was done much differently than the medallions he'd seen, and that pointed some things out to him.  The medallions were a four-pointed star with concave sides inside a six-pointed star.  This symbol resembled that six pointed star, but instead of a star it was six individual triangles laid out corner to corner, third point out, all contained within the circle.  Each triangle was a different color.  They were red, blue, a shade of purple like violets, orange, yellow, and a lighter shade of purple that was obviously a different color.  The circle encircling them was green, and the concave four-pointed star within was white.  The design had to be about fifty paces across, taking up about three quarters of the floor.
	Tarrin felt...strange.  There was something in this vast chamber, but he couldn't quite put his claw on it.  It hovered right on the edge of his consciousness, almost like something that rested just at the edge of his vision, a sound that was so faint that he couldn't tell if it was real, the phantom of a scent in his nose.  "Do you feel that?" he asked Dar quietly, almost reverently.
	"Sometimes I do," he replied.  "There's something in this place, but the Sorcerers won't tell me what it is.  I think it has something to do with magic.  Not many people come in here, so I like to come in here alot and think."
	Tarrin advanced into the huge open area, still trying to understand the extremely vague sensation he was feeling.  His pads made no noise on the black tiles as they crossed the boundary and set foot on the green of the surrounding circle of the symbol.  Tarrin felt that unusual sensation more strongly as he advanced into the middle of the huge room.  He looked up into the soaring void that rose up over them, an enclosed area that went up so high that he could just barely make out the ceiling so far above.  Tarrin put a paw out in front of him, because he could almost see a something coalescing in front of him.  As he moved closer, it seemed to be more distinct.
	When his paw crossed the invisible barrier above where the green circle ended and the red triangle began, something strange happened.  A faint, ghostly radiance appeared around Tarrin's thick fingers, and it swirled and eddied like water between and over them.  At the touch of that visible light, Tarrin's fingers tingled angrily, pins and needles that were almost painful, yet seemed to go through his fingers as well as around.
	"Amazing!" Dar murmured, standing beside him.  "It never did that to me."
	Tarrin put his entire paw in, feeling the tingles, watching the light ghost up and around his paw.  It was almost like water; whatever it was was definitely flowing, from the floor up towards the ceiling so high above.  "Put your hand in," Tarrin told him in a wondrous voice.  "Don't just put it in, feel what's there."
	He did so, closing his eyes.  After a moment, while Tarrin put his other paw in and played with the swirling, smoky radiance, Dar's eyes snapped open.  "I feel...tingles," he said.  He put his other hand out, and then tendrils of ghostly smoke-light started wisping out from under Dar's hands.  "Incredible!" he whispered as it became stronger.  "I can feel it!"
	Tarrin raised a foot, to take a step inside.
	"I wouldn't do that," a voice called from behind.
	They both whirled around.  The woman standing before them was very, very tall, and she was almostly achingly beautiful.  Her skin was bronze colored, but her hair was a brilliant, fiery red.  A most unusual combination.  She wore a daring, low-cut red silk dress, and had a figure that most women would kill for.  Dar instantly bowed to the woman, and Tarrin clumsily did the same.  Her hard green eyes swept over them quickly, then she walked up to them.  She stepped between them and put her hand out, over the barrier, and Tarrin watched it as it reached into the same area where he had been.  "You have no idea what you're doing," she said in a hard voice, "and that can kill you if you're not careful."
	Her hand suddenly erupted into a white fire, which spread over her palm, and licked up from under her cupped hand.  She removed her hand from the place, and the white fire was still in her palm, dancing and weaving in the air.  Tarrin could feel the heat from it; it was real fire.  It was pure white, but it was real.  "This place, I don't think it's safe for either of you.  You'd best not come here again."
	Swallowing, Tarrin looked at the fire.  Why hadn't it done that for him?  Like she said, it was something he had no knowledge of, but he just had to know.  "What is it, Mistress?" he asked.
	"It is Sorcery," she said simply.  "It's something you haven't learned yet.  But from what I just saw, it's something that both of you will learn," she added with an appraising look at Dar.
	Dar positively beamed.
	"Just don't get creative," she said.  "Before you even try to use Sorcery, there are many things you have to learn.  It's way too easy to kill yourself if you don't know exactly what you're doing."
	"I know," Tarrin said absently thinking back to Jenna and her explosive experience with the power of Sorcery.
	"Now get on with both of you," she said shooing them away with a hand as the fire winked out from the other.  "I suggest you not come back here until you've learned more about the power of Sorcery."
	They left her with hurried bows, almost running from the vast chamber.  Only when they were clear of her did they start whispering fervently.  "You will be a Sorcerer!" Tarrin whispered to him, as Dar said "that was absolutely incredible!"
	Dar looked over his shoulder.  "That was Ahiriya," he told Tarrin in a hushed tone.  "She sits on the Council of Seven."
	"Ahiriya?" Tarrin asked.  That was also the name of a Goddess, the Elder Goddess of Fire.
	"I know, she almost looks the part, doesn't she?" Dar said with a grin.  "She sits in the Fire seat on the council and everything.  She has just as much of a temper too.  She's the last person in the Tower you want to have mad at you."
	"The Fire seat?"
	"The council, it has six members," he explained.  "Each one is the seat of one of the six spheres of Sorcery.  Air, earth, fire, water, the mind, and the power of the Goddess.  The Keeper is the seventh.  They rule the Tower."
	"I remember that much," he said.  "I just didn't know they called themselves that, that's all."
	"You'll learn most of that in the first week or so of the Novitiate.  That's about all they talk about.  Rules, rules, rules, and just how deep you bow to which person.  I think it's a bit silly, myself," he grunted.  "Back home, you bow to the king, but that's about all.  We're kinda informal about that kind of thing."
	"You sound like a noble," Tarrin said.
	"Well, my father is a Margrave," he admitted.  "That's a rank something like a Baron here in the west, but there are no lands that go with the title.  It's like a landless noble."
	"A landless noble?" Tarrin asked.
	Dar nodded.  "He earned it about fifteen years ago.  The king needed something done badly, and my father managed to do it for him.  He gave my father the title in thanks."
	"Hmm," Tarrin sounded.
	"We don't take it seriously, anyway," he said.  "My family earns money through the spice trade, so we don't really need land."
	"My father said that Novices work when not in class," he said.
	"We do," he said with a wince.  "I got very lucky.  They wanted you to know your way around, so I have the afternoon off to show you the Tower."
	"What do you usually do?"
	"Scrub floors, scrub walls, scrub pots and pans, scrub scrub scrub," he said with a face.  "I swear, when I get out of here, I'll never so much as look at another scrub brush as long as I live."
	Tarrin laughed.  "You should work on a farm," he said.  "You do the same things every day, over and over.  As soon as you finish it, it has to be done again.  It's very monotonous."
	"Sounds like torture," he said.
	"You get used to it," Tarrin said.  "I didn't mind most of the chores.  It was something to do."  He looked down at his paw idly.  "Besides, we had a small farm, and there were four of us, so there wasn't a huge amount of work.  We had alot of free time."
	"What did you do with it?"
	"Hunted, roamed around in the forest, that kind of thing," he said.  "My father was a Ranger, so he taught me all about the woods.  My mother's Ungardt, so I learned all about fighting from her.  That's more or less what I did with my free time."
	"I sat and learned numbers, then learned how to cheat spice dealers," Dar said with a grin.
	"Must have been boring."
	"You have absolutely no idea."  He looked around.  "Let's go back outside.  It's a nice day, and if any Sorcerer decides they need something, they can make us do it.  We're the mules in the Tower, and idle mules irritate many of the Sorcerers for some reason."
	Tarrin laughed.  "Outside sounds like a good idea."
	The sky was clear, with the Skybands cutting across the blue in their dull white colors.  They went to the massive garden behind the Tower proper, where numerous Novices toiled in the meticulously arranged gardens with gardeners and Initiates supervising them.  The garden was in its early summer bloom, and it was a sea of colorful flowers divided by red brick walkways.  There were several fountains among the large sections of roses and tulips and numerous other flowers, and they stopped at each one and gazed on the beautiful sculpture that often spouted streams of water.  There was also a huge hedge maze behind the flower gardens, and the two of them wandered the pathways of that huge maze for almost the entire afternoon, going well past the point where the pathways were neatly tended.
	"Things are getting ragged," Dar noticed.
	"I don't think they come in this far," Tarrin replied.
	Dar laughed.  "Maybe we'll come across the skeleton of the last person who did," he joked.
	"It's certainly large enough to get lost in," he said.
	"Do we even know where we are?" Dar asked a bit uncertainly.
	"I know where I've been," he assured him.  "I can smell our trail, so we can just follow that to get out."
	After a while, though, Tarrin was getting aggravated.  They'd followed every single possible path, and yet they still hadn't found the center.  "There has to be a way in," he growled.
	"As rough as these hedges are," Dar said, pushing away a branch that quite nearly grew across the entire path, "The way to it may have grown over."
	"I think you're right," he agreed.  "Let's start looking for holes in the hedge."
	After about half an hour, they found it.  It was indeed overgrown, and so badly that it literally looked like a wall.  They pushed through it, walked down a short path that was similarly choked, and then they found themselves standing in the center.
	The hours were worth the effort.  There was a fountain in the middle of the large grassy clearing, a fountain that was bright and clean despite the obvious years of neglect.  There was a statue in the center of the pristine marble fountain, a statue of a woman of indescribable beauty.  The stone was unweathered, and it seemed to literally capture the sparkle in the eye of the long-haired, nude figure.  The sculpture was so incredibly detailed that Tarrin could see the individual strands of hair  flowing down the back of the statue's shoulders.  It stood on a pedestal in the center of the fountain, where small spouts of water filled the small center area with the sound of happily splashing, bubbling water.  The figure was in a delicate feminine pose, and its arms were outstretched, as if welcoming them into the clearing.  The clearing itself was neat and clean, despite the obvious fact that nobody came into it anymore, with several rose bushes growing to each side of a single solitary bench that sat in front of the fountain.  There was a red brick path around the fountain, widened around the bench, running under their feet towards it.
	"It's beautiful," Dar whispered.
	Tarrin couldn't answer.  He approached the rim of the fountain and boldly stepped up onto the lip, then waded through the ankle-deep water.  He went right up to the life-sized statue and stared at its intricately detailed face, a beautiful face with elegant cheekbones and almond shaped eyes under very delicate brows.  Tarrin reached out and put his paw on the cheek of the statue, just to make sure that it was really stone.  Never had he seen such unbelievably detailed sculpture.  For an irrational moment, the statue's exquisite figure reminded him of Jesmind, and he wondered if she somehow had something to do with it.
	"What are you doing?" Dar asked.
	"It's really stone," he told him.  "You can see the hairs in her eyebrows."
	"It's almost embarassing," Dar said.
	"What?"
	"That's not all the hair the sculpter made," he said delicately.
	Tarrin looked down.  "You can see each hair in that too," he said.
	Dar blushed.
	"What?" he asked.  "It's just stone, Dar.  I don't think it cares if you look."  Tarrin stopped himself.  Where did that come from?  That sounded just like Jesmind.  Had those short days changed him so much?
	"Well, it's still improper."
	"Don't be such a prude, Dar," he said.  "With all the art I saw in the room, I would think that you could appreciate the art of this, even if she is nude."
	"Yes, well, I can appreciate the art," he said, "but it's almost too life-like.  If you touched that statue in the wrong place, I think it might slap you."
	Tarrin rather bluntly placed the palm of his paw against the area of contention.  Dar choked a bit, and then he laughed.  "No slap," Tarrin said.
	"You're fearless," Dar told him.
	"No, I'm just not afraid of a piece of marble," he replied.
	"Well, you couldn't have touched it in a more sensitive place," Dar said.
	"Yes I could have, but the statue was carved with her legs too close together," he said.
	"Tarrin!" Dar hissed.  "That's nasty!"
	"And you've never thought of doing it yourself?" he asked pointedly.
	"Yes, well," he said, clearing his throat and turning a bright shade of red.  "I never thought to do it to a piece of stone."
	"Now you're thinking the right way," Tarrin said, leaving the statue and wading back across the fountain.
	"You don't think the same way we do," Dar deduced shrewdly.
	"No, I don't," he said calmly.  "What I consider modest and improper isn't the same as what you do, Dar.  It has to do with what I am."  Again, he marvelled at how much like Jesmind he sounded.  "This is a very nice place," he said.  "That's the most beautiful fountain I've ever seen, and the whole thing is pretty.  I could live in here."
	"I wonder who keeps it like this, since the opening is so overgrown that it's hidden," Dar wondered aloud.
	"Somebody has to," Tarrin agreed.  "This place would be a jungle if it wasn't tended.  But there are no human smells in here.  Not even a trace of one," he told him.  "Nobody has been in here in weeks, maybe months.  And that's too long for it to look like this."
	"Maybe the place is magic," Dar said.
	Tarrin considered that, and then he thought about the way he felt in the huge chamber Dar called the Heart of the Goddess.  But that same feeling wasn't here.  But there was a different feeling here...a feeling of peace.  That was the only way to describe it.  Standing there, staring at that beautiful statue, Tarrin coudln't deny that there was something very special about this place, something that made him feel very much at peace.
	"I don't know about magic, but this place is very special," he said in a quiet voice.  "Maybe it's a good thing that nobody really comes here."
	"Yeah," he agreed.  "They'd just mess it up."
	They sat down on the bench and stared at the exquisite statue for a long time.  They didn't speak.  Talking was unnecessary.  They both simply contemplated the statue, her arms held out in a gesture of welcome, the look of gentle caring on her face.
	"It's getting late," Dar said, looking at the dimming sky.  "We probably missed dinner."
	"It was worth it," he said calmly.
	"It was," he agreed.
	"We should go.  They may be looking for us, and they won't find us here."
	"Yes.  We should remember that.  This might be a nice place to get away from it all."
	Tarrin glanced around at the clearing.  "Yes, it would be," he said.  Looking up, he could see that the hedges didn't conceal the center from the vast height of the main Tower.  But from that height, one would need a spyglass to see who was down here.
	They went back to the Novice quarters, and Tarrin considered the fountain.  It was a beautiful place, and it was indeed very well hidden.  It was the perfect place to go when he didn't want to be bothered.
	"Let's see if we're not too late for dinner," Dar said.
	"You go ahead," he said.  "I need to do something."
	"Alright.  See you in the room.  I'll try to sneak something back for you."
	"Thanks," he said.
	He immediately went to the Library.  He wasn't too late to keep his appointment with Dolanna.  The library was a vast place, a chamber that took up almost every span of available room on one side of the Tower.  It went from the inner wall to the outer wall, took up two levels, and probably took up enough room to house about three hundred people.  The floor was lined with bookshelves, and each one was piled heavily with books.   There was a set of steps on each side of a large statue of some robed man with long hair and no beard, leading to a half-upper level with even more bookshelves.  In the exact center of the lower floor, up against the wall that separated the central core of the tower, was a circular desk behind which sat the Master Librarian and two or three of his scholar attendants, who were responsible for keeping the Tower's vast wealth of books in a neat and orderly fashion.  Tarrin hesitated to let one of those librarians pass, pushing a wooden cart stacked with books that were to be replaced on the shelves.
	Ignoring the several curious looks, Tarrin squatted down and put his nose close to the floor.  There were a multitude of scents all jumbled together on the floor, but he knew precisely which one he was looking for.  He had to check two other likely places it would be until he found Dolanna's scent, sharp and strong and fresh.  After that, he simpy followed it.  It went up the stairs and into a dark corner of the huge library.  She was sitting at a solitary table behind a large, dusty bookshelf, where a single one of those glowing globes hovered over the table to provide light.
	He sat down across from her at the small table quietly.  She looked up from the book she was reading, then carefully looked in either direction for eavesdroppers.  "Thank you for coming, Tarrin," she said.
	"What did you want to see me about, Dolanna?" he asked.
	"Nothing earth-shaking, my dear one," she said with a smile.  "I simply wanted to talk to you about your journey to the Tower.  I felt that there some things that you did not wish to talk about in front of Sevren."
	"Not a whole lot," he told her.  "Me and Jesmind, we, uh, got very, you know, uh--"
	"I understand," she said quickly.  "I had assumed as much."
	"Why?"
	"Because, my dear one, that is a very effective way for a woman to control a man," she said.
	"That's not why it happened," he said.
	"Then what did occur?"
	Tarrin explained to her the social peculiarities of the Were-cats, as it was described to him by Jesmind.  Dolanna simply nodded.  "Yes, that is logical," she said.  "I should have expected as much.  I keep falling into the trap of thinking of you and the other Were-cats as thinking in a human manner."
	"No, we don't," he said soberly.  "Here lately, I've really noticed it.  I've changed, Dolanna."
	"How so?"
	"I'm starting to think almost the same way Jesmind does," he told her.  "I used to be nervous about undressing in public.  Right now, Dolanna, I could strip and walk across the library without batting an eyelash.  It just doesn't seem the same as it once did."  He shuddered slightly.  "I find it very easy to kill," he added.
	"What else?"
	"Just little things, Dolanna, mostly along those lines," he said.  "I think the time with Jesmind opened my eyes to that other side of me, and now they're starting to communicate.  Jesmind told me that I was ignoring it.  Well, I'm not doing that anymore.  And it's doing it without me knowing about it.  When I was in the baths, I realized that my ideas about being nude changed.  It wasn't until then."
	"It is your instincts," she told him.  "They are starting to merge with your conscious mind.  Tarrin, it is what is supposed to happen, and it is a very good sign.  You do not seem to be having any problems integrating them together, which is also very good."
	"It's just scary," he told her.  "I'm starting to wonder at what I'm going to do next.  It's like I'm starting to lose control."
	"No, dear one," she assured him.  "The fact that you can recognize these changes in attitude tells me that you are still very much in control of yourself."
	"It's still weird," he said.  "At first, when I met Jesmind, I was amazed at how different she was.  She was blunt and almost totally fearless, and she thought about some things in ways I never thought any woman would ever think about them.  And now I find myself acting more and more like her with every passing moment.  I know I'm not becoming her, because she's female and I'm not, but I'm starting to think almost the same way.  I'm getting just as blunt, and I find myself capable of doing things that would have made me almost faint just last month."
	"You are starting to think like a Were-cat," she told him gently.
	"I didn't realize that it would be so different," he admitted.
	"But you do realize it, Tarrin, and that is your best weapon in learning how to deal with it," she told him.
	"I hope so," he sighed.
	"Just believe in yourself, dear one," she told him.
	He nodded.  "Did you tell them about Jesmind?"
	"Yes," she replied.  "The Keeper has started putting eyes out to watch for her.  So far as I know, she has yet to arrive.  Nobody has seen her."
	"They're not going to," he grunted.  "If she doesn't want to be seen, she won't."
	"We must have faith," she said.
	"What about the Goblinoids?"
	"Now that we have passed on to the King," she told him.  "I have not heard what will be done about it, but at least the King now knows what is happening.  I am certain he will mobilize units in the army to deter them from getting any ideas."
	"Good," he said.  "Dolanna, that place in the center of the Tower, what is it?" he asked.
	She gave him a curious look.  "It is called the Heart of the Goddess," she told him.
	"I know.  Me and my roommate were in there.  There's something in there, something magic.  But before we could find out, someone came in and threw us out."
	"That was a good thing," she told him with a look of concern on her face.  "Tarrin, you have awesome potential, and you will have tremendous power when you learn to use it.  That place, it is very central to our power as Sorcerers.  It is something that you will not understand until you learn about the Weave.  But for now, consider it to be a place with a great deal of magical energy.  With your inherent aptitude, I am surprised that nothing bad happened."
	"I think it almost did," he said with a shudder.  "Me and Dar were playing with the area inside the symbol, because it was creating light when we put our hands in it.  The woman came in and stopped us before we did anything else."
	"Then your roommate has the talent," she told him calmly.  "He will be a Sorcerer."
	"Yes, the woman told him that," he replied.  "He's very happy about it."
	"Have you, done anything with Sorcery?" she asked.
	"No," he told her.  "After what happened with Jenna, I don't even want to try until I know what I'm doing.  I've seen what can happen if I mess it up."
	"That is a very good attitude," she told him fiercely.  "Sorcery is not bad, Tarrin, but you must understand what you are doing when you do it, or there is a tremendous potential for disaster.  Training people as powerful as you is very, very dangerous because of that.  I have asked for the honor of doing that myself.  I feel that I am best qualified to do it, since I know you so well, and you are so comfortable with me."
	"I wouldn't mind it."
	"But they may not allow it," she told him.  "I am very strong, Tarrin, but there are others much stronger than I.  They may decide to pair you with a Sorcerer with enough raw power to stop you from hurting yourself.  And there are only a handful with that much raw talent in the Tower."
	"Not if I refuse to learn from them," he said.
	"Tarrin, you cannot do that."
	"Really?  What's stopping me?"  She gave him a blank look.  "I didn't think so."
	"Tarrin, that is rebellion you are talking about," she said.  "That is not tolerated in a Novice."
	"I'm not a normal Novice," he told her.
	"You will get in a great deal of trouble," she warned.
	"And?  Dolanna, I'm already in trouble.  Do you think that a little bit more is going to make a difference?  Between Jesmind and the Goblinoids and the person that was trying to kill me, I'm really not going to worry about someone getting into a twist because I want a specific teacher."
	She gave him a strange look, and then laughed delightedly.  "Tarrin, my dear one, you are going to drive this Tower to distraction," she told him fondly.  She looked down the passage between the bookcases.  "It is getting late, dear one.  We should be leaving."
	"It is getting there," he agreed.  "I don't have anything to do tomorrow either...maybe I'll spend the day reading.  And maybe see you in here.  Around sunset maybe."
	"Perhaps," she said with a smile.
	Tarrin left her sitting at the table.  It had been a productive meeting.  Dolanna had calmed some fears that had broiled up in the past day, and he had learned a thing or two besides.  And he got to talk with Dolanna.  Tarrin had a very special rapport with the Sorceress, and they both knew it.  It had been she that had kept a terrified Tarrin from going into histrionics after he'd been bitten.  It was her gentle guidance that had literally kept him from going mad.  And they had a very close personal friendship as well.  She was in many ways one of the crutches on which he leaned, and he would have no one else teach him about Sorcery.  Unlike many others 