d the others?"
	"I know them, Tarrin.  I haven't decided yet if I like them.  They don't really understand me, and I don't bother trying to explain myself.  You don't require things like that.  You take me as I am, just as I take you as you are.  No questions, no regrets."  She looked down into the water.  "I'm really not a very nice girl, Tarrin.  I'm a spy, sneak, thief, and from time to time, an assassin.  I have more skeletons in my closet than you ever will.  People in my line of work have trouble finding friends, because we're all naturally suspicous and distrustful.  But from the first time we met, I just had this feeling that we were going to be friends.  Very good friends.  And here we are."
	"Here we are," he agreed.  He put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned against him comfortably.
	They stood at the rail and stared up into the sky quietly.  Nothing more needed to be said.

	Despite the fact that Miranda had helped him feel much better about himself, it didn't change his restrictive punishment.  For four days, he spent his days in the cabin, and was allowed to come out only at night.  And even then he was restricted to his cat form.  The days were long and almost insufferable, because everyone was kept up on deck to learn their routines for the carnival performances.  They didn't have the leisure to spend time with him until well after noon, nearly sunset  Tarrin spent that time the only way he could, reading.  Keritanima had brought several books with her, two of which were the Sha'Kari language books.  It turned out it that Keritanima had used Sorcery to create written words, and used that the laboriously translate every word of Sha'Kar she knew into the common tongue, and the other way around.  The result was a dictionary of the Sha'Kar language, the closest thing to a comprehensive work on the Sha'Kar language that there was.  The other book was the original Sha'Kar instruction scrolls transcribed into the book, which she still studied nearly every day.  Tarrin didn't understand why she did that.  Keritanima had the amazing ability to remember almost everything she read or heard, with an exacting recall that was astounding.  Even things read or heard months or years ago were still immediately recalled whenever she needed it.  She had admitted that her memory wasn't perfect unless she studied the material a while or she was paying very close attention when she read or heard it, but she had had that book for months.  Certainly that was long enough for her.
	The time had had a souring effect between him and Dolanna.  He was somewhat angry that she had punished him, and stewing about it alone in the room day after day did not help that at all.  He was mad at her, but he already realized that it was like a rebellious adolescent stiffening against the orders of a parent.  Her rebuke of him had also stung him, stung him deeply, making him feel like he was starting to drive away his own friends.  His friends and family were dear to him; they were all that he had left in a very empty, cruel, and unforgiving world.  Without them, he would be utterly lost, and the very thought that Dolanna didn't like him anymore was enough to send a cold wave through his heart.  He wasn't sure why he could be both angry and afraid that she had rejected him, but he was.
	The fifth day of imprisonment began as the other four had, with him trying to sleep away as much of it as possible.  There was a kind of sublime forgetfulness in sleep, and being part cat, he had the ability to sleep whenever he wanted, for as long as he wanted.  But the sounds of laughter and voices would drift in from above, and it would awaken him with a sharp pang of loneliness and regret.  His cabin had no windows, forcing him to rely on the light of a candle, but it was currently out.  There was no need for light, and the light shining from the crack under the door was more than sufficient for him to see if he wanted to.  He couldn't read like that--it was too dim, and a cat's eyes couldn't see with the exacting clarity needed to make out letters written on a page--but he didn't feel much like doing anything that required rational thought.  He drifted in and out of sleep, trying to ignore the sounds of music above him.
	And then the entire ship rocked violently to the side, followed up by a ear-splitting crack that seemed to reverberate throughout the entire ship.  Tarrin was hurled off the bed and head-first into the wall some five paces away, so violently did the ship lurch, as if struck by some gigantic hand.  The impact dazed him, leaving him to lay on the floor woozily and try to stop counting all the pretty little stars.  After what seemed ten years, he finally managed to shake the cobwebs loose from his mind.  He pulled himself off the floor, fighting against a wave of intense pain that went up his skull and down his spine.  The impact had broken his skull, and it didn't seem to be healing back very fast.  He left his head drooping until the pain subsided, and then he quickly changed form and rushed out of the cabin.
	The companionway was clogged by several fallen beams from the ceiling above, and more than one small hole let murky light filter in from the sky above.  He slithered over and around several obstacles, and over the still form of Phandebrass the Unusual, who looked by casual inspection to be alive but unconscious, clonked on the head by a piece of wood.  He didn't have time to mess with that now, he had to get on deck and see what had happened.  He raced up to the steep stairs, then was thrown back to the deck as the ship shuddered again.  Tarrin clawed back to his feet as the ship swayed alarmingly back and forth, hearing the screams and the sounds above that sounded like breaking wood and general confusion.  The light from the outside streamed down the stairs, heavy with dust shaken free by the impacts.  Using the claws on his paws and feet, he pulled himself up onto the deck by steadying himself against the rocking of the ship by hooking into the walls of the staircase.
	Outside it was chaos.  The central mast was sheared off about halfway up its length, leaning heavily over and straining the rigging that held the masts and sails in place.  Debris littered the deck, as well as several still forms, and to the ship's left he could see a large fogbank.  Six large, sleek black ships hung lazily in midair, moving with a silent grace as they surrounded the garishly painted galleon, and he saw men along the sides, pointing down at the decks and unleashing small, sizzling missles that looked to be purely magical in nature.  Men and women rushed about mindlessly, screaming and seeking shelter, even as some of them fell to the magical attacks from the ships above.  Zakkites and their skyships, probably attacking by surprise from the fog.
	Tarrin simply stood there, and time seemed to slow to a crawl.  He surveyed the deck, looking for his friends, for his sisters.  Dar was hunkered under a fallen boom and sailcloth, looking up at the ships in raw panic.  Faalken had smashed a hold hatch and physically threw Dolanna into it before jumping in himself, just as a sizzling bolt of lighting hit the deck right where he had been standing.  Allia had pulled a young woman into another hatch near the bow before disappearing with her below decks.  Binter was sheltering Keritanima near the bow bulwark, holding onto her, as the Wikuni kicked and gouged and seemed to be screaming, but it was lost in the loud cracks and deafening din of the coordinated attack.  It was her eyes.  She was in a panic, and she was desperately trying to get free of her protector and run across the deck.  Tarrin followed Keritanima's eyes, and he saw them.
	Sisska laid still on the deck, her tail twitching spasmodically, and beside her laid Miranda, who had a wisp of smoke rising from her chest.
	He never remembered running across the deck.  One moment he was hunched in the stairwell, and the next he was kneeling beside Miranda.  Her simple peasant dress was scorched in several places, but it was the hideous charred wound in her chest, smoking above and between her breasts, that captured his attention. Her burned breastbone was clearly visible, and the flesh around gaping wound was seared.  The smell of burnt fur and flesh reeked from her.  Tarrin looked at her in stunned confusion, into eyes that were glassy and empty.
	"No," he said quietly, hugging her to his chest.  She was dead.  He couldn't believe it.  Miranda, gentle Miranda, with her quiet, wise ways and her cheeky grins.  Miranda, who always had a place on her lap for him, always took the time to pay attention to him when nobody else would or could.  Miranda, who probably understood him better than Allia, yet never sought to usurp Allia's rightful place in his life.  Always favoring the background, even with him, her presence was always noticed by him, even if it wasn't by anyone else.  She was his friend, one of the few that she trusted.  She couldn't be dead.  It was impossible!
	He stared into her empty eyes again, shaking his head.  The impact of something searing against his back barely registered to him, because his entire world seemed to be dissolving away.
	"No," he said more forcefully, as dumb shock was quickly being replaced by rage.  A searing, blinding, overwhelming anger that boiled up in him like an erupting volcano, but he did not fight it. He couldn't fight it.  Not like this, not now.  He welcomed it, joined with it.  He knew what it wanted to do, and he wanted that himself.  He set Miranda down on the deck gently.
	"NnnnnnnnnnnnnnOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He shrieked as he lost himself.  Blindingly white radiance literally exploded from his paws, as the Cat took hold of the Weave and nearly ripped it asunder as he demanded its power, all the power it could give to him.  He jumped to his feet as that power began to build, faster than was possible for the richness of the surrounding Weave, until its light limned over his entire body.  The scream of denial transformed into an inarticulate bellow of pure, abject fury, so loud that it echoed back from the fogbank and made the entire ship vibrate with the immensity of its power.  He raised his paws against the nearest of the Zakkite skyships, which was about twenty spans in the air and about thirty spans off the rail, whose every eye was riveted to him.
	A huge bolt of pure, raw, magical power blasted from his paws, the same chaotic weave of Fire, Air, Earth, Divine energy, and token flows from the other spheres to grant the spell the power of High Sorcery.  It struck the Zakkite ship dead in the stern.  The instant it hit, the wood of the side of the ship simply disintegrated under the immense power of the weave, and debris and shards of wood exploded with the beam as it ripped its way completely through the entire ship.  He deliberately raked that magical onslaught across the entire ship's length, from stern to bow, literally cleaving the ship in half, implacably sending a steady stream of fiery debris flying from the far side of the ship as the beam burned and punched through the ship and continued on for nearly a league before finally dissipating.
	The attack sent the first ship tumbling to the sea with a loud, frothy splash, and suddenly every attacker's magical attacks came right for him.
	Riding a nearly euphoric sensation of the raw power of High Sorcery, Tarrin opened himself up to it more and more, drawing in the power faster than the Weave could supply it, surpassing what he could usually hold without injury.  His rage, his fury caused him to completely ignore the usual dangers of wielding that kind of power, and quickly his clothes and fur began to smolder as he drew in so much that his body could not contain it.  But he was beyond pain, beyond caring.  There was only those who had killed Miranda, and the overwhelming desire, the need, to make them pay for their crimes.  There could be no vengeance too merciless, too brutal.  They would suffer a million times more than what they had done to Miranda.  Tarrin swatted his arm to the side negligently, weaving together a spell made up almost purely of Divine power, with only token flows from the other spheres to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery.  The area around the galleon shimmered in a scillinting sphere, and all the magical attacks of the Zakkites struck that barrier, and were absorbed.  He turned his attention to the next ship, weaving together a nightmarish weave of Fire, Divine energy, and Earth, infusing it with such power that it almost completely drained him to create it, then he snapped the weave down and manifested it.  A black ball, crackling with electricity, appeared in his cupped palm, and he turned and hurled it at the next closest Zakkite ship in a sidearm motion.  The ball expanded as it soared at the ship's middle until it was the size of a wagon, causing the Zakkites aboard to turn and flee from it in terror.  But there would be no escape.
	The ball hit the ship almost perfectly amidships, and in that touch it doomed the black vessel.  Wood sheared and snapped as it was sucked  into the unimaginable void created by the weave, drawn into that black oblivion with such force that the air itself howled into it with hurricane force winds.  It picked up hapless Zakkites and anything not nailed down, sucking it into its effect, sending them into an abyss from which there would be no escape.  The ship compressed and crumpled around the black sphere, crushing and crunching to the sound of howling wind, ripping wood, and the screams of the doomed, until the last shards of the bow, the stern, and the masts were drawn into its black depths.  After the last pennon on the mast disappeared, the ball shrank steadily, until it too simply winked out of existence.
	The lull of sound was from the awed, stunned disbelief of the four remaining Zakkite vessels, and it gave Tarrin a chance to recharge.  The energy roared into him, but it did not come fast enough.  The Weave couldn't support the demands he made on it.  Eyes blazing with incandescent white light, he reached out his paws to the sky and forced the Weave to obey, drawing in energy of all seven flows, then sending them out from him in every direction.  They spiralled together as they radiated out from him in every direction, intertwining with each other in groups of seven, until they made contact with other strands.  When they did that, Tarrin pulled on them, causing each intertwined finger of flows to suddenly flare with bright white light, then fade into invisibility.  Along with the light came a shimmering bell-like sound that vibrated the very air, causing wind to blow away from him with enough force to tatter the fog bank that had been resting to their port.  The light faded to nothing, as did the sound.  The intertwined flows were gone.
	Leaving new strands in their stead.
	Standing in the center of a web of saturated strands, Tarrin immediately drew in more power than he could hold, so much that the air around him wavered and the deck beneath his feet began to blacken.  There was no pain in his fury, a fury unlike anything he had ever experienced, a fury that did not care if he survived so long as he took those responsible for Miranda with him.  He generated a weave of pure Air, not high Sorcery, but a weave of such titanic immensity that its physical manifestation was nearly as large as the ships it was created to attack.  It manifested as an invisible wall of pure air, and Tarrin made a pushing motion with one arm--
	--And there was a thunderous BOOM, as the Zakkite ship directly astern simply shattered against the force of a wall of air, as large as it was, striking it at supersonic speed.  There was no piece of it larger than a teacup, and the finely pulverized debris sprayed the water aft of the galleon in a spreading fan pattern that turned the waters gray.  The shockwave caused by the attack had kicked up a wave ten feet high, that went racing to the southwest at a speed that defied imagination.
	The other ships finally reacted.  The remaining three began to turn, to flee from this monster who could destroy entire ships with single spells, but they would not get far.  Still holding the air Weave, Tarrin sent it against the next nearest ship.  He slashed both arms down in a smashing motion, and the flat surface of the weave slammed into the top of the next nearest ship.  It didn't strike at supersonic speed, but it struck with enough force to shatter the masts and crush the ship underneath it.  An ear-splitting series of explosions of ripping wood heralded the death of the vessel, smashed into fragments that were slammed into the ocean with enough force to send up a splash hundreds of spans into the air.
	The toll of his actions slowly began to catch up to him.  Even in his rage, he began to feel the bone-weariness that working with such power was causing, an exhaustion that would kill him if he didn't stop.  But he would not stop.  Not until they all paid for what they did to Miranda.  But even in they purity of his rage, he understood that he had to do it fast.  Already, he could feel the burns, the injuries he had done to himself.  He understood that he was walking a razor's edge between being Consumed and dying from burning up all his own energies.  But there was no fear in it.  He would welcome either, so long as they came after he destroyed the Zakkites.
	There could be time for one more weave.  The remaining two ships were fleeing from the galleon, close to each other.  Tarrin reached out in his rage and drew in the power to weave, saturating himself with the power, the majesty, the might of High Sorcery.  His fur was all completely burned away, and his skin was smoldering as the power burned him alive from the inside out, but he did not stop.  Weaving together a weave composed primarily of Water, he raised both hands and released it.  Two massive walls of water rose up from the sea on both sides of the Zakkite vessels, who immediately tried to climb out from that valley of death.  The walls of water shimmered and pulsated, undulating like the surface of water blown by the wind in a pond, then their surfaces snapped taut, as if some giant had pulled the corners of a sheet laid over them.
	When they did that, Tarrin slapped his hands together, which made the two mountains of water smash into one another with a thunderous noise, grinding the last two ships into small shards of waste.  The debris showered the sea all around them as the two mounds of water turned into a singular column of power that sprayed out as if a god had thrown a small island into the sea, spraying water, wood, and the mangled bits of the dead all over the water's surface for longspans in every direction.
	The last windrows of the sound faded away, and Tarrin sagged to his knees on the deck.  Charred paws came to rest on Miranda, where he had laid her so gently, and in that touch he could sense everything about her.  His awareness heightened by his touch on High Sorcery, still saturated with its power, he could assense her in a way that he had never been able to do before.  Her body was dead, but the soul within had not yet been released, as it awaited Dakkii, the goddess of Death, to come to claim her.  With a clarity that seemed unnatural, he understood the significance of that simple fact.  Sorcery could not resurrect the dead, but Miranda was not truly dead.  Not yet.  But Dakkii was coming--in his state of expanded awareness, he could feel her approach, knew that there wasn't much time.
	Reaching out one more time, understanding that to draw on the Weave again would be fatal, he drew in the power for one last spell.  There was no regret in the action.  The rage had subsided, leaving behind an emotionless sense of awareness that judged an action only by its rightness, and what he was going to do could not be any more right.  He leaned over and put one paw on Miranda, and the other on Sisska, then closed his eyes.  The black metal amulet around his neck flared into sudden incandescence as he wove together Water, Air, Earth, Divine energy, and token flows of the other spheres so that his weaving carried the power of High Sorcery, and then released them into the two females.  His touch became a searing flash of light, and both females suddenly bowed their backs and snapped their jaws tightly shut.  The weave of healing literally attacked the ghastly wounds which had killed both of them, reknitting flesh, smoothing away burned bone, reconstructing entire sections of body, and then infusing them both with the pure energy of the Weave.  That spark of power incited their hearts to beat, their diaphragms to flex, reawakened the souls that had been preparing to depart this world and move onto the next.  The power of his touch was more potent than any spell of destruction or battle, as if the Weave itself responded to him with a complete surrender that was missing when he used it in anger or to destroy, magnified by the utter saturation of energy that the new strands allowed him to bring to bear.
	As one, both Miranda and Sisska drew in a ragged breath, on their own.  They would make it.
	He had no more.  Still connected to the Weave, he no longer had the power to sever himself from it, or to let go of it.  But it did not rush into him as he thought it would have.  He was utterly defenseless to the Weave, yet it did not seek to fill him with its power.  Instead, it simply drained away, evaporated, letting go of him with a gentleness that made him blearily wonder what had happened.  But no matter how gently it happened, it still generated a backlash within him, one that his body simply could not tolerate.  Eyes rolling back into his head, he collapsed forward, and knew no more.

	"By all that's holy!" Dar said in utter awe, crawling out from his hiding place.  Keritanima stood not five paces from Tarrin, Miranda, and Sisska, hands held out.  He could feel her, feel the tremendous effort it had taken her to cut Tarrin off from the Weave.  Dar wasn't an expert on Sorcery, but he was positive that she just saved his life.  He was being Consumed, had drawn too much power to handle, and had she not stopped that, it would have killed him.  His body was burned, blackened, as if he'd walked through a fire, but Dar knew that those were only the injuries that they could see.  The same thing had been done to him inside, almost like he'd been cooked in an oven.  She stood there for a long moment, a look of terror and hope in her eyes.  It would have to have been Keritanima to do that.  Not even Dolanna had the raw power necessary to try to overwhelm Tarrin, even when he was in such a weakened state.  Keritanima was a powerful Sorceress, and would be among the very strongest, if Tarrin's power did not eclipse her.  Only she had both the power and the ability to even hope to cut Tarrin off from the Weave.
	He had never--never--thought that he would ever see anything like that.  He had felt it in his soul, a power so immense that anyone who could touch the Weave could not help but feel.  Tarrin had created new strands, built them out of flows pulled from existing strands, and for no reason other than the fact that he wanted to draw more power, faster.  Dar stood there and stared in mute shock as Keritanima rushed over the the inert trio, stared dumbly as Miranda took in a shuddering breath, and then sat bolt upright so quickly that it nearly scared him into wetting himself.
	"A Weavespinner," Dolanna said in reverence, coming up beside him, and seeming to know what he was thinking.  "That, my young pupil, is what being a Weavespinner truly means."  She touched the shaeram around her neck delicately, then grabbed hold of it in a strong grip. "Come, Dar, Tarrin is badly injured, and there are many in need of our aid.  I will need the power of a circle to help mend them."

	Crying.
	Someone was crying.  Someone was dead.
	Miranda!
	"Miranda!" Tarrin gasped, eyes fluttering open as consciousness flooded into him with a speed that left him disoriented.  He felt as if he'd been baked in an oven, and his entire body itched. And it ached with a weariness that seemed to have infected him like a disease, leaving him feeling feeble.  The recent past was lost in a haze of weariness and a memory of rage.  He had lost control of himself again, he remembered that, but as was normal for him, his actions during that period of frenzy were murky and indistinct.  Time would sort them out.  As if he really wanted to know what he had done this time.  He was too tired to brood about it, but he distinctly remembered what triggered it.  Seeing Sisska and Miranda laying dead on the deck.
	He was in his cabin.  Keritanima sat on the edge of the bed, Allia stood at her shoulder, and much to his eternal relief, Miranda sat on a plush chair that had not been in his room before, right at the head of his bed.  She had a blanket in her lap and was dressed in a soft blue dressing gown, and on her face was a look of profound relief.  The scents of his other friends were still strong in the room, hinting that he was being visited often, as was the smell of some kind of hot broth.
	That was an expression shared by all three women.  Keritanima's hands were on his shoulders, pushing him down, and Allia had a hold of one of his paws.  Both of them looked just a little haggard.  "You put yourself right back down, brother," the Wikuni princess said sternly, but the tears in her eyes gave away her concern.  "Don't you ever do that again!"
	"Wh-what happened?" he said in a bare whisper.  "I, don't remember very much.  Only seeing Miranda laying on the deck.  Everything after that is a blur."
	"Brother, let us just say that you avenged Miranda," Allia said gently.
	"As you can see, I'm just fine, Tarrin," Miranda told him, a voice that sang like music in his ears.  "A bit weak and a little tired, but otherwise fine."  She took a sip of that broth he had smelled earlier.  "Kerri's been babying me almost as much as you.  She won't let me walk ten steps by myself."
	"And if you do, I'm going to chain you to your bed," Keritanima said with a steely expression at her maid.
	"What happened?" he asked again.
	"Zakkites," Keritanima replied.  "Six of them.  They came out of a fogbank and hit us before we even knew what was going on.  They were about to sink us, but you showed up and destroyed them with Sorcery."  She shuddered.  "You nearly killed yourself, Tarrin.  If I hadn't been there to cut you off from the Weave, what's left of you would be in a little jar.  Don't ever scare me like that again!"
	"Azakar," he recalled blearily.  "I never saw Azakar.  Is he alright?"
	"We had to fish him and a few others out of the sea," Miranda replied, drawing a glare from Keritanima.  "He was thrown overboard after the first assault."
	"Sisska?"
	She's fine," Keritanima assured him.
	"Binter is tending to her," Allia told him.  "She is still recovering from her ordeal.  Binter agreed to allow me the honor of defending Keritanima until he can resume his duties."
	"That couldn't have been easy," Tarrin said weakly.  "I'm really thirsty, sisters.  Can I have something to drink?"
	Keritanima picked a cup of broth up from a small table, and Tarrin sensed her touch the Weave.  It began to steam slightly, heated by her magic, and she allowed him to take small sips.  The liquid was flavored with chicken, and tasted sweeter than any wine ever could.
	The door opened, and Dolanna and Faalken entered.  Their entrance cramped the small cabin somewhat, but Tarrin's eyes were locked on Dolanna.  She looked very tired and wan, with dark circles under her eyes.  Faalken was literally supporting her.  She smiled at him warmly, and that made Tarrin feel an entire world better for some reason, as if their fight had never been.  "Dolanna, you look terrible," he told her.
	"I look much better than you," she said in a weary tone, but her eyes danced and she gave him a glorious smile.  "After the fight, there were many people to tend.  You among them."
	"How bad was it?" he asked quietly.
	"By some gift of the Goddess, only two people were killed," she replied.  "The Zakkites struck during the breakfast meal, and most of Renoit's people were in the galley filling their plates.  Most of the injuries were very serious, but the conditioning of these people allowed them to live more than long enough for us to render aid."
	"It pays to be in shape, it seems," Faalken noted, as Miranda took another sip of her broth.
	"We did pick up a few survivors from the Zakkites.  All of them are slaves," Dolanna told him.  "One is an Aeradalla."
	"What is that?" he asked.
	"A race that is reputed to no longer exist," she said in a tired voice.  "Some call them the Winged Ones, winged, human-like beings that were thought to be long dead.  She has refused to leave until you recovered, even after I healed her of her injuries."
	"Refused?  How long have I been asleep?"
	"Nearly two days," Allia told him.
	"They had her in their soultrap," Dolanna told him. "It was her life force that was making the ship to which she was bound fly.  That is how Zakkite skyships defy gravity, by consuming the life force of flying creatures.  She managed to get free of it before what was left of the vessel sank."
	Tarrin sipped up the rest of the broth, then laid his head wearily back on the pillow.  Just the act of raising his head had completely exhausted him.
	"Tarrin, do you remember what happened?" Dolanna asked intently.
	"No, not really," he said.  "Just seeing Miranda laying on the deck.   Everything after that is a blur."
	"Let us hope that you can recall what happened," she said.  "You and I absolutely must discuss what you did."
	"Why, what did I do?"
	"Tarrin, you created strands," Keritanima told him in a gentle voice.  "You made them, but they're just like any other strand.  It's like you reached out and put new threads into the Weave."
	"That is exactly what he did, Keritanima," Dolanna assured her.  "It is something that is supposed to be completely impossible, and yet you did it."  She leaned against Faalken a bit more.  "If you can remember how you did it, then the possibilities may be boundless.  We could repair the thinned sections of the Weave and restore it to its former state.  Maybe even reclaim some of the power of the Ancients."
	She smiled and patted him on the arm.  "But that can wait.  Right now, you need rest, and your sisters need to sleep.  Neither Keritanima nor A