ve made."
	One by one, the leaders of the nobles houses approached her and made the same offer.  Retaining titles and lands in exchange for the promise to stop resisting.  Keritanima accepted them, one by one, making every noble leader say it publicly in court so that there would be no weaseling out of it.  The most satisfying of them was when Sheba Zalan gave her stiff curtsy and pleaded to retain her house and titles.  Keritanima made her sweat for a moment by pretending to consider the matter, but finally agreed.
	When the last swore to her, she stood up again.  "Don't even think that I believed a word of what you said," she said hotly to them.  "Right now, a force of thirty thousand Vendari are on the way from Vendaka.  Sashka has pledged his full support, and the Vendari will only obey the Crown.  If you care to mouth your platitudes while buying muskets, go right again.  I'll pit my forty thousand Vendari and the Royal Navy against everything you can hire.  You will understand right here, right now, that you either embrace change, or be crushed under its heel.  I'll continue with my plan, whether there are any nobles left to form a House of Lords or not."  She looked over them coldly.  "Understand one thing, my nobles.  You are alone.  The Vendari are behind me, and the commoners believe in the idea of a Republic.  We can go on without you.  You aren't needed anymore.  You can either march with us into the future, or be destroyed.  The choice is yours."  She crossed her arms and swept a powerful gaze over them.  "This audience is concluded.  Get out!"
	In total silence, the court withdrew.  Keritanima went through the back entrance with her retinue and sashka, and only in the antechamber where the Queen donned her Royal robes did she blow out a sigh of relief.  "That went as well as I expected," she told her friends.  "I appreciate your aid, friend sashka."
	"We are yours to command, your Majesty," he said mildly.
	"Do you believe in what I'm doing?"
	"This idea of a Republic is not our way, Majesty," sashka said calmly.  "It is against our nature.  So long as you do not impose it upon Vendaka, all will be well."
	"But do you think it's a good idea for us?"
	"I have read your papers.  You have vision, Majesty.  For the Wikuni, I believe it will be a good thing."
	"Then that's all I needed to hear," she said to him with a gentle smile.  "I trust your judgement, sashka."
	"My judgement will ever be at your command, your Majesty."
	"That comforts me in ways I don't think you can imagine, sashka," she said sincerely.  "Now I can get things moving for real."
	"Why the haste, your Majesty?" Sashka asked.
	"I have a promise to keep, sashka," she replied seriously.  "It's a matter of honor.  I have to return to Sennadar as soon as possible."
	"If it is a matter of honor, then your haste is understandable," he replied, his eyes approving.  "But do not let the haste cloud your judgement.  You cannot rush to Sennadar to save honor while losing it here."
	"I'm aware of that, but I do need to hurry," she told him.  "I want to be back in Suld inside four months.  I think that's a realistic timetable."
	"Workable," Miranda piped in.  "Now that you've cowed the nobles, you just have to organize the government, and find someone to act in your stead while you're gone."
	"I already know who that will be," she said.  She turned to the massive Vendari ruler.  "Would you do me the honor of serving in my place while I'm gone, sashka?  If there's anyone in Wikuna I can trust, it's you.  I have total confidence in your ability, and the nobles wet themselves at the sight of you."
	"You honor me, your Majesty," the Vendari replied in a serious voice.  "I am not worthy of the position, but if you wish it, I will do my best."
	Miranda laughed brightly.  "The nobles won't even think of trying to revolt while we're gone if sashka is serving as the Queen's regent," she told Azakar.
	"That's only a small reason," Keritanima said.  "Sashka knows Wikuna, and he knows what I'm trying to do.  His ability to govern is more important than his ability to intimidate."
	"But it doesn't hurt," Miranda added.
	"No, it does not," Keritanima agreed with a smile.
	She took off her crown and set it on a cushion with the sceptre, sighing in relief.  That was the last obstacle.  With the nobles under control, she would soon be on her way back to Sennadar, back to her brother and sister.  She had three months to prepare Wikuna for her departure.  Three months.
	It wouldn't be short enough for her.

	Heat.
	Burning sun, burning sand, burning rocks.  Tarrin had never known such heat.  It hammered into his body, it beat the energy out of him, it boiled him in his own fur.  His Were body was well suited to dealing with heat, but it began to tire him after only half a day of exposure to the powerful sun and baking ambient heat of the Desert of Swirling Sands.
	Tarrin huddled inside his leather cloak, using it to shield him from the merciless sun, which hung like a ball of molten bronze in the sky, a disc of pure fire that burned at him.  Its light was so bright that it reflected painfully off the sand and gravel, bright even under the protection of the tinted visor Sarraya had made, and every step burned the sand's intense heat into the pads on his feet.  He was sweating profusely within the cloak, but he knew that it would be ten times worse if the sun was directly striking him.  Sweat made his still-short hair wet to the touch, bleeding out the black dye that Sarraya had used to darken his hair.  His skin had lost its dark color, but his face was nearly as dark now from exposure to the sun, darkening in response to exposure to the blasting sunlight of the desert.  If anything, now he understood why the Selani had brown skin.  It had been burned into them to the point where it had become an inherited trait.
	Crossing the desert in the heat of the day hadn't been his first choice, but he was too close to the edge of the desert to suit him.  The sandstorm that sent him scrambling for cover the night before ended as quickly as it began, and just as mysteriously, making him wonder if the Selani goddess really did create the storm to drive Anayi out of the desert.  It had howled deafeningly for about five hours, and then it stopped.  Tarrin had spent the rest of the night sleeping, and when he awoke in the morning, he realized that he was entirely too close to the escarpment to make him feel comfortable.  So he had set out in the morning sunrise to put distance between him and the ki'zadun.  The morning had been cold, at first, but he expected that.  He'd heard many of Allia's tales about the desert, so he knew what to expect.  He moved quickly in the morning, and slowed more and more as the sun rose and started baking the land.  It wasn't even noon yet, and already it was nearly unbearable.  He knew that he had to stop soon, to find shade and rest during the hottest part of the day, and then start again in the afternoon.  That wasn't the Selani way, but then again, the Selani were born and raised in the desert, and were acclimated to the heat.
	He would adjust.  If his Were body was good for anything, it was adaption to new environments.  His system would get used to the heat, his body would adapt to the environment, and his regeneration would protect him from things like sunburn or heat stroke.  Dehydration was his primary concern, so he made sure to drink water often.  He'd get used to the heat and not sweat as much, but he had to keep water inside him until that happened.
	"Now...now I understand why the Selani are so fierce," Sarraya panted under his hood, hiding from the heat.  Her voice was listless.  "Anything that can live in this must be all but indestructible."
	"I thought you'd been to the desert before," Tarrin noted.
	"It was winter then, it's not as hot in the winter," she replied.  "And I visited the northern marches of the desert.  This is the southern marches."
	"It makes a difference?"
	"Entirely," she panted.
	The sense of relief he felt from getting here didn't quite overcome his sense of trepidation.  Now he was safe from those seeking the Book, but he just traded them in for beasts that were after him as a meal.  He'd already seen some tracks.  Tracks at least as large as his own feet, three-toed, and with divots at the ends of the toes that told him the toes sported some wicked claws.  The way it looked, it was a pack of them, and judging by the size of the feet, they had to be at least Tarrin's size, if not larger.  And if they weren't bad enough, he'd seen two Selani markers.  The Selani owned the desert, and they killed invaders.  He wouldn't be able to hide from them forever, but he hoped to get well into the desert before meeting up with any of them.  Add to that the challenges of surviving in such a hostile land, and it made for a relatively unpleasant experience.
	But he couldn't deny the stark beauty of the land.  That morning, after leaving the little cave in the side of a rock spire, he had to stop and marvel at how the light struck the many stone spires dotting the wasteland, at the different colors that banded them as they rose towards the heavens, reds and browns and yellows and even greens and blues.  The sun illuminated the scene in brillant reds as it rose, like fire sweeping across the desert, causing the stone to change colors as the sun rose from the horizon.  It was breathtaking.  He never knew unworked stone could look so beautiful.  There was an elegance to it, a simple beauty, as if the wind had taken up a paintbrush and left its mark upon the spires.  A little climbing told him that it was the stone itself that was colored, which was even more amazing.  Never before had Tarrin seen green sandstone, but yet here it was.
	Blowing out his breath, Tarrin stopped.  He had to stop often to drink, but stopping made him feel like he was standing on a campfire.  He dug his feet into the sand, sinking them down past the heat to the cooler sand beneath, and let his fur insulate him from the hot sand pressing up against his ankles.  He knelt down and spread the cloak out around him, shielding the sand from the sun so it would cool and take some bite off the inferno hitting him in the face while he rested.  He pulled the waterskin off his belt and shook it, then uncapped it carefully with his claws and emptied it of its contents.  The water was hot, but it soothed a parched throat, and sent a minor surge of energy through him.
	But not much.
	Crossing this land would be a trial.  He already knew that, but it took coming here, feeling the fire under his feet and the weight of the sun's heat on his head to fully appreciate how difficult it was going to be.  But why did he have to do it?  The Goddess had told him to go this way, told him to go into the desert.  She had to have a good reason.  After all, if Keritanima controlled the Wikuni fleets, that literally meant that she controlled the seas.  On board a Wikuni clipper, he would be completely safe.  He could go to the coast right now and call to Kerri, and she would send her ships to pick him up.  Why did he have to endure a trek across the desert?
	Because she told him to do it.
	Sometimes acting on faith was a chore.  Tarrin rose back up, staring out into the blasted lands of the Selani.  It was all sand and rock, and rock and sand.  Not to mention the sand and the rock.  Allia said there were plants in the desert, in some areas, and even then only if one knew where to look.  There were oases in the desert as well, but they were well hidden and well guarded by the Selani, for they represented life.  Most of them served as the Selani's home camps.  The Selani were a semi-nomadic people, traveling from oasis to oasis so as not to completely drain the water in an area and to find what forage they could for their animals.  They lived in tents mostly, but each clan had a permanent village where the clan-king lived.  They would be interruptions of the sand and rock, at least.
	In a way, Tarrin almost wanted a sandstorm to come in.  At least inside the howling winds there would be shade.  He shaded his eyes with a paw and looked at a distant rock spire, one of the large ones.  That was his goal, to reach that spire by sunset.  There was a smaller one about three longspans ahead, and that was where he intended to find some shade and rest through the hottest part of the day.
	There was some kind of dark disturbance on the horizon.  Tarrin watched as it seemed to take form, to expand and grow, and he realized that it was another sandstorm.  He focused on it, watched it as it grew larger and larger, and in growing horror he realized that it was getting larger because it was moving towards him, and moving faster than anything he'd ever seen move!
	"Sarraya, there's a storm coming in, and it's moving fast!" he said, jumping up and sprinting.  Three longspans.  For him, that was only ten minutes, a distance he could cover quickly and without worry.  But the sand grabbed at his feet, the heat drained his strength.  Even as he started to run, he began to doubt whether they were going to make it.
	"Good gods!" Sarraya said in a strangled tone as she came around and looked out of the front of the hood.  "Tarrin, run!  If that hits us, it'll pick us up, and you won't survive the landing!"
	"I'm running!" he snapped in reply, charging ahead in complete desperation.  Never had he seen anything move so fast!  It had to be unnatural!  In seconds, the edges of the storm were defined.  It was small, but it moved with incredible speed, and its broiling center churned with blowing sand and dust.  It was a dark cloud, a cloud of death, which would kill anything unfortunate enough to wander into its path.
	Step by step, Tarrin closed on the storm, trying to beat it to the rock spire between them.  Step by step, the storm loomed larger and larger, swallowing up the horizon, coming to dominate the region before him.  He could see the bulging clouds of sand making it up, see the edge of the powerful wind as it picked up everything in its path.  What ferocity!  And what speed!  It moved faster than the fastest horse, carried along by its own winds, racing across the desert like some dark phantom.
	They weren't going to make it!  He was barely halfway there, and the storm was directly before him, so close that the first stirrings of wind began to tug at his cloak.  In immediate terror, he realized that he had moments--seconds--before it hit them.  He had to think fast!  He skidded to a stop on a flat rock buried in the sand, its surface worn smooth by the scouring winds.
	"No!" Tarrin said in a growling tone.  "I didn't come this far to get killed in a storm!  NO!!!!!!!!!" he shouted at the storm, as his eyes flared with an incandescent light.  The power of the Weave rushed into him before he even realized what he was doing, so quickly that Sarraya hastily tried to control it.  But as quickly as he touched the Weave, the storm bore down on him like it was a thing alive, leaving him the shortest moment to brace for its impact.  He wasn't ready!  He didn't have enough magic built up to do anything strong enough to counter the power of the sandstorm!  He couldn't draw enough to control safely that would counter the power of the wind!
	In desperation, Tarrin wove a weave of Earth, and caused his feet to sink into the stone beneath them.  Then he crossed his arms before his face and braced himself.
	It was like being dragged through a briar patch by ten racing horses.  The wind struck him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, and carried on it was the merciless scouring sand.  The sand and dust tore into him, tore his clothing, stripped the fur and skin from him, made a whining sound as it assaulted the nicked, pitted steel of his manacles.  Hot, slashing sand ripped into his face, and the force of the wind stressed the bones in his legs, threatening to break them.  Tarrin leaned into the wind, using his inhuman strength to resist its power, bent his knees to take the stress off his shins.  Sand invaded his mouth, drove into his ears, even ripped the tip of his left ear off.  The cloak around his neck shredded instantly from the immense power of the wind, nearly broke his neck as it was pulled by the wind.
	He only barely heard Sarraya's frightened scream as the clasp of the cloak broke, the laces were ripped apart, and the cloak was ripped from his back.
	"Sarraya!" he gasped.  She had been inside the hood, and he could hear her cry fade into the howling of the wind as she was carried away from him.  Sand filled his mouth, but the sudden fear for Sarraya, the instant horror that she might be dead caused him to lose his fear, lose his inhibitions.  Tarrin released all constraints and opened himself completely to the Weave, and allowed it to flow into him, through him.  The Weave was weak where he was, but he could still draw in enough to feel it racing through him, scouring the fatigue and aching within as the sand scoured away skin, hair, and fur without.  Tarrin felt the Weave fill him, infuse him, quickly go past the point where sweetness became pain, and warmth became burning heat.  The warning from the Goddess remained in the back of his mind, caused him to attempt to clamp down on the power rushing into him, but again he found that he could not.  The only way to free himself from the Weave would be to use the power within, the cut himself off before it had a chance to recharge.  The Weave was thin here, he'd have a very good chance of doing it without causing himself any permanent injury.
	He had to use it now, before it built past his ability to control.  It wasn't enough power to disrupt the storm, but that wasn't his intent.  Weaving together a spell of Air and Divine power, Tarrin released it and caused a wedge of pure Air to form before him, deflecting the wind from him enough to where it did not threaten to tear him apart.  Then he sent a tendril of Air behind, a spell of searching to look for Sarraya.  She was a Faerie and a Druid.  She could fly, and she had magic to protect herself from the wind.  He had no doubt that she would survive, but she may be injured by flying debris, and he wouldn't allow that.  He found her quickly, out of the hood, being carried along by the powerful wind as it ripped her dress from her body and stripped blue skin from her body.  He reached out with his tendril of Air and grabbed her, surrounded her with a barrier of protection from the wind, and then started carrying her back to him.  The wind pushed against him, tried to rip her from his magical grasp, but he would not yield.  It was so strong that he stopped concentrating on the wedge of Air protecting him from the force of the storm, diverted that energy into keeping his grip on the Faerie and keeping the killing winds away from her.  When he let the wedge dissolve, a furious blast of wind hit him in the face, tore off the rest of his left ear, blinded his left eye, but he ignored the damage, ignored the pain, concentrating solely and completely on his weaving.  Sarraya meant more to him than his own safety.  He inexorably pulled her back towards him, resisting the power of the wind, battling the power of the storm over the little Faerie.
	With bloody paws, Tarrin clasped them around Sarraya's quivering, naked body.  The wind had done its damage to her as well as him.  He cradled her like a baby, cradled her to his chest and hunkered down, then wove a weave of Air, a Ward to keep out the sand and the wind.  He laid it down around him, and when it took effect, the howling of the wind became a whisper, and the dusty air was unnaturally still.
	"Tarrin!" Sarraya suddenly cried as he opened his paws.  She began to cry, putting her bloody hands over her face and weeping into them.  She was shivering with fear, as any normal person would be after looking death so closely in the face.
	Tarrin was drained, weary.  He found cutting himself off from the Weave to be relatively easy, but the pain of the backlash felt as if he'd been filled to the brim with magic, rather than nearly completely drained.  The Ward itself shuddered from the magical effect of the backlash, a displacement of the air around him that caused what little remaining clothing on him to blow away from him.  He didn't have much left.  The pack was still intact, and its precious contents were safely on his back.  But all of the shirt he had on that wasn't under the pack was now gone.  His trousers had survived, but only just.  The pant legs were all but gone, leaving nothing but the leather from the mid-thigh up.  All of the fur on him that had been directly facing the wind was gone, and alot of his skin was stripped raw.  Much of the hair on his head had been plucked from its roots, but the itching he felt up there, and all over him, told him that already his body was beginning to restore itself.  Within an hour, he'd look as if he'd never been in the storm.
	"Sarraya," he said weakly, "are you alright?"
	"I'm alright," she said in a small voice, sniffling.  "I'm scared half out of my mind, but I'm alright.  Are you?"
	"I'm a little grated, but I think I'm alright," he told her.  It was hard to see her.  Both of his eyes had been struck by the corrosive sand, and they had been damaged.  She was nothing but a hazy blur, a smudge of blue in a brown hodgepodge of indistinct shapes.  "I can't see."
	"Hold on."  He felt her reach into that place where the magic of the Druids resided, and then heard the buzzing of her wings.  A tiny hand touched his face, and gentle warmth flowed through it.  His eyesight became sharper and sharper, more distinct, until he could see her clearly.  He held up his paw before him, and she landed lightly upon it as he managed to focus on her.  "Is that better?"
	She was a mess.  The wind and sand had ripped the dress right off her back, and her blue skin was striped in angry reds from the stripping of the sand.  Both of her wings had survived--actually, they were a bit brighter than before, having been polished by the power of the wind and sand--and alot of her auburn hair had literally been ripped from her head.
	"You're naked," he remarked.
	Sarraya blushed, then laughed.  "You wear a dress and manage to keep it on after that," she teased.  "The cloak didn't last long, did it?"
	"Would you expect it to survive that?" Tarrin asked, pointing to the fury outside the Ward.
	"Nope.  And I think we'd better not make that mistake again.  I'll make you a long-sleeved shirt and some rugged leather trousers when it blows over.  At least the sword and the pack made it."
	"They're up against me," he replied.  "I felt the wind trying to break the straps of the pack, but they held.  I guess I'd better grow out my hair again.  If anything, it'll keep the sun off my neck."
	"That would be a good idea," she said, sighing.  "I see one more thing as well."
	"What?"
	"I'm going to have to teach you some Druidic magic," she said.  "If I get separated from you or die, then you won't have anything at all to help you with your Sorcery, and you'll be stuck out here with no way to get water.  You'll die if I don't teach you.  Evaluation or not, I'm going to have to teach you."
	"I guess that makes sense," he said after a moment of consideration.  "But you don't have to worry, Sarraya.  I'm not going to let anything take you away from me."
	"I appreciate that, but let's be realistic," she said with a beaming smile.  "Why didn't you get picked up by the storm?"
	Tarrin pointed down with his other paw, and Sarraya followed his finger.  Then she laughed brightly.  "Tarrin, that was clever!"
	"It was all I could think of," he said sheepishly.  "If I'd really been thinking, I would have created a Ward like the one I have up now."
	"Well, live and learn," she chuckled.  "Let me get you out of there, and we'll see about making some new clothes.  You know something?"
	"What?"
	"I'm not hot now," she said.
	Tarrin gave her a curious look, then laughed.  Something he didn't do much anymore.  Only Sarraya would say something like that, and only Sarraya could make him laugh.  "I guess this is your fault.  You're the one who wanted a storm."
	"I guess I don't know my own strength," she said with a wry smile.
	"Be careful what you wish for," he said, quoting an ancient saying, "you may get it."
	"No argument here," she said with a laugh, and bent about the task of healing and clothing them.

	They reached the rock spire he tried to reach before the storm late in the afternoon, well after the sun began to sink towards the horizon.  It was one of the thick ones, hundreds of spans wide, and it had a nearly vertical surface that had deep ruts etched into it.  Some of them were thin, some wide, some shallow, some deep, and a little exploration showed one that had a bulging pocket near the ground, half-filled with sand, going deep enough into the rock spire to almost be called a cave.  It was large enough to serve as a den for the night.
	The savage sandstorm had kept them pinned in for most of the afternoon.  His Ward dissolved long before the storm ended, but Sarraya had used her Druidic magic to change the shape of the stone ledge upon which they stood, raising it to form a barrier against the wind, even curling it over to form something of a half-cave.  Sarraya wisely put the entrance so it faced the side of the wind rather than the back, to keep the sand from building up quickly.  It was a good shelter, so long as they paid attention not to let the sand build up at the entrance and bury them.  After it passed, Sarraya returned the rock to its original state, and they moved on.
	Tarrin leaned against the wall of the shallow nook, sitting on soft sand, while Sarraya lay on her back on the sand by his foot.  He was exhausted.  The heat had worn him down, and using Sorcery had brought him nearly to the limit.  As if that wasn't enough, the struggle against the storm had used up what energy he hadn't used in Sorcery, used up just about everything he had left.  The Weave in this region was curiously thin, and that had probably made using Sorcery much less taxing, much less dangerous to him than normal.  A thin Weave meant that it took considerably longer to build enough energy to weave.  That had kept him from attacking the storm directly, but it had also made it much easier to cut himself off.  He leaned against the rock, feeling its strange warmth, feeling the warmth of the sand beneath him in the cool shade of the pocket, let it seep into him and soothe tired muscles.
	The sandstorm had caused him to do one thing before setting out again, and that was to protect the Book of Ages.  He had placed it in the elsewhere, shifting into human form and tightening the straps of the pack holding it to the point where it would disappear when he changed back.  It was something that he was intending to do anyway, but the storm convinced him that getting it into the ultimate of safe places immediately was the wisest thing to do.  The sword, resting beside him at the moment, had jiggled around more than was comfortable for him after the pack was removed, but he'd get used to it.
	Sarraya's wings began to flutter, and then she sat up and yawned.  The Faerie showed no signs that she had been flailed by the driving sand earlier that day.  Her cobweb clothing was new, but this time she wore a costume much like Allia's desert garb, a loose shirt adjusted for her wings and baggy pants.  She had even created diaphonous shoes for herself, to protect her feet from the sun.  The ethereal material was brown, which covered most of her blue skin and made her less conspicuous to people when she wasn't invisible.  She had made Tarrin a new set of clothes as well, a loose long-sleeve shirt, the color of sand, made of some very light material he had never seen before.  It was so light he almost felt like he wasn't wearing anything, but he already found out that it was very strong and rugged.  The trousers were good old leather, undyed buckskins, and he'd already managed to put some tears in the cuffs when he was putting them on.  With feet as large as his, it was hard to get them into trousers fitted for his waist and legs without catching the claws on them.  She even made him a new visor to replace the one he lost in the storm.  He decided that letting his hair grow was the best move, to protect his neck, so he once again had a braid as thick as a child's arm hanging from his head, hanging down all the way to his backside.
	Sarraya had been right.  The length of his hair was something he could control by conscious choice.  As soon as he decided to let his hair grow again, it quickly grew out to its former length.
	"Well, are you ready?" Sarray asked.
	"Ready for what?"
	"For your first lesson."
	"Now?"
	"I wasn't kidding, Tarrin," she told him sharply.  "The sooner you can use Druidic magic, the better.  that means we start now."
	"I'm tired, Sarraya."
	"So am I," she snapped in reply.  "Now sit up and pay attention."
	He blew out his breath and sat up, pulling in his legs and crossing them, then looking down at the Faerie with a weary expression.
	"Druidic magic is nothing like Sorcery," she began calmly, taking a curiously serious, sober tone.  "So let's get that out right up front.  In Sorcery, you take in the magic to use, then make it what you want it to be.  Sorcery lets you hold the power and not do anything with it.  That's not how it's done in Druidic magic.  With Druidic magic, you have to know what you want to do before you do anything.  Then you come into contact with the All and will it to be so.  If you're strong enough, it happens.  If you're not, it kills you.  It's that simple.
	"Since you've used Druidic magic before, I'm not really going to go into the mechanics of how it works.  You don't need to know that, because you've already done it.  Druidic magic is like Sorcery that way.  Once you use it once, you'll always know how to use it again when you need it.  That's one of the main reasons I'm teaching you.  What you do need to know is that it works the same way, no matter what you're trying to do.  There are no spells, no formulas, in Druidic magic.  All you do is come into communion with the All and tell it what you want done, and it does all the work.  You're nothing more than a tool for it, an outlet for its power."
	"For everything?"
	"For everything," she affirmed.  "Conjuring a gnat or attempting to change the orbit of the Greatest Moon would be no different.  The only difference comes 