ing coup!  I think if he wished me dead, I would be dead!"
	"Truly, there is no dishonor in losing to such a warrior," Morin consoled him.  "You fought well."
	Snorting, Tarrin turned and started walking away from the pair.  He'd sampled a taste of what he could expect from the Selani.  Var had been a very worthy foe, but his unfamiliarity with Tarrin's nature had been his downfall.  He had lost himself when Tarrin turned on him with his claws, when he could have used his sword to make the Were-cat back off.  He had forgotten Tarrin's strength, and when he came at him, Tarrin used it against him.
	Even a Selani could be intimidated.
	"Hold, stranger!" the one Morin called in Arakite.  "To venture into our lands is death!  Your victory has earned you a day of protection, but no more!  I say to you now, as a warrior of honor, return to Saranam!  It would be a great loss to have to kill you!"
	Tarrin stopped, turning just enough to look back over his shoulder at the two of them.  "I spared him out of respect for the Selani," he bluffed.  "I won't be so gentle next time.  Remember that before you decide to chase me down."
	He looked down, and saw the Selani's spear laying by his foot.  Impulsively, he snaked his tail around the shaft, and pulled it up into his paw.  He hefted it once, then turned enough to lob it harmlessly in their direction.  Both of them stared at it for a long moment, then looked to him again.
	"Answer me one thing, stranger," Morin called.  "Where did you learn the Dance?  I saw its roots in your movements."
	"From the best," he answered honestly.  He wouldn't dishonor Allia, no matter what.  He looked right into their eyes.  "From the best."
	Tarrin turned and started walking away, but Morin called again.  "Show me the brands!"
	That stopped him in his tracks.  He turned and regarded Morin and Var calmly.  "What makes you think I have brands?"
	"You know the Dance.  No Selani would teach you the Dance unless you were deshida.  Which clan calls you brother?"
	"No clan," he replied bluntly.  He wouldn't dishonor Allia, but he wasn't about to get her in trouble either.  Allia's clan didn't know about Tarrin.  "My brands were for the sake of one, not for the sake of a clan.  Hers is the only honor I carry.  As far as you or any other Selani are concerned, I am kaiji, an invader."
	That seemed to intrigue both of them, wildly, but they said no more.  He left them where they were, moving off towards the west, muddy and a little bloody and a bit tired.  He had dealt with a kajat and he had made his first contact with the Selani, a meeting that had turned out more or less as he expected.
	But at least he wasn't thirsty anymore.

	The face wouldn't go away.
	He stood on one of the rock spires that dotted the desert that sunset, climbing up to look at the beautiful spectacle from a higher vantage point.  He had run the rest of the day, without water, to distance himself from the Selani behind him.  He was thirsty, very thirsty, but there would be time enough to drink later on.
	The day had been eventful.  He had seen a desert reptile up close, and had his first meeting with the Selani.  Both had bolstered him a bit.  Both had been exhilerating encounters, but had proved to be not too dangerous.  With some luck and patience, he had a good feeling that he'd get across the desert in one piece.
	At least physically.  The face of the girl was still there, behind his eyes, and he was tired.  He would have to sleep soon, and he was certain that she would be in his dreams, waiting for him.  That terrified him more than any kajat or Selani horde ever could.  From the girl with no eyes, there could be no escape, no quarter, no mercy.  The dead had no compassion.
	Sleep was something he did not want to face, but he had to sleep.  The desert really took it out of him, and he had to rest, to do more than just sit.  He had to sleep.  And he knew that she was going to be there.  The very thought of facing the dream again was almost enough to send him flying into a panic, but that wouldn't do him any good.  He would take the time before having to sleep and try not to think about it, enjoy his calm before the storm to come.  When it was time to sleep, then he would face the dream, face his punishment for his evil, stand before their accusing gazes and know that he had become what he had always feared.  It was unavoidable, inescapable, and the only solace in it was that he would eventually wake up, and it would be over.
	Again, it seemed that he had little choice in things.  But then again, the choice that would have avoided it had been made long ago.  And he had made the wrong choice.  Now it was time to pay for that mistake.
	The flutter of wings heralded the return of Sarraya.  He couldn't see her, but he could smell her as the wind picked up.  She was coming up from behind.  He heard her wings right beside him, and then a blur in the corner of his eye told him that she was visible again.
	"You're a mess," she said conversationally.  "What happened to you?"
	"I was dancing," he told her quietly, staring at the lovely sunset.  The sun was almost all the way down, and it painted the sky with breathtaking reds, yellows, and even some oranges and greens.  The Skybands were just beginning to flare into their colored brilliance, bisecting the sunset in a most breathtaking manner.  The desert was a land of extremes, both extreme dangers and extreme beauty.
	It was a land that mirrored his own soul.  A barren landscape of desolation, but with certain beauty, if one cared to take the time to look for it.
	"I'd hate to see your partner," Sarraya chuckled.  "I'm, I'm sorry I left you alone all day, but you made me really mad.  I left you out here all alone, with just one waterskin.  You must be parched."
	"I've had enough water today to last me a month, Sarraya," Tarrin said quietly, somberly.  "I'll tell you about it over dinner.  Come on, I found a nice little cave where we can spend the night."
	Tarrin began climbing down the rock spire, the stark beauty of the desert sunset forgotten in the moment.  But it was still there, waiting for someone to look up and take it in, to look beyond the harshness immediately before them and appreciate the beauty in the distance ahead.
 
Chapter 7

	Gasping, sitting bolt upright, Tarrin recoiled from the dream in the cold night air, feeling the cold air all but freezing the sweat slicking his body.  His heart was racing, and that nameless terror had again swept over him.  He panted like he'd ran fifty longspans, his heart pounding in his chest and his paws trembling visibly.
	No rest.  For ten straight nights the dreams had haunted him, and he'd managed to get very little sleep.  Not even shapeshifting into cat form helped, which usually did when it came to dreams.  The lack of sleep had been getting to him, but not nearly as much as the dreams themselves.
	Ten days.  It seemed like an eternity of torture.  Ten days since he'd skirmished with the Selani, ten days since fighting with the kajat.  Since then, he'd only seen a few small desert dogs and a few oversized lizards, what Allia called umuni.  He knew to stay away from those, for they had the most potent poison in the world.  Umuni literally meant "killing lizard."  The lack of sleep and that eyeless face dogged him now, made him short-tempered--even for him--but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.  The only thing he could do was wait for the dreams to fade, or make them stop somehow.  Ten days had not tempered the abject terror they spawned in him, a nameless dread that couldn't be denied.  This dream seemed just as frightening as the first, and it was the same dream, over and over and over again.
	He was sleeping in a boulder field, in a tent Sarraya had conjured which was attached to the flat side of one large boulder and staked to the ground everywhere else.  The sand between the great rocks was soft and strangely warm, even now, as if there were hot springs beneath the sand to keep the sand comfortable.  The irregular outline of the boulders would hide him from the Selani, he knew, and keep the larger reptillian predators from reaching him without giving him enough warning that they were on his scent.  It had been ten days since seeing anything large enough to threaten him, but that didn't meant that they weren't out there.  If something that weighed more than a riverboat could sneak up on him, he wouldn't assume much of anything about anything.
	Laying back down in the warm sand, he put a paw over his face and tried to recover his breath, slow his heart.  Why?  Why the same dream over and over and over?  It just didn't make any sense!  And why was he still afraid of it?  When it began, he knew absolutely everything that was going to happen next.  Why should it still frighten him?  And yet it did.  Just as strongly now as it had the very first time.
	It just didn't make any sense.
	Closing his eyes, he tried to think of something else.  He remembered Sarraya's lessons from the night before, lessons on how to conjure large things, how to conjure many of one thing.  Ten days of lessons also occupied his mind, and they all centered around conjuring.  It seemed to be the beginning for Druids, but then again, Sarraya said that she didn't intend to teach him anything else.  It certainly seemed to be useful.  And it was easy.  Like she said, maybe it was too easy.  His biggest problem was focusing through the ever-present face, the hauntingly beautiful young girl who had no eyes, whose empty gaze burned him with the searing purity of its accusation.  When he could push that memory out of his mind long enough, he could conjure.
	It was useless.  He was up now, and there would be no going back to sleep.  There never was, after the dream.  He sat up and sighed, looking over to Sarraya, who slept on a conjured cloth laying on the sand in the corner of the tent.  She would be alright for a while.  He crawled out of the tent and climbed up onto one of the boulders, looking up into the sky soberly, at the bright stars, the Skybands, at Duva and Kava as they began to set, and Vala as it began to rise.  Dommammon had risen before sunset and set about midnight, and by the look of the night sky, it was a few hours until dawn.  The gentle wind, carrying its icy bite, was almost devoid of any smell but sand and rock, but there was a hint of salt in the smells reaching him.  This wasn't a very populated area.  Probably because of a lack of water.  The Weave in this region was a bit thicker than it had been in the border of the desert.  The strands were larger, more charged, and a minor Conduit existed not far from where he was.
	His sense of the Weave had only increased in the ten days since meeting the Selani.  Now he could sense it all the time, as if here touching the Weave all the time, sense the strands, sense their power and size, sense their arrangement even beyond his sight.  It was an expansion of his former ability, and he had already become accustomed to it.  He could literally see the strands now, see them as if they were just beyond his sight yet were not, but he more or less ignored them.  They had become part of the background now, just like how he looked over the boulder field and saw rocks, but no specific rock caught his eye.  The Weave was there, but there was nothing to make him pay attention to it.
	Maybe now was the time.  He'd been in the desert for fifteen days now, and he'd yet to try to make contact with the Selani goddess.  A part of him was afraid to do it.  A part of him didn't want to do it while the dreams haunted him.  Another part of him shuddered at the idea of begging aid from a god other than his own.  That smacked of heresy to him.  The Goddess hadn't said if she would mind if he did that, but he didn't really want to take that step into blasphemy just yet.  He was hoping that Fara'Nae, the Holy Mother, would be the one to initiate contact with him.  He had hoped that the Goddess had spoken to her, asked her to teach him about ancient magic, but that hadn't happened.  None of it had happened.  He had come into the desert hoping to be taught old secrets, but the only thing that had really happened was the resurrection of old demons inside him, demons he thought he'd conquered long ago.
	He didn't know what to do.  He wanted to try to contact Fara'Nae, but a part of him rejected that idea.  He wanted to learn about the ancient magic, but he was afraid to take the first step.  In his mental condition, maybe trying to learn new magic wasn't a good idea.  The Druidic lessons had showed him that.  He had enough trouble concentrating as it was.
	In any event, the primary mission had not changed.  To get the book to Suld.  Everything else that happened would have to fit around that mission.  If it happened, it happened.  If it didn't, it didn't.
	Sometimes it felt so silly.  Here he was, Tarrin Kael.  The Tarrin Kael, the Were-cat who had stories, rumors, and now even legends being made about him out in the rest of the world.  The most notorious man alive, probably the most feared, and he was afraid.  Afraid of himself, afraid of the future, afraid of something as simple as trying to make contact with a Goddess when he spoke to a different one all the time.
	He just didn't feel quite as towering as others probably made him out to be.  Those were stories.  This was his reality.  And in reality, despite his size, despite his appearance, despite his history, he was still that innocent, slightly naive farmboy that had left Aldreth so long ago.  His outlook and personality may have changed, but it still rested deep inside him.  He could deny it, even to himself, but part of him knew that it was true.
	Tarrin Kael.  He forgot all about Tarrin Kael.  A tall, strapping young man who had dreams of being a Knight, of travelling the world and seeing exciting things.  A young man with an overprotective mother and a father so mellow that a rampaging Troll really couldn't put him out of sorts.  A young man with a cute little sister.
	Now he was just Tarrin, son of Triana.  Were-cat, Sorcerer, Druid, scourge, murderer, and all-around ruthless monster.  He was a Were-cat with a mission, and the Gods help anyone who got in his way.  Life had lost its luster, its shine for that Tarrin.  Everything was a chore, everything led to nothing but more bleakness.  There was no light in that person's life anymore, where Tarrin Kael always found the light in anything.
	Tarrin Kael had been an optomist.  Tarrin was fatalistic.  Tarrin Kael would have found the good in his current situation.  Tarrin just found it to be yet another needle in him, to go along with all the other needles.  Tarrin Kael would have looked up at the sky and said "Wow, how beautiful!"  Tarrin looked up at the sky and simply saw stars.  Tarrin Kael would sigh in relief when this was all over, and return to a good life.  Tarrin fully expected to die.  And if he did not, then there would no longer be anything left to live for.  He had done too much evil in this world now...he was beyond redemption.  The accusing gazes of the thousands of eyeless phantoms reminded him of that night after night.
	He wondered how his parents and Jenna were doing.  They were probably still in Ungardt.  It was summer there now, a very short summer, starting to wind down into winter.  His mother was probably with her father, Eron was probably learning how the Ungardt brewed their heavy ale and whiskey, and Jenna was probably breaking hearts.  It had been so long since he'd seen them, remembering how they looked seemed hard now.  And Jenna was a year older, she had to be taller, more like a woman and less like a little girl.
	It would be good to see them again.  But they were in Ungardt, and he was in the Desert of Swirling Sands.
	The wind picked up, blowing cold air over him.  The thong holding his braid untied, and his hair quickly unbraided itself in the steady wind, fanning out behind him like a yellow cloak.  It dragged the ground now when unbraided, and though he could change its length, something inside him liked it that way, despite the weight of the braid and the stress it put on his scalp.  Perhaps it was a masochistic bent.  Perhaps it was a reminder, a constant sensation to remind him of how it felt to feel pain when something inside him had become dead to it.  He really didn't know, all he did know was that it was something he preferred.
	He looked up into the sky again...and all he saw were stars.
	He closed his eyes and turned into the wind, feeling its icy fingers caress his exposed skin, felt it pull and tug at the fur on his arms and feet, felt it billow out his hair, felt it pool inside his ears as they caught it.  This was feeling.  Cold biting, the chilly domain of the desert at night, where the air stole away all the heat the sun imparted to things during the day.  This desert was two different worlds.  The burning fires of day, and the cold hand of night.  Yet they existed in the same place, separated by the movements of the sun, forever chasing one another across the land in an endless cycle of repetitive monotony.
	Two different worlds.
	A dark smudge appeared on the western horizon, and he'd been here long enough to comprehend what it meant.  A sandstorm was coming.  It was why the wind had started to pick up, it was the wind wall the preceded them.  The boulder field was a good place to weather a sandstorm, so long as it didn't bury them.  The boulders would break up the wind, protect them from the scouring power of the blowing sand.
	He had time.  He sat down and calmly rebraided his hair, watching the boiling fury of nature approach, studying it carefully to come to a better understanding of how they moved, how they worked.  This one wasn't that fast, but it was still pretty speedy as it neared him.  It was a big one as well.  He guessed that it would last for some time.  Maybe long enough to bury the boulder field in sand, if it died out over them.  Maybe taking a few precautions would be a good idea, and for that, he'd need Sarraya's help.  A couple of large Wards to deflect the sand would keep them from getting buried.
	The time for pondering was past.  The reality of the desert had intruded on his musings.  It was time to deal with things.
	He tied the thong securely around his braid, then scooted over the the boulder's edge and slid down.  Time to deal with reality.

	The sandstorm lasted for three days.  For three long days, Tarrin and Sarraya huddled in the boulder field, inside a tent protected by a strong Ward against the blowing wind and sand.  The wind howled and screamed outside his Ward, making it loud in the protected area, but at least the wind was kept off of the tent, denied the opportunity to rip the tent out of the ground and deprive them of their only shelter.
	The three days were very slow ones for Tarrin.  When not trying to sleep, Sarraya instructed him more and more on Druidic magic.  She taught him how to conjure water; it turned out that he had had the right idea when he tried himself.  Had he not gotten distracted while making the attempt, it would have worked.  She taught him more about conjuring many items, and taught him the techniques behind conjuring very large items.
	But through it all, it was still just Conjuring.  The core method of it did not change.  All she taught him were the little differences and tricks necessary to make it more flexible.
	"Well, that's it," Sarraya announced after Tarrin had conjured a stone about the size of a large dog.  "I've taught you everything you need to know about Druidic magic.  At least for now.  We'll have to find something else to talk about from now on."
	For some reason, this disappointed him.  "That's it?" he demanded.  "Sarraya, I've barely broken a sweat!  I can learn more!"
	"I know you can learn more," she affirmed.  "But I'm not a good teacher.  I'm not going to put your neck on the block, Tarrin.  I've taught you what I feel comfortable teaching you, and I won't teach you any more.  You know what you need to know to survive, and that's all I told you I was going to teach you."
	For some reason, he was bitterly disappointed.  Probably because he felt the same way about Druidic magic that he did about Sorcery when he first started.  He was wildly curious, interested, and he wanted to learn everything there was to know about it.  But he couldn't use his Sorcery without extensive preparation and help anymore, and there was nobody left to teach him anything.  So all he had was Druidic magic.  And now he couldn't learn any more of it, because Sarraya refused to train him.
	"I'm not worried about learning from you, Sarraya," he nearly pleaded.  "You've done a good job teaching me."
	"If you only knew," she laughed ruefully.  "Tarrin, I did a very bad job teaching you.  I didn't do anything that I was supposed to do, and I more or less just let you go on your own.  If Triana knew how I taught you, she'd rip off my wings.  You know how to Conjure, and you know how to Summon.  Because you know both of them, that means you automatically know how to Create--after all, Creation is just the Conjuring of something that doesn't exist.  Why do you need to learn anything else right now?  Just go with what you know for now, get a feel for the Druidic magic.  And when we get out of the desert, when we get back to Triana, she can teach you anything else you may want to learn.  Is asking you to wait such a bad thing?"
	He stewed for a moment.  "Yes, but I guess I don't have much choice," he grunted.  "I guess I'm unhappy because this is magic I can use."
	"Then why aren't we trying to work out what's going on with Sorcery?" she asked.  "Tell me what you feel from the Weave right now."
	"Everything," he replied automatically.  "I can feel every strand within a longspan.  I can tell how strong they are, and I can feel a Conduit about ten longspans south."
	"And this shouldn't be possible, should it?"
	"No, it's not," he replied.  "I should only be able to feel this when touching the Weave, and I still wouldn't be able to sense things much past a few hundred spans."
	"Me and Dolanna had some long talks about Sorcery.  Answer me this question.  When a Sorcerer is touching the Weave, then he can use Sorcery, right?"
	"Right.  It's what we have to do in order to use our magic."
	"Fine.  So, you say you can sense the Weave.  Ever think that that may be because you're actually touching it?"
	If she would have dropped a grain barge on his head, it would not have produced a more profound effect on him.  Of course!  The sense of the weave was exactly the same as when he was touching the Weave!  Exactly!  The only difference was that he wasn't actually connected to the Weave, there was no channel open between him and its power.  Outside of that one difference, everything else was the same.
	"Almost," he said immediately.  "I'm not actually connected to the Weave, but everything else is the same."
	"Says you," she replied.  "If you can sense the Weave, then there has to be a link between it and you.  Think you can find it?"
	"Why would I want to do that?"
	"Tarrin, you big silly, if you can figure out how you're linked to the Weave, then you could learn how to affect it through that link," she told him with a grin.  "And since this link seems passive rather than active, I don't think High Sorcery would be a threat to you."
	Tarrin stared at her for a long moment.  He could find no hole in her logic.  She was right!  She was absolutely right!  He now remembered a conversation he'd had with Dolanna a very long time ago, when she was teaching him about Sorcery.  As a Sorcerer learns more about the Weave, and practices, it brings that Sorcerer in a more intimate contact with the Weave.  That Sorcerer can draw energy from it faster, from a wider area, can weave flows together quicker, and can even directly affect the Weave without drawing in, she had told him when she was teaching him about Sorcery.
	Directly affect the Weave without drawing in.
	In other words, a Sorcerer with great experience could use Sorcery in a way not considered possible.
	It made him remember what the Goddess had told him, when she explained why his sense of the Weave had changed.  High Sorcery is simply an alternative method of using Sorcery.  She told him that Sorcery and High Sorcery were simply two ways to use the same power, and that there were also other ways to do it as well.  She told him that he could learn how Weavespinners learned their magic, that someone would teach him.
	She didn't mean the Selani goddess, she meant himself!
	It all made sense now.  Tarrin's connection to the Weave had increased, expanded.  It had extended beyond some mysterious threshold and caused him to elevate to a new level.  His many explosions of High Sorcery had intensified that connection, had brought him into touch with the true power of a Weavespinner.  He was just now starting to feel those connections, feel the fundamental changes in his magic caused by having his eyes opened to a new way to use Sorcery.  He was growing into his power, and like any growing process, he underwent a period of change, and a period of discovery.
	He had come to the desert thinking that Fara'Nae would teach him about Weavespinners.  Now, it seemed that he had come to the desert to discover that magic for himself.
	He sat down on the covered sand.  Hard.  Sarraya took one look at him, then started laughing delightedly.  "I take it you just underwent an epiphany?" she asked with a grin.
	"I think you're right, Sarraya," he said quietly, respectfully.  "Dolanna told me a long time ago that experienced Sorcerers could directly affect the Weave while touching it, even without drawing in the power to affect it.  The Goddess told me that there are more than two ways to use Sorcery.  It fits.  I think you're right.  If I can figure out how to affect the Weave through my sense of it, I may be able to use Sorcery without getting burned by High Sorcery.  I wouldn't be opening that direct link to the Weave, and that's how it gets to me."
	"Well, I'm glad I was able to help out," she smiled.
	"Sarraya, you are a wonder," he said with a smile.  "How can such a flake be so smart?"
	"Hey!" she snapped, then she laughed.  "Well, it's just truth in advertising," she admitted.  "So, what do you do to figure it out?"
	"Practice," he replied.  "Just keep trying until I finally figure out what works.  Since I'll be doing it with no idea what I'm doing, it'll just be luck."
	"Then again, that seems to work for you," she grinned.  "The less you know about something, it seems, the better it works for you."
	"Guess I'm not saddled with doubts and worries," he said ruefully.
	"So, what now?"
	"Breakfast.  I'm not ready to tackle this problem just yet, not so soon after learning Druidic magic.  I'll start on it tomorrow.  Hopefully this sandstorm will be past by then."
	"Then Conjure us some breakfast," she told him.  "Just make sure you get ripe fruit this time!"
	"I liked them like that," he teased her as he began the mental preparations necessary to use Druidic magic.
	The rest of the morning, and the day and afternoon and evening, for that matter, were spent in quiet meditation, as Tarrin sought to find this mysterious connection between himself and the Weave, tried to use Sorcery without touching the Weave.  The problem was that he had no idea what he was looking for, what had changed.  He felt no diferent than he did before this change inside.  His sense of the Weave had changed, but it seemed that nothing else did.  The first thing he tried to do was affect the Weave simply by willpower, but that didn't work.  It was like smoke, something he could see but not touch, a hazy illusion without substance.  He searched inside him for something new and different, but that too didn't work.  There was nothing different within him, nothing he could sense.  The attempts wore him out, physically and mentally, just as trying to touch the Weave for the first time had done to him so long ago.  The seeking of the magic required intense concentration and effort, and it took its toll on him as the day progressed.
	And behind it all was the eyeless face, disrupting his attempts to find this new form of magic.  Every time he reached a state of contemplation, it appeared in his mind, and upset his attempts to seek it.  The face did not lose its effect on him, even after so many days of enduring it.  It could still cause a mindless panic and terror in him, if it struck with enough force or he was unprepared to deal with the emotions it incited inside him.  He was forced to try to push it out of his mind and try to find a state of deep concentration at the same time, and that was not easy.
	The end result of it was that by sunset, as the sandstorm died out, he was mentally and physically exhausted.  So exhausted that he almost immediately fell into a deep, dreamless slumber after eating, a sleep so deep that even the dream could not find him.  He awoke the next morning feeling a bit woozy, but a night's complete sleep had done his body very well.
	The next morning had dawned clear and calm.  There was still a bit of a dusty pall in the air from the sandstorm, and climbing onto the boulder showed him that the strong Ward he had made had been a very good idea.  The Ward had about a span of sand built up around its border, and the sand was noticably higher between the boulders now than it had been before the storm.  A span of sand wouldn't have buried them, but it would have collapsed the tent and left them exposed to the power of the scouring wind.
	Sarraya flitted up and landed on his shoulder.  "Dusty," she remarked, then she sneezed.
	"The storm was a big one," Tarrin replied.  "It's going to be dusty for a couple of days, at least."  As he said that, he took the red scarf the girl gave him and settled it over his face, then donned his violet-shaded visor.  The sun wasn't bright enough through the dust to be painful, but it would keep the dust out of his eyes.  "You're going to have to navigate, Sarraya.  I can't see the Skybands in this dust."
	"Not a problem."
	"What about the tent?  Want to take it with us?"
	"Why?" she asked.  "If we need a tent, we'll just make another one.  Let the Selani have it."
	"I keep forgetting about that."
	"That's why I'm the brains of this outfit," Sarraya teased.
	"A Faerie, the brains of an outfit.  I'm doomed."
	"Hey!"
	Navigating the boulder field was easy enough for him, he simply