.  The old powers couldn't come back unless there were Weavespinners.  The magical limits of Wizardry and Priest magic are dependent on the Weave, and the Weave is dependent on the Sorcerers."
	He gave her a penetrating look.  "You're right," he told her.  "It's strange to think that my presence is fueling the powers of those who are trying to stop me."
	She laughed ruefully.  "That's one way of looking at it, I guess," she admitted.  "You feel like moving?  I rebuilt the lean-to while you were out.  Want to move back into the shade, or do you want to stay here?"  She hovered over him.  "Need something to eat or drink?  Want a pillow?"
	He pulled himself up to his feet, but he could feel his bone-weariness.  Using his magic as he had had literally sucked all the strength right out of him.  He never dreamed that it could be so tiring.  But then again, what he had done would have been considered impossible.  "I'm fine, Sarraya," he said.  "Just let me take a nap and get something to drink, and I'll be fine.  I don't think we'll be moving until tomorrow, though.  I need to rest."
	"We can't stay up here," she said with a fret.  "You sit down and rest and let me go find a good campsite that's close enough for you to reach.  Then we'll move and make a good camp, instead of this ramshackle rush job here."
	"Sounds like a plan to me," he said, moving over to the lean-to.  He flopped down in the shade and rolled over on his belly.  He was so tired that his tail simply laid limply across his leg, when it usually would have been swishing over him.  "Just come and get me when it's time to move."
	"Sure thing."
	"Sarraya."
	"What is it?"
	"Thanks for caring," he said in a weary voice, then he lowered his head, closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.  A deep, dreamless sleep, uninterrupted by stray thoughts.  A sleep of recovery.

	Sarraya had found a good campsite, in a shallow valley between two flattened hills, a rambling little dell that concentrated the light of the campfire and gave them a great deal of warning should something come over the hilltops and attack.  It required a herculean effort for Sarraya to rouse him from his sleep once she returned, having to resort to Druidic magic to shock him back into some sense of consciousness with ice-cold water.  It was only about a longspan from where he had been sleeping, and it took him nearly an hour to trudge over to the rather elaborate campsite that Sarraya had erected before coming back for him.  Three large tents, one of them filled with all kinds of foods, even meat, kept chilled by conjured ice.  A tent for sleeping, complete with enough blankets to raise the top some span off the desert floor, so soft that he very nearly sank into them.  She wouldn't explain why she raised the third tent, and he was too tired to care when he dragged himself past the large fire pit that she had excavated and crawled into the tent she had said was his.  He fell asleep as soon as he was inside, and slept all the way until nearly noontime the next day, in a nearly comatose slumber that would have been impossible for him to awaken from, should he be needed.
	He finally did stir at the smell of cooking bacon, and the sound of it sizzling in a skillet.  He felt as if his head had been stuffed with wool, but his body felt much better.  He still felt tired, but he knew that that was an effect of sleeping for such a long time.  The brightness outside told him that it had to be well into morning, at the very least, and he realized that he'd been sleeping almost non-stop since noon the prior day.  He sat up and realized that he'd been laying on his tail all that time, rendering the limb numb and paralyzed from lack of blood from about a longspan from the base down.  It hung limply behind him as he stood up and stretched carefully so as not to bring down the tent, then it dragged on the ground behind him as he left the tent to see what was going on.
	Sarraya was hovering near a skillet that was itself hovering over the fire, a large slab of bacon sizzling merrily within it.  The Faerie was sweating profusely, between the desert heat and the radiance of the fire.  He looked down at her with both amusement and gratitude.  It took a great deal to make Sarraya bend to such manual labor.
	"Morning," she said with a smile.  "Sleep well?"
	"I have no idea," he grunted, stretching again.  His back popped in several places, making Sarraya cringe.
	"What's wrong with your tail?"
	"I slept on it," he replied.  "It's numb."
	"Well, it should start buzzing like mad in just a moment," she said with a laugh.
	"I know," he replied, squatting down by the fire.  "I'm surprised that you lowered yourself to cooking on my account."
	"Well, I figured you'd need a hot meal when you woke up," she replied evenly.  "I didn't expect you to wake up yet, though.  I was planning on eggs, bacon, bread, and porridge."
	"I'll settle for the bacon," he told her, the smell of it making him hungry.
	"Well, you just sit down and wait," she said sternly.  "You can't eat uncooked bacon.  It's unhealthy."
	"How would you know?  You don't eat meat."
	"I know how to cook," she said tersely, glaring at him momentarily.
	"Who taught you?" he asked curiously.
	"That's a stupid question!" she snapped at him.
	"Really?  It's stupid to wonder where you learned how to cook meals that you won't even eat?  My, I must really be dense."
	"If you must know, I learned how to cook a long time ago," she replied.  "The Druid who trained me taught me.  Cooking for him was one of my chores, because he was getting old, and couldn't get around much anymore."
	"That's surprising."
	"That I can learn things?" she said dangerously.
	"That a Druid got old," he said mildly.  "I thought you lived forever."
	"No," she said.  "Druids are the extensions of nature, and death is a part of nature.  Druids live a long time, I'll grant that, and they're usually pretty spry right up to the end, but they die just like anything else."
	"I shoulda figured," he said as his tail suddenly began to tingle and buzz painfully.  Blood had managed to flow back into the limb, and it began to twitch spasmodically as movement was restored.  "How long was I asleep?"
	"Since yesterday.  I had to throw cold water on you to wake you up so you'd come here."
	"Huh.  I don't remember that.  I don't even remember walking here."  He looked around the campsite idly.  "What are the other two tents for?"
	"One's for food, the other is mine," she replied.  "I decided it would be nice to sleep in a place of my own for once, instead of always sleeping with you.  I was starting to get tired of you rolling over on me."
	Tarrin ignored that.  "A big tent for such a little lady."
	"I wanted a bit of luxury," she said primly.  "We're all entitled to a bit of pampering now and then."
	"I guess," he sighed, flexing his tail as the tingles ended.  "Looks like you've settled in, Sarraya.  You want to leave today?"
	"Tomorrow," she told him.  "Let's give you an extra day to rest, and I think both of us wouldn't mind a little break from all the travelling.  I'd like to sit down and read a book, and you need to sleep some more."
	He yawned.  "That sounds like a good idea.  At least it will be after I eat something.  Any trouble?"
	"Not so far," she replied.  "This stretch of desert doesn't have much foliage, so there aren't many animals.  I didn't see or hear any Sandmen last night, but I guess that's no guarantee that they're not around here."
	"Any Selani?"
	"I think I spotted one just after sunrise, but it was too far away for me to make it out.  I think it was a Selani.  It was tall and bipedal.  I only saw it a moment."
	"Probably was," he told her.  "They've been keeping an eye on us."
	"I know.  Alright, bacon's ready.  Just be careful, it's hot," she warned.
	Tarrin gave her a flat look, then reached out and picked it up out of the pan.  She forgot that heat didn't bother him, not even the searing heat of sizzling bacon.  He attacked the well-cooked bacon ravenously, wolfing it down in mere moments, just in time to take a conjured tankard filled with warm milk Sarraya offered.  He drank that down in two huge swallows, then started on the basket of fruits that the Faerie conjured for him.
	"By the time you're done with that, I should have the eggs ready," she informed him as he started with an apple.
	After a very large meal, nearly more than Tarrin could eat, he settled down near the fire, laying on his back, staring up into the cloudless sky and soaking up the heat of the desert sun.  Sarraya gave him a little kiss on the cheek, almost like a mother, then retreated into her tent to escape from the heat, and probably to take a much needed nap.  He felt a little tired yet, but that was just an aftereffect of sleeping so long.  His mind rolled over the amazing things that had happened the day before, trying to make sense of them.  Jenna was a Weavespinner.  He knew that she was, but he didn't expect her to bloom into her full power this quickly.  He had seen Jenna and his parents again.  that brought painful longing, but it wasn't something that he couldn't control.  By now, they were all on board their grandfather's ship, if he knew his parents, sailing for parts unknown.  They would take his warning seriously.
	A warning that he felt hadn't come from him.  The Goddess had a habit of injecting herself into his words now and again.  It had happened before, and he had little doubt that it was what she had done this time.  The warning to move Jenna had come from the Goddess, but looking back on it, he could only agree with her caution.  Jenna was vulnerable now, and there were alot of people who would want to control her for the power she would gain when she recovered.  Jenna would be like him, capable of using High Sorcery unaided, and that would make her one of the most formidable magic-users in the world.  That was a power that absolutely could not fall into the wrong hands.  She may have incredible power, but she was still little more than an adolescent girl, relatively easy to manipulate and control for one skilled in the inner workings of the young mind.
	Two--no, three--Weavespinners.  Himself, Jenna, and that Sha'Kar woman.  How would that increase the power of the Weave?  There were only three of them, it seemed ludicrous that only three beings could have such a dramatic effect on something that ranged over the entire world.  Well, there were three active Weavespinners, he corrected himself.  Those who had yet to touch their power would still have an effect on the Weave, but not as much of one.  When Jenna made the transition, had come into full bloom of her power, the magical energy she released back into the Weave was more than what had filled her before it happened.  Jenna's body, her presence, her magic, had amplified the power within her, made it stronger than it had been before, and then that power was released to spread out into the Weave.  That had enriched the Weave somehow, like fertilizing a farm field.
	A rather distasteful analagy, but essentially correct, the Goddess sang in his mind, her voice amused.  Are you well, kitten?
	"I'm fine, Mother," he said in a quiet tone.  Sarraya was napping, and he didn't want to disturb her.  "Still a little tired yet, but I'll be just fine.  How is Jenna?"
	She's still sleeping, the Goddess told him.  But she'll be just fine.
	"Do you, talk to her too?"
	Tarrin, what a silly question, the Goddess laughed.  She's one of my Children now.  Of course I talk to her, but not directly as I do with you.  She's a lovely little girl.  I'm very glad to have her.  I get unconditional, boundless love from her, unlike the guarded posturing I get from you, and the rather leathery regard I get from the Sha'Kar.
	"You're going to make me jealous, Mother," he said in a light tone.
	I'm just teasing, my kitten, she said impishly.  All of you are my beloved Children, and I love you all equally.
	"I know that, Mother."  He paused.  "How does it work, Mother?  How--"
	I can't answer that, Tarrin, she warned before he began.  That's a secret that you'll have to discover on your own.  But seeing Jenna do what you were too busy to see about yourself when it happened to you should give you something of a basic understanding of what you're asking.
	That was truth.  "Somehow we make the magic stronger," he answered.  "I don't understand how, but where Sorcerers simply draw up the power from the Heart, the Weavespinners make it more than what was brought forth.  The more Weavespinners there are, the stronger the Weave becomes, and the more powerful the magic it can sustain."
	Correct.  A very complete answer.  Sometimes your intellect amazes me, kitten.  You don't often act or think in such analytical ways.
	"Thank the other side of me for that, Mother," he grunted.  "It's dragging me down the path before the rest of me can stop and think about what it's doing."
	That can be a very endearing trait, she said lightly.  But on to matters.  You're going to need to be able to talk with Jenna with absolute privacy, and you already know that you can't do that through the amulet.
	"I know."
	So, you need to find a way to talk to her without anyone listening.  You already know how and where, you've been there before.  Just think about it, and it'll come to you.
	He closed his eyes.  Someplace utterly private.  Well, the only way he could talk to Jenna was through magic, since she was thousands of leagues west of him.  The only magical means to speak was through the amulets, but it couldn't be that way.
	Then he remembered seeing Jenna enveloped in a golden glow, and felt her soul join with the Weave and seek out the Heart.
	Of course!  The Heart!  Only Weavespinners could go there, the core of the power of Sorcery, a place much like being in the arms of the Goddess.  He had been there twice, by sending his consciousness into the Weave.  That meant that he could probably enter that place any time he wished.  And if he could do it, Jenna could do it too.
	Very good, kitten, the Goddess said to him proudly.  That is the very place.  The only ones who will hear you there are Weavespinners also within the Heart, and myself, of course.  The only thing you'll have to do is teach Jenna how to enter the Heart voluntarily.
	Something clicked in his mind.  "That's the real test, isn't it, Mother?" he asked.  "Not gaining control of the power when it threatened to Consume, but the ability to find the Heart!"
	You are getting too clever, kitten, the Goddess laughed.  You're right, and also wrong.  Finding the Heart is the main reason for the test, but at that time you have to be filled with magical power, as much as you can possibly hold, and that only really happens when you're in danger of being Consumed.  That instant between achieving your absolute maximum potential and the Wildstrike that would destroy you.  It does you no good to reach the Heart when not filled with energy, because it dramatically reduces the power you could have gained, and the power that is sent back into the Weave.
	"So, being filled with power when reaching the Heart is why Weavespinners are so much stronger?" he asked.  "The Heart changes the Sorcerer into a Weavespinner, but it needs that power to be there to do the job right?"
	Very perceptive, but not exactly right, she replied.  It's something I don't think I'd be able to explain to you, kitten, because it touches on things you haven't learned about yet.  Let's just say that the more you bring when you arrive, the more you take when you leave, and the more that gets released into the Weave after you've succeeded.  Both of those effects are extremely important, so it's imperative that Weavespinners take that next step only when the situations are favorable.  As in, only when being Consumed.
	"Mother, you've called me a Weavespinner all this time, but what you just said makes me curious.  Could anyone become a Weavespinner?"
	Kitten, there are Weavespinners, and there are Weavespinners.  You were born with the potential within you, and it was ordained that you would reach this level.  But to answer your question, yes, any Sorcerer can achieve the level of Weavespinner, if they can find the Heart during their moment of truth.  Their power will be nowhere near yours, but they do gain access to Weavespinner magic.
	"What's the difference?"
	The Ancients separated Weavespinners into two groups, kitten.  Sui'kun and Da'shar.  The term sui'kun doesn't mean what you think it means, because the Sha'Kar language changed over time.  What you thought meant soul fire actually means Blessed Soul.  Those Weavespinners were the ones born with such potential that their elevation to the Weavespinner status was pre-ordained.  Like you and Jenna.  They are hand over fist over the Da'shar, a term that means Favored, because of the fundamental differences in the level of power you can control.  Sui'kun like you have the power to wield High Sorcery alone, and that fact doesn't change just because you've become a Weavespinner.  Da'shar can't do that, nor can they pull off some of the tricks of raw power that you can.
	"You mean Jenna could have used High Sorcery all this time?" Tarrin gasped.
	Yes, Tarrin.  In fact, it was her first touch on High Sorcery that caused her to lose control.  We can only thank my mother that you progressed enough to be able to guide her through it.
	That startled him.  Jenna had touched High Sorcery!  And her very first attempt nearly killed her!  Now he appreciated why the Goddess had stuck him in his Were-cat body.  He had been only a little older then Jenna when he first touched that power, and without his Were body and its powerful resistance and regenerative powers, without someone to guide him to the Heart, he would have been Consumed in that first experience.
	I'm glad you finally fully comprehend and appreciate why I had to do what I did, kitten, she said soberly.  I didn't want to do it, because I knew how much pain it would cause you.  But I had to keep you alive, and it was the only way.
	He nodded silently.
	My time is growing short, kitten.  I have to go.  You'll know what to do with Jenna when the time comes, but for now, know that she and your parents are safe and well, and out of danger.  You can talk to her when she wakes up, but be careful what you say.
	"I will."
	Good.  I'll talk with you again later, kitten.  Be well, and know that I love you.
	And then she retreated away from him.  The sense of her presence never really left him anymore, but he could tell when she was close enough to talk to him and when she wasn't.
	She left him with many things to think over.  Jenna could use High Sorcery!  Actually, it made a sort of sense.  If the ones like him and her were so strong, it was no wonder that it was more or less a given that they would become Weavespinners.  After all, the raw power of High Sorcery was enough to overwhelm someone using it alone, so it was a guarantee that a sui'kun would eventually face being Consumed, usually the first time he happened across High Sorcery.  The da'shar were the ones that stumbled into being Consumed by either accident or circumstance, but had presence or skill enough to find the Heart before being destroyed.  Those would be very adventurous Sorcerers, ones very strong and willing to experiment and gamble.
	Keritanima.
	He had no idea how he knew that, but he knew it.  Keritanima was just such a Sorcerer.  Keritanima was extremely powerful, much stronger than even the members of the Council of Seven when taken on a one-on-one basis, and would have been the jewel of the Tower if not for Tarrin's eclipsing abilities.  She used her power alot, and she was willing to weave spells in ways nobody had ever thought to try.  She took too many risks, and it was eventually going to catch up with her.  Keritanima was the prime example of what he thought a da'shar would be, a Weavespinner who found the power more or less voluntarily.
	Sometime in the future, Keritanima was going to face her power, and either take the next step or be destroyed by it.  If he had anything to say about it, she'd be taking the next step.
	There were also things he didn't understand, such as how Weavespinners enriched the Weave, and there were no immediate answers for that.  Not even guesses.  It was a process of complete mystery to him, and without clues, there was nothing to go on.
	He laid there, looking up at the sky, musing over what he had just learned.  A great deal, from the sound of it, and it would take him some time to fully absorb the many things the Goddess had taught him.  But he didn't mind.  The desert gave him time if anything, time to lay there and attempt to understand that which was honestly quite beyond him.
	If anything, he had time.
 
Chapter 17

	They were off again at the rising of the sun.
	Sarraya wasn't too happy about it.  Taking a look into her tent showed him why.  She had conjured up just about every item of luxury she could imagine, including spectral servants to do her bidding.  He had never seen such creations before.  Sarraya called them mephits, and from her explanation, they were semi-aware representations of nature, kind of like half-formed spirits, weak enough for nearly any Druid to summon and control, and stupid enough to be no threat of breaking free of that control.  They were the first stage in the path to summoning Elementals, she explained, though very few ever managed to get past the mephit stage.  Summoning Elementals was the ultimate expression of power for a Druid, and Sarraya told him that only a handful could do it.  Sarraya was not one of them.
	A few moments of instruction had shown him how it was done, and he filed away the ability to summon mephits as another aspect of his Druidic power that he doubted he would ever seriously use.
	At least he got a good explanation of why so few Druids could summon Elementals, a much more rational explanation than Sarraya's previous talks about them.  "It's not the Druid, it's the Elemental," she told him.  "I have the power to summon an Elemental, but I don't have the power to control one.  Druidic Elementals are an order of magnitude stronger than the Elementals that you Sorcerers and the Wizards can conjure.  That means that it takes supreme power, skill, and willpower to keep one of them under your control.  The only real difference is that Druidic Elementals don't go berserk when the break free.  They simply go home, and the backlash of that against the Druid is usually enough to kill her."
	"I didn't know Wizards could summon Elementals," Tarrin mused.
	"What they call Elementals," Sarraya said scathingly.  "They're hardly more than a mephit.  Sorcerer's Elementals, on the other hand, are formidable.  Mainly because Sorcery is, at its heart, magic dealing with elements.  Fire, Water, Earth, Air, they're spheres of Sorcery, so that makes the Elementals they conjure very powerful.  Sorcerers are much more attuned to Elemental magic than Wizards."
	"That makes sense," he agreed.
	That got him to thinking about magic in general, and of course his thoughts drifted to Jenna.  She was probably still sleeping, trying to recover from the tremendous ordeal which she had endured.  He remembered how he felt after he woke up from his own ordeal, so he felt pretty sorry for her.  She'd probably go crazy without her magic--Jenna loved being a Sorcerer--but that would pass when she was ready to use her new magic.  And he'd be there for her when she was ready to learn, to teach her what he had to struggle to learn for himself.
	He still felt a little bitter over seeing his family and not being able to spend time with them.  It had been so short!  Just enough to give them some warnings, and then he was gone.  He played at the idea of trying to find his way back before they left that morning, even going so far as to entering the Weave and trying to find the path he had taken from within it.  But the shifting nature of the Weave had erased all traces of his passage.  It was like trying to track someone by scent who was swimming in a river.  It just couldn't be done.  The flowing power within the Weave had carried away the traces of his passing, and its surreal nature when viewed from within made it impossible for him to find his way.  It was a good thing that it required no tracking to return to himself; just by wishing to do so, he could return to his body any time he wanted to do so.
	It was yet another aspect of being a Weavespinner he hadn't expected.  Entering the Weave was much like sending his soul out of his body and joining it with the power that was now so entwined through him that it would be impossible to separated it from him without killing him.  It was so large, so...intimidating.  He had no idea where to go, where anything was.  He could reach the Heart only because all strands eventually went there.  Without somehting to guide him through the vast labyrinth of the Weave, he could not use it to visit other places as he had done so with Jenna.  He had a feeling that he could learn how to get to a few places, if they were important enough.  Since the main Conduit that came from the Heart came out through the Tower, he thought he could reach the Tower in that projected state.  It would take a little trial and error, but he felt that he could do it.  He'd just have to make sure that he was fully rested when he tried.  Entering the Weave, and trying to use any magic while inside it, took a tremendous amount of effort.  The episode with Jenna had already taught him that very important lesson.  It was like a standard Sorcerer trying to weave a spell from ten longspans away.  The effort to push the magic over such a great distance was exhausting.
	It was something about which nobody had ever said anything.  He thought it was one of the abilities of the Weavespinners that had been forgotten by the modern katzh-dashi, one of the many things lost because they could no longer read the historical annals left for them by their ancestors.  It made him wonder what else he could do, what else had been forgotten.
	Clearly, Sorcery wasn't as simple as weaving spells.  It had several different disciplines within that broad definition, and it would take many, many years of study to come to an understanding of his own abilities.  Weaving spells was just one of the aspects of Sorcery.
	But thoughts of the future yielded to thoughts of the present.   They were still travelling northwest, and Tarrin was still looking for an ideal place to stop, an ideal battleground that would stack the deck in his favor.  Jegojah was coming, and he was just starting to feel...twinges, little variances in the Weave that he thought were being caused by something unnatural.  That could be Jegojah, for it was an undead being, and it was also possessed of formidable magical abilities.  He couldn't pin a location to that feeling, but it was not close.  That was all he could tell.  But if it was close enough for him to sense it, then it had to be a maximum of twelve days away.  That was when he started feeling the crown of the Aeradalla.  And since the crown was such an incredibly powerful artifact, he doubted that he would feel Jegojah coming from a similar distance.  Jegojah's probable effect on the Weave was nowhere near that.  That meant to him that Jegojah was much closer than twelve days away, if that sense was actually him.  That made finding a suitable location to challenge the Doomwalker his highest priority, because he would take no chances in this.
	Jegojah was...special.  It had killed Faalken, nearly killed his family, and had hounded and tortured him for years, by either deed or fear.  It was going to end.  This would be the last time he crossed swords with Jegojah, one way or another.  Thinking of it made his hackles rise, but it also made him remember the vision that the Goddess had given him about Jegojah.  That Faalken had been standing in front of the Doomwalker, his decayed body making it obvious he was a corpse, holding a flaming sword.  What did it mean?  Was it a warning for him not to get too carried away?  Would Faalken's memory interfere somehow, as the vision suggested, or would it cause him to come into danger?  Just thinking about that fateful day when Jegojah killed Faalken, killed him because Tarrin had lost control, made him suddenly furious.  Jegojah had killed Faalken, but Tarrin had abandoned him to his death just so he could destroy Jegojah.  The anger was directed at Jegojah, but some of it was focused on himself.  That day had shown him the consequences of his actions.  That day, his rage had cost him a friend, and caused him to vow that no one else was going to die if he could help it.  Killing Jegojah would bring closure to him, he felt.  Destroying the Doomwalker once and for all would avenge Faalken, and would act as atonement for allowing the valiant Knight to die.  Jegojah was a physical embodiment of the demons that had plagued Tarrin since becoming Were, and he meant to destroy the Doomwalker, and them, and vanquish those demons back to the nether realms.
	They stopped for lunch and to wait out the heat of the day in the shade of a large overhanging rock, then moved on again.  The hilly terrain of the desert became progressively more and more rocky, and rugged foothills of respecatable size had begun to show through the heat haze that made looking at distance in the desert an uncertain pasttime.  Tarrin and Sarraya found themselves running from valley to valley to avoid climbing the steeper and steeper hillsides, moving through terrain that very nearly seemed mountainous.
	They travelled up one such valley near sunset, looking for a good campsite, when the valley opened up into a vast depression in the land like a great bowl with a flat bottom.  The bottom of that wide valley-like feature was dotted with boulders and rocks strewn about the floor of it like children's toys, and rock spires, hundreds of them--
	--not rock spires.  Towers!
	It was a ruin!  The remains of a great city were hidden in those crisscrossing valleys, a city that had completely filled up the depression in which it had been built.  The city was buried in sand here and there, and it was obvious that a recent sandstorm had carried away much of the sand that had once buried the city.  A city built of the same sandy colored stone that filled most of the desert, but it was a city that was remarkably well preserved.  Buildings still stood here and there, and they stood out agai