n," Kimmie smiled.  "Jesmind can live with it if you're angry, but she can't if you hate her.  She really loves you, you know.  I've told you that before.  Your good opinion of her matters as much to her as Jasana, or breathing."
	"Well, let's go make sure that she keeps breathing, then," he said, feeling much better.  Kimmie was alot like Allia, he realized.  Always there with a gentle word and a kind paw to make him understand things, to make him feel better about himself and the world.  Her calm reasoning had explained things to him in a way that made sense, had calmed his fears and eased the troubled tumult rolling through his mind.
	The camp was empty and quiet.  He could scent the others in their tents, clearing the way for him to come back without facing a gauntlet of concern.  He could smell that the fire had been doused with water, but not before it was used to roast the deer.  Kimmie shooed him towards his tent, then went to her own and ducked inside.
	Jesmind had her back to the tent flap, kneeling on the ground, but she whirled around to face him when he opened it and ducked in.  He was surprised to see that she'd been crying, and that caused what animosity he'd felt for her and what she'd done to melt away.  He realized that Jasana wasn't in the tent, that she was probably with one of the others while her parents worked things out.
	"Oh, Tarrin, I'm so sorry!" she said immediately as he knelt beside her, and he was startled when she reached out and embraced him so tightly that it threatened to break his ribs.  "I didn't mean to--"
	"Kimmie explained it," he interrupted in a wheezing voice.  "Could you let go before your paws meet in my middle?"
	"Oh!" she said in surprise, releasing him.  He put his paw to his chest and took a deep breath, then he looked into her teary eyes calmly.  "I'm sorry I reacted that way, Jesmind.  I knew you'd never do something like that willingly, but when I saw it happen--" he looked away.  "It's not you.  When I saw that, it reminded me of the things I've done, and I was angry with you because it made me remember.  Kimmie said no Were-cat likes to see another lose control for just that reason.  I believe her."
	Jesmind sniffled, wiping at her face with the back of her furry white paw.  "I never wanted you to see me like that," she said in a quiet tone.
	"It's alright," he assured her.  "I'm a little angry, but that's natural, considering things.  I'm not going to hold it against you, and I don't hate you for it.  If Rahnee can forgive you, then so can I.  What kind of mate would I be if I couldn't accept you for your faults as well as your strengths?"
	The look she gave him was one of unparalleled gratitude.  Then she reached up, grabbed him by the back of his head, and pulled him down into a fierce kiss.

	Kimmie had been right yet again.
	The bad event of the last evening had either been forgotten, or nobody cared to talk about it the next morning.  The Were-cats gathered together for breakfast without much conversation, and then they were off before the fire had a chance to burn down to coals.  Rahnee and Jesmind did talk with one another for a moment after they woke up, doing so privately, and when they returned they were actually smiling at one another.  Kimmie had been right once more when she said that Rahnee wouldn't hold what happened against Jesmind.  The two of them seemed to have made peace with one another, but Tarrin knew that was going to last just as long as Rahnee thought that Jesmind wasn't keeping an eye on her.
	But there were other things on their minds that day, and that was war.  The entire host became quieter and quieter as they neared Torrian, and they began to move faster.  Even the humans seemed to sense the quiet urgency catching up the Woodkin, an urgency to set right a wrong ignored too long, a need to strike a blow against foes that sought to destabilize the balance of things.  They were almost running as the sun began to set, and Arren pulled them up behind a small rise.  Tarrin remembered that rise from long ago, and he knew that Torrian was just on the other side of it, in a wide, shallow valley split in half by a river.  That river flowed directly through Torrian, going under the log wall, and it formed a part of the formidable defenses that protected the castle in the middle of the city.
	"This is it," Arren announced.  "The other Rangers should be around here somewhere.  Tarrin, could you call that winged woman down so she can tell us what's out there?" Arren called.
	"Yes, Arren," Tarrin complied, calling out to Ariana with the amulet.  She responded, then swooped in to land just in front of them not a moment later.
	"I was circling over a large camp of Rangers about a longspan over there," Ariana said, pointing south.  "They had scouts out, and that camp is breaking up.  They know we're here, and they're moving out into the forest."
	"Did they set up the traps as I ordered?"
	"This morning," Ariana replied with a nod.  Tarrin realized that Arren must have sent Ariana ahead with orders from him.  It explained why he hadn't seen her much for the last two days, she'd been spending her time flying back and forth.  "They're all in the camp now, so they must be moving to deploy like you told them to, since they know we're here."
	"Good.  Alright, let's get Mikos, Sathon, and Audrey up here.  It's time to get set up."
	Tarrin looked towards Jesmind, who had Jasana up on her shoulders.  They hadn't spoken much since the night before, and that ended without much conversation.  Jasana had been curiously quiet all day, which surprised him.  He figured that she'd ask a thousand questions about what happened the night before, but she hadn't.  She'd been downright silent all day.  He found out that Kimmie had watched her last night, her being the only Were-cat that Jesmind would trust with their daughter, and that told him that Kimmie had probably explained some things to Jasana in a way that both made her understand and prevented her from talking about it today, bringing up things that everyone knew were better left dropped.  They had talked about this last night, about what would  happen next.  Jesmind had argued vociferiously about it after she got over her bout of guilt, reverting to her old ways as soon as she realized that her place with him was still secure, but in the end she could not move Tarrin an finger.  So she would spend this battle well outside of it, away from danger, and she would have Kimmie to help her protect Jasana from harm.  Tarrin would settle for no less than two Were-cats defending his child, and it was probably best to keep Kimmie out of the fighting anyway.  She didn't have the temperament for it.
	Sathon and Mikos arrived a moment after Arren summoned them, and Audrey a moment after them.  "Alright, we're here," Arren announced.  "We're going to do this as we planned.  All of you know what to do.  Audrey, did you explain the concept of officers to the Were-kin?"
	"It wasn't easy, but they understand," she replied.  "They don't like not knowing every part of the plan.  Were-kin have a problem following orders blindly."
	"I've noticed," Sathon said with a grin.  "I think they don't like following orders from humans more than following orders in the first place."
	"That's probably true, Sathon," Audrey agreed with a straight face.
	"I chose strapping Rangers that can keep up with the Were-kin in a fight, so that shouldn't be a problem," Arren told her.  "Tarrin, are you ready for you part?"
	"There's not really much need to prepare," he said mildly.  "Since there's only one gate on this side of the river, I know where to go and what to do.  I just need to know when."
	"When I send you off with Lady Ariana, it'll be time," Arren told him calmly.  "My dear, you flew over the city?"
	"Several times, my Duke," Ariana smiled.  "You're going to be facing about five thousand Dal troops.  Most of them are quartered either on the walls or in the castle.  They're using ten man patrols to keep control of the city, but I suspect they'll all head for the walls when the alarm goes out."
	"That would be the logical thing to do," Arren agreed.  "All right then, my officers have already received their orders, and they'll be spreading out to take command of your groups.  Uh, you did divide them up into units, didn't you?" he asked.
	"My Centaurs are already organized like that, Duke Arren," Mikos told him calmly.
	"I had a hard time convincing the Were-kin to divide up, but they eventually agreed.  I barely had to bite anyone to do it, either."
	"I'm so glad to know that," Arren murmured.  "The officer I'm sending with the Were-cats should--"
	"Don't bother, Duke Arren," Tarrin grunted.  "They wouldn't listen to a human officer.  Just tell them where to go and what to do, then let them do it.  They'll find a way to be useful."
	"Well then, I'll take your word for it," Arren chuckled.  "They know the signal?"
	"When they see the others attack the gate, they'll know."
	"Well then, there's no more need to stand here talking.  Let's get into position.  Everyone remember that we can't be seen, so move carefully and be quiet.  Tarrin, you and Ariana stay with me.  Everyone else, you know what you have to do."
	Tarrin, Ariana, and Arren moved forward more slowly than the others, at a walk, allowing their forces to get into their assigned positions, but with a short look at him, Jesmind took Jasana and Kimmie and went the other way, away from the city.  Arren took them to the top of the rise just as darkness claimed the sun, hiding them from view from the city below as they looked down upon it.  There were many, many torches, many points of light shining over the walls of the city, and they looked a little...hazy.  Tarrin had a strange, nagging sensation that he couldn't quite explain while he looked down at the city, and it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable.  He didn't know why, but he did.
	They waited in grim silence for nearly half an hour, and then Arren mounted his horse deliberately.  "Give me five minutes," he told them.  "Five minutes, and then go.  Remember, be quick, be careful, and be true.  We only get one chance at this."
	"One chance is one more than what's necessary, Duke Arren," Ariana said confidently.  "What you're asking is child's play."
	"Let's hope you're right, my lady," Arren grunted.  "I suddenly have a bad feeling about this."  And then he urged his horse to a slow walk, disappearing into the trees on the left side of the road.
	"Worryer," Ariana snorted, shivering her wings.  "When will it be five minutes?"
	"You'd think that people who have to navigate by air had a sense of time," Tarrin muttered, looking at her.
	"Tell me what a minute is, and I'll gladly tell you how many have gone by since he left," she said sharply.
	Tarrin glanced at her, then chuckled ruefully.  "Nevermind.  By the time we talk about what we'll do, it'll be ready to go."
	"Oh, alright then.  I already know which house we should hit.  It's a really big one right by the gate, with one of those rooves made of straw.  It should make a nicely distracting fire."
	"I think I remember that building," he said, remembering back to his first and only visit to Torrian.  "Big place with a stable in the back?"
	"The building surrounded by the fence?" Ariana asked.  Tarrin nodded.  "That's the one," she agreed with a grin.  "How close do you need to be?"
	"The closer the better, but you won't have to get within bow range of the city," he assured her.  "Five hundred paces over the building is close enough.  I know a way to weave the spell that will allow me to drop it from the air and have it land on the building, then ignite the thatch."
	"Alright then," she said, looking around.  "You have that basket handy?  It's about time to go."
	Tarrin conjured up the basket to ride in, and she belted it to her waist.  He shifted into cat form, she picked him up, settled him inside, and then they were off.
	Tarrin still had a silent exuberance about flying.  It was a wonderfully strange feeling, a feeling of utter freedom that appealed to his nature and his instincts.  Tarrin looked out of the basket as the ground slowly became a blur of dark, green trees, as his cat's eyes lost the ability to make out fine detail about the ground below him, but he could see enough to know where they were.  Ariana was flying in a wide circle as she gained height, flying away from the city at first, but had now turned back towards the city now that she had enough altitude.  He could make out the lights of the city and could discern the city wall because it was a different color, a border between the green of the fields surrounding Torrian and the browns and blacks of the city itself.
	Again, he felt a wave of...something.  He looked down at the city, and for the first time, he began to slowly comprehend why he had had such a nagging feeling.  He had been feeling the edges of a strong magic, and now that they were nearing the city, he was feeling it again, and it was markedly noticable.  He looked down, trying to puzzle out what he was feeling.  It was a spell, a woven spell, and it was big.  It was impressive how large it was, how it had been created, and he realized that it had to take a circle of seven very good Sorcerers to create and maintain it.  He couldn't see the spell, though, he could only sense it, and that worried him.  What he could make out, however, was that the spell was laid over Torrian itself, filling its volume within the walls completely, and that it was not a spell meant to interact with the physical world.
	Tarrin looked down, trying to make something out.  Torrian wasn't a large city by any standard, more of a large town than a small city, with about five hundred buildings safely located within the log walls.  But that was still an impressive amount of area to cover with a weave, a weave that he couldn't make out because of the difficulties of trying to see it through cat's eyes and being in cat form, which did impact his ability to use and sense Sorcery.  Were there katzh-dashi in Torrian?  Was this some part of Arren's plan that had been made when he wasn't there to hear it?  His fahter had never said anything about katzh-dashi being assigned to the Rangers before.
	No, wait.  If they were making the spell, and it was such a large one, they had to be at its center.  It would be the only way they could maintain something so large.  They had to be at the center of it, so that the power that sustained it flowed as quickly as possible from the Sorcerers and into the weave's every woven edge.  Tarrin looked down, swinging his head from one side to the other, fixing the middle of the weave in his mind.  He found its center, and it was in a place that looked a little different from the others, a place with lots of torches and a blurry grayish color that made it separate from the rest of the city.
	Gray.  The only large gray thing in Torrian, a town made of wood and wattle buildings, was the castle.
	Sorcerers in the castle, using a large spell that covered the entire city?  Arren said that the Dals occupied his castle.
	Something wasn't right.  Very not right.  Tarrin started squirming out of the basket as they crossed over the wall, as Ariana began a tight banking turn to keep Tarrin over the target.  She didn't seem to notice that he was trying to squirm free of the basket--
	--but he did end up free of it when he heard Ariana curse loudly and suddenly veer off in the other direction, dropping about fifty spans in a heartbeat, which caused Tarrin to get wrenched free of the basket.  He began to fall immediately, but caught himself on a hastily woven platform of Air, and used it as a base from which to change form and regain his better eyes.  He needed them right now.
	It was chaos.  Three black, scaly things were banking behind the Aeradalla, who was turning again to try to shake off the pursuers.  One of them screeched, and he recognized it immediately as the cry of a Wyvern.  He had been right in one's face as it screeched like that, the one that had capsized Renna's little riverboat on his first journey to Suld.  Wyverns!  He looked carefully, and saw that all three had riders.  They all had crossbows, wearing black armor, taking shots at the Aeradalla as their Wyverns tried to bite at her wings when they managed to get close to their faster, more agile target.
	Wyverns chasing Ariana.  But only the ki'zadun used Wyverns as mounts.  Jula had told him that.
	Jula.  Jula had been a Sorceress, and she had been in the ki'zadun.
	Sudden horror rising up in him, Tarrin absently smashed the nearest Wyvern with a weave of Air, killing it and sending its rider plummeting to his death below, shrieking all the way down.  His paws rose up, and a weave of Air, Water, and Fire spun together between them, causing a vicious blast of bright lightning to lash out from them, striking the rider of the next closest Wyvern squarely in the back, blasting the slight figure from the saddle.  Maintaining the core of the spell, he recharged it and unleashed it again, striking the Wyvern with the last rider in the head with it, causing its beaked head to suddenly explode as blood and fluids boiled instantly from the incredible heat of the lightning, rupturing its head in a spectacular fashion.  Gore and ichor splattered the rider just as he aimed his crossbow at Ariana, and it made him flinch as the bolt was loosed, just before the Wyvern dropped from the sky and carried the man to his doom.  But instead of making him miss, the flinch actually corrected his aim, and the bolt struck his Aeradalla friend in the lower side, in her back.  Tarrin knew immediately that it wasn't a mortal wound, but it did cause her to wobble in the air and drop some altitude, then dive towards the trees.  She knew not to stay in the air when she was wounded.
	The injury to Ariana only made him angry.  Where did the Wyverns come from?  They were so big, Ariana couldn't have missed them when she flew over the city on her scout!  He looked down, and with his humanoid eyes, the nature of the massive weave covering Torrian became clear.  He could see a town with empty streets, with torches at intersections, spaced through the streets, but it wasn't real.
	It was an Illusion!
	A massive Illusion!  He penetrated it with his eyes, using his control over the Weave to allow him to ignore its false image, and beneath that he saw streets overflowing with men in Dal uniforms, running all over the place.  There were men in black uniforms as well, uniforms he recognized as ki'zadun, and there were also Goblinoids.  Dargu and Waern mainly, but he did see a pack of about twenty Trolls.  They boiled out of houses, out of every building, running quickly and confidently towards the walls, towards the defenses, moving exactly as if they knew where to go and what to do.  Nowhere, nowhere did he see a single man or woman in Sulasian dress.  Everywhere he looked, he saw nothing but enemy troops.  Thousands of them!
	There was no small garrison here, there was a massive army!
	He looked down, and to his horror, he saw forces forming up in a large open space near the gate, all of them mounted.  They were going to ride out and attack the Rangers!  He saw covers being thrown off of catapults, siege engines being readied by their crews, tubs of pitch and naptha ready beside them to hurl fire into the fields outside the city.  He saw archers readying bows on the walls, he saw an army getting ready to ride out of the gates of Torrian and attack the Rangers and Woodkin hiding in the fields beyond.  He saw a man run to a building and set fire to it, a building near the city gates that the Were-kin were going to try to take in the darkness.
	It was a trap!
	"No!" Tarrin growled, looking at what was below him as he stood in midair, eyes penetrating the Illusion.  They had been waiting for them!  They knew they were coming!  And they knew what Arren had planned!  But it made no sense!  Why attack Ariana with Wyverns in full view of the army outside when they could have just let them set the fire--wait, it was too dark now for anyone to see the black Wyverns against the sky, even the Were-kin.  It was too far away from the treeline even for a night-sighted Were-kin to be able to see so far.  There was a good two longspan gulf between the treeline where the armies were hiding and the city walls, and that was new.  They must have cleared the distance since the last time he'd been there.  They had stopped Ariana, but they knew something couldn't have gone right for them, because something had killed their Wyverns.
	Tarrin looked down at the city in horror.  So many...so many of them.  The Were-kin were going to slink right into a trap!  The Rangers were going to be slaughtered!
	Tarrin's heart seized as he realized what had to be done.  It was...it was too horrible to think about.  But what other way was there?  If he didn't stop the Dals here and now, they would be facing a much larger army in Suld, and doing it with less men of their own.  It would put his Goddess, himself, his friends, his family, his daughter, in mortal danger!  There was nothing else he could do.  There was no other way!
	His eyes lighting from within with incandescent light, his paws limning over with Magelight as he pulled in the power of High Sorcery, Tarrin suddenly screamed in rage and horror.  The limned glow around his paws became coherent as he brought them together, and he wove together that chaotic mix of Air, Fire, Water, Divine, and token flows of the other Spheres to grant his spell the power of High Sorcery, then he unleashed it with a scream, unleashing it against the castle.  A blazing bar of pure white light, as bright as the sun, suddenly came into being across the sky over Torrian, blazing from Tarrin's outstretched palms and slamming into the Torrian Keep, right into the very center of the Sorcerers he could feel there, maintaining the Illusion.  The invincible blast of magical power struck the walls of the keep, and they withered to nothing under that incredible blow of magical might, sending stone and mortar and wood spinning away in burning chunks as Tarrin implacably raked that sustained beam of death across the castle, penetrating it all the way down to the dungeons, shattering stone and vaporizing people wherever it went.  The initial blast had only killed three Sorcerers, and he could feel them in there, running from the power of his spell.  He used it to chase them down, one by one, chase them down and destroy them in the blazing purity of the wrath of the Goddess, the punishment for working for those who opposed her.
	When he killed the last, Tarrin wrenched the sustained stream of magical power, and that caused it to explode violently.  It started where he was, forcing him to shield himself from the raw force of it with a shield of Air.  The coherent blazing bar suddenly became an expanding snake of fire, writhing through the sky with the speed of a cannonball shot from a Wikuni bombard, until it struck the solid stone of the keep.  The immense power of the detonation shattered the entire keep from the inside out, sending chunks of fiery debris soaring thousands of spans from the inferno that had once been the Torrian Keep, raining fire down on the city below.  The sound of the detonation was like a physical thing, shattering windows all over the city and knocking down soldiers who stopped to look at the blazing pyre burning in the middle of Torrian.
	No other way, he thought to himself over and over again as he released the weave and began drawing in more and more power.  No other way.  More and more of the power of the Weave flooded into him as he sent out flows and snapped them into strands to provide him with a direct feed of energy from the Weave.  The Magelight limned over his entire body, and then it expanded from him, forming the concave star at the center of the shaeram, a blazing star that illuminated the city below with milky white light.  Tarrin felt the platform of Air dissolve under his feet, felt himself being held aloft by the power itself, felt the power of it flow into him, infuse him, saturate him as he drew in everything that he could, drawing in to the limits of his power.  He became the power, felt it flow through him like blood, felt it become a part of him.  It moved with him, joined with his mind, understood what must be done, and it did not judge.
	It never did.
	Tarrin descended towards the burning wreckage of Torrian Keep as the white star surrounding him suddenly turned an angry, broiling red, its elegant, distinct borders flexing and boiling like water in a kettle as the symmetrical star melted into a sphere of ominous, ruddy red, concealing the form within from view as the suddenly terrified Dal soldiers began to panic, rushing through the streets, rushing towards the closed gates.
	Closing his eyes, Tarrin descended into the fire of Torrian Keep, and disappeared.
	The Dal soldiers stopped running when they saw the reddish ball of magic disappear, the ball that had destroyed the castle.  Some thought that it had died out, some thought that using magic like that had worn out the mage that had created it.  But some kept running, afraid of whatever may come, afraid of what might happen next.
	They were all doomed.
	The fires of Torrian Keep suddenly stopped.  They froze in mid-churn, their lines and boils and trails of multicolored flame frozen as if stopped in time.  The smoke billowing up from it kept moving, entrancing those Dals and ki'zadun that had turned to look, showing a sculpture of fire with a trailing gout of smoke rising above it.  They stared at it in awed, horrified wonder, at this sculpture of fire, until it suddenly contracted.  It contracted as if it were water draining from a hole in the bottom of a bucket, swirling down into a ball of blazing red light, casting a crimson pall across of the buildings, streets, houses, walls of Torrian, and all the faces and bodies contained therein.
	The Dals and the ki'zadun stared in terror, then they turned and began to flee in desperate, hysterical panic.
	It must be done.  It must be done.  There's no other way.  Goddess, forgive me!

	"Oh, I don't know about that one, Kimmie," Jasana bubbled happily as the Were-cat female showed her a small stone that had flecks of quartz in it, that made it glitter.  "I don't think that wouldn't be very pretty, even if it was polished."
	"Well, kidlet, if I used it as a decoration, I'd be worried."
	"What do you use it for, anyway?"
	"Well, this right here is used to create a little ball of light," Kimmie replied, holding it up so she could look at it and Kimmie's face at the same time.  "It's part of a magic spell."
	"Papa never uses things like that."
	"He's a Sorcerer. I'm studying Arcane magic.  They're different, kidlet."
	"Why--" Jasana began, but then she gasped and put her paws to her head, covering her eyes.
	"Jasana?  What's wrong?" Kimmie asked in sudden concern.
	"Cub?" Jesmind asked quickly, rushing over from where she was looking towards Torrian, fuming over having to stay behind when she should have left Jasana with Kimmie and did what needed doing.  She was already worried, because she had heard some strange rumbling sounds from that direction, almost like thunder.  But it was a clear night, with no lightning anywhere.  "Jasana?" Jesmind said in sudden concern when Jasana cried out suddenly, as if in pain.  "Jasana!" Jesmind said in a strangled tone, physically pulling her small arms away from her face, demanding that she look at them.
	But both she and Kimmie were unprepared for what stared back at them.
	Jasana's eyes were glowing an incandescent white.
	"Papa!" Jasana managed to gasp.  "Papa!  He's doing something, something big!"  She gasped again.  "Fire!  He's making fire!"
	And then the ground shook, and a sudden explosion of light illuminated the western horizon. 

	The ball suddenly shivered, and then it exploded outwards.  It was not the blast of Air that Tarrin had used to destroy before, this was a one-weave spell, a spell of pure Fire.  It swept out from him in a circle, incinerating anything it touched, causing wood to explode and thatch to simply evaporate and stone to burn and steel to melt, blasting the flesh of anything it touched into ash as it swept out from the center of town as fast as a leaden ball fired from a Wikuni musket.  In the span of four heartbeats, the towering wave of fire swept up to the walls of the city, then engulfed them, sending a shockwave of heat and ear-splitting roaring emanating out over the cultivated farm fields surrounding the city.  And then they stopped rushing outward and instead turned upwards, swirling up into the sky, creating a cyclone of fire that reached into the night, a vision of hellish proportions that utterly engulfed the city.
	Almost as quickly as it appeared, as it had engulfed the city of Torrian, the massive cyclone of fire simply ceased.  It left behind a raging inferno of normal fire in its wake, burning what the firestorm did not instantly incinerate, leaving a firestorm that illuminated the forest beyond fields that were being rained upon with burning embers.  A firestorm that would leave Torrian a blackened wasteland of ash, charred bones, twisted, melted metal, and shattered rock.
	Those who had been outside, the armies of the Rangers and the Woodkin, stood in mute, dumbfounded shock, staring at the wall of fire that consumed the logs that made up the walls of Torrian, watched them fall and reveal an entire city being consumed by a raging inferno, the likes of which they had never witnessed before.
	Standing in the center of the firestorm, ankle deep in ash and melting rock, stood Tarrin Kael, his expression one of emptiness, and tears flowing freely down his cheeks.
 
Chapter 28

	The fire burned on and on.
	Those outside had gathered around the destroyed city of Torrian, trying to comprehend what had happened.  They had seen the bolts of lightning in the air, and then the white bar, clear indications that something had gone terribly wrong.  That was confirmed when they found Ariana not long after the fire had erupted, laying half-conscious in a field not far from the treeline with a crossbow quarrel in her back.  Sathon managed to get her conscious, and it was from her that they began to piece together at least the first of it.  That Wyverns bearing riders attacked her, that Tarrin had somehow gotten free of his basket, and what was more surpr