gan did so through a single act, be it an idea or motion that began the sequence of events.  But this act, carried out by a trembling, furry little hand, was in itself very significant for the very fact that that delicate hand with its short claws opened a book holding the entirety of the history of the known world.
	The Book of Ages was just that, a book that chronicled the history of the world.  As the others looked over her shoulders, Keritanima opened it to that first page and indeed found herself staring at three simple words, three words that summed up the completeness of the book:

		In the beginning.

	Simple words, often seen at the beginning of a story, but those words formed the beginning of a vast chronicle of lore lost for thousands of years, knowledge unknown since before the peoples who created that knowledge disappeared from the annals of history, forgotten by their descendents.  They all could not help but feel the great weight of the book then, to feel the tremendous burden it imposed on them, to know that they were responsible for protecting and safeguarding the recorded history of the world.  Tarrin had carried the book with him for nearly a year, kept it safe within the elsewhere and there it stayed out of his mind.  But now, to look down upon it and know that within its pages rested not only the information they needed, but the complete accords of the history of man and Selani, Wikuni and Were-kin, Vendari and all other races, it was sobering.  It didn't look it, but the book held everything, every major event, every kingdom, every war, every atrocity, every revelation, every alliance, every intrigue that had shaped the world into what it was.
	There was just one small problem, one little thing that caused all of them to stare at one another in surprise, and for Tarrin's heart to lurch.
	The book was written in Sha'Kar.
	Tarrin's ability to hear the whispers of the Weave didn't seem to be affected by the altered time, for the memory of those symbols was clear to him, something common enough to evoke a response from the echoes of the memory that sometimes came to him.
	"Oh, great!" Keritanima snapped, pounding her fist on the table.  "How can we use the book to learn the written form of Sha'Kar if the damn book is written in Sha'Kar!"
	"Patience, Keritanima," Dolanna said, reaching down over her shoulder and starting to turn pages in large blocks.  "It will actually make things easier for us."
	"And how is that?" she asked acidly.
	"Simple, sister," Allia replied.  "All we must do is find where we start seeing languages we can identify.  Odds are, that is where the information is that we need."
	Keritanima looked at Allia, then she laughed ruefully.  "Well, that is a good idea," she admitted.  "Why didn't I think of it?"
	"You were too busy having a heart attack to think," Dar told her with a sly smile.
	"Oh, keep it up, Dar," she snarled at him.  "Since we're all feeling so intelligent, help me.  I'm going to file through the pages pretty quick.  If anyone sees anything they think that they can identify, tell me to stop."
	The idea worked, and it worked well.  For nearly two hours, Keritanima turned page after page, having to pause from time to time to lick her fingers or just give them a break, displaying page after page of those neatly spaced, symmetrical columns of spidery glyphs that were the Sha'Kar language.  Keritanima continued until a new form of symbols appeared, blunt, blocky runes that Tarrin immediately identified.  "Stop!" Tarrin snapped, causing Keritanima to nearly tear the page in her haste to pause in the act of turning pages.  "Go back a page," he ordered, reaching over her as she did so.  "I've seen these before.  They're Dwarven."
	"Can you read it?" Keritanima asked.
	"No."
	"Then why did you stop me!" she snapped.
	"Because the Dwarves are one of the four First Races," he replied.  "The Goddess told me that story a while ago.  If the book is written in Sha'Kar, then that means that they kept the language of their ancestors, who were also one of the First Races.  Since humans developed later than the Dwarves and the ancestor race, and I don't think the Goblins ever created a written language of their own, that means we should start seeing human languages pretty soon."
	"I wonder who wrote this book, anyway," Dar asked curiously.  "Or how many.  Writing it must have taken thousands of people their whole lives to do it."
	"This book was not created by a mortal hand, young one.  The god of knowledge, the Younger God Denthar, is responsible for it," Dolanna answered him.  "It is said that it was created by him, and that the book writes itself, each new page appearing at the book's end with every event worthy to be recorded within."
	"Then the book has no ending," Dar mused in a wonder-filled voice.
	"It has an ending, but none of us will be alive to read it," Dolanna corrected him.
	Keritanima cleared her throat, and then began again.  She thumbed through the pages for another half an hour or more before Miranda suddenly told her to stop, right after she turned a page.  "This is a different writing system," she announced, pointing to a line of rough, almost ugly marks on the page.  The rough marks were interspersed in alternating lines with the Sha'Kar glyphs, a promising sign that a key to translating was indeed held within the book.
	"That is Hyralar, the root language of Hylar, the First Civilization," Dolanna announced.  "It is said that from them, the true Ancients emerged.  The ones that built the seven great cities and left ruins behind that we still find to this day."
	Tarrin knew something of the far history, thanks to the story that the Goddess told him.  This Hyralar had to be close to the time when the Urzani conquered the world.  That would put the book's dating still some seven or eight thousand years in the past.  "Kerri, grab a good handful of book and turn it," he told her.  "Go way ahead.  We're looking about eight thousand years in the past."
	"How do you know that?" she demanded.
	"The Goddess told me a story of the great past," he replied.  "She told me that the ancestor race split into two groups, and that one destroyed the other.  Then that race, called the Urzani, conquered the humans.  That was like two or three thousand years before the Blood War.  If this is the first example of human writing, then we're not even to that part yet."
	"Urzani.  I have heard that term," Dolanna said absently, tapping her cheek.
	"I'll tell you the story the Goddess told me some time," he told them.  "I'm sure you two would find it very interesting," he noted, looking at Allia and Keritanima.
	"And why is that?" Keritanima asked.
	"Because your people and the Selani are descended from the Urzani," he announced flatly.  "The Wikuni and the Selani descended from the Sha'Kar, who are descendents of the Urzani.  You and Allia are cousins as much as sisters."
	"Truly?" Allia asked suddenly.
	"That's impossible!" Keritanima flared.  "I mean, look at us!  How could we be related to the Selani?  We're absolutely nothing alike!"
	"Not now, but a long time ago, the Wikuni looked like the Sha'Kar, because they were the Sha'Kar.  I'll tell you about that later, sister.  Right now, we have another job that's just a little bit more important."
	"Oh, fine, go and drop a cannonball like that on my lap and expect me to just forget about it," Keritanima growled at him as she grabbed a good half-span of book and turned it, so hard that it made an audible thud when the pages turned.  The page to which she turned was still written in Sha'Kar.  "Alright then," she growled, starting to turn pages again.
	After about two more hours, they found what they were looking for.  "Stop!" Miranda said excitedly as Keritanima turned a page.  The fox Wikuni turned back a page as Miranda almost snatched the book out of her hands, pointing to a line.  "Am I tired and thirsty, or is that High Wikuni?" she said excitedly.
	Keritanima feverishly looked over the page, and Tarrin saw her eyes widen.  "Alright, we're in business!" Keritanima announced.  "Everyone here thank my father, who's rotting in an insane asylum, for making them teach me High Wikuni," she said in a grand voice.  "I can read this!"
	"You hope you can read that," Dar corrected.
	"Oh, no, Dar, I can read it," she challenged, putting a finger on the slightly angular scrawl.  "'Herein lies the third generation of the script of the Shorian dialect of Low Sha'Kar," she read from the book.  "A simplified system of writing adopted by the Sha'Kar for communicating with other races after encountering great difficulty teaching their writing system to the other races.  Created by Shoria Do'Ara, High Scholar and thirty-fifth Keeper of the Tower of Sharadar."  Keritanima gave out a squeal of delight.  "Contained on the pages hereafter is the cross-indexed dictionary of translating Sha'Kar into Shorian Script!" she said with a laugh.  "I guess this does mean that our ancestors with the Sha'Kar," she said with a look at the book.  "If the root written language of my people was invented by a Sha'Kar, then it's only logical that my ancestors were also Sha'Kar."  She looked at Allia.  "I guess we are cousins, sister."
	"We can discuss that a bit later, sister," Allia told her, a bit impatiently.
	"But you're the only one who can read it," Tarrin objected.  He knew the real answer to that, but he was too interested in getting started than he was in getting bogged down in a history lesson.  They'd learn about that soon enough, if they read through the book.  "If we keep looking, we may find where they have Sulasian."
	"Which would you rather do, Tarrin?  Use up another six or seven hours looking for it, or start right here and now?"
	Given the choices in that context, Tarrin realized it wasn't much of a choice.  "Well, alright then," he agreed.
	"Miranda, break out the books," Keritanima said.  "Everyone take a seat.  We're all going to have a little study session."
	"What are you talking about, sister?" Allia asked.
	"I'm going to tell you a word in Sha'Kar and point to its corresponding symbol.  Then you're going to copy that symbol down in your own books and write the Sha'Kar word using a phoneticized comparison to whatever language you're most comfortable with beside it.  That way you have to write it down, and it's always easier to remember things when you have to write them down.  Trust me, I know.  I speak from experience."
	"This is going to take months," Dar groaned.
	"About that," Keritanima agreed.  "Sha'Kar is an unbelievably complicated language, with a vocabulary that has as many words as two other languages put together.  Given that it looks like there are two systems of written language, it's going to make it that much harder."
	"Two forms?" Tarrin asked in dismay.
	Keritanima nodded, her eyes poring over the book.  "Some of these symbols repeat.  From what I see here, it's because those repeating symbols don't represent a word, they represent a phonetic syllable.  Like a symbol that represents a block of letters instead of a single one.  I guess they ran out of ideas for new glyphs, and adopted a syllabic format for all the words they invented afterwards."  She grunted.  "High Wikuni is also a syllabic writing style, using fifty-two symbols to represent phonetic sounds.  But it looks here like there are quite a few more syllabic symbols than fifty-two."
	"Ugh," Miranda grunted.  "This is sounding more and more difficult by the moment."
	"The syllabic format will actually be the easier one to learn, because repetition breeds familiarity," Keritanima said professionally.  "It's the glyphic format that's going to be a royal pain to learn.  From what I see here already, the words represented by glyphs are not translated into the syllabic form.  We'll have to learn every glyph and its corresponding word, one by one."
	"It's going to take months," Dar groaned again.
	"Clear your calendar, boys and girls," Keritanima said grimly.  "We're going to be very busy for a while."
	Months.  In this strange altered time, that would be more like rides, but the sheer size of the task before them was intimidating.   Mother, is there anything you can do to help? he asked pleadingly.
	You have but to ask, kitten, she replied lightly.  I seem to recall that Dolanna learned Sha'Kar in a matter of rides.  Maybe you should ask her how she did it.
	I know how she did it.  She said she used a priest spell--can you do that for me? he asked immediately.
	You have but to ask, my kitten, she said in a teasing voice.  And before you ask, yes, I can grant priest spells in that altered reality.  Have Dolanna teach you the spell.  In fact, have her teach it to all of you.  Well, except Miranda, of course.  She'll have to negotiate with Kikalli over this.
	"It will not take as long as you think, Keritanima," Dolanna told her patiently. "I once used minor priest magic to learn Sha'Kar.  We can do so with this.  It is a simple spell."
	Dolanna must have read his mind.  "Dolanna, I was thinking the exact same thing," Tarrin told her gratefully.  "Can you teach us the spell?"
	"It is a simple matter, dear one.  Priest spells are prayers for a specific thing, using ritual words.  I can teach you the prayer of aiding memory in moments, but be warned that it is not an absolute.  The spell only aids memory.  It does not cause you to automatically remember perfectly anything you see or hear.  But it will cut down the time it will take to learn by a drastic amount."
	"I'm feeling left out," Miranda sighed morosely.
	"I can use Sorcery to keep you up, Miranda," Keritanima assured her.  "Mind weaves can pass information from one mind to another.  Since we're the same race, they'll work for us."
	"Oh.  That's fine then," she said brightly.
	"Well then, Dolanna, I'm feeling particularly pious at the moment, and find I have an overpowering desire to pray," Keritanima said with a light smile.  "Teach us the words, and we'll get this ball rolling."
	Dolanna did so, and after repeating the prayer over and over again until they had it memorized, they used it in earnest.  It was the first time Tarrin had ever used real Priest magic, and he found it to be quite odd.  He couched his request in flowery prose, as was taught to him by Dolanna, seeming to grovel verbally to be blessed with the Goddess' magic.  It seemed odd to be so humble to one who laughed at his jokes and talked to him like a best friend, but if that was what was necessary, then that was what was necessary.  Tarrin never forgot that the Goddess was his Goddess, and he was devoted to her and knew his place in their relationship.  He chanted the prayer a bit self-consciously, but when he reached its conclusion, he could not deny the magic that responded to his words.  He felt the finger of the Goddess brush against his mind, and he entered what he could only call an episode of exceptionally acute attentiveness.  He became aware of absolutely every little thing around him, even beyond his normally inhuman senses, and the open pages of the Book of Ages on the table before them looked not quite so intimidating now.  He actually felt confident in the upcoming task to learn the written Sha'Kar language.  He actually felt much smarter than he did just a moment before, felt up to the challenge of the academic hurdle facing him.
	"Wow, I feel...enlightened," Dar said after finishing the prayer.
	"A strange effect," Allia agreed.  "I have never felt so...smart."
	"That is the noticable effect of the prayer," Dolanna nodded.  "It only lasts a few hours, and we cannot use it again until tomorrow, so let us move along, Keritanima.  Even in this altered state, time is very much a factor."
	"Alright then," Keritanima said as Miranda started handing out blank books from one of the chests, then handed each of them one of those fancy, expensive Tellurian fountain pens and put a couple of inkwells on the table for all of them to use.  "The book starts with a key for the syllabic form of the language.  This is the first, it represents the phonetic sound shi."

	Time became blurred to them all in that alternating form of time.
	They would spend hours and hours--days even--within the realm of slower time, laboriously going over the written Sha'Kar script, hours and days spent in a silent unchanging light that seemed to eat at Tarrin's sense of normalcy, an eternal, quiet moment of daylight that did not end.  It ate at his instincts, his sense of the natural order of things, and it caused him quite a bit of discomfort for much longer than it bothered the others.  Symbol by symbol, glyph by glyph, one by one, they learned the Sha'Kar language.  But the days and days spent within the boundary of the gift from Shellar translated to hours and hours in the real time of the outside world, giving all of them a strange sense of dislocation from everything else.  Keritanima started with High Wikuni--or what she thought was High Wikuni--before realizing that the Wikuni had corrupted the language written on the pages, changing the meaning of many of the words.  She could read about half of it, but for her, that wasn't precise enough.  After that, they went through the book again, until they found the key to translating into Sha'Kar from Arakite.  When they found that, Dar and Tarrin took over the task of training, since they were the only two who understood the written form of the Arakite language.  It was here where Dar asserted himself over Tarrin, proving that his Goddess-boosted ability to remember and learn outstripped his old friend by many degrees.  Tarrin happily allowed Dar to take over the sessions, since he preferred being a student rather than a teacher anyway.  As they expected, Dar's memory when it came to images and things he saw--such as the glyphs of Sha'Kar--made him invaluable to them.
	With Dar's help, they managed to convert the Sha'Kar keys into the base languages of all the others, and then they completely memorized the syllabic branch of the language.  As Keritanima said, it was much easier than memorizing some ten thousand individual characters, but it still wasn't easy.  There were three distinct forms of those syllabic symbols, each relating to a differing level of formality.  Three different symbols that stood for the same phonetic sound. In all, there were over four hundred individual syllabic symbols to memorize, and what was more, they had to learn when and where each one was used.  But they managed to complete it, and that allowed them to read about ten percent of the Sha'Kar writing before them, consistingly mostly of words borrowed from other languages, words adopted after the syllabic format had been created, leaving the vast majority of the language unreadable.  Once that was mastered, they started on the glyphs.  It was a painfully slow process, but it did progress.  Inside the time-altered dome, they labored for over a month to learn the Sha'Kar language, using the memory-boosting prayer taught to them by Dolanna--which, they found out, was still bound by the time limitations of real time, making it effective for subjective days so long as they stayed within the dome--they did move forward.
	It took four days.  Four days in real time.  In the strange dual subjective time in which they had functioned, however, it took then nearly two months to complete the education in Sha'Kar, and even that was only possible because of the aid from the Goddess.  But when it was over, any of them could pick up anything written in Sha'Kar and read it perfectly.  Dar and Keritanima had demanded thoroughness, teaching them absolutely every word in the dictionary--after all, they were looking for obscure and unusual information, and it would probably be written using obscure or unusual words.  So they had to be masters of the Sha'Kar language to find what they were looking for.
	It had been hardest on Tarrin, for he had been the one responsible for keeping the others fed.  He would step out into real time, Conjure up some food, and then return.  He found out that repeatedly crossing the boundary between the two times had detrimental effects on him.  It made him very tired and irritable, and it gave him strange headaches.  It also made his sense of the Weave go haywire when he returned to normal time, since his ability to sense the Weave was affected by the shift of time.  At the end of every day--the real end--he would drag himself back to his room and collapse on the nearest piece of furniture.  Jesmind and Jasana weren't too pleased at his lack of attention to them, but he was honestly too tired to care.
	Four days.  Four days closer were the ki'zadun, but on the other hand, the Selani were also four days closer.  He figured that they'd be attacking the Dals at Ultern any day now.  Suld no longer looked like a city; it looked like a fortress.  The gates had all been closed and reinforced, forcing anyone wishing to enter the city to do so by ship.  All the villagers surrounding the city had come inside, and everyone was hard at work preparing the city for siege.  There was no way, nor a reason, to hide the preparations any longer, as houses were torn down to pile against the backs of the city gates and every man with a sword or weapon was pressed into duty to man the walls or patrol the streets against thieves and looters.  The Regent for the king had given over all duty and power for defense of the city to Darvon and the Knights, and the wise old military man had deployed the forces and organized Sorcerers as well as could possibly be done.
	On the start of that fifth day, they all came back to the courtyard to find the dome gone.  Obviously, it had served its purpose, and now they were going to be running in real time while they started looking through the books and scrolls they stole from the Cathedral of Karas.  "Well, I guess it was inevitable," Keritanima sighed.  "I'd have loved to read the Book of Ages, since we'd have all the time in the world.  Looks like I won't get the chance."
	"At least not now," Dolanna agreed.  "I suggest each of us take up some book or scroll from the cache and start looking.  Since we now have very little time, there is no more time for study."
	"We didn't need any more time to study," Dar told his mentor.  "There wasn't anything else to learn."
	"There is always something else to learn, young one," Dolanna told him calmly.  "Let us get moving, young ones.  Now, there is little time to waste."
	"I hate this," Allia growled as they entered the tent, opened chests, and Dolanna handed a book to each of them in turn.  "I would much rather be on the walls, looking for the enemy."
	"They're coming, sister," Tarrin told her.  "No need to go look for them.  They can't be very far away."
	"True, but it would feel more satsifying than sitting here reading through ancient books," she told him.
	"I can't argue with that," he chuckled.
	Tarrin sat down with his back to the fountain, using the sound of its running water as pleasant background noise to allow his mind to concentrate on the old leather-bound book in his paws.  It turned out to be something of an informal history of the Tower of Zabar, a place he'd never heard of, from two thousand years ago.  The book was a personal diary of sorts of a Sha'Kar Sorcerer named Alion, who, Tarrin found out, had a very dry, sardonic wit and a keen understanding of human peculiarities that was very amusing.  He found the bustlings of the human katzh-dashi to be endlessly amusing, writing about the idiosyncracies of the humans every day in his journal.  His particular favorite human to observe wasn't a Sorcerer, it was one of the servants of the tower, a gardener that was about seventy years old, crotchety, bad-tempered, and set in his ways, with a wizened view of the world that was both disturbingly correct and lightly self-effacing.  This gardener, Vilo, seemed to be both the epitomy of human discourtesy and an example of the wisdom the race could display.  As Alion wrote, "he is the best and worst I have witnessed in humans, the perfect example of everything that is both best and worst in that very peculiar, unpredictable species.  A perfect paradox in a people that seem to contradict themselves on a daily basis."   Dolanna and Dar may have found Alion's writings slightly offensive, but Tarrin could appreciate a non-human's view of the human race.  He had once been human, so he could see both why the non-humans found certain things humans did to be funny or strange, while at the same time understanding some of the reasons why humans did the things they did.
	On another tack, he realized why the Ancients wrote in Sha'Kar.  Since it was a glyphic language, it allowed the writer to pack an amazing amount of information into a single book.  A single page written in Sha'Kar held the same amount of information as five pages in a book written in nearly any other language.  Since books were expensive--at least they were now--it was only economical for them to make the maximum amount of use out of each and every one of them.
	He sat there, getting somewhat engaged in the surprisingly entertaining book, until a rustling got his attention.  He looked up curiously, seeing the branches covering the choked opening of the courtyard begin to part.  What stepped out from the opening surprised him, snapping the book shut and moving to get back on his feet.
	It was Jasana.
	Jesmind slid out of the opening just behind her daughter, pausing to look around as Jasana called out to him and trotted over in his direction.  Tarrin realized that Jesmind had been serious when she said she was going to come after him if she felt he wasn't spending enough time with her, for there she was, and she had a flinty look on her face.
	"I knew I'd find you eventually, papa," Jasana giggled as she plopped down in his lap.  "Mother couldn't find you cause your scent went away in the maze, so she told me to find you.  I kept looking for you, but I couldn't feel you anywhere.  Today, I could."
	Today, he realized, he wasn't hidden within the dome of altered time.  Jesmind had used Jasana's ability to sense him to find him.  That was rather clever.  "Well, I see you did," he agreed mildly as the others looked in his direction.  "Now, what did you want to do about it?"
	"Do about it?  Nothing," Jesmind scoffed as she came over to him.  "Do I need a reason to want to spend time with my mate?"
	"I told you I'd be busy, love."
	"That was five days ago.  I'm tired of I'm busy.  If I can't spend time with you when you're not busy, I'll do it when you are.  Besides, it doesn't look like you're all that busy to me," she said accusingly.  "You're just sitting around reading.  All of you are."
	"You missed what we did before this," he said dryly.  "Well, if you're coming in, come on.  Have a seat over here with me, and please try to keep it down.  This takes some attention."
	"What does?" Jesmind asked.
	"Come here, and I'll show you."
	Jesmind got a curious look on her face, and did as he asked.  She sat down beside him, and he showed her the book, explaining that they'd spent the last four days learning how to read the language so they could do what they were doing now, going through the books to find some specific information.  "That looks boring," Jasana complained.  "This is all you've been doing?"
	"Just about, cub.  If you're bored, go play.  Just keep quiet."
	Jasana looked around.  "I would," she said in a quiet, conspiratorial voice, "but the shining lady is here.  I think this is her garden, and I don't want to break anything.  She might get mad at me."
	Tarrin looked at her, realizing that she meant the statue.  Then he laughed.  "I don't think she'd get mad at you, cub.  I don't think you can break anything in here, outside of what's in the tent."
	"Really?  Good!" Jasana said brightly, then she got up and started running across the grass.
	"Keep it down, cub!" Tarrin called after her.
	"So, what are you looking for?" Jesmind asked curiously, leaning up against his side as he put the book back in his lap.
	Tarrin quietly explained what they were doing as Jasana basicly careened around the courtyard, running to and fro, examining the flowers, the benches, getting wet in the fountain, and pestering all the others with about a million questions, no matter how many times he told her to keep quiet.  Despite being in the presence of five strangers, she acted like they were all family, behaving before and to them as she did towards her other family members, acting like her usual exuberant, energetic self.  Tarrin had a feeling that it was the courtyard that was doing it to her, affecting her with its sense of peace and security to overwhelm her usual shyness towards strangers.  Jesmind took the book from him, puzzling over it, then turned it over upside-down and looked at it again.  "How do you know which side is up?" she asked, handing the book back to him.
	Tarrin chuckled.  "It starts in this corner and goes from left to right, top to bottom," he explained, pointing to the first word on the page.  "If it was in columns rather than rows, it would go from top to bottom, right to left.  This language can be written either horizontally or vertically."
	"Why?"
	"I have no idea," he shrugged.  "Now then, love, let me get back to this."
	Of course, it wasn't easy to concentrate on the book with Jesmind right there, but he found some way to ignore the proximity of his mate, whose scent told him clearly that she was not happy with being ignored.  He managed to deflect her by Conjuring a book on military history for her to read, so she could better understand why Darvon and the soldiers were doing what they were doing out in the city in preparation for the coming siege.  Jesmind was intelligent, but she didn't actively go out of her way to study things she didn't deem to be important.
	By sunset, Jasana had managed to wear on every nerve in the courtyard, even her own mother's.  Each of them had finished at least one book--Keritanima and Dolanna had finished three--and none of them had read anything that related to the Firestaff or its location.  So they left the courtyard after Tarrin picked up the Book of Ages, which had been kept safely within the dome, and returned it to the elsewhere.  They had all felt safe to leave it in the dome, but now that the dome was gone, Tarrin had a feeling that it would be best to keep it safely with him.  Despite not finding anything, they were all still in a relatively good mood about the whole thing.  A