ove.  A reminder of some past event or transgression, though Camara Tal had never told him the specifics.  She was a Priestess of the goddess of the Amazons, but had been a warrior before the calling of the religious order.  She prided herself on her ability to fight, and was checking to see how improved Azakar had become under his tutelage with the Vendari.  Camara Tal reminded him alot of his own mother, Elke, a gruff, direct, no-nonsense kind of woman who didn't play around, yet held great capacity for love and friendship within her.  Once one got past her rather unfriendly front, they found a warm, caring woman beneath, and a stalwart friend.  Tarrin had been learning the spells of the Priests from her during the mornings, chants in some arcane language that nobody spoke anymore, a language that was used universally among all Priests, no matter what god they served.   They used the same spells as well, the Goddess had told him, part of a rule that the Elder Gods had made concerning the gods granting their power to mortals.  Tarrin found them difficult to learn, for the language they used made very little sense to him.  It was more a memorization of obscure words and sounds than any kind of language he had heard.  Tarrin had a strong affinity for languages, being able to speak six languages fluently, so it bothered him a great deal that he couldn't decipher this odd languages that all Priests used to chant their spells, yet none of them seemed able to speak outside of spellcasting.
	She was really pressing Azakar.  Azakar was an oddity, a human that was so unbelievably tall that he was even taller than Tarrin.  He had to be ten spans tall--a Wikuni would call him eight feet tall...strange term, that--an absolute monster of a human that was as strong as three men yet moved with the speed and agility of a panther.  Even decked out in his plate armor, so heavy that an average man couldn't even lift it, let alone wear it, he still moved with speed and precision, though there was a great deal of clanking and squeaking involved when he did move.  Azakar had been caught up with Keritanima when she had been separated from the others, and had taken lessons in fighting from the Vendari bodyguards that usually protected the queen, but could not come to Suld with her this time.  Tarrin had seen him fight during the short war in Suld, and he had to admit that he had come a very long way.  Binter and Sisska had taught him new techniques, but they had also taught him what was most important for a warrior, patience.  Azakar, or Zak to his friends, had learned how to not lose his head in a fight, to be controlled and calm and force the opponent to make mistakes that would allow him to defeat him.  He watched as Camara Tal and Azakar daned around each other for long moments, then the Amazon lowered her sword meaningfully, a signal to stop.  The human sheathed his weapon and took off his large visored helmet, baring a rather handsome face with a strong jaw and a slightly wide nose and full lips.  Azakar was a Mahuut, a race of humans from the southern continent of Valkar, with dark brown skin and coal black hair that had curly waves in it, and slightly smallish dark eyes, eyes that seemed hooded and defensive most of the time.  Azakar kept his hair very short on top and on the sides, but had rolling black waves of hair cascading down onto his shoulders in the back.  Azakar had been a slave at one time, and though he couldn't see them, Tarrin knew that his back and the backs of his arms were covered in a multitude of criss-crossing scars, scars gained at the business end of a whip.  Those scars defined much of Azakar's personality, for he was a haunted, defensive man, nervous around strangers and very quiet.  He never tried to bring attention to himself, which was very hard considering his great size.  But he opened up when around friends, showing that he was a considerate, friendly man who had come through his slavery surprisingly well, not allowing it to change him too much on the inside, though it had hardened him on the outside.  If he'd been a Were-cat, Tarrin would have considered him to be feral.  He certainly had the traits.
	A strange group, very diverse, but that diversity had proved to be an advantage so far.  What one could not do, another could.  They had Dolanna and Phandebrass' education, Keritanima and Miranda's intelligence and cunning, Camara Tal's, Allia's, and Azakar's martial skill and bravery, Keritanima's resources and contacts, and Tarrin had many unique attributes that made him useful.  Firstly, he was a Were-cat, and his nature granted him several magical and quasi-magical abilities that made him exceptionally hard to kill.  Were-kin could only be truly harmed by silver, magic, and weapons of nature, such as fire or acid or being struck by unworked, natural objects, or falling from a height.  Wounds inflicted by a non-magical sword healed over as soon as the weapon was withdrawn, which only managed to anger the Were-cat struck by it.  His Were nature gave him inhuman strength, a strength proportionate to a cat of the same size.  Cats were deceptively powerful creatures, and it gave him the strength of six men, a raw power few humans could challenge.  He also had the senses of a cat, and had the power to shapeshift into cat form.  The gifts of his Were nature were primarily defensive, keeping him alive and allowing him to detect foes, but his magical powers were most definitely an offensive weapon.  Tarrin was a Sorcerer, a very rare kind of Sorcerer called a sui'kun.  He was a Weavespinner, a Sorcerer that could weave spells that normal Sorcerers could not even dream to be able to do alone.  Tarrin's power was staggering, eclipsing every magician of any order around him, a huge power that few could withstand when he used it in anger.  If that weren't bad enough, his Were nature had stopped his aging, rendering him all but immortal.  That distinction was important, because it allowed him to transcend a law set forth by the Elder Gods that no mortal would be able to use more than one form of magic.  Tarrin was a Sorcerer, but he was also a Druid, a being with mystical ties to the energy generated by living things, an energy called the All.  He could use that energy to create Druidic magic, which was very versatile and clever, capable of some things Sorcery either could not accomplish, or he had yet to figure out a spell to accomplish it.  He had learned very recently that he could also use Priest magic, which was the reason he'd been taking lessons in Priest spells from Camara Tal, but it was still new and rather uncomfortable.  The Goddess had already told him that she would grant no Priest spell to him that had a corresponding spell in Sorcery.  Since Sorcery was very versatile in its own right, that covered virtually all Priest spells he had learned so far.
	Tarrin was an almost undefeatable, unkillable opponent, and that was the only reason he was still alive.  He and his friends were on a very important mission, a quest to find an ancient artifact that was called the Firestaff.  It was an object that could turn a mortal into a god, if he held it on a certain day and at a certain time, the brief time in which it activated every five thousand years.  Half the world knew of the Firestaff, and almost all of them were either searching for it or had sent agents to retrieve it for them, so Tarrin and his friends had encountered stiff competition, competition that had often turned violent.  From the very beginning, one group in particular, called the ki'zadun, had known of Tarrin, and had continually tried to kill him almost from the very day he left his home village of Aldreth, before he knew anything about the Firestaff.  They knew he was the destined Mi'Shara, a term for the one who had the best chance of finding and winning the Firestaff, and they knew he was in the hands of their enemies, the katzh-dashi.  So they tried to kill him to deprive the order of Sorcerers from gaining his aid in the search.  It did not in any way mean that he was the only one who could get it, but the ancient books that spoke of it said that of all beings, he had the best chance of succeeding.  Even he could fail, and if he did, it would fall to some other who had a lesser chance than him, but may have better luck.
	It was why they were on the sea.  The Firestaff had revealed itself to the world during the battle at Suld, a battle between the ki'zadun and half of the kingdoms and races in the West, a battle to prevent the ki'zadun from finding and destroying the icon of the Goddess of magic, the Goddess who maintained the Weave.  It was an attack aimed at destroying Sorcery and killing almost all Sorcerers in one fell swoop by destroying the physical manifestation of the Goddess, which was also her link to the physical world.  Without the icon, the Goddess could not give magic to the world, and it would cause the Weave to tear.  That would kill any Sorcerer with even a modicum of ability, and would conveniently destroy the one order of magic that posed the greatest threat to their own bid to find the Firestaff.  It had been a very involved plan, a very clever plan, and a very thorough plan.  And it had come so close to succeeding that it still made the fur on Tarrin's tail ruffle with goosebumps.  Had it not been for the warning he had received from Jegojah, once a Doomwalker under the control of the ki'zadun, they would not have known about it, and they would have won at Suld.
	The Firestaff had revealed itself, and now virtually any Wizard, Priest, Sorcerer, and Druid knew in a general sense what direction in which the Firestaff lay in relation to where they had beeen standing that instant that the Firestaff had activated.  Tarrin had no doubt that many of them were now on ships, sailing towards the direction of the Firestaff, hoping to get lucky and find it before anyone else.  It was a race on the open sea, but Tarrin and his friends had a fundamental advantage in this race, for they had discovered very specific directions to follow that would take them to where it was hidden.  The directions also held warnings, warnings that no ship with sails could reach the Firestaff, so they were sailing to Wikuna to take a very experimental ship that was propelled by a paddlewheel that was turned by a contraption called a steam engine.  It could move over the ocean without sails, and would suit their needs.
	That advantage made him optomistic about all this.  They may find where the Firestaff is, but they wouldn't be able to physically reach it.  But Tarrin's group could, meaning that the only hairy part would be getting the Firestaff back out.  They'd have to run a gauntlet of enemies to get away with the prize.
	He was hungry.  Kimmie looked intent on her magical lessons, and it was about time for Keritanima's lessons as well.  Kerri had crossed over during the battle at Suld, had become a Weavespinner herself, and that meant that there had been some pretty significant changes in her magic.  Sorcery was much a function of the body as it was a magical power, and the crossing over changed the body.  It rendered the Sorcerer invulnerable to any kind of heat or fire.  Keritanima could stroll through a volcano and swim in the lava now, and the worst it would do is burn the dress off her body.  But that physical change affected her magical powers, and she had temporarily lost them until she adjusted to the changes her body had undergone.  Despite not being able to use magic, Tarrin had begun teaching her the basics of Weavespinner magic, fully confident that she'd be able to use it when she did regain her powers.
	In return for the lessons in magic, Keritanima had been teaching him the Wikuni language.  Tarrin had used that as an excuse to experiment a bit with Priest magic, using a spell that caused him to remember with perfect clarity everything that was said during the spell's duration.  It was how Dolanna learned Sha'Kar in a matter of a couple of rides.  Now Tarrin was using it to learn Wikuni at an accellerated rate, and so far, it had been working.  In six short days, he had gone from totally ignorant to being able to form sentences in Wikuni and understanding some of the more obscure grammar rules.  He'd been working on his vocabulary the last few days, doubling or tripling the number of words he knew every day.  At the rate he was going while using the magic to assist him, he'd be competent enough to understand almost everything everyone said when they got to Wikuna.  The Priest spell augmented natural ability, and Tarrin's natural affinity for language made the spell that much more effective when he used it.
	It seemed like cheating, though.  He had learned Sulasian and Ungardt as a baby, from his parents.  One was Sulasian, the other Ungardt.  He learned Arakite from Karn Rocksplitter, the village smith in Aldreth, who taught it to him during long hours over the forge when Tarrin had briefly worked there to help Karn after his apprentice broke both his arms in a very bad accident.  He learned Selani from Allia while they were at the Tower together, the Selani woman wanting to be able to speak to him in her native tongue, a language in which she could express herself more easily.  He learned the dead language of Sha'Kar from scrolls that he, Keritanima, and Allia had stolen from forgotten vaults in the Cathedral of Karas in Suld.  And he'd learned Sharadi from a Selani named Denai while crossing the Desert of Swirling Sands.  Now he was learning Wikuni, but he was doing it in a matter of days, and that seemed...cheap.  Things gained easily weren't valued as much, his mother would say.  He was learning Wikuni with almost no effort, and he wondered if the language would hold in his mind long after the magic that helped place it there faded away.  Cheating or not, he enjoyed it.  Tarrin loved languages, loved to learn them, loved to speak them.  It was a special gift, something that had nothing to do with Sorcery or being a Were-cat or anything, something he enjoyed.  Where some knitted or collected ancient coins or carved or painted, Tarrin learned languages.
	He felt better.  Kimmie's scent had been flushed out of his nose, including the inviting smell of her availability, replaced by the clean smell of the salty ocean and the smell of the wood and rope and paint that surrounded him, as well as a few lingering scents of some those who had recently occupied the crow's nest before him.  He felt ready to go back down there and endure it for a while, while he taught Keritanima about Weavespinner ways and she taught him the Wikuni language.  He enjoyed the lessons, both teaching and learning, just enjoyed spending time with Keritanima.  She had been separated from him when they had left Suld to seek out the Book of Ages, an ancient tome of knowledge that held information vital to their mission, had been taken back to Wikuna to face her father for running away.  Tarrin had missed her desperately during the time she was gone, and it got worse when he himself had been separated from the others after getting the Book of Ages, forced to get back to Suld on foot while the rest of them went back by ship.  That had been a journey of nearly two thousand leagues, and it had taken him nearly a year.  A year with no one but Sarraya for company at first, and then later the companionship of Var and Denai, two Selani he'd met while crossing the Desert of Swirling Sands.
	Var and Denai.  He had to chuckle at the thought of them.  They'd been coming to Suld with the other Selani to help, but he hadn't seen them there.  He'd honestly forgotten about them in all the chaos, but when he did realize that he hadn't seen them, he asked his bond-mother Triana to find out what happened to them.  Triana had circulated the word through the Druids, and one of them had finally responded two days ago.  She had contacted him the day after and told him that his suspicions were correct.  Denai was pregnant, and according to Selani custom, the expecting mother and the father of the child could not fight, to protect the interests of the child.  They had gotten but two days from Suld when they were forced by their clan chief to leave the West, to return to the desert before Denai got too big to travel.  They had been forced to turn around almost within sight of their destination.
	Fate was sometimes cruel that way.
	But he was happy to hear it.  Var and Denai were young, and very much in love.  The child would be loved, nurtured, and would grow up happy.  That was the best thing that could happen for a child.
	Climbing up onto the edge of the crow's nest, Tarrin vaulted out into open air and snagged a rope.   He dropped down onto a mast spar, startling the two Wikuni who were trying to secure it with ropes, then almost immediately stepped off of it and dropped twenty spans to another rope, using it to break his fall.  Tarrin had the agility and dexterity of a cat, and had an absolute fearlessness concerning heights.  He used the rigging and the masts and spars and jibs to execute a controlled descent to the deck, moving with a speed and grace that made all the sailors stop what they were doing and watch the Were-cat seemingly fall through the rigging and land easily on the deck so far below.  He landed right beside the mizzenmast, not far from the sterncastle, and within spans of Keritanima's chair.
	"It's about time," Keritanima said without looking up from her book.  Szath turned to stare at him, with his boxy, scaly green snout and black, soulless eyes, and shifted to get out of Tarrin's way as he approached.  Tarrin didn't really like Szath, for he was a bit stiff and not too smart.  He hoped that Binter and Sisska would rejoin them when they got to Wikuna.  He liked those two.  "I thought you were going to forget about me."
	"How could I do something like that?" he asked simply, looking around.  He spotted a barrel tied against the sterncastle, an empty one that had once held water.  He untied it and dragged it over to face the two Wikuni females, then seated himself atop it easily.  "Where did you want to start, Kerri?  My lessons, or yours?"
	"I'll go first today," she said with a toothy grin, showing off that muzzle full of sharp teeth, closing her book and setting it on the deck beside her. "I've come to discover that the person going last gives a longer lesson.  I'd rather spend more time learning than teaching."  Kerri didn't actually give that lesson by herself.  Miranda helped out quite a bit, since she spoke Wikuni as well.  She didn't look up from her knitting, pausing to brush her thick blond hair from her face, pushing it back up into the little poof that hung over her face, yet didn't droop down to touch it.  She parted her hair to the side, tucking the long bangs up over the round, furry ear that poked up through her hair, giving her that poof of hair in front.
	Tarrin cast the Priest spell that enhanced his ability to learn, and then they began.  Keritanima concentrated on vocabulary, expanding the number of words that Tarrin understood.  Tarrin could speak Wikuni as it was, albeit slowly and not without a little prior preparation, so she was working on the more uncommon words that still managed to find their way into everyday speech.  The way things were going, Tarrin was going to be fluent by the time they reached Wikuna, which would be in about twelve days, by Keritanima's estimation.
	After his lesson was over, he became the teacher.  This day, he concentrated on the Weavespinner's ability to join his consciousness with the Weave and leave his mortal body.  It was something that all Weavespinners could do, and it allowed one to perform some pretty clever tricks, such as weaving spells from great distances, or looking out into the physical world from the strands of the Weave.  Tarrin took great pains to explain the metamagical geography and the rules of the Weave, for they were completely unlike anything Keritanima had ever experienced before.  The Weave was its own world, its own domain, and it had its own set of laws.  The most obvious one, and the one that caused Tarrin so much trouble, was that the geography of the Weave did not correspond to the geography of the real world.  A Sorcerer may have to travel vast distances through the Weave to look on the other side of a door, for instance, and that was why using the Weave in that manner was better used for looking across a continent rather than across a city.  Joining the Weave took energy, and a Sorcerer could tire himself out much more by spying through the Weave than he would by simply going and looking for himself.
	"You haven't taught me how to do this yet," Keritanima complained.  "You keep talking about what I can and can't do when I do it, but when are you going to teach me how to do it?"
	"You already know how to do it," he replied calmly.  "You've done it once before, when you crossed over.  When you regain your powers, you'll find yourself joining the Weave even when you don't mean to, and the Weave will respond to you even when you don't think it can."
	"What do you mean?"
	"When you crossed over, you became bound to the Weave," he explained.  "It's much closer to you now.  It's why Weavespinner magic doesn't require drawing power.  The Weave responds to your desire, not the force you exert against it.  The Weave will react to you whenever you're highly emotional, because it senses your feelings.  Sometimes it doesn't do anything you notice, but sometimes it does.  When I get like that, sometimes I hear echoes in the Weave, memories of past events still reverberating along the strands.  More than once, the knowledge of what I need, what got me so worked up in the first place, came to me through echoes when I needed it.  But don't think that's going to happen all the time," he cautioned immediately.
	"Can I find these echoes?"
	"You can look for them, but more often than not, they find you," he replied.  "And when you do find them, what you get is broken and incomplete.  The Weave has all the knowledge any of us ever knew trapped in it, but it's not coherent.  More often than not, what you hear leaves behind more questions than answers."
	"You just had to go and ruin a good idea," she muttered with a snort.
	"That's just one of the things you can find when you're inside the Weave," he told her.  "There are also currents of magical power that flow through the strands.  Some of them are strong, and a few times I almost got pulled away by them.  Every once in a while, you'll find yourself in a nexus, a point where some magical device draws energy from the Weave to power itself.  Those try to drag you into them, so avoid them."
	"What would happen if you did get pulled in?"
	"I have no idea.  Odds are, your consciousness would become part of the magical item you'd just been pulled into.  You'd be a living magic item."
	Keritanima shuddered.  "I think I'd like to keep the body I have right now, thank you," she said.
	"That's about it as far as danger is concerned.  The Weave is actually a pretty safe place.  It's easy to get lost, but you can always return to your body any time you want just by willing it.  It's also easy to find the Heart.  All you do is sense which way the magic flows, and follow it.  All magic flows back to the Heart."
	"I, I remember that place," the Wikuni said with reverence.  "I could feel the Goddess there, like really there.  And there were glowing threads in the blackness, as well as thousands of glittering stars.  Those stars seemed so close I could touch them."
	"You could," he replied.  "The stars represent every Sorcerer alive, and each of us has one there.  When you see a star go out, that means the Sorcerer it represented died.  When one appears, a new Sorcerer has been born.  You can use a Sorcerer's star to find the Sorcerer in the real world.  Remember the first time I used a projection to talk to you?" he asked, and she nodded in reply.  "Well, I couldn't find you physically through the Weave, so I used your star to locate you.  It guided me to you."
	"Then why did you tell me to touch the Weave?"
	"So I could find you more easily," he replied.  "It was the second time I'd ever done it, if you recall."
	"Oh yeah," she mused.  "I tell you, brother, I just can't wait until I get my powers back and I can practice all this.  It sounds so much more exciting than boring old Sorcery."
	"It's just an aspect of Sorcery, Kerri," he replied.  "And don't worry, it's been a while since you lost your powers.  You should be getting them back any time now.  You been practicing?"
	"Every night," she assured him.  "I can feel the Weave now, but I still can't weave spells."
	"Then you're close," he told her.  "Just remember that the Weave is going to seem slippery at first.  The flows will resist you until you get the hang of it.  When you have that down, I'll show you how to weave spells without that resistance."
	"Why not show me how first?"
	"Because you have to know the basics before I can teach you the advanced concepts, Kerri," he chided her.
	"I hate it when you get smug," she snorted.
	"I could say the same thing about you," he teased.  Chopstick, one of Phandebrass' pet drakes, flapped over and dropped itself in Tarrin's lap.  He stroked the creature's iridescent reddish scales gently, and it nuzzled its scaly head against his stomach in contentment.  It was a very clever little animal, and looked just like the pictures of dragons he'd seen in so many books.  Only it was the size of a small dog, when a dragon was supposed to be the size of a large house.  It even had small black horns that swept back over its head, jutting out over each little yellow, reptillian eye.  Its muzzle was narrow, and filled with a mouthful of needle-like teeth.  Tarrin rather liked the two drakes, because they were affectionate and didn't make too much of a nuisance of themselves.  Turnkey was more mischievious than Chopstick, given to playing games of hide and seek with Phandebrass at the most inopportune times.  Chopstick was a spoiled little drake, always wanting someone to pay attention to it.  Usually it bothered Allia for attention, for both drakes seemed to really like his Selani sister, but when she or Phandebrass were too busy for it, it came to Tarrin.  Tarrin didn't mind at all.  The little drakes were companions for Phandebrass, and now for the entire group, but they had proven that they could be very useful in fights.  Both of them were very small, but they were utterly fearless, and they were fast and agile enough to distract enemies and give their human and non-human friends an easy shot against the distracted foe.
	A bell rang on the sterncastle, signifying that dinner would be ready within the hour, and Keritanima clapped her hands.  "It's about time!" she announced.  "I wonder what they're cooking tonight."
	"I hope it's not fish," Miranda said, making a face.  "I'm getting tired of fish."
	"I thought all Wikuni loved fish," Tarrin mused.
	"There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, Tarrin," she told him with a wink.  "I saw them bring some sides of beef on board when we laid over at the Stormhavens.  I hope we're having that tonight.  They'll have to cook it soon, or it'll go bad."
	"They already did, Miranda," Keritanima told her.  "It's been gone for a week now."
	"You had to go and ruin a good idea, didn't you?" she accused.  Then she batted her eyelashes at Tarrin and gave him that quirky grin that warned him she was about to try to sweet-talk something out of him.  "You love me, don't you, Tarrin?" she asked in a little-girl voice.  "Do you love me enough to make me some steak?"
	Tarrin looked at her, watched her wink one more time, then he chuckled ruefully.  "You could ask, Miranda.  If you keep flirting with me, I may take you up on it.  Then you'd be in real trouble."
	"Bah.  A girl shouldn't flirt if she wasn't ready for the consequences," she said dismissively.  Tarrin often forgot that Miranda was actually a very bad girl, nothing like the rather straight-laced Keritanima.  She had often had to seduce information out of targets, and it was something she did not entirely object to doing.  She had even confided that she enjoyed it, given that her mark was handsome.  "It's an empty threat, anyway.  I know you wouldn't be serious about me," she grinned.
	"Well, you never know, Miranda.  You are cute, even to a Were-cat."
	"And you'd break me in half if we tried," she teased.  "Entirely accidental, of course, but you know how wild things can get when--"
	"I think we get the idea," Keritanima cut her off, the fur on her cheeks ruffling slightly, her form of a blush.  Keritanima was bold, but Miranda often seemed to get the best of her friend and employer.  Talking about such things wouldn't bother Keritanima if they were talking about strangers.  To Keritanima, it would be the same as her brother sleeping with her best friend, something not entirely pleasant to think about.
	"Well, will you, Tarrin?  I've been dying for steak all week."
	Tarin had to think about that a minute.  The Wikuni used some different standards for measuring things, like distances, or time.  A Wikuni week was a period of seven days, when the West used the terms ride or tenday to describe a period of ten days.  They also used weird terms called feet and miles for expressing distances, where the West used span and longspan.  The length of a foot was different than the length of a span; a foot was longer than a span by a small amount, but those small amounts added up when talking of large lengths.  Tarrin was nine and a quarter spans tall, but Keritanima had told him that in her measurements, he was seven and three-quarters feet in height.  Azakar was ten spans tall, but Keritanima said in her measurements, he was just a shade over eight feet in height.  The monstrous Szath was well over twelve spans tall, nearly thirteen, but Keritanima told him that he was ten feet in height.
	Tarrin wondered how those terms came to be used, and how their distances were set.  It was something he'd have to study one of these days.
	"Well, I guess so, but let's not make it common knowledge," he told her.  One of Tarrin's abilities was called Conjuring, and it was an aspect of his Druidic magic.  It was what Miranda was asking of him.  It was a catch-all term for three forms of conjuration magic, Conjuring, Creating, and Summoning.  They were simple tricks, something any Druid could do.  Conjuring was bringing to a place an object that existed elsewhere, 