Aldreth, I guess you would need to set things straight.  Think you can Teleport up?"
	"I don't know how," she admitted.
	"Sister, by tonight, you'll know more about Sorcery than Ianelle," he told her confidently.  "I haven't told anyone this yet, but when I was turned, the memory potion was affecting me.  It has several, interesting side effects.  One of them is that I picked up a great deal of information from the echoes of memories in the Weave.  I can weave almost any spell any Sorcerer has ever used, and Mother told me to teach them to you.  I only have one day, so you'd better be very attentive."
	"How did that happen?" Jenna asked in surprise.
	"I'm not sure," he said.  "But it did.  I've also had something of an expanded memory since I woke up.  I can remember absolutely every second of my entire life, even from before I was born.  It's a very weird feeling," he admitted.
	"I say, what an amazing turn of events!" Phandebrass said brightly.  "I really must talk with you, lad, I must!  I thought that there may be some unusual side effects of your turning, but I hadn't expected this!  I say, why, I may be able to manufacture a new potion that enhances the ability to remember!  I may make a potion that increases intelligence, I may!"
	"It'll have to wait, Phandebrass," Tarrin told him bluntly. "I have too much to do today."
	Phandebrass looked a little crestfallen, but said nothing.
	"Mother told me that the life memory will fade, but what I learned from the Weave never will," he told them to assure them.  "She said that though it was a bit hard on me, I wasn't permanently harmed by the ordeal.  My memory will return to normal after a little time, except for those things I learned from the Weave."
	"That's a relief," Jenna said sincerely.
	Tarrin looked to Sapphire.  "I know you were just waiting for me to recover, my friend," he said.  "As you can see, I'm well now.  What do you intend to do?"
	"I intend to return home," she said calmly. "Since you are going to the desert, I guess I will leave with you tomorrow.  You'll cut a great deal off of my travel time."
	"You're more than welcome to come with us," he told her honestly.
	"I need to get home.  I have no doubt that my brood has destroyed our caves with their revelling in my absence, and I must be there to set things right."
	Tarrin chuckled.  "I guess young ones are young ones, no matter what species.  They all seem to have this knack for upsetting parents."
	"Truly," she agreed with an impish smile.
	"Well, I guess that's about everything," he said.  "What we need to do now is get ready to leave.  And don't make a secret out of it," he told them.  "We want them to know that we're leaving, remember that.  Jenna, I need to start with you as soon as we can."
	"I will handle the arrangements, my Keeper," Ianelle told her.
	"I appreciate that," she nodded.
	"I have just the Knight in mind, son," Darvon told him.  "He's an overly clever young Senior Cadet that calls himself Fox.  He's half Ungardt, just like you, and he's a born troublemaker.  I think he can do the job nicely."
	"He'll need a crash course in how I behave," Tarrin said.
	"I can handle that," Keritanima told him.  "Me and Dar need to go see him to tailor the Illusion to him anyway." She took on a thoughtful look.  "Darvon, do the Knights still have those Trollskin gloves?"
	Darvon looked at her, then laughed.  "That's quite clever, your Majesty," he said.  "Yes, we still have them.  And if we put them on Fox, then he can have a little help convincing people he's Tarrin."
	"My thoughts exactly," Keritanima nodded with a wicked little smile.
	"I can help with that," Triana told them bluntly.  "Bring him to me.  I'll make him as tall as Tarrin, and then the Illusion will only have to change his features.  I've noticed that Illusions that change height have trouble dealing with the physics of movement."
	"Can you put him back, Mistress Triana?" Darvon asked.
	"As easily as I grow him, I can shrink him," she said confidently.  "It won't be too pleasant, but it'll work."
	"That will make the Illusion much more convincing," Dar said professionally.  "It's a good idea."
	"I already know how Allia acts, so I think I can handle being her," Auli added.  "I hear about nothing but Allia from Allyn anyway.  If I didn't know her by now, I never will.  And since I'm about her size, you shouldn't ahve to do anything to me to make it believable," she said quickly.
	"You'll be fine as you are, girl," Triana said to her absently.
	"I say, I need to make a few preparations, and break down my lab," Phandebrass said.
	"I'll be staying here, Tarrin," Kimmie said.  "I'm getting a bit too round to be travelling just now."
	"I didn't want you to go," he told her.  "I'd rather have you and our child out of harm's way from now on.  I think Jula can serve well enough as the party's resident Were-cat."
	"Me?" she said in surprise.
	"You," he told her.  "They may need our unique abilities before it's all said and done, and you're also a Weavespinner, daughter.  I'd rather have that kind of power protecting my friends.  Is that alright, mother?"
	Triana looked to Jula.  "Only for a short time," she said bluntly.  "Jula is still a child."
	"I know, but I don't think a couple of months alone will hurt her too much."
	"I don't like it, but it's necessary," she said sourly.  "I'll be stopping by to check up on you, girl, so don't think you'll be out of reach of my arm," she warned.
	"Yes, Triana," Jula said obediently.
	"Mist won't like it, but I'm going to have her stay here," Triana said. "It'll be easier to keep an eye on the cubs if they're together, and she can replace Jula as a babysitter."
	Jula flushed a little at that, but wisely said nothing.
	"If I want to get Sarraya back here by midnight, I have to start getting things done now," she announced, standing up.  "It won't take me long to stretch this human, but I have a few other things to do before I can leave."
	"Yes, we have much to do," Ianelle agreed.  "Keeper, I'll be at your earliest convenience."
	"I'll let you know when we're done," she said.
	They broke up then to prepare for tomorrow.  Tarrin did pause to talk lightly with them, with Dolanna and Dar and Camara and Koran Tal, answering a few questions and assuring them that he was alright.  He wanted to spend more time with them, tell them all about what happened to him, but they all had too much to do now to waste time on idle chitchat.  Things were starting to come to a head, and everyone knew it.  When they all left the Tower tomorrow, nobody doubted that their leaving wouldn't cause shockwaves through all of Sulasia, all of the West, that could possibly lead to another war.  Only this war would be fought in Ungardt, and the odds were going to be stacked most decidedly in the other direction.  Tarrin wouldn't need to assemble an alliance of different peoples to stand against that.  The Ungardt would use their rugged, hostile homeland as all the ally they would need to protect it.
	Summers were very short that far north.  Very soon now, as summer wound down into autumn, the first snows would fall, and not long afterwards the countryside would be a snow-choked quagmire, hostile to any kind of large-scale action.  Ungardt weather was never very good, and all those elements would combine to make any idea of forced invasion very costly.  Any attackers would be faced with two overwhelming opponents if they invaded Ungardt.  The Ungardt people, and the Ungardt winter.  Both were equally formidable, and equally merciless.
	And if things worked as he hoped they would, they would all be bashing their heads against the proverbial rock to get to him, and he wouldn't even be there.  If everything was done right, every eye in the world would be affixed to Ungardt.  That meant that since he'd be in the desert, he'd be relatively safe.  As if he wouldn't be safe enough.  Even if he did tell everyone where he was going, he doubted they could do anything about it.  The desert was even more hostile to an invading force than Ungardt, but he wasn't going to take any chances.  Not over this.  The Firestaff was too valuable, too precious, too dangerous to take any risk whatsoever.  With Tarrin leaving, Jenna could seal the Tower to protect his mates and children, and anyone who tried would find themselves facing an army of Sorcerers and fanatically loyal Knights.  Anrak Whiteaxe, his grandfather, would use every resource at his disposal to make his friends unassailable in Ungardt, and Tarrin would do the same in the desert to make the Firestaff just as unreachable.
	If everything worked as he hoped, them leaving and diverting the attention of his enemies to the fortress kingdom of Ungardt would prevent them from getting any kind of hold in any one place.  And if he could keep them off balance and guessing for just a few short, critical rides, then he would slip completely beyond their reach.  The Firestaff would be safe in the desert, Gods' Day would come and go, and then he could finally end this madness.  He would put the Firestaff somewhere safe, wherever the Goddess told him to leave it, and not worry about it for another five thousand years.  He could then return to Aldreth with his mate and children, with Mist and Kimmie close by, and settle into the  life of wonderfully ordinary domesiticity that he so desired.
	All they needed was a little luck.
 
Chapter 9

	There were a great many things to do, and it almost seemed to Tarrin like they weren't going to have enough time to get to all of it.
	After they split up from the meeting at the courtyard, Tarrin and Jenna withdrew from the others and returned to her personal rooms, one of the few places where nobody would disturb her, and Tarrin got to work.  After Jenna used the Priest spell to augment her ability to retain knowledge, he started training her in the many, many spells that he'd learned through his unusual turning.  There were a great number of them, and having to think about each one to teach Jenna let him get a little better understanding of them and how they were used.  Some were battle spells, like one nasty one that created a very powerful acid out of flows of Earth, Water, Fire, and Divine, which was sprayed forth to injure an opponent.  There were many new Transmutation spells, including the one that allowed the Transmutation of a being into another kind of being.  Shapeshifting.  It was one of the spells, though a Sorcerer wouldn't use that particular spell on himself.  Sorcerers were wary of spells that altered the body, because it may damage or destroy their connection to the Weave.  There were few ways a Sorcerer would Transmute himself, and crossing over, changing the body to make it invulnerable to heat and fire, was one of them.  Sorcerers could Transmute themselves in other ways, but a tiny mistake could strip them of their powers, so Sorcerers, even the Ancients, were very wary about doing so.  It was such a dangerous and unused sphere of Sorcery that even Tarrin's knowledge of it was strangely incomplete.  Then again, given how extraordinarily dangerous it was, there was little surprise in the fact that a very, very rare few katzh-dashi would even dare to experiment in that area.  Some were spells of an aspect of Sorcery the modern katzh-dashi had never even seen before, Divination.  The reading of signs and portents to predict a possibility in the future.  Divination was terribly unreliable, for the future was not set, and elements of the present changed constantly to alter the lines of possibility in the future.  The one spell that Tarrin had learned in that field of study that had any kind of reliability at all was a rather interesting little weave that predicted the probability of success of an impending action, provided that the action was accomplished within a minute of the casting of the spell.  But even that one was unreliable if other factors influenced the possibilities of success, especially when other sentient beings were involved.  So, the spell would be fairly accurate if Tarrin used it to see if he could successfully break down a door, but it wouldn't do him very much good in predicting a winner if he and Allia decided to race down a passageway.  There was another spell that tried to gauge the severity of possible danger in the near future, but the spell couldn't determine the type of danger, nor its cause.  But it did operate with at least a modicum of success, but it was notoriously fickle about what it considered danger.  The concept of danger was a very personal one, and what Tarrin felt was not dangerous, others would.  That made the spell very erratic, especially when the danger would be caused by another sentient being, or the danger another caused was purely accidental.  That made it moderately useful for a Sorcerer trying to detect the possibility of being attacked by brigands in an alley, as they intended to cause danger to the Sorcerer, but would not warn of a thief on a rooftop above that accidentally knocked a roof tile loose that fell on the Sorcerer's head and killed him.
	There were a great, great many useful spells, many of which Auli had demonstrated in their endless games of fun.  Sorcery was capable of battle and other things, but the Ancients had concentrated on finding ways to make Sorcery useful.  That was why there was a weave to do almost any kind of chore or labor, there were weaves that affected clothing, mended broken items, and even trivial ones that changed the color of things.  The Ancients placed greater value on spells that could do things for them, not spells that could kill people.  Then again, back then the Sha'Kar dominated the katzh-dashi, and their pacifistic ways had influenced how they researched the ability.  Tarrin taught Jenna an absolute plethora of handy little weaves that did any number of small, useful things, as well as a few that weren't quite so small, like weaves that determined the age of an object, or a weave that would tell the Sorcerer who had last touched an object, and more importantly, exactly where that person was, or even a weave that 
	After that, they moved into a more serious aspect of Sorcery, and that was healing.  There were many spells of healing that had been forgotten, even by the Sha'Kar, and many of them were spells that affected more than just injury.  There were weaves for helping the body fight disease, though the weave couldn't outright cure the disease itself.  There were weaves that helped a Sorcerer heal mental damage, such as trauma or shock, but only a Sorcerer of the same race could do that.  The boundary of species was a constant throughout all of Sorcery when it came to using Mind weaves, even to the Ancients.  Only under truly extraordinary circumstances could that barrier be breached.  Spyder was the only example of such an extraordinary circumstance.  After ten thousand or so years, the Urzani had come to understand humans to such a detailed, exacting degree that it allowed her to use Mind weaves against humans.  There was even a weave that partially reversed insanity, though it was not a permanent effect.
	After that, they started with sphere-specific spells, going through a myriad of different Air weaves and Fire weaves and Water weaves and Earth weaves, which weren't really anything new.  Sorcery was a very fluid, dynamic magical power, which allowed for a great deal of lattitude in its use.  It didn't demand the exacting words and gestures of Wizard and Priest magic, and it didn't require the immense clarity of intent and discipline of Druidic magic, which meant that the results of Sorcery could often be quite different from casting to casting of the exact same spell.  It was also why a spell's effect often had different potency from one Sorcerer to another, depending on any number of variables, including the concentration and experience of the caster.  This margin of relaxation gave Sorcery a unique aspect that didn't exist for the other orders, except perhaps Druidic magic, and that was the ability to improvise.  Experienced Sorcerers could improvise on the spot, make up new spells as they needed them, and many of the things he'd learned through his turning were more formal variations of spells that he or Jenna or Keritanima or Dolanna had invented when they had a need for them.  Druidic magic was capable of such improvisation, but the consequences of failure were so drastic that making things up as one went along was a very dangerous practice.
	The only sphere-specific spells that were carefully used were Mind weave spells, because of the risk of damage to the mind affected by them.  One did not improvise when using Mind weaves, so the spells that he taught Jenna, a great many of them, were new to her, new and somewhat useful.  Spells to intefere with a mind's operation, spells to put a victim to sleep, spells that were more refined versions of the phantasm aspect of Mind weaves, spells that made someone believe that he could see or hear or smell or touch something that actually didn't exist.  Illusions fooled the senses, but Phantasms tricked the mind.  They were well researched because not many Sorcerers were very adept with Illusions.  Dar was one of a very rare few that showed such aptitude for Illusions, for it was a very demanding field of study and also required a very vivid imagination.  There were spells to delve into the memory of a victim, allowing a Sorcerer to access memories of another, and spells to hear the thoughts of others.  There was also a spell that instantly allowed a Sorcerer to lift an entire language out of another's mind and learn it, but it was a Weavespinner spell, meaning that only Jenna and Dolanna would have any real use for it, since it too was restricted to only being able to be used against members of the caster's own race.
	After that was done, and they broke to get a late lunch, they came back to start learning the Weavespinner spells.  These were powerful spells, ones so strong that only a Weavespinner could use them.  Spells like Teleportation, a spell that would instantly kill a victim by disrupting his body's processes and leave no trace of its use, a spell that could interfere with gravity itself in a small area, either increasing it or lessening it, even changes its direction of pull for a short time.  There was a spell that allowed a Sorcerer to take complete control of someone's mind, turning him into a puppet, and a spell used against Sorcerers that would strip them of their powers for as long as the caster kept the spell active.  Sorcerers could block one another from using the power, but that required strength and a great deal of effort.  The spell made that a little easier, but it still depended on the strength of the caster and the strength of the victim.  Jenna could use it to block almost anyone in the Tower except Tarrin, Jasana, and perhaps Keritanima, Dolanna, and Ianelle.  Those three weren't sui'kun, but they were both very powerful and very experienced, and could possibly break the spell.  There were a great many other spells, fighting spells, useful spells, even some trivial spells, showing that the Ancients still placed a greater value on Sorcery as a useful tool or means of entertainment than a weapon of war.
	As the sun began to set, they moved on to the most powerful of all the spells he'd learned, the spells of High Sorcery.  These were the most powerful of all, and a vast majority of them were battle spells.  The Ancients did study magic as a weapon of war, but they seemed to concentrate on using it thus only at its highest level of ability.  This too seemed to make sense to him, since the Sha'Kar had dominated the culture of the Ancients, and their aversion to fighting meant that if they had to do it, they were going to do it fast and be sure about the results.  High Sorcery was the most efficient and fastest means to win such a fight, and as such it was developed mainly with spells used in combat.  There were non-fighting spells in Tarrin's memory that relied on High Sorcery, but the majority of them were battle magic.  The Sunbolt, a spell Tarrin had learned very early on, was just one example of the kind of raw, unmitigated power that High Sorcery could unleash, and other spells of the same ilk had the same kind of destructive ability.  There were spells for making rock explode, spells for turning air into a lethal poison, spells to change blood into a poison.  There was a spell that caused a massive earthquake in a confined area, a spell that caused a deluge of razor-sharp shards of ice to rain from the sky.  One spell even called down a meteor and made it strike where the Sorcerer indicated.  Something falling from the sky had such speed and energy built up in it that when it hit the ground, it would explode with the power of thousands and thousands of kegs of Wikuni gunpowder, absolutely annihilating everything around where it impacted.  Tarrin's memory told him that that particular spell had only been used in battle once, and it was used to destroy a city in the southern kingdom of Stygia, the immediate neighbor of Sharadar.  The katzh-dashi had been so horrified by its effects and what they'd done that the spell was outlawed and the war between Sharadar and Stygia was immediately ended.  It was the only war Sharadar had ever lost in its entire history, and they lost it because they surrendered to the Stygians in apology and repentence for what they'd done.  For their own honor and pride, the Stygians accepted that apology, and it led to the strong alliance that the two nations now enjoyed.
	It was a sobering thought, that one, one that Jenna brought up.  The sui'kun, single, individual beings, could call forth the power to destroy entire cities.  She remarked that perhaps that was too much power for a mortal to hold.  Tarrin didn't really engage her in the philosophy of that debate, for the memory of what he'd done at Torrian was still fresh and raw in him.  He knew how it felt to destroy an entire city, and he fully understood the horror of the katzh-dashi after doing it themselves.  He did not blame them in the slightest for outlawing the spell, but he realized that it was a very rash act.  Any spell, even that one, could be altered in its power to be made less potent.  That was a core rule of Sorcery, any spell could be made as strong or as weak as the Sorcerer desired, up to the limits of the Sorcerer himself.  They could have simply decided to call down a smaller meteor, one that devastated a much smaller area.  That would be very handy in eliminating an army.
	After they were done, both of them were quiet and reflective.  Now Tarrin understood why those who had caused the Breaking were so afraid of the katzh-dashi.  They really were that powerful.  Had they really wanted to, they could have conquered the entire world.  But that was then.  The katzh-dashi of today weren't nearly as powerful or as numerous, and though they could help an army conquer a much larger force, the effort of wielding magic on that scale would make them only useful for short periods.  Even Tarrin himself, one of the most powerful, couldn't use that kind of magic in a sustained manner any longer than a few minutes at the most.  The most powerful of all spells were vast in size and intricate in construction, meaning that they took a long time to weave, and that would wear him out by the time he started the second, or possibly the third, depending on how angry he was.  They were spells more suited for a Circle, where the effort to weave them was distributed among the members of the Circle.
	But that too was a moot point.  The katzh-dashi were an order of peace, and they would only use that power in defense of itself or for the protection of those placed under their care.  They would never use it to conquer or rule, and with Jenna as the Keeper, he was sure that that would never change.
	It was well past dark when they finally finished, not far from midnight.  They were both tired, but there was an excited light in Jenna's eyes.  She was thrilled at having learned so much about Sorcery in such a short time, and he couldn't really blame her.  If he'd been in her shoes, he'd be very excited about it too.  Jenna's short life was totally devoted to Sorcery now and all it entailed.  The Tower was her new home, and the katzh-dashi were like her children.  She was unswervingly devout to the Goddess, just as he was.  Tarrin couldn't see how anyone who'd been touched by her couldn't be devout.
	They went down to the kitchens for a late dinner, since they'd both only had that one meal and were both ravenous.  As always, the kitchens were busy, but now the business was concentrating on cleaning up and preparing for tomorrow's cooking than cooking for today.  Pots and pans were scrupulously cleaned, fireplaces swept of ash, tables and countertops wiped down, kettles scrubbed.  But the instant the Keeper appeared, they fell over themselves offering her anything she wished.  When she asked for a bowl of beef and vegetable stew, one of her favorites, a kettle was pulled off the peg, ingredients were retrieved, and the head cook, a large fellow named Golin, assured her that it would be ready very soon.  He pushed breads and pastries at her, meat pies and a large platter of fruits and vegetables, urging her to eat a little before her meal was prepared.  She took a little bread and a small bowl of grapes, Tarrin filched a joint of beef that had been roasting for most of the day, and they retired to the main dining hall, where the Novices were seated and dined three times a day. It was empty now, the long benches and tables cleaned and waiting for breakfast.
	"This place brings back memories," Tarrin mused as they sat down at the table nearest the doorway to the kitchens.
	"You know, I never had to sit in here," Jenna chuckled.  "Sometimes I come in here and eat, just to see what it's like."
	"It's alot different when it's empty," he grunted.  "Try eating with the Novices some day."
	"It would be just as quiet now as it would if I did that," she winked.  "I'm the Keeper, Tarrin.  I'm not someone that a Novice would feel comfortable eating with, you know."
	"True," he admitted.  "But maybe you could wear a disguise or something.  You're young, sister.  If you put on Novice white, I think that you could probably fool some people.  Not all of them, but some of them."
	"I don't think so," she said.  "It's a small  Tower, brother, and everyone knows me."
	"Then use an Illusion."
	"I'm not really very good at Illusions," she admitted sheepishly.  "I can make image Illusions well enough, but there's a trick to making them move I haven't quite figured out.  All my Illusions look like painted portraits, and they look silly when they start moving."
	Snorting, Tarrin set down his joint.  "Make one.  Let's see where you're making your mistake."
	She did so, an Illusion of their mother, Elke Kael, and he saw immediately that it wasn't her weaving that was the problem.  "You're doing it right, but you're weaving it like it's a spell, Jenna," he told her.  "Illusion is an art form, not a formula.  You don't weave it, you create it.  You have to breathe life into it, or it's going to look exactly like that one.  A picture."
	"Now I understand why they all say that Illusions are so hard," Jenna said with a furrowed brow as she tried again.  The image was just as detailed as the first, but it too had that empty, soulless quality that made it apparent that it was an Illusion.
	"Don't think about how mother looks," Tarrin said.  "Think about her.  Her presence, her personality, what makes her who she is.  Then put them into the Illusion."
	Frowning, Jenna banished the Illusion and took a moment to mull things over, then she tried once more.  The resulting Illusion looked as the other two did, a faithful reproduction of their mother's appearance, but now there was just something a little more in it, a kind of presence that made it seem more real than the first two.
	"Now you're getting it," Tarrin complemented.  "It takes practice, Jenna.  It's not the kind of thing you can just start doing.  Just work on it a little, and you should get the hang of it."
	Jenna laughed.  "And I thought everyone was blowing Dar's talents out of proportion," she said ruefully.  "I didn't think that being good at Illusions was such a thing to take notice of."
	"Dar's very talented, sister.  He has the soul of an artist.  That's what gives his Illusions such power.  When he weaves an Illusion, it doesn't just look real, it feels real."
	"I think I'll ask him for some lessons," she smiled.
	"I wonder where he is," Tarrin mused.
	"Right now?  I think him and Tiella are walking," she answered.  "Tiella has the biggest crush on him," she added with a conspiratorial smile.
	"Dar really fancies her," Tarrin added.  "I think they'd be a good match."
	"Maybe we should," she trailed off, waving her hand slightly.
	"I don't think we need to do anything," he said.  "As soon as Tiella works up the nerve to tell Dar how she feels, she'll have him.  She's intimidated by him."
	"Everyone is.  Whatever you and Dolanna did to Dar, brother, it has quite an effect.  He walks around the Tower with a confidence that makes everyone take him very seriously, despite the fact that he's still technically an Initiate.  He knows more than some katzh-dashi ten times his age," she chuckled.
	"After going through what he went through, he'd better have learned," Tarrin grunted.  "Dolanna took him under her wing and taught him almost everything she knew.  And Dolanna is a very good Sorceress.  She's got some tricks that most other katzh-dashi would say are impossible."
	"I've noticed," Jenna smiled.  "I think it's no big surprise she was the very first of the new katzh-dashi to cross over."
	"None at all," Tarrin agreed.  "Even before she crossed over she was probably stronger than anyone on the Council, but it's not her nature to want a position like that.  She seems more comfortable out in the world, using her abilities in direct service to the Goddess.  She's a natural field katzh-dashi."  Tarrin glanced towards the door.  "Mother is very pleased with her," he told her.  "She told me not to tell Dolanna, but I don't think she'd mind me telling you.  She told me that whenever she has a delicate or serious problem somewhere,  Dolanna is usually the first name on her list of children to send to take care of it."
	"That's not all that surprising.  If I had a serious problem somewhere, Dolanna would be the first pe