ther peoples and other races, and training opportunities in the basics of merchantcraft that would make them good speakers, excellent negotiators, accomplished accountants, wily politicians, and learned conversationalists.  Those were traits that many noble houses prized in their younger generation.  Most nobles sent their children to the Tower for five years of education, and when they came out, they were intellectually ready for to take up their places in their noble houses.  Arren himself was a product of the Novitiate, as was almost every Sulasian king or queen for nearly three thousand years.
	Since Janette was Sulasian, it meant that her parents would get a break on the cost of sending Janette to school.  On the other hand, since this was Janette, it meant that she'd get the education for free.  When one was personal friends with the Keeper, one got certain boons of preferential treatment.  The cost reduction for natives was what allowed so many craftsmen to send their children to the Novitiate, so they could be educated and become an asset to the kingdom.  Sulasia's population was probably the best educated in all of the West because of the Tower.  Almost everyone could read and do simple math, skills that weren't quite as prevalent in Shac, Ungardt, Tykarthia, Draconia, Daltochan, Arkis, the Stormhavens, or the Free Duchies.  Not all of them were taught at the Tower, but most had an aunt or grandfather or some relative who did, and the knowledge of reading and simple math were often taught to the rest of the family.  Over the centuries, the Tower had caused the proliferation of literacy in Sulasia, until teaching children how to read and do numbers were basic skills taught long before they reached adolescence.
	Tarrin saw what was coming.  He hoped Janine would be content with Janette being both a wife and a merchant.  Janine had to know what the Tower was going to teach her daughter, so it made him wonder if she really would be opposed to the idea of Janette going into the family business.  After all, if she found a good husband, he'd be in the business too.
	But, as they always did, their visits turned into a simple game of chase.  Tarrin spent almost two hours chasing that battered wooden doll around the house, and despite the fact that she was growing up, Janette still delighted in the game.  He knew that they wouldn't be able to act like children much longer, but then again, he found the idea of that to be rather promising.  The little girl would be replaced by an intelligent young woman, and he'd enjoy conversation with her then as much as he enjoyed playing games with her now.
	The visit did everything Tarrin wanted it to do.  It put him in a much better mood, and by afternoon, after a delicious meal and engaging conversation, Tarrin and his parents bid them farewell and took the opportunity to go see Jenna.  Jenna was well and happy to see them, and Tarrin caught up a little with Ianelle while they were there, getting the latest updated reports about what was going on in the world and finding out what was happening with Auli.  She was still in the Tower in Sharadar, and still getting into trouble almost every other day.  He found out from Jenna that Dar was about ready to murder his parents and come home, because his mother was contesting his attempts to be married in Arkis.  Dar's mother had gone from disapproval of Tiella to abject hatred of Tiella, and was beseeching the High Priest of Mikaras himself to deny Dar the right to marry, as well as trying to have Tiella ejected from Arkis as an illegal settler; Arkis had strict laws about outlanders entering the kingdom and taking up residence.  Only those who married Arkisians could legally live in Arkis.  Jenna had fired off a rather terse letter to High Priest Rasham that if he rejected Dar's marriage application, the Tower was going to have very unpleasant things to say about it.  And she went on to say that if Tiella, a fully recognized member of the katzh-dashi, was thrown out of Arkis, then there would be an ugly international incident.  She all but ordered him to put a hand into the seething cesspool of the Arkisian governmental bureaucracy and put a stop to the nonsense of having Tiella ejected from Arkis.  Or else.
	Jenna certainly didn't help by stirring up that hornet's nest, as Dar's mother would have a conniption when she found out that Jenna was interfering, but he understood her irritation.  Dar and Tiella were in love, and they were already married.  It would be silly for Rasham to refuse to allow them to marry, because the ceremony was only a technical formality to establish legal marriage under Arkisian law.  For Rasham to deny Dar permission was just like saying he wasn't married, and any children he and Tiella had would be illegitimate in Arkisian law.  Dar's mother couldn't do anything about that, so she was doing everything she could to make Dar and Tiella as miserable as possible, to force them to split up.  That really angered Jenna.  So Jenna, being Jenna, hung several very nasty rocks over Rasham's head as dire warning of the trouble that would befall him and Arkis if he didn't do what Jenna wanted him to do.
	That never ceased to amuse Tarrin.  His little sister, sweet little Jenna, who had the capacity to be an absolute tyrant when things didn't go her way.  The knowledge Spyder had bestowed upon Jenna had truly changed her, but he had to admit that they were not bad changes.  She was assertive, authoritative, decisive, and she was also compassionate and honestly concerned for the katzh-dashi.  She was a very good ruler, and the katzh-dashi and just about everyone in Suld absolutely adored her.
	Tarrin wasn't too worried.  Rasham and Arkis didn't want to irritate Jenna.  That was a very bad idea.  Jenna's power may not extend too far beyond the boundaries of Sulasia, but what Jenna lacked in official power, she more than made up for in friends.  She was related by blood to the Ungardt and Fae-da'Nar, was a sister to the Wikuni Queen, was very close, personal friends with the Queen of Sharadar, had strong ties with the Amazons, was well liked by the Wizards, and happened to be friends with the Empress of Yar Arak--sort of.  She didn't have the official authority to back many of her demands, but the society that was the rulers of the kingdoms of the Known World knew that Jenna didn't need official power when she had so many friends around who would be more than happy to lend her a hand.  There were many kinds of power, and the power of Jenna's friendships more than made up for her lack of political or military power.
	They talked well into the night, until Jenna's head was nodding off, and then they sent her to bed and Tarrin and his parents returned home.

	The short vacation did wonders for Tarrin's mood, but the simple fact that Mist and Eron were gone still bothered him every time he looked around the house.  He managed to distract himself with his studies and his teaching of Jasana and Jula and the presence of his other three children, but a thousand friends and family couldn't cover the hole left by the departure of only two.
	The only thing that brought him out of it was when Mist finally contacted him and told him he could visit.  He did so immediately, leaving in the middle of teaching Jasana and Jula a weave that transmuted water into acid.  Mist had returned to the house she'd built for herself after getting pregnant, a small cabin on top of a very gentle rise that was contained in a shallow valley not far from the mountains.  It was crude by Tarrin's standards, but then again, he'd become totally spoiled by the amenities of his wonderful house.  But like Tarrin had in the desert, Mist quickly reverted to living without the luxuries his house provided, and actually seemed a little more comfortable in her little three room cabin, being again on her own and in the wild, mistress of her domain rather than being a guest of another.  She was much calmer, much more open than she had been in the house, and actually seemed happier.  Tarrin felt a little guilty when he realized that Mist hadn't really been happy in his house, that the only reason she had stayed there was to keep Tarrin close to his son, and to keep Eron close to Jasana.  He was the reason Mist had been unhappy.
	It reminded him of the powerful bond that existed between him and the diminutive, feral female.  Mist would do anything if she thought it would make Tarrin happy, even if she hated doing it.  Triana was probably the only adult Were-cat that could force Mist to act against her will, but Tarrin was the only adult that could make Mist act against her own wishes of her own volition.  The trust and loyalty that she had in him was unbelievable, and he suddenly felt a massive responsiblity towards her, much as he had for Kimmie when he found out how she felt about him.  Mist didn't love him like Kimmie did, but she was very, very fond of him, and she considered him her truest friend.  That meant that he had to honor that, as well as understand that he had to make sure that Mist did things that she did for herself, and not just to make him happy.  Mist had done a great deal because she had thought it would make him happy, despite the fact that it put her in a perpetual bad mood, and got his house trashed when she finally couldn't take it anymore.
	Tarrin spent the rest of the day with Mist and Eron, seeing Mist come out of the shell she had kept around herself in the house, seeing her actually smile for a change, and he knew that Mist's leaving the house was best for everyone involved.  And she and Eron weren't more than a thought away for him.
	After grounding himself in her home so he could Teleport back there whenever he pleased, he left early the next morning.  When he got back, Jesmind had a fit that he'd spent the night with Mist, but he brushed her off in that manner that never failed to drive his mate absolutely wild.  Jesmind was being silly, being too jealous, and he made sure she knew exactly how he felt.  This kind of behavior annoyed Tarrin, but he knew that to get the good out of his mate, sometimes he had to deal with her bad side.  Those times when Jesmind was happy and affectionate more than made up for these stormy fits.  His mate was very moody and temperamental...in other words, a typical Were-cat.  But Jesmind had a very hot temper, one of the hottest among them, so Tarrin knew that he was never going to go a full ride without setting her off one way or another.  So he'd simply learned how to ride out those explosions of ire.  When one lived with someone with such an explosive temper, one had to learn how to live in the eye of the hurricane, to not to stray too far from the calm center, else be lashed by the winds of howling fury that lurked just away from that calm eye.
	Tarrin retreated to the sanctity of his private study, where he kept his books and the little bits of Dwarven art and artifacts that he liked to study, one place Jesmind knew that she was not welcome when she was in a bad mood.  He returned to studying the axe, but it wasn't long before he was in a bad mood, since he really couldn't get any further with it.  He again pored through his books, trying to find some clues to the duthak writing on the axehead, but again came up empty.
	Jasana opened his door and peeked in.  "Mama's looking for you," she told him.  "She's really zonkers today."
	"I visited Mist and Eron yesterday."
	"I know.  Why did you stay all night?"
	"I had to ground myself so I can Teleport there."
	"Oh.  Why didn't you tell Mama?  She thinks you and Mist were--"
	"Because she's being silly," he said abruptly, cutting her off.  He didn't really like hearing Jasana use the kind of language that he knew was coming, but she was a Were-cat, and his say in her upbringing only went so far.  Were-cats were educated in ways that would make humans think they were all depraved, but it was a simple difference of culture, nothing more.  Were-cats didn't hide their children from those kinds of things, since they'd be partaking of them when they grew up.  Despite that, the human-raised Tarrin still didn't really like knowing that his daughter was not only perfectly allowed to use that kind of language, but she knew what it all meant.  It was one of the few areas where Tarrin was still more human than Were.  Kimmie had been totally subjugated to the Were ideal, because she'd been turned for more than a hundred years, but at least Jula shared his shock at some of the things that Mist and Jesmind taught their cubs.  Like him, Jula totally embraced her Were nature, but still had strong remnants of her human mentality lurking in her personality.  More so than him, probably because she'd been human much longer than Tarrin or Kimmie had been before they were turned.
	"No need to snap at me," Jasana huffed.
	"Sorry, cub, I guess I'm getting annoyed again," he said, tossing the book on the table moodily.
	"I told you, Papa," she said chidingly, "just use the Book of Ages.  It's got to have Dwarven writing in it.  It can teach it to you easy, just like you learned Sha'Kar."
	Tarrin looked at his daughter, about to rebuke her, then he laughed ruefully.  "I totally forgot about that," he admitted, scrubbing the back of his head with his paw.
	"Again," she teased.  "You're too easily distracted, Papa."
	"Don't push it, cub," he told her with insincere parental authority, waggling a finger at her.
	"I'll tell Mama the real reason you were there," she told him.  "Since you're afraid to."
	Jasana laughed and shut the door when Tarrin threw a small paperweight at the door half-heartedly, then chuckled and leaned back in the chair.  Jasana's behavior had improved since returning to the desert.  She had been very well-behaved, still stinging from the poignant lesson Fara'Nae taught to her, and he had hope that she finally would get reigned in somewhat.  He was glad that she had learned where the line was without it affecting her base personality, which was optomistic, bubbly, fun-loving, adorably mischievious, and quite charming.  His daughter was a total charmer, but always before they were always too wary of her charm, fearing that ulterior motives lurked in her charismatic behavior.
	But in this instance she was more than right.  The Book of Ages would end his fruitless searching through musty old books for information that would certainly be in that book.  It would teach him Duthak, as well as the Dwarven language, though it would do nothing to help him with pronunciation.  More than that, the history of the Dwarves would be in that book, an accounting he wouldn't find in any other tome of history, which would give him a background no other scholar could match.
	The good part was that the Book of Ages wouldn't teach him everything.  It would certainly be very thorough, but as he'd learned reading through it before, its lore dealt mainly with major events and generalities, not things like customs, daily life, and so on.  The Book of Ages would tell him where and when cities were built, it would teach him their language, show him exhaustive geneology trees showing the roots of the Dwarven kings, and would teach him about the basics of Dwarven culture as it pertained to history, but that was it.  The book was vague about culture, customs, and the simple day-to-day activities which interested Tarrin much more than a history of their race.  It dealt in hard facts, not the minutia of small details that would turn the book into a vast compilation so endlessly huge that it would take a massive library to hold it all.  Even the Book of Ages had limits, and that limit was space.  So the book would quickly teach him the basics, the core education that would allow him to learn about the Dwarves the way in which he wanted to, which was to understand their culture and society as much as know how they had risen and fallen with the sands of time.
	Tarrin wanted to learn, but he didn't want to learn it all from the Book of Ages.  It would make his victory in that regard seem cheaply gained.  Tarrin still believed that one had to work for goals that one would prize and treasure, and getting to his goal simply by cheating using the Book of Ages would make it a hollow victory.  Tarrin wanted to learn more than just the history of the Dwarves, he wanted to learn what made them tick, wanted to understand their society, their culture, and their customs.  He wanted to see through the eyes of one of the ancient Dwarves and understand what motivated him, and what a typical day in his life might be like.  And he wouldn't learn that from the Book of Ages.
	And that suited him just fine.
	Getting the book was a matter of simplicity.  Tarrin had once owned it, and that allowed him to Summon it to him.   That was done without any thought in the matter, though he was suprised at how much energy the spell had taken for it to work.  He wondered at that for a moment as he ran the pad of his forefinger along the book's elaborately designed front cover, his mind drifting back to the savage battle with the glabrezu to obtain it, and the many adventures and experiences he had had while carrying it back to Suld.  He wondered if those adventures had managed to find a way into the book; the book wrote itself, new pages appearing in the very back of it as events of modern history significant enough to capture its attention were recorded into it, to be saved for posterity.  The book was very large, even for Tarrin's oversized body, and he knew from experience that though it looked like it only had about a thousand pages, it actually had tens of thousands of pages.  Each page was made of a strange, very thin paper, but was still remarkably tough, and they seemed to magically compress into the binding so they would all fit.  The book itself was an item of great magical power, and the magic that allowed a ream of paper to fit into the bindings of a single book was but one aspect of its magical ability.
	With a start, he realized that it had taken so much energy to retrieve because Jenna had placed magical safeguards around it to keep it from being stolen.  It also occured to him that he never asked Jenna to borrow the book, he just took it.  Jenna would be furious if she found out, but having it right there in his paws was enough to keep him from sending it back and asking her.  It also wouldn't be a good idea to ask her if he could borrow it after he took it.  Jenna was very serene and sedate, but she was half Ungardt, and that gave her a very nasty temper.  It was also something of a pet peeve of hers when people bothered her things without asking, a trait that Tarrin had probably instilled in her when they were children, teasing her by taking her dolls and other possessions and hiding them around the house and farm.  It just took quite a bit to set her off.  Tarrin had seen one of Jenna's fits, and he had no desire to endure one of those.  When she was really mad, she could give Jesmind a run for her money.
	Tarrin decided on a rather simple solution that should hold up until he was done with the book.  He Created an exact duplicate of the Book of Ages, that looked absolutely convincing so long as someone didn't open it and look inside, and sent it back to occupy the space from which he had taken the Book of Ages.  He put his name on the inside cover, so if Jenna did open it, she'd know who had it, and thus hopefully deflect some of her anger.  When he was done with the book for tonight, he would trade the real for the fake, and swap them again whenever he needed the book.  That way he could use the book whenever he needed to do so, and he wouldn't have to bother Jenna every time he needed it.
	It seemed to work.  For a good ten days, Tarrin borrowed the Book of Ages without incident, and used it.  It took him the first day just to find where the Dwarven language appeared in the book, and after he located it, he began the process of trying to learn it.  It taught Dwarven from Sha'Kar, since the majority of the book was written in Sha'Kar--it didn't switch over to a human language, Sulasian, until after the Breaking, when the Sha'Kar were thought to be extinct--and that proved to make it rather tricky.  He did use the memory enhancing spell to accelerate his learning, but it didn't help as much as learning Sha'Kar had.  Dwarven wasn't a complicated language, but he had already known how to speak Sha'Kar, when he had no idea how to speak Dwarven.  The Book of Ages did not teach how to speak Dwarven, it simply provided the key to learning how to write in Dwarven, and it also provided a Dwarven dictionary of words in another section, which took him about seven hours to find.  It was up to him to take that base of knowledge, the key of the Dwarven writing system, and a dictionary of Dwarven words, and decipher Duthak into the spoken language.  The dictionary did teach proper pronunciation of the Duthak words, so it would allow him to get the pronunciation right when he unlocked the mystery of the Dwarven tongue.
	Learning Duthak took about an hour.  After that, Tarrin had to use the Book of Ages' sections that were written in Dwarven and the dictionary, which he used Sorcery to transcribe into a blank book so he wouldn't have to constantly turn back to it, and he started the lengthy process of deciphering the spoken and written language using the tools he had provided.  Remembering the book that Keritanima had Miranda make when they were learning Sha'Kar, he used Sorcery to keep a written record of what he did, so that whoever read the book after him would have the ability to learn Dwarven from his book, instead of having to do what he was doing.
	During this time, he pulled away from the others, closing himself off in the study he kept on the second floor in one of the spare bedrooms, which had been reconstructed after Jesmind and Mist's battle, the only place he could go in the house to study where he didn't have to worry about being interrupted.  After ten days of constant work, he had managed to master Duthak and begin work on the words and rules of grammar of the Dwarven tongue.  Its pronunciation was harsh, growling in a way, with lots of consonants, probably an insight into the Dwarven personality.  Sha'Kar was lilting, musical, with plenty of vowels, and it was a good indication of the gentle natures of the Sha'Kar people.  A language was quite often an insight into the cultural personality of the peoples who had created it.
	It was precisely ten days after he started that he got in trouble.  Someone knocked on his door with enough force to break the lock, and he whirled in his chair to see a furious Jenna standing in the doorway.  "Tarrin!" she shouted vociferously.  "Do you have my book?"
	She looked like a rabid wolverine.  Tarrin leaned back in his chair and quickly fell back on habits that had allowed him to deal with Demons, monsters, and gods, for at that moment, Jenna looked almost as intimidating.  "Where else would it be?" he asked in a mild tone, tapping it with a claw.
	"Do you have any idea how hard I've been looking for that book?" she shouted at him, stomping into his room.  "I thought one of the Zakkites stole it!"
	"As if they could ever pull that off," he snorted, doing his best to seem mild and unassuming.  "I figured you'd know I had it, since my name was on the inside cover of the replica."  He looked at her.  "I put it there so you'd know I had it."  He stared at her, an eyebrow raising mildly.  "You never opened it, did you?"
	Her eyes blazed for a moment, her shoulders heaving as she panted in fury, and he was momentarily worried that she was going to use Sorcery against him.  But then she pointed a finger at him.  "Why didn't you ask to borrow it?" she raged at him.
	"Because you're busy," he told her in the most complacent manner he could manage, trying to sound both considerate and logical at the same time.  "I've been studying from it for about a ride now, and I didn't want to bother you with asking for it and sending it back to you every day."
	She made several strangled noises, interrupted by "You--I--Why--That--" and then she slammed her hands down at her sides, clenched into fists, and managed some kind of sound that sounded like "Rrrrraooaahhh!!!" before whirling and stomping out of his study.
	Tarrin blew out his breath, relief flowing through him.  At least she wasn't going to throw things.  He jumped up and followed after her, with the intent of trying to calm her down before she went back to Suld, or even worse, jumped over to their parent's house and told them.
	Tarrin had to work for nearly an hour to calm Jenna down, but all in all, he knew he'd gotten off relatively easily in the scope of things.  She'd probably had her fit at the Tower when she realized it was gone.  But that was Ianelle's problem, not his.

	It was not half as easy as Keritanima had made it seem.
	For well over two months, Tarrin labored exhaustively in order to learn the Dwarven language.  At first, he thought it would take little more than two rides, but he had been sorely mistaken.  What made it different was that before, when they learned Sha'Kar from those scrolls, they were learning it from writing that was specifically designed to do so.  But Tarrin was doing it from scratch, armed with little more than a dictionary and a key for knowing the letters of the Dwarven writing system, Duthak.  What that meant was that Tarrin could make out the spelling of the words he saw in his old books and on his Dwarven art, but they did not in any way help him sort out the grammar or rules of language that existed in the Dwarven language.  Those, he had to puzzle out for himself.
	He could learn easily enough, given that he used the memory spell liberally, but what it didn't take into account was that he often had to compile enough examples of grammar from many different pieces of Dwarven writing, and cross-reference them with word definitions, that it made it very slow going in understanding the language.  None of the languages he knew was in any way similar to Dwarven, so that wasn't any help.  In Selani and Sha'Kar, the verb was always at the end of the sentence or clause.  In the human languages he knew, the verb was followed by the predicate.  But Dwarven was totally backwards.  The verb often came first, the predicate next, and then the subject, usually but not always followed by a linking verb that connected it to the action of the remainder of the clause or sentence.  So what would be I went down to the inn for a tankard of ale in Sulasian ended up being went down to the inn for a tankard of ale, I did.  That seemed quite odd to him, but Tarrin had a gift for languages, so he was able to wrap his mind around it much quicker than most others would have, even with the use of the memory spell.
	The need to research was what slowed him down so greatly.  Had he had all the information he needed laid out for him as it had been in the Sha'Kar scrolls, he would have been done in twenty days.  But for every hour of actual learning he accomplished, it was accompanied by about three hours of careful research.  And what made matters worse, he needed many different examples of Duthak to find similar words, phrases, and clauses that would allow him to identify and understand Dwarven grammar, as well as idioms and sayings that often made no sense to a neophyte speaker without a base of context grounded in the society that created the language, idioms that had a habit of creeping into any language that was even moderately old.  Dwarves were miners and builders, so much of their idioms revolved around the earth, tools, mining, and smithing.  The word aroga, Dwarven for hammer, seemed to show up in almost every phrase, as if they had some religious obligation to say aroga fifty times a minute.  That made it maddening to try to figure out just which context in which the saying was being used, whether it was an idiom or a saying, or they really just discussed hammers that often.
	During that time, Tarrin became quite a common sight in both Suld and Dala Yar Arak.  He had need of extensive libraries holding ancient tomes, and those were two of the three best places to find them.  He scoured the library in the Tower like a maid obsessed with cleanliness, going through virtually any book that had examples or passages of Duthak inscribed within them.  The Tower's librarian, a weedy little Sorcerer with thin brown hair and spectacles named Erlo, got quite upset with the Were-cat as he would simply appear within the library, scoop up dozens of books at a time and root through them.  He left a terrible mess behind him every time he visited, and he simply took books out of the library without telling anyone he was taking them.  The high-strung little man had quite a fit every time Tarrin appeared in the doorway, waggling an accusatory finger in the direction of his face and trying to be as inconvenient as possible whenever Tarrin needed questions answered.  The Were-cat endured the treatment for all of two days before he simply hung Erlo in midair in the center of the library and spun him like a top whenever the man didn't immediately and thoroughly answer any question he asked.  The Initiates in the library at that moment thought that to be quite funny until Erlo vomited from the severe spinning, spraying the contents of his stomach all over the library, including all over them.  After that bit of abuse, the Tower's head librarian promptly vanished whenever Tarrin appeared in the library.
	After wringing the Tower's library dry, he turned to the Imperial Library of Dala Yar Arak.  They were quite shocked to see him there, and even more shocked to discover that the flat-eyed Were-cat wasn't about to listen to them when they told him that only nobles, permitted scholars, and staff were allowed entry into the library.  It took them nearly four hours to find and get down the thirty librarians who had tried to get in the Were-cat's way, for he had scattered them all over the library in various states of indisposition when they made the mistake of putting their hands on him.  One unfortunate young woman got hung by her ankles off the ceiling, her feet sunk into the polished marble by Sorcery.  Nobles and scholars gathered under her and gaped, staring the thirty spans up at the hysterical woman who struggled to keep her robe from falling over her hips between very loud screams for help.
	Tarrin was fully intent on leaving that woman up there until they found some way to get her feet out of the stone