	Those were the normal rules, but the Kaels were not a family that really bothered to follow the rules.  They really didn't even know what the rules were,and even if they did, they would arrogantly conclude that such stupid rules did not apply to them.  Unlike thousands of households the world over, the day of the Kael departure was one marked with calm serenity and remarkable nonchalance.  Unlike most families, the Kaels had an overwhelming advantage in Tarrin and Jasana, and that was the ability to Conjure.  They didn't have to pack, simply because the father and daughter could instantly summon forth anything the family owned on demand.  Because of that, there really wasn't any preparation involved at all for their trip.  They didn't have to worry about packs, they didn't have to worry about horses, they didn't have to worry about the weather.  It was going to be a trip of complete ease and comfort for them, for they were going to travel through the power of Tarrin's magic.
	The only thing that came close to preparation was Kimmie.  For the first time, Kimmie was ready to take her twin blue-eyed daughters out of the house and introduce them to some of the others in Tarrin's world that had yet to come and visit at the house.  Besides, she was very good friends with Camara Tal, and had promised to bring the twins to Amazar and introduce them to the others.  They were now about nine months old, and they were fully ambulatory.  Both could walk, though they weren't very good at it yet, and both had started talking much the way that Tarrin had remembered Thel Dalton's young son down in the village when he was about fourteen.  Thel's son, Berton, spoke in a kind of mish-mash that was hard to understand for one who had no experience with it, but if one had enough patience, one could make out the words that were being spoken.  Tara had a vocabulary of about two hundred words, but Rina seemed to have a much more broad base of language skills.  She couldn't say as many words as she could understand, but she could speak nearly four hundred, half in Sulasian and half in Torian.  It wasn't that Tara was dumb, Kimmie supposed that Rina had inherited her father's unusual gift for languages.
	More and more, the twins were defining themselves.  Tara was more brooding and aggressive, kind of like Tarrin, but Rina was sweet and gentle and lovable, just like her mother.  But Rina showed traits from Tarrin, like the language gift, and Tara showed traits from her mother when she was content and happy, showing peeks of the gentleness that so defined Kimmie when she seemed to have nothing to complain about, hinting that her aggressiveness was more bluster and show than it was seated personality.  The fact that they could walk now meant that they had to be watched absolutely every second, because both had a penchant for getting into anything that they shouldn't be fooling with.  They truly weren't infants anymore.  They were toddlers now, very precocious toddlers that were a real handful.  If it wasn't for Jula, poor Kimmie would probably have been driven crazy by them months ago.
	The only time they ever seemed to behave was when Tarrin or Triana were in the room.  Jula jokingly concluded that it was that strange aura of unshakable power that surrounded the two of them, that radiance of absolute authority that quelled the mischievious bent in the toddlers, but seemed to have little effect on Eron or Jasana.  When both Kimmie and Jula were at wit's end with them, they dropped them in Tarrin's lap and went to have a cup of nerve-soothing tea and let their father deal with them.
	Tara and Rina were the only Were-cat twins in the world, and seeing how Were-cat children were, Tarrin reasoned that things were that way because any more than one would drive the mother to irrational, desperate actions to control them.  Were-cats were too wild to have to deal with any more than one child at any given time.
	They woke up around sunrise and while Tarrin and Jesmind cooked breakfast, Jasana helped Jula and Kimmie get the twins ready for the journey.  Not that it would be much of a journey.  They would Teleport to Suld, pick up Allia and Allyn, Keritanima and Rallix, Miranda and the Vendari, Dar and Tiella, Phandebrass and Sarraya, Triana, and Jenna and Ianelle, along with a handful of Knights that would escort the Keeper and Ianelle, most prominent among them being Azakar.  Ianelle had been to the Tower in Sharadar before, so she and Jenna would Circle, and Ianelle would transport them there.  Once there, he was told, Alexis Firehair, Queen of Sharadar and Keeper of the Tower there, had some kind of mysterious surprise in store for them regarding the remaining journey to Amazar.  The fact that Jenna had found out that Alexis had been in communication with Phandebrass for some month or so now made all of them more than a little nervous.  Alexis Firehair was something of an unpredictable woman, he had come to learn.  She was smart and cautious in politics, but she had a flair for the dramatic and a tendency to come up with some pretty unusual ideas.  The fact that she consulted Phandebrass, probably the most unconventional human being on the face of the planet, did not bode well.  With their luck, they'd be riding winged slugs that left a glittering trail of slime that hovered in the sky as they made their way the thousand or so leagues north-northwest between Sharadar and the islands of Amazar.  Alexis would find such a thing to be wildly funny and more than appropriate.
	Where Phandebrass was involved, anything was possible.
	But that was nothing that a few hundred stone-weight of Conjured salt wouldn't fix.
	After a hearty breakfast, Kimmie fought to get Tara into some new clothes, or more to the point, battled her daughter over wearing a dress.  Kimmie had an almost instinctive need to dress her little girls in the most frilly, lacy, ridiculously overdecorated dresses she could make.  Rina had taken to dresses immediately, thinking them to be quite pretty, but Tara would have absolutely nothing to do with it, tearing them off of herself whenever Kimmie managed to ram one down over her head.  Tarrin had seen this played out before, and knew that Tara was going to win this fight, as she always did.  She simply ripped the dress apart, and when Kimmie ran out of dresses, she would be resigned to let Tara wear her favorite buckskin breeches and a sleeveless half-shirt.  Kimmie would always glare murderously at Tarrin after these battles over raiment and tersely inform him that his daughter was absolutely incorrigible.
	That behavior never failed to amuse Tarrin, and make him wonder a little bit.  Jula, who had been human much longer than both Tarrin and Kimmie, did not wear dresses.  In fact, she avoided them whenever possible, and in a way, he knew why she did it.  They were reminders of a past that was no longer hers, a poignant memory of what had been that she had to distance herself from.  She would look at Kimmie's dresses with undisguised longing when she thought nobody was looking at her, but she was afraid to wear one, fearing that it would start her back down the slippery slope that led to madness.  She had been forced to abandon most of what she loved and take up entirely different habits, but it was how she kept her balance, so Tarrin didn't interfere with it.  It was easy to forget that Jula was still very new to her Were-cat condition, and that newness required her to be very careful in certain regards else she would threaten to destabilize her tentative mental balance.  In time, however, she would mellow out, and probably would be more than comfortable in a dress once again.  All she needed was a little time.
	He was impressed with his bond-daughter.  She had adapted, and adapted rather well.  She had found something of a niche in his family, and had even found acceptance with Jesmind and Mist, which was surprising.  Mist actually liked Jula, and that was saying something.  But behind it all was still the same human woman he knew from the Tower, just without some of her more backbiting habits.  Her human personality had managed to survive, quite strongly, in fact, and her intelligent mind and the fact that she was da'shar always gave him someone in the house to talk to that would understand many of the things he talked about.  She was a very good student, having learned nearly half of what he intended to teach her, and more than that, she was a very good friend.  She understood him because she saw things the same way he did--up to a point, since Tarrin was so totally grounded in his Were nature that it was like he was a natural-born Were-cat--and was a part of the world of Sorcery, which gave him both someone to teach and someone to debate with.  Jula had been a very good Sorcerer in her day, before becoming Were, and now that she had Druidic talent as well, it augmented and amplified her Sorcery by an impressive amount.  The fact that she had crossed over and become da'shar made her that much stronger.
	At the breakfast table, Jasana yawned, showing off her impressive little fangs, and watched as Kimmie continued to try to get Tara into a dress, trying to muster up all the parental authority she possessed, which Tara absolutely ignored.  "Why does she bother?" Jasana asked idly, taking another bite of her venison stew.  "She knows she's not going to win.  She never does."
	"I guess it pleases her, somehow," Tarrin shrugged.  "Don't ask me why."  He looked down, and saw a tick attached to the back of her ear.  "Been hunting again?" he asked, reaching down and using his claws to pinch the tiny parasite and pluck it from her.
	"Where do you think this came from, Papa?" she asked with a sly smile.
	"Getting in the way was more like it," Jesmind said calmly as she sat down beside him with a bowl.  "Kimmie, just let her dress herself and get something to eat!  We have to leave in a little bit!" she called.
	"Not this time!" Kimmie said combatively.  "It's about time you learn who's in charge here, little miss!" she said sternly to her daughter.
	"I'd say Tara," Jasana said with a little giggle.
	"Cub, be nice," Tarrin chided.
	As everyone at the table knew, Kimmie lost that little skirmish, but vowed that the war would be hers.  She finally relented to let Tara wear whatever she wanted, then got the two of them to the breakfast table along with Jula.  "Did you finish what you were studying, father?" Jula asked him.  He hadn't seen her since yesterday morning, as she'd went to Suld in the morning, then had spent the afternoon over in the village doing something for Garyth, the mayor.  Probably adjusting or changing the Ward that still laid over the village.  Jenna had been forced to bring it down after the war, but Garyth had asked if the Ward could be restored in order for it to repel insects.  That was more than possible, and Tarrin had raised a new one in its stead that repelled insects.  But they had found out that some insects were vital to their gardens, and many times either Tarrin or Jula had had to go down to the village and adjust the Ward to allow this or that insect into the village, until they finally gave up on figuring out what it would let in and changed it so it blocked only those insects it was designed to repel.  That worked much better, and over the months, they had had to go down and adjust it to repel this or that insect, or go help with problems with blight or irrigation, just generally doing what they could with their Sorcery to help the village along as they could without having them come to depend on magic.  Whenever the villagers asked for something outrageous, the Were-cats would flatly refuse.  Tarrin didn't want to see the villages become like the Sha'Kar, weak and indulgent and totally dependent on their magical power.  He tremendously respected the Sha'Kar for their abilities and culture, and was very good friends with several of them, but he still had trouble with that part of their society, as it went against everything he was taught about self-reliance and everything he believed in as a Were-cat.
	He nodded to her absently.  "Just finished yesterday morning.  What did you do yesterday?"
	"I went to Suld and picked up some things for Karn, then helped Garyth with what he thought were oversized gophers."
	"Gophers?"
	"He thought they were gophers at first, given all the holes in the fields.  Turns out they were voraxes."
	Tarrin frowned.  Voraxes were small quadrupedal badger-like animals that weren't indiginous to the forest.  They lived in the foothills just under the Skydancers, but had been migrating south for some reason.  Voraxes looked like small badgers, about the size of a small dog, and they were extremely dangerous little animals.  They had finger-long claws on their paws, nearly as big as their paws themselves, and they had an exceedingly hostile disposition.  Voraxes were very much feared by the Dals because they were utterly fearless, they would attack anything in their territory no matter how big it was, and once they locked their jaws on something, they absolutely would not let go.  Even if they were killed, they seemed to go into instant rigormortis, locking all their muscles, requiring the jaws to literally be cut apart in order to make it let go.  Though their size made them easy to deal with--they could easily be stepped on by the average human--their dangerously aggressive disposition made dealing with them a very touchy undertaking.  If one missed, the vorax would attack, and if it managed to get its jaws on its victim, that was it.  Only cutting it off it would make it let go.
	"What did you do?" Tarrin asked.
	"Relocated them," she said with a slightly dangerous smile.
	"Where?"
	"Oh, let's just say that Shiika got an early birthday present," she said with an impish smile.
	"Jula, you didn't!  The Imperial Palace?"
	"Well, I thought they'd like them over there," she said girlishly.  "You know, similar mentalities.  Voraxes would be Shiika's kind of pet."
	Tarrin tried to give her a hot look, but the image of seeing Shiika and her Alu daughters dealing with a horde of mindlessly aggressive little wolverine-related creatures, their little jaws clamped onto various portions of the Succubus' ample anatomy, was just overwhelmingly funny.  He laughed helplessly, then blew out his breath and scrubbed the back of his head with his claws.  "If she finds out you did it, she's going to have your hide, cub," he warned.
	"She'll never catch me," she winked.
	"Girl, you've been hanging around Sarraya too much," he accused.
	"We all have to play sometimes," she said with a wicked little smirk.  "I just play mean games, that's all."
	"I knew I had a reason to like you, big sister," Jasana laughed.
	"Do you think you can teach me Duthak, father?" Jula asked politely.
	"I made a book of what I did," he said absently.  "I'll lend it to you."
	"I was hoping you'd do it the other way," she said urgingly.
	He glanced up at her.  "No," he told her.  "If you want it, work for it, cub.  No free rides.  Not after what I had to go through to learn it."
	"You're so cruel to your daughters," she said with total insincerity.
	"Deal with it."
	After the meal, Tarrin and Kimmie cleaned up the kitchen as Jula and Jesmind went around and made sure the house was ready to stand empty for a few days.  Tarrin's parents were going to come over every day or so and make sure everything was alright for them, so there wasn't all that much to do.  The magic of the house would repel any kind of hostile invader or vermin, as the direct hand of Niami, the Goddess of Magic, was laid protectively over the little meadow that held Tarrin's precious home.  Add to that that the meadow was considered holy ground to Fae-da'Nar, as it was the chosen ground of a Druid, and that made it almost inviolate.  Tarrin had to nudge a toddler out from underfoot every once in a while, but that stopped the instant Tara tried to climb up the back of his trousers.  Her little claws weren't that long, but they had no trouble digging painfully into the skin on the backs of his legs.  A few scolding words chased both cubs away from their parents, back out into the common room, letting them finish cleaning up.
	After that was done, there really was nothing holding them back anymore, outside of the early hour.  It was not long after sunrise there at the house, but the sun was just rising at the Tower, and it was the middle of the night in Wikuna.  Conversely, it was approaching midday over in the desert, so organizing a schedule hadn't been that easy.  It agreed that they would meet at two hours before the midday bell, which was a generally decent hour for everyone involved.  It wasn't terribly late for Allia, wasn't ridiculously early for Keritanima, and was just about right for everyone in the West.  That meant that they had a few hours to go, but then again, that time would easily be spent at the Tower, catching up with Dar and Azakar.  Dar had returned to the Tower yesterday, so Jula told him, hopping mad and about ready to kill his mother.  Azakar had never left the Tower, staying with the Knights.
	"Well, everything's ready," Jesmind announced as she and Jula came downstairs.
	"Fine, let's go," he said, picking up Tara absently before she could start climbing up his leg again.
	Before they could leave, they all used the magical gateway arch to travel to the farm of his parents, the place where Tarrin grew up.  He never failed to feel a little nostalgic any time he came to the farm, seeing the old barn and the brewhouse and the old farmhouse.  He and Jenna had grown up quite happily on this secluded farmstead, and it always felt like a home to him, even now.  Strange, he mused, that the likes of him and Jenna would have their beginnings here, on this most isolated of isolated holdings, outside of the most remote village in all of Sulasia, maybe even all of the West.
	Or perhaps, he thought seriously, where better a place to hide them from potential enemies than the absolute fringe of civilization, a place so remote that those few that actually knew it was here wouldn't be able to find it even if they were given directions?
	After a brief farewell with his parents, and a promise to bring back some interesting recipes from Amazar for his mother to try out (and a promise to procure an Amazon's haltar for his father, a promise that earned both of them a slap on the back of the head from his mother), they gathered by the sheep pen, and Tarrin Teleported them to Suld.
	As he always did, Tarrin chose to appear in the courtyard.  That had nothing to do with a need to visit the place or gaze lovingly at the icon of the Goddess, it was grounded in good old fashioned caution.  If there was a person or a thing occupying the space into which Tarrin tried to Teleport, it would kill them both, so Tarrin made sure to Teleport to the one place on the Tower grounds he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt was not occupied.  That rule didn't seem to make much sense to Tarrin, as he knew that Teleportation wasn't moving into that space over there, it was an exchange of spaces between the origin and the destination.  Logic declared, at least to him, that the poor bugger in the destination space should be picked up and moved to the origin, literally changing positions with him when the spaces were exchanged.  But despite that bout of logic, it didn't work that way.  Tarrin had never asked the Goddess just why that was so, mainly because he doubted that he'd understand her explanation.  He remembered rather ruefully back to his initial training, when Dolanna had told him that magic adhered to its own rules, and those rules weren't entirely logical.
	Given that the deity controlling magic was female, the fact that it wasn't a logical force was in its own manner a logical observation.
	Oh, you're going to get it for that, kitten, the Goddess warned playfully in the recesses of his mind.
	After a moment to adjust to the fact that the sun was much closer to the horizon over here, still hidden behind the shrub walls of the maze, Tarrin looked around and saw that everything was exactly where it should be.  "I hope Jenna's up," Tarrin mused as they started towards the exit.
	"Come on, my mate," Jesmind scoffed.  "You think she'd oversleep today?  She's been looking forward to this for months."
	"She's not the only one," Jasana said eagerly.  "I just wish Eron could come."
	"When Mist says no, she means no," Kimmie grunted.  "I just wish she hadn't thrown that meat cleaver.  It put a new part in my hair."
	"If there's one thing about Mist, it's that life is never boring with her around," Jula noted sagely.
	"Too right," Jesmind growled.
	Jenna was indeed up, taking breakfast in the parlor of her apartment with Dar and Tiella.  Dar looked a little taller, Tiella looked absolutely radiant, and Jenna looked a little sleepy.  Tarrin could tell from one look and one whiff of Dar's scent that the young man was seething over something that had happened, and though he greeted Tarrin with sincere affection and exuberance, taking Tarrin's paw and shaking it with a big smile on his face, but that festering anger did not disappear.  "Good grief, are these the same babies I saw just a few months ago?" Dar asked in surprise after hugging Jasana, looking at Tara and Rina, the blue-eyed twins who were holding onto each of Kimmie's paws.  "What are you feeding them, Kimmie?"
	Kimmie laughed and swatted him lightly with her tail, since both paws were full.  "Do you remember Dar, cubs?" Kimmie asked them.  "He's one of your uncles."
	Tara gave Dar a somewhat flat look that made the young man a bit nervous to approach, but Rina giggled and held out her paw palm up, then pivoted it back and forth like a pendulum.
	"She remembers!" Dar said in surprise, then he laughed.  "Uh, which one is she again?"
	"This is Tara, and this is Rina," Kimmie said, holding up a paw slightly with the recitation with each name.
	"You must be losing your touch, Dar," Jasana told him with a wicked grin.  "You could tell them apart when they were babies."
	"That was before Kimmie fed them fertilizer," Dar said off-handedly.
	Tarrin hugged his sister fondly, and saw the beaming grin on her face.  "What's got you so ecstatic, sis?" he asked.
	"I finished the book," she told him with a dazzling smile.
	"Well, it's about time," he teased.  "You've been at it for what, a year now?"
	"You know how much I had to write down, you ingrate?" she flared, then she laughed.  "So, you want to read it now, or later?"
	"I'll just steal it when you're not looking," he said with a sly half-smile.  "That makes it more fun."
	"You!" she said, slapping him on the arm.  "Are you hungry?  There's room at the table for more."
	"We already ate, Jenna," Tarrin told her.  "Tiella, how are you?" he asked, reaching past Jenna and taking his friend's hand.  He knew that Tiella was a little intimidated by Jesmind and the other Were-cats.  Though she had been inducted into the inner circle by virtue of marriage to Dar, she hadn't gotten used to it yet.  It was quite a change in someone's life, given the kind of people who shared that inner circle with her.
	"I've been doing alright, Tarrin," she answered, a bit shyly.  "How have things been in Aldreth?"
	"That never changes," he chuckled.  "Has Dar killed his mother yet?"
	Tiella laughed, showing some of her usual personality for a brief moment.  "Not yet, but he's not the one that's been out for her head.  He's had to hold me back a few times."
	"I can imagine," Tarrin chuckled, turning a chair around and sitting on it so the back of it was in front of him.  He put his forearms on the back of it and leaned against them.  "What did she do this time?  I can smell some serious anger on Dar."
	"Dar's father is very distantly related to the Emperor," she answered.  "She used those family contacts to get a letter of request in front of him, asking that I be exiled from Arkis and declared an outlaw."
	"An outlaw?  What law did you break?" he asked with a smile.
	"I guess taking her little baby away from her," she said with a sour frown.  "Dar's mother is a total shrew, Tarrin.  She's been after him since we went to Arkis to give up the katzh-dashi, dump me, and marry this horse-ugly woman from a family across town.  I swear, old friend, the woman looks like a crossbreed between a horse and a Dargu.  Dar hates her and his mother knows it, but she's decided that that's what's best for him, so she won't listen to reason."
	"Where's his father in all this?"
	"Staying neutral," she replied.  "Remember, he has to live with that spiteful old hag, so he's being careful not to stir the pot."
	"Hmph," Jesmind snorted.  "Dar should just kill her."
	"He's getting close to it, Mistress Jesmind," Tiella said carefully, and not a little nervously, given that Jesmind had directly addressed her.  "This business with trying to bring the Emperor into it was the last straw for him.  He disowned his parents just before we came back to Suld."
	"I didn't think a child could disown parents," Tarrin chuckled.
	"Well, Dar did," she said proudly to him.  "Then we got married in this nice little chapel in a small village by the sea, a place called Calm Waters.  It was a lovely little place."
	"I thought the Priests of Mikaras wouldn't marry you."
	"When Dar disowned his parents, they couldn't raise any legal objections," she answered.  "That parental consent had been what was standing in the way."
	"But Dar's a grown man!" Tarrin said in surprise.
	"Things work differently in Arkis, my friend," she reminded him.  "There, anyone of nobility has to have official parental consent to marry, no matter how old they are.  Dar's father is only a baronet, the lowest rung of the ladder, but Dar still had to have his parents' approval."
	"Well, I'm happy to hear that you got everything sorted out, but why is Dar still angry?" he asked.
	"Now his mother is trying to have Dar's disowning invalidated," she answered.  "She had an absolute tizzy fit when she found out we got married.  She's not going to give up until either I leave him or she's dead, and I'm not about to leave my husband anytime soon," she flared with sudden heat.
	"Don't worry about that, Tiella," Jenna said absently as she poured more tea.  "I'll take care of it."
	"But Keeper, it's not right that--"
	"Stuff it, Tiella," she cut her off.  "You're from my home village and a good friend, Dar is like a brother to me, and that makes you my sister.  I don't ignore family.  When I'm done with Dar's mother, she's going to wish she never turned her back on you."
	Tiella looked at her, then giggled.  "Well, if it's going to cause that old bat to have another tizzy, then I'm not going to say a word."
	"She'll be clawing the walls and chewing on the furniture.  I guarantee it."
	"You have to watch Jenna, Tiella.  She can be a spiteful witch when she wants to be," Tarrin told her.
	"How are things back at the farm?" Dar asked curiously.
	Tarrin told him about Mist's departure, and their trip to the desert, as well as his mission to learn Duthak.  "I just finished it up yesterday," he concluded.  "I made of a book of it, just in case someone wanted to learn it."
	"Don't tell Phandebrass," Dar grinned.
	"That reminds me, exactly what has he been telling Alexis?" Tarrin asked Jenna.
	"I don't know, he won't tell me," she said, cringing a bit.  "And that worries me."
	Dar laughed.  "It's sure to be exciting, whatever it is."
	"I think I can live without that kind of excitement," Tarrin said wearily.
	"I guess the first thing Camara'll do when we get to Amazar is start in on Phandebrass," Dar said with a grin.  "I think she misses it."
	"He probably does too," Tarrin grunted.  "Have either of you talked to her lately?"
	Jenna nodded.  "I keep in touch with Koran, to make sure Camara doesn't brainwash him into not coming back.  He says that she says she'll be due in about six days."
	"How does she know?" Dar protested.
	"She's a Priestess, Dar," Jenna answered.  "I'm sure she cheated."
	"I hope we get there before she delivers," Dar said with a smile.  "I want to see her fat and ungainly."
	"I wouldn't say that to her, Dar," Jenna warned.  "Because when she's not fat and ungainly anymore, she may come looking for some payback."
	There was a knock at the door, and then it opened immediately afterward.  The first thing Tarrin saw were two little red blurs that seemed to whirl around and around the room, and then both of them landed on his shoulders.  They were Chopstick and Turnkey, Phandebrass' pet drakes.  Tarrin's relationship with them started off hostile, but over time they grew on him to the point where he considered them good friends.  But wherever the drakes were, their master wouldn't be far away, and his scent, permeated with the materials and spices and compounds that he had to use in his magic, wafted to Tarrin's nose.  He looked up to see him, still wearing that same frayed gray robe with stains here and there on it, caused by only the Goddess knew what, and that same utterly ridiculous brimless conical hat that slendered to a sharp point well over a span over his head.  The man within the garment was a thin, bony man with pale skin and white hair, but his face and manner deceived one as to his real age.  Phandebrass looked old at first glance, but as one studied his narrow face, with its high, prominent cheekbones and narrow, slightly long and pointed nose, one realized that he was actually much younger than his skinny body and white hair let on.  Tarrin didn't know exactly how old the doddering Wizard was, and it was hard to tell from his personality as much as his appearance.  Phandebrass was utterly obsessed with learning.  It was all he did, it was all he wanted to do, and it was what he had devoted his life to pursuing.  Phandebrass was well suited for his self-appointed mission, for he was very intelligent and was also quite quick to remember, but he didn't seem to have a single lick of common sense, and sometimes it seemed that he was too smart for his own good.  Most often, his mind was so lost in the vast stores of knowledge it had accumulated over the years that he had a very dim idea of what was going on around him.  He would often repeat himself or ask the same question over and over, and look for things that were either right in front of his face or literally in his hand.  It wasn't that he was senile or slow, it wasn't that he was dumb or addled or mad, it was just that his mind was so clutt