Weavespinner

by James Galloway

  The three ladies did not dwell on this sudden change of events for long. Keritanima bolted out of the door, and Jenna pushed Sapphire through before her. Allia watched them get out of the room with intense concern, and then yanked her sword free and darted towards the door. She literally flew out of the room, and then Jenna and Keritanima grabbed hold of the door and slammed it closed. "We have to brace this thing!" Jenna said feverishly, pushing on it as if a horde of Trolls were pushing from the other side.. "He'll break it down like it was made of paper!"

  "Back!" Sapphire shouted in a commanding voice, waving them away with one arm. The three Sorcerers scrambled out of the way just as a howl of fury vibrated the door from the other side, and Sapphire chanted in a strangely discordant language, making several very precise gestures with her hands. Jenna felt a magical force travel through the Weave into the shapechanged dragon, and then it was released from her and infused the door. The door seemed to shimmer visibly for a second, then returned to seeming normalcy.

  "How did you do that, Allia?" Jenna asked breathlessly as the door shuddered as if struck by a heavy piece of furniture, but it held.

  "Jesmind taught me long ago how to kill a Were-cat," she answered in a panting tone. The short fight had pushed the Selani a great deal more than she first thought. "To put Tarrin down should he become too great a danger. Done briefly, it can serve to immobilize one without doing permanent harm."

  "It worked well enough," Kerri said nervously as the door shuddered again. "But now what do we do?"

  "We keep him in there, no matter what it takes," she answered in a loud tone as Tarrin started roaring in frustration as he continued to pound on the door. But Sapphire's spell was holding, and he was incapable of breaking it down. "I think you really ticked him off, Allia!" Jenna remarked in a dry tone.

  "He will get over it. If he even remembers it," she answered calmly, but she had a white-knuckled grip on her two swords.

  Sapphire's eyes widened, and she jumped back. "We must flee now!" she said with desperate urgency.

  "What's wrong?" Jenna asked.

  "Do not argue! Run, you foolish bipeds!"

  Jenna paled when Sapphire, a mighty dragon, turned and fled with all speed away from the door. If anything, that was a fair indication to Jenna that whatever was about to happen was not going to be good.

  Within the room, the Were-cat's rage had only doubled since regenerating from the ghastly wound inflicted by the speedy foe. Humiliation was added to the volatile chaos of emotion that roared through his brain, wounded pride making his volcanic temper erupt as never before. He had recovered fully from the blow, but the moment of incapacitation gave his quarry time to escape. The door was solid, and it would not budge despite his most powerful blows, and that only frustrated the Were-cat that much more.

  Drowning in a sea of fiery rage, the Were-cat was only dimly aware of a strange, awesome power that seemed attracted by his intense emotion, drawing nearer and nearer to him. He felt it hovering just on the edges of his awareness as he slammed his fists and shoulder into the door again, and again,and again, trying in vain to burst it from its hinges. His claws could do no better, for they could not penetrate the wood, no matter how hard he pushed. When he broke all the claws on his left paw trying to sink them into the wood, he reared back and kicked the door, but only managed to rebound from it. The door was like nothing the enraged mentality of the Were-cat had ever experienced before, a baffling invulnerable barrier whose very existence was a direct challenge to the Were-cat's strength and dominance. Roaring in impotent fury, the Were-cat reared back, sank his claws into the floor, and then drove his shoulder into the door and pushed. He pushed with all his might, not trying to break the door with a sharp blow, but with inexorable pressure. His fury-tinged vision seemed to blur, blood pounded behind his eyes, bones in his shoulder threatened to snap under the monstrous force that he exerted against the door, but still it would not budge. Deep furrows were dug into the floor from his scrabbling claws, trying to gain purchase, but still it would not budge. He threw his entire might against that door, a might that every living thing would respect if not fear, and still the door would not budge.

  The strange power seemed to rush in on him then as he found himself faced with a problem that could not be conquered by brute force. It flowed into his mind, searched through it, searched, and joined with it. It sensed that which infuriated the Were-cat so, the immovable door, and it seemed to respond to his animalistic, base impulse, his utter need to break down the door, to destroy it, to show it that he was the stronger. That power joined with that will, and even in his fury, the Were-cat felt it flow through him from wherever it came from and take up the task that he could not accomplish alone.

  The door, which had been invulnerable to his physical attacks, shattered like crystal when that unknown power struck it, struck it with raw, elemental force, unshaped energy, unrefined might. The power of the blow shattered the wall on the opposite side of the passage beyond the door as well, hurting the Were-cat's ears with the loudness of the detonation, and sending a cloud of choking dust billowing into the room. Broken and whole stone blocks were littered in the passage and the dusty storeroom that had been on the other side of the wall, some of them smoking as if on fire.

  The power did not flee from him after accomplishing this task. It remained joined to him, joined to his fury, and it became a welcome tool to the furious Were-cat in his need to lay waste to all things. Stepping out into the hallway quickly, he saw the four fleeing figures, among them the one upon which his fury had become temporarily affixed. The power within responded to the sight of them, sending another blast of unmitigated power down the passageway, a wave of incredible force that shattered the walls, the ceiling, even the floor as it passed by, shrouding the passage in a dense fog of dust and flecks of stone. He couldn't see them anymore, and losing sight of them in the middle of that wave of destruction pleased the Were-cat, made him certain that the object of his attention had been destroyed.

  Losing the focus of his rage, the Were-cat returned to wild, uncontrolled destruction, but instead of flailing about with his arms and body, he now flailed about with this strange power that had joined to him. Walls collapsed and shattered from the monstrous power unleashed by the enraged mind of the Were-cat, sending thunderclaps of detonation echoing in all directions. The floor, which was solid stone beneath neatly cut and arranged stones, buckled and heaved as the stone was exploded from within, showering the rubble in the destroyed passage with red-hot jags of shrapnel. The celing collapsed on the Were-cat, but the power joined to him shrugged off the tons and tons of jumbled debris, forcing it back up, then sending it flying with a surge of repelling force.

  The passage was a rubble-choked ruin, and it pleased the Were-cat in a dark manner that destruction had been achieved. But he was still enraged, still in need of destroying to appease his unsatisfied lust for destruction. The passage was sealed, but the collapsed roof exposed another level above the current one, a new place to destroy. Picking himself up within the strange power joined with him, the Were-cat lifted off the floor and floated up towards that new area, a new thing to destroy.

  Not even in the Battle of Suld had Jenna come so close to being killed.

  Whatever Tarrin had done--it wasn't Sorcery!--it had come down the hall at them, shattering the walls, ceiling and floor, like an avalanche of invisible force that destroyed everything it touched. The four of them had just barely managed to reach a side passage, and they literally dove into it and huddled on the floor, hands over their heads as the shockwave or whatever it was continued on down the passageway, with only a small wave of force passing harmlessly over them. But then came a rain of stones and a cloud of choking dust as the walls and ceiling in the passage were ripped apart and collapsed, forcing Keritanima and Allia to scramble forward on all fours to get clear of the avalanche of smoking rubble that blocked off the passage. Jenna was hit on the head by a rather large rock, and after a moment of seeing stars
and feeling her head swim, she recovered enough to realize where they were and what had just happened.

  It wasn't Sorcery, so it had to be Druidic magic. That was bad in its own right, but at least it wasn't Sorcery. If he touched the Weave, he could bring the Tower down around them!

  "He's going to bring the Tower down around our ears!" Keritanima said, mirroring Jenna's fears as they all got up and ran blindly down the passage, a passage whose walls were now shivering and buckling in a very unsettling manner, as smoky dust was shaken from the arched ceiling above.

  "The All has touched his anger, and it's responding to it!" Sapphire shouted as they ran towards the stairs. "He will not stop until he either exhausts himself or the All tries to do something his power can't support! And that will kill him!"

  "Neither of those are acceptable, Sapphire!" Jenna said in a commanding voice. "I'll either lose my brother or the Tower! How do we stop him?"

  "It takes a Druid of greater power than him," she replied. "I can do it, but I don't want to face him in a confined space! We must lure him outside!"

  "Why not?" Keritanima demanded.

  "Because I don't relish the idea of being buried alive!" she answered honestly. "I have to subdue him, Wikuni, and I don't think this structure can withstand that!"

  There was an ear-splitting BOOM, followed up almost immediately by a violent shaking of the earth beneath their feet. One of the walls behind them fell in, but it was hard to see or hear in the pall of dust and the loud rumbling of the shifting rubble and earth all around them. The shaking of the ground was enough to spill Jenna to the buckling floor, but Sapphire's curses were even louder than the echoing thunder of the explosion.

  "What's happening?" Keritanima asked fearfully. "That wasn't Sorcery!"

  "That fool!" Sapphire raged, then cursed for several seconds. "It is the Were-cat Druid, Triana! She's engaged Tarrin within the Tower walls! She'll kill us all!"

  Despite his unmitigated fury, the Were-cat had never faced an opponent of such power, and it took him aback.

  Her body literally glowing with an angry light, the unrecognizable Were-cat female squared off against him in the ruins of another shattered passageway, a passageway that she had destroyed in an attempt to gain his undivided attention. It had worked. Something about this female tickled at his memory. He knew that he should somehow know her, but his fury-stained mind could not reach through the haze to make the connection. He could only see her as an opponent, as an enemy, and her might challenged him in a way he could not ignore. The primal force in him demanded that he meet this challenge, defeat it, prove his superiority and establish dominance.

  Rising up, the Were-cat male danced from pile of broken stone to pile of broken stone in a dazzling display of agility, running forward over the uneven ground with claws extended and a look of mindless brutality twisting his features. The female stood her ground, spreading her feet and opening her arms, in a twisted mockery of a mother's opening embrace. Then she brought her paws together, and it was like the air itself sought to crush him in an invisible grip, literally catching him as if he'd run headlong into an invislbe wall and dropping him ankle-deep in loose stone debris. He responded almost immediately with the power in him, using it to push back this unseen attack. The powers battled against one another, causing savage lights to erupt around the male, raking the walls with lightning as two overwhelming magical powers contended directly against one another. It was a battle of strength, a tug of war using the magic as the rope, and they seemed to be evenly matched.

  But that was an illusion, and even the Cat, who was in control, understood that. Rage and emotion made it impossible for the Cat to fully draw on the memory and knowledge of the Human, a rage of truly blind proportions, a rage so intense that even the Cat was inhibited by its power, unable to fully draw on all the resources within the mind it shared with the Human that were commonly available to it. It knew that there was experience with this power in the mind, it knew that there was extensive knowledge of another form of power that it could wield against her, but all of that was locked up inside the fury, and even the Cat could not touch it. It could only respond with raw emotion, base instinct, and the power within was limited to those primal actions, joined to a mind that had degenerated into nothing but stimulus and response, coupled to an overwhelming need to destroy.

  But it would not just give up. The Cat would work with what it had and prevail, as it always did.

  Diverting just a tiny bit of attention, the Cat struck at the debris separating them, causing a shower of dust and small bits of rock to lash out at the female The design was to distract, not harm, but the female brushed that spray of debris aside like swatting a fly, then made a slashing motion with her other arm. Something caught him high in the side and slammed him into the debris of the rockfall to the side, then she slashed in the other direction, causing him to sail across the destroyed passage and slam into the rock on the other side. The pain was barely registered as the treatment she gave him served to make him even more indignantly furious, and it was like his mind had become fire. The power within picked up on the idea of fire, and searing flame exploded around his paws. He thrust those burning paws in the female's direction, creating a hellish blast of superheated flame to roar down the passage towards her, faster than an arrow was shot from a bow.

  The female didn't flinch. She simply rose her paws, and it was as if the fire struck a solid wall, blooming out over its unseen surface, unable to reach her. The she closed her fist and raised it, and all the loose debris on the floor, surrounding him, debris she had created, suddenly lifted up from the broken floor and hovered unwavering in the air, all around him, concealing her from his view. Then, as if struck by something to propel it forward, all of the debris raced towards him, seeking to crush him just as the invisible hands had done. The force exploded out from him, catching the stones between two opposing forces, and most of them shattered into gravel from the stress. When the pressing force disappeared, the cloud of gravel exploded away from him, embedding into the rockfalls on either side of him, the floor, the ceiling, and rocketing down either side of the passageway.

  The Cat started in its fury, confused. The female was gone. The stones and gravel had hidden her from his eyes, but she wasn't there now. Not even her scent remained.

  The Cat felt that she had fled, though it couldn't understand why. He had not done anything to make her flee. She had no reason to run.

  That lack of comprehension turned into shock when living flesh impacted him from behind. The female's arms wrapped around him as she collided with his back, sliding up and around, locking under his arms, snaking up over his shoulders, and lacing her fingers behind his head. It forced his own arms up and away from his body, removing their usefulness to him, and the sudden overwhelming pressure she put on him, driving him down towards the floor, locked both his feet to the floor. Her tail immediately sought out his own and wrapped vice-like around the end of his, seeking to keep it from hooking her legs and trying to unseat her foundation.

  The Cat realized almost immediately that since he couldn't see her, he had trouble focusing the power within on her. He tried blowing her off with that power, but she used her own to brush his aside like dust, cancelling it out. That power suddenly smothered all over him, clamping down on his own power and trying to throttle it, feeling like a thick molasses that had been poured over his body and mind. That smothering power assaulted him on myriad levels, body and mind, as tendrils of her power sought to burrow through the fury imprisoning his rational mind. The Were-cat could only struggle physically against her as her power both covered over his own, making it useless to him and sought to break into his mind for some inconceivable reason.

  "Stop fighting with me!" she hissed from behind, tightening her hold on him to such a degree that the pain registered to him, and he could feel the tendon and ligaments in his shoulders threatening to tear. He could feel her power starting to peel away the layers of fury that submerged his concsciousn
ess, slicing through the desperate defenses the Were-cat tried to erect in its path. "Stop it! I don't want to hurt you, cub!"

  In desperation, the Cat finally managed to reach down through the fury and touch on knowledge denied to it earlier. It reached out and made a connection to yet another form of power, the one it had used so many times before, the magic of the Weave. But, to his horror, the Cat felt the female's power slash that connection with some kind of invisible knife, and then erect a barrier between him and it that made it unreachable.

  Even in his fury, the Were-cat found tremendous respect for this opponent. She was simultaneously maintaining several forms of magical pressure on him, and still had the ability to physically restrain him. She seemed capable of multiple actions all at the same time, something that was very, very hard to do. She was an extraordinary foe.

  "I said stop it!" she said seethingly, and then there was something like an arrow of her power lancing into his mind. She stopped simply wearing down his defenses, she penetrated them in a fast, powerful strike, a strike that made his mind go numb and caused him to lose all the strength in his body. He was driven down to his knees, felt her pressing down on him as her myriad magical assault stripped away all his defenses, felt her magical attack drive into the heart of his mind. But once it was there, it did not seek to harm him. Instead, it freed his rational mind from the prison of his fury, returned his senses to him, reassured him with its gentle, loving presence within him. Her touch on his mind allowed him to recognize her as his adopted mother, and her touch joined their minds in a way he had never before experienced. It was a window between them, and he found he could look into her mind as easily as she could look into his. Within her mind was a crushing fear, a fear of hurting him, and a strange exhileration of using her Druidic power at its peak, as if subduing him appealed to her competetive nature. He could see beyond the moment, look in and see the towering protectiveness she had for her children, all her children, a need to nurture and defend that stemmed from the trauma she had been forced to suffer a thousand years ago, when she and the other first-born, children of the Breaking, children born radically altered from their parents, had been forced to destroy them. He could feel the pain she still carried within her over that, for she had loved her parents despite everything that had happened. Just as he absolutely would not allow another friend to be killed during the course of this mad quest, she would not permit any she called family to die. He saw faces, faces, an endless line of faces, all of them faces of those who had died, faces that had great meaning to the Were-cat matriarch. Were-cat faces, both those of the old ones and the new, faces of humans, faces of other Fae-da'Nar, faces of humans, even several faces of Wikuni. All friends, family, acquaintances, teachers, mentors, lovers. All dead. All gone now when she continued on, feelinga a strange guilt that she was the last of the oldest ones, the last to remember. It reminded him of the dreams he'd had, the dreams of where he was confronted with the endless faces of those who had died from his hands. Triana carried many scars inside, scars she did not show to the world, scars her own children did not know were there, and it made his feelings for her become that much stronger. He felt her emotions run wild when she touched on the reason he was out of control, and in that wild moment the only thing that kept her from doing the same thing he did was because her mind was anchored into his own.