Weavespinner

by James Galloway

  Tarrin bowed his head as he folded in his wings over Val, completely unafraid of what he was about to do. Val, sensing his power, realizing what was about to happen, screamed and howled in terror, trying to break free, but his darkness was totally surrounded by Tarrin's light, and he could not escape. He was trapped, imprisoned once again by his most hated foe, and he could only scream in a voice that could not contain his outrage, his terror, even as he did attempt to strike at Tarrin with all the power he could bring to bear.

  But it was too late.

  Mother, Tarrin's voice called out, totally at peace. Take care of them for me. I love you.

  And then, in a cataclysmic explosion of all of Tarrin's focused power, he destroyed Val. And in so doing, he destroyed himself.

  The death of a god was a release of energies too vast to be contained by the material world. The destruction of two in a simultaneous event was more than the planet could have withstood, had the combined might of every god of Sennadar not been there to contain that release. The black pyramid, that man-made mountain rising up from the flat tundra, shuddered in the instant of that destruction, and then it was vaporized by a light brighter than a thousand suns, a light that erupted into a massive cataclysm of fire and energy that formed at the point of destruction, and then expanded away from it faster than any horse could ever run and any bird could ever fly. It manifested as a hellish sphere of fire that expanded in every direction, including down, utterly destroying everything it touched. It raced away like a shockwave, travelling impossibly fast, but not so fast that those mortals who glanced back did not see it racing towards them.

  Jesmind, Jasana, and the dragon that carried them were three such mortals. Jesmind screamed in terror when she saw the flash, then looked behind to see a wall of fire raging towards them so fast it would overtake them in a matter of seconds.

  "Mama!" Jasana wailed, turning and clutching at her mother desperately, so desperately that she nearly fell off the dragon. Jesmind held onto her tightly, sure that the dragon would never get away from that.

  All of that effort to get away, and it was for nothing! Nothing!

  She saw strange lights ahead of them. They were incandescent balls of light floating in the sky, and with some surprise, she realized somehow that they had to be the gods. So, they had finally shown up! Well it was a little too bloody late for them now!

  Move, dragon! the voice of the Goddess touched both Jesmind and the dragon. You must get past us before the fires reach you!

  That seemed to spur the dragon on. It beat its wings in a frenzied manner, frantically trying to outrun certain death as it raced up towards them from behind. Jesmind clutched at Jasana as the little girl wailed and cried uncontrollably, wanting to cry herself, but so much had happened that she was almost numb with shock. She could only look behind her and watch the broiling fireball roar towards them, watch with some distant interest as it consumed Goblinoids on the ground behind them, Goblinoids that had been closest to the pyramid when the earthquakes began, and hadn't had the time to get away. She looked ahead and saw the blazing lights of the gods before them, and now she could make out bodies within those blinding lights, lights of every imaginable color, lights that encircled the fireball. The ones she could see before her had their hands raised, as if to repel the fireball that was rushing towards them.

  She looked back once more, and saw that it was so close that she could almost feel its heat. And from that distance, in a strange kind of way, it was a beautiful sight to behold. Then the terror of certain death gripped her, tore her back into reality, and she screamed out her fear as she squeezed the little girl in her arms desperately, as if she could protect her from the fire with the power of sheer will and holding onto her as tightly as she could.

  But certain death would not claim Jesmind that day. The dragon sizzled between two of the gods with the fireball hot on its tail, and then the gods set themselves in a unifying movement as the fireball reached them. It struck something solid before the gods, a something that suddenly bulged from the strain of containing all that unbridled power, but did not break, containing the full fury of the fire safely inside it. The shock of the impact transferred through the protective shield of godly might, sending a concussive shockwave away from them that knocked everyone down it struck, everyone but the largest of the dragons, who dug in their claws and relied on their raw size to let them withstand the blow. That shockwave struck the dragon and its riders, and only Jesmind's inhuman strength locking her legs around the dragon's scaly neck managed to let her keep from getting dislodged from her mount. The dragon shrieked in pain and fear as it was catapulted forwards by the impact, turning over in the air, and for a terrifying moment Jesmind looked up and saw the ground. But the dragon somehow managed to twist in the air, righting itself, though it had lost a great deal of altitude. It tried to pull up, and partially did so, but it still hit the ground fast enough to send Jesmind and Jasana flying over its head. Jesmind tucked in her body and relied on her innate sense of presence in the air, knowing exacty where the ground was at all times in relation to her position, and it let her hit feet first. She rolled to absorb the forward momentum, keeping Jasana safely tucked away and out of harm, then skidded to a stop. She dropped to her knees immediately, hugging her sobbing child to her with trembling arms, unable to believe that they had actually managed to get away from that alive.

  Jasana couldn't stop crying, clutching onto her mother with her little claws digging into Jesmind's sides and her face buried in Jesmind's breast. She tried to comfort her terrified child as best she could, but the terror of that ordeal was so strong in her that she wanted to be comforted.

  Jesmind looked up woodenly, to where the gods had been floating. One by one, they disappeared, winked out of sight, as if stopping the fireball had been all that was required of them. That angered Jesmind quite a bit, but she bit back that anger when she looked around and realized that the dragon had crashed among the armies that had been summoned to battle Val and his Goblinoids and Demons. They extended on for a great distance, and she realized that their army must have gotten safely away from the explosion.

  The explosion! That had happened at the pyramid, and that's where Tarrin had been! Her mate couldn't be hurt by fire, so she was pretty sure that he was still alive, but, Goddess, what power! Did that mean that Tarrin won? Had he truly done the impossible and somehow managed to defeat a god?

  A bright light over her head made her look up, and she saw that not all the gods had departed. There were ten left, and she realized dully that they were the Elder Gods. Those ten deities looked down at them, but they were too far away for Jesmind to see their expressions. But she did hear the voice of the Goddess touch her mind.

  It seems that your services are no longer required, she said in a heavy, exhausted manner. Could gods really get tired? It certainly sounded like it. Don't worry, we're about to send you all back to where you came from. When you arrive, we'll make sure that people are told what happened, so you can know. You deserve that much for what you have done here today. Go with our blessing, and know that we are both pleased and grateful for what you have done here today.

  Jesmind saw the light surrounding them flare suddenly--

  --and then she was kneeling on the cool grass of the Tower grounds, not far from the Knights' training field, along with all of Tarrin's sisters and friends, all the Knights and katzh-dashi, and quite a few Wikuni Marines and Arakite Legionaires.

  Now she was confused. She looked around, and saw that everyone seemed as stunned as she was. They stood where they were for long moments, utterly silent, but Keritanima and Jenna had haunted looks in their eyes. It had all happened so fast, and she didn't understand even a portion of what was going on. What had that fire been? Had Tarrin won? If so, then where was he? He hadn't appeared with the others.

  She stood up on wobbly feet, totally drained and exhausted. Not a moment ago, she was fleeing for her very life, now she was back at the Tower, safe and sound, and eve
rything seemed to be over. But what had happened? And where was Tarrin? She looked around, but she neither saw him or caught his scent anywhere. She took a feeble step forward, but nearly toppled over. Jasana continued to cling to her desperately, and her crying was the only sound that was coming from any of the shocked, stunned survivors of that most bizarre of experiences.

  A touch came on her shoulder. She turned and saw her mother, Triana, who looked down at her daughter with a grim, resolute look on her face. "Mother," she said in confusion and exhaustion. "I have Jasana. See?" She tried to hold up her daughter, but Jasana's claws embedded in her sides made pulling her little girl away a potentially painful experience. "Where is Tarrin? He needs to see her. I have to show him."

  Her innocent question sent a severe jag of intense pain through Triana's stony mask of expression, and Jasana wailed loudly. "Papa's dead!" she screamed hysterically, then erupted into an even more intense outburst of tears.

  Jesmind stared up at her mother in utter disbelief, but the empty pain within her mother's eyes told her that it had to be true. "No," she said in a bare whisper as the horrible truth crashed down on her. "No, it can't be," she said more forcefully, clutching her daughter tightly to her breast. But it was true, and that truth was more than she could bear. She would have dropped to her knees had Triana's strong paws not caught her, and she closed her eyes in anguish as tears rolled down her cheeks. She gave out a cry of such pain, such loss that it broke the heart of every person who heard it, a cry of one who had just lost everything that had meaning to her.

  "NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

  Chapter 16

  It was a very grim time.

  Tarrin's death had terribly affected the entire Tower, from the Keeper down the the lowliest maid or servant. Though not everyone knew him, and fewer liked him, he had been such a integral part of the Tower, such a part of its workings and its power structure, that his loss had affected everyone within it. And as things affected the Tower, so they also affected Suld. The new king of Sulasia, Arren Strongheart, had gone into deepest mourning when he heard the news, and had ordered a day of mourning for the city and the kingdom. Everyone in the Tower was very quiet and somber, all the katzh-dashi wearing mourning black, and very little real business was being done.

  It had been three days since the strange and terrible end of the war. They had won. Not many Goblinoids survived the horrific earthquakes, and Val had been utterly destroyed, which had forever removed the threat he had posed, but the cost it had exacted had been more than they had all been willing to pay. All of them except Tarrin, it seemed. All of his friends gathered together and tried to make sense of what happened, but nobody had been close to him when it happened except Jesmind and Jasana, and they were not very helpful. Jesmind had entered a deep black reverie that had struck her not long after she found out what happened. She would not speak unless spoken to, and her responses were often disjointed and made little sense. Jasana was virtually inconsolable, and even speaking her father's name was enough to send her into a crying storm so severe that only Jesmind or Triana could calm her down. But Jesmind was so lost in her grief that the burden of caring for the fragile child fell to her grandmother, and she accepted the burden with haunted eyes. Tarrin had meant a great deal to the Were-cat matriarch, and his loss had struck her just as keenly as it had her family, but she seemed capable of holding herself together. Mist had taken the news better than everyone expected. The destruction she wrought was confined to only two floors, and luckily they managed to clear the warzone of all innocents before Mist got outside of their area of control. They did not try to stop her, they only confined her to areas of the Tower where they could afford to lose what was there, and Jenna wanly joked with Mist after she played out her rage that those were areas that needed remodelling anyway. Kimmie had fainted when they told her, and the shock of it had sent her into labor. She had not been conscious for the birth of her own child, or much to the surprise of everyone, her children. She had twins, a pair of blue-eyed baby girls who looked exactly alike, with Kimmie's blue eyes and their father's black fur. They had dark hair like their mother, but everyone who looked at them said they could see Tarrin in those tiny infants' faces. In honor of their father, Kimmie named her babies Tara and Rina.

  The joy of her children did not make up for the loss of their father. It was a bittersweet thing for Kimmie, Mist, and Triana, as her bond-mother and the Were-cat matriarch helped the grieving mother to care for her wondrous burden.

  The Keeper had her own troubles with the loss of her brother, so much so that the running of the Tower and the paperwork it required began to fall behind. Duncan and Ianelle did their best to help in that regard, and they kept things running while the young girl dealt with her grief.

  The death of Tarrin had had a powerful effect in Suld, but the death of a sui'kun could have a disastrous effect on the Weave. But as the Goddess had told them so long ago, the gods had permitted extra sui'kun to be born to protect the world against another Breaking. The eighth sui'kun had silently been born some month before Tarrin's death, his birth unnoticed until after Tarrin died, and his loss did not damage the Weave. The burden he had represented had passed on to the infant child, and so the Weave had been protected.

  Even the gods seemed to mourn. For all three days since the war and Tarrin's death, the skies had been covered by thick clouds, and those clouds reached out to cover the entire world. It cast the world into dark, gloomy shadow, and everything seeemed unnaturally quiet and subdued. The seas did not lap against the land in breaking waves. The wind did not blow. The animals were not themselves. Everything seemed nearly surreal in those gloomy days, as if the gods intended to show their grief upon the land, and their mourning could not help but affect the mortals who depended upon them. Jenna had tried repeatedly to talk to the Goddess, but she would not answer, and even the sense of her that seemed a permanent fixture within the Heart was gone.

  Jenna had tried to find out what happened. She tried to coax the story out of Jesmind, but her responses were chaotic and made very little sense. Nobody could speak of such a thing to Jasana, who was so fragile and higly upset; nobody would even want to try. Any hint or mention of her father sent her into a storm of weeping. Jenna was grieving just as much as they, but the need to understand how he had died consumed her, the need to know what had happened, the need to understand how he had somehow managed to destroy a god, but there was nobody to give her any answers. The only reason she knew that he was dead was because Triana said so, and she had no doubt that Triana knew. She wouldn't say such a thing unless it was true.

  Jenna handled her grief by trying to piece together the story. His other sisters and friends dealt with it in other ways. Allia spent nearly every waking hour in the Goddess' courtyard, and nobody knew what she was doing in there, but they all understood that she was observing Selani customs and rites that dealt with the loss of a brother. Keritanima had little time to mourn with the demands of governing Wikuna, but she would return to the Tower every evening and spend quiet time with Allia, the two drawing strength from one another. Dolanna spent those days with Jenna, sharing her need to discover what had happened. Dar had sought comfort from friends, and then, to everyone's surprise, he found solace in the arms of Tiella, who had long harbored a crush on the Arkisian Sorcerer. Camara Tal had put off her departure for Amazar to counsel their tight group, showing the tenderness and compassion that made her a Priestess, a surprising side of her that the others rarely experienced. Sarraya spent all her time with Kimmie, hovering around her twin daughters trying to help her, but more often than not just getting in the way. Azakar remained at Dolanna's side, not wanting to leave her, as if he feared the moment he left she would be attacked. Miranda stayed by Keritanima's side as well, offering gentle comfort and a shoulder for her to cry on when the emotion of it overwhelmed her, and whenever anyone saw her when she wasn't consoling her friend, her hands were feverishly busy with embroidery pulled from the
shoulder satchel that was never very far away from her. Even Phandebrass had been affected by Tarrin's death, putting aside his studies and beginning to write down all his memories and observations about the enigmatic Were-cat, chronicling his tale, a tale of a reluctant hero who more often that not was worse than the evil he battled, but in the end had somehow carried the day. Phandebrass became quite enthusiastic about the idea of writing it all down, but he too did not know how it ended, and as was his nature, when confronted with a mystery, the addled Wizard found a new focus in his life to solve it. So he joined Jenna and Dolanna in the quest for discovering the truth.

  But it was a mystery without answers. The only ones who were there were Jesmind and Jasana, and they had already exhausted any attempt to get any information from them. Not even Phandebrass would press the grieving pair, understanding the terrible loss they had experienced, and not wanting to aggravate their pain. For them, the loss was most keen. Tarrin had died retrieving his daughter from Val, and Jesmind and Jasana would never be able to forget that he had died for them, and that would invariably cause them to feel guilt for his loss.

  Three days, though it had seemed like an eternity. Three days of steady cold rain, as the skies wept along with them, three days when Jesmind did not eat, did not sleep, only sat in that chair facing the fireplace, her unblinking eyes lost in the licking flames. Those three days had already shown on her, as her face seemed slightly gaunt and dark circles had appeared under her striking eyes. Jasana sat on her mother's lap, thumb claw in her mouth, with a hollow expression on her face, clinging to her mother out of reflex more than anything else. Jesmind did not hold her daughter, did not even register her presence, her empty eyes lost in the dancing of the fire before her. Keritanima and Allia were with her, as were Dolanna and Dar, and wherever Keritanima and Dolanna went, Miranda, Binter, Sisska, and Azakar were never more than a few paces away. They were helping Triana keep an eye on the non-responsive Were-cat. Triana had warned them that this kind of response was very unpredictable, and at any moment she could snap out of it and fly into a rage. So they had to keep a very close watch on her, to get Jasana away from her if such a thing happened. Keritanima was reading from a book, though her heart was not in it. Allia was sitting on the floor, her eyes closed, trying to find peace within herself through meditation and introspection, though it had been an elusive thing. Binter and Sisska stood silent watch, ready to face the Were-cat female and hold her down if necessary to give their charges time to escape, and Azakar stood behind Dolanna's chair as she watched Jesmind carefully, though her own eyes also had dark circles beneath them.