Of course! The Heart! Only Weavespinners could go there, the core of the power of Sorcery, a place much like being in the arms of the Goddess. He had been there twice, by sending his consciousness into the Weave. That meant that he could probably enter that place any time he wished. And if he could do it, Jenna could do it too.
Very good, kitten, the Goddess said to him proudly. That is the very place. The only ones who will hear you there are Weavespinners also within the Heart, and myself, of course. The only thing you'll have to do is teach Jenna how to enter the Heart voluntarily.
Something clicked in his mind. "That's the real test, isn't it, Mother?" he asked. "Not gaining control of the power when it threatened to Consume, but the ability to find the Heart!"
You are getting too clever, kitten, the Goddess laughed. You're right, and also wrong. Finding the Heart is the main reason for the test, but at that time you have to be filled with magical power, as much as you can possibly hold, and that only really happens when you're in danger of being Consumed. That instant between achieving your absolute maximum potential and the Wildstrike that would destroy you. It does you no good to reach the Heart when not filled with energy, because it dramatically reduces the power you could have gained, and the power that is sent back into the Weave.
"So, being filled with power when reaching the Heart is why Weavespinners are so much stronger?" he asked. "The Heart changes the Sorcerer into a Weavespinner, but it needs that power to be there to do the job right?"
Very perceptive, but not exactly right, she replied. It's something I don't think I'd be able to explain to you, kitten, because it touches on things you haven't learned about yet. Let's just say that the more you bring when you arrive, the more you take when you leave, and the more that gets released into the Weave after you've succeeded. Both of those effects are extremely important, so it's imperative that Weavespinners take that next step only when the situations are favorable. As in, only when being Consumed.
"Mother, you've called me a Weavespinner all this time, but what you just said makes me curious. Could anyone become a Weavespinner?"
Kitten, there are Weavespinners, and there are Weavespinners. You were born with the potential within you, and it was ordained that you would reach this level. But to answer your question, yes, any Sorcerer can achieve the level of Weavespinner, if they can find the Heart during their moment of truth. Their power will be nowhere near yours, but they do gain access to Weavespinner magic.
"What's the difference?"
The Ancients separated Weavespinners into two groups, kitten. Sui'kun and Da'shar. The term sui'kun doesn't mean what you think it means, because the Sha'Kar language changed over time. What you thought meant soul fire actually means Blessed Soul. Those Weavespinners were the ones born with such potential that their elevation to the Weavespinner status was pre-ordained. Like you and Jenna. They are hand over fist over the Da'shar, a term that means Favored, because of the fundamental differences in the level of power you can control. Sui'kun like you have the power to wield High Sorcery alone, and that fact doesn't change just because you've become a Weavespinner. Da'shar can't do that, nor can they pull off some of the tricks of raw power that you can.
"You mean Jenna could have used High Sorcery all this time?" Tarrin gasped.
Yes, Tarrin. In fact, it was her first touch on High Sorcery that caused her to lose control. We can only thank my mother that you progressed enough to be able to guide her through it.
That startled him. Jenna had touched High Sorcery! And her very first attempt nearly killed her! Now he appreciated why the Goddess had stuck him in his Were-cat body. He had been only a little older then Jenna when he first touched that power, and without his Were body and its powerful resistance and regenerative powers, without someone to guide him to the Heart, he would have been Consumed in that first experience.
I'm glad you finally fully comprehend and appreciate why I had to do what I did, kitten, she said soberly. I didn't want to do it, because I knew how much pain it would cause you. But I had to keep you alive, and it was the only way.
He nodded silently.
My time is growing short, kitten. I have to go. You'll know what to do with Jenna when the time comes, but for now, know that she and your parents are safe and well, and out of danger. You can talk to her when she wakes up, but be careful what you say.
"I will."
Good. I'll talk with you again later, kitten. Be well, and know that I love you.
And then she retreated away from him. The sense of her presence never really left him anymore, but he could tell when she was close enough to talk to him and when she wasn't.
She left him with many things to think over. Jenna could use High Sorcery! Actually, it made a sort of sense. If the ones like him and her were so strong, it was no wonder that it was more or less a given that they would become Weavespinners. After all, the raw power of High Sorcery was enough to overwhelm someone using it alone, so it was a guarantee that a sui'kun would eventually face being Consumed, usually the first time he happened across High Sorcery. The da'shar were the ones that stumbled into being Consumed by either accident or circumstance, but had presence or skill enough to find the Heart before being destroyed. Those would be very adventurous Sorcerers, ones very strong and willing to experiment and gamble.
Keritanima.
He had no idea how he knew that, but he knew it. Keritanima was just such a Sorcerer. Keritanima was extremely powerful, much stronger than even the members of the Council of Seven when taken on a one-on-one basis, and would have been the jewel of the Tower if not for Tarrin's eclipsing abilities. She used her power alot, and she was willing to weave spells in ways nobody had ever thought to try. She took too many risks, and it was eventually going to catch up with her. Keritanima was the prime example of what he thought a da'shar would be, a Weavespinner who found the power more or less voluntarily.
Sometime in the future, Keritanima was going to face her power, and either take the next step or be destroyed by it. If he had anything to say about it, she'd be taking the next step.
There were also things he didn't understand, such as how Weavespinners enriched the Weave, and there were no immediate answers for that. Not even guesses. It was a process of complete mystery to him, and without clues, there was nothing to go on.
He laid there, looking up at the sky, musing over what he had just learned. A great deal, from the sound of it, and it would take him some time to fully absorb the many things the Goddess had taught him. But he didn't mind. The desert gave him time if anything, time to lay there and attempt to understand that which was honestly quite beyond him.
If anything, he had time.
Chapter 17
They were off again at the rising of the sun.
Sarraya wasn't too happy about it. Taking a look into her tent showed him why. She had conjured up just about every item of luxury she could imagine, including spectral servants to do her bidding. He had never seen such creations before. Sarraya called them mephits, and from her explanation, they were semi-aware representations of nature, kind of like half-formed spirits, weak enough for nearly any Druid to summon and control, and stupid enough to be no threat of breaking free of that control. They were the first stage in the path to summoning Elementals, she explained, though very few ever managed to get past the mephit stage. Summoning Elementals was the ultimate expression of power for a Druid, and Sarraya told him that only a handful could do it. Sarraya was not one of them.
A few moments of instruction had shown him how it was done, and he filed away the ability to summon mephits as another aspect of his Druidic power that he doubted he would ever seriously use.
At least he got a good explanation of why so few Druids could summon Elementals, a much more rational explanation than Sarraya's previous talks about them. "It's not the Druid, it's the Elemental," she told him. "I have the power to summon an Elemental, but I don't have the power to control one. Druidic Elementals are an order of magnitude st
ronger than the Elementals that you Sorcerers and the Wizards can conjure. That means that it takes supreme power, skill, and willpower to keep one of them under your control. The only real difference is that Druidic Elementals don't go berserk when the break free. They simply go home, and the backlash of that against the Druid is usually enough to kill her."
"I didn't know Wizards could summon Elementals," Tarrin mused.
"What they call Elementals," Sarraya said scathingly. "They're hardly more than a mephit. Sorcerer's Elementals, on the other hand, are formidable. Mainly because Sorcery is, at its heart, magic dealing with elements. Fire, Water, Earth, Air, they're spheres of Sorcery, so that makes the Elementals they conjure very powerful. Sorcerers are much more attuned to Elemental magic than Wizards."
"That makes sense," he agreed.
That got him to thinking about magic in general, and of course his thoughts drifted to Jenna. She was probably still sleeping, trying to recover from the tremendous ordeal which she had endured. He remembered how he felt after he woke up from his own ordeal, so he felt pretty sorry for her. She'd probably go crazy without her magic--Jenna loved being a Sorcerer--but that would pass when she was ready to use her new magic. And he'd be there for her when she was ready to learn, to teach her what he had to struggle to learn for himself.
He still felt a little bitter over seeing his family and not being able to spend time with them. It had been so short! Just enough to give them some warnings, and then he was gone. He played at the idea of trying to find his way back before they left that morning, even going so far as to entering the Weave and trying to find the path he had taken from within it. But the shifting nature of the Weave had erased all traces of his passage. It was like trying to track someone by scent who was swimming in a river. It just couldn't be done. The flowing power within the Weave had carried away the traces of his passing, and its surreal nature when viewed from within made it impossible for him to find his way. It was a good thing that it required no tracking to return to himself; just by wishing to do so, he could return to his body any time he wanted to do so.
It was yet another aspect of being a Weavespinner he hadn't expected. Entering the Weave was much like sending his soul out of his body and joining it with the power that was now so entwined through him that it would be impossible to separated it from him without killing him. It was so large, so...intimidating. He had no idea where to go, where anything was. He could reach the Heart only because all strands eventually went there. Without somehting to guide him through the vast labyrinth of the Weave, he could not use it to visit other places as he had done so with Jenna. He had a feeling that he could learn how to get to a few places, if they were important enough. Since the main Conduit that came from the Heart came out through the Tower, he thought he could reach the Tower in that projected state. It would take a little trial and error, but he felt that he could do it. He'd just have to make sure that he was fully rested when he tried. Entering the Weave, and trying to use any magic while inside it, took a tremendous amount of effort. The episode with Jenna had already taught him that very important lesson. It was like a standard Sorcerer trying to weave a spell from ten longspans away. The effort to push the magic over such a great distance was exhausting.
It was something about which nobody had ever said anything. He thought it was one of the abilities of the Weavespinners that had been forgotten by the modern katzh-dashi, one of the many things lost because they could no longer read the historical annals left for them by their ancestors. It made him wonder what else he could do, what else had been forgotten.
Clearly, Sorcery wasn't as simple as weaving spells. It had several different disciplines within that broad definition, and it would take many, many years of study to come to an understanding of his own abilities. Weaving spells was just one of the aspects of Sorcery.
But thoughts of the future yielded to thoughts of the present. They were still travelling northwest, and Tarrin was still looking for an ideal place to stop, an ideal battleground that would stack the deck in his favor. Jegojah was coming, and he was just starting to feel...twinges, little variances in the Weave that he thought were being caused by something unnatural. That could be Jegojah, for it was an undead being, and it was also possessed of formidable magical abilities. He couldn't pin a location to that feeling, but it was not close. That was all he could tell. But if it was close enough for him to sense it, then it had to be a maximum of twelve days away. That was when he started feeling the crown of the Aeradalla. And since the crown was such an incredibly powerful artifact, he doubted that he would feel Jegojah coming from a similar distance. Jegojah's probable effect on the Weave was nowhere near that. That meant to him that Jegojah was much closer than twelve days away, if that sense was actually him. That made finding a suitable location to challenge the Doomwalker his highest priority, because he would take no chances in this.
Jegojah was...special. It had killed Faalken, nearly killed his family, and had hounded and tortured him for years, by either deed or fear. It was going to end. This would be the last time he crossed swords with Jegojah, one way or another. Thinking of it made his hackles rise, but it also made him remember the vision that the Goddess had given him about Jegojah. That Faalken had been standing in front of the Doomwalker, his decayed body making it obvious he was a corpse, holding a flaming sword. What did it mean? Was it a warning for him not to get too carried away? Would Faalken's memory interfere somehow, as the vision suggested, or would it cause him to come into danger? Just thinking about that fateful day when Jegojah killed Faalken, killed him because Tarrin had lost control, made him suddenly furious. Jegojah had killed Faalken, but Tarrin had abandoned him to his death just so he could destroy Jegojah. The anger was directed at Jegojah, but some of it was focused on himself. That day had shown him the consequences of his actions. That day, his rage had cost him a friend, and caused him to vow that no one else was going to die if he could help it. Killing Jegojah would bring closure to him, he felt. Destroying the Doomwalker once and for all would avenge Faalken, and would act as atonement for allowing the valiant Knight to die. Jegojah was a physical embodiment of the demons that had plagued Tarrin since becoming Were, and he meant to destroy the Doomwalker, and them, and vanquish those demons back to the nether realms.
They stopped for lunch and to wait out the heat of the day in the shade of a large overhanging rock, then moved on again. The hilly terrain of the desert became progressively more and more rocky, and rugged foothills of respecatable size had begun to show through the heat haze that made looking at distance in the desert an uncertain pasttime. Tarrin and Sarraya found themselves running from valley to valley to avoid climbing the steeper and steeper hillsides, moving through terrain that very nearly seemed mountainous.
They travelled up one such valley near sunset, looking for a good campsite, when the valley opened up into a vast depression in the land like a great bowl with a flat bottom. The bottom of that wide valley-like feature was dotted with boulders and rocks strewn about the floor of it like children's toys, and rock spires, hundreds of them--
--not rock spires. Towers!
It was a ruin! The remains of a great city were hidden in those crisscrossing valleys, a city that had completely filled up the depression in which it had been built. The city was buried in sand here and there, and it was obvious that a recent sandstorm had carried away much of the sand that had once buried the city. A city built of the same sandy colored stone that filled most of the desert, but it was a city that was remarkably well preserved. Buildings still stood here and there, and they stood out against the fallen debris that cluttered what had once been wide avenues. The architecture of those buildings were blocky, with many right angles, and as he and Sarraya approached them, he began to realize that the builders of this vast city weren't human.
The doorways to those buildings were only about six spans high.
Tarrin reached the edge of the city, and looked at the nearest building still standing. It was th
ree stories high, but its compact construction made it only as tall as a human's two story building. It was made of sandy colored stones that showed the erosion of the years, but the wearing away did nothing to hide the exacting precision with which the stones had been fitted together. The architects and builders of this place had been engineers of the highest degree. These sprawling ruins put modern cities to shame with the durability and craftsmanship of the buildings.
"Who made this place, Sarraya?" Tarrin asked, looking at one of the buildings.
"I don't know," she replied. "The doorways are small. If I were a gambling Faerie, I'd say it was one of the Lost Races. Maybe Dwarves, or Gnomes."
He'd heard those names before, but they belonged in bedtime stories. The Dwarves and Gnomes had lived a long, long time ago, but had been wiped out during the terrible Blood War. The Gnomes had died out by attrition, but the Dwarves had fought to the very last man, even their women, fighting to protect the world from the dark evil of the Demons. Even now, five thousand years after the fact, the heroism of the Dwarves was honored in song and story from one side of Sennadar to the other. The Race of Heroes, they were called. Both races were supposedly short. The Dwarves were stocky and strong, the Gnomes thin and willowy. Both races were respected as stoneworkers and builders without peer. If this place was built by one of their races, it was no wonder that so much of it had survived the destruction wreaked upon it by the years and the harsh desert sands.
He looked down at the doorway, which came up to the his chest. There was no way he'd be able to get into one of those buildings in his current form. But looking down caught his eyes on a small bright object partially buried in the sand. He knelt down and picked it up, and found it to be a small knife. A knife held in a skeletal hand.
A little excavation revealed a skeleton of a short, heavy-boned bipedal creature, wearing a massive set of plate armor--at least massive for the skeleton's size. A broken battle axe rested underneath it. The creature had died with a knife in its hands, fighting on to the last breath. The metal worn by the skeleton was clean and unblemished, a sign of being buried in scouring sand with no humidity. That, or the metal wasn't steel, wasn't subject to rust.
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