Chapter 13

        Tail swishing back and forth, eyes closed, Tarrin kept his paws on the table and tried to remain in a meditative state.  It wasn't easy, because he was still internally celebrating what he felt to be his independence from the Tower.  He kept wanting to jump up and down, but he knew that it was imperative that he keep his elation to himself.  Keritanima's plan depended on him looking unhappy, and it would ruin it.  It was a good plan, and he wasn't about to destroy it.  Dolanna's breathing kept anchoring him to reality, and her scent of ivory and lavender and silk soothed his jittery consciousness.  Her scent had slowly begun to have that effect on him; her very presence was usually enough to take the raw edge off his nerves.  Tarrin noticed it after Jesmind left, and he had the growing suspicion that his subconscious, his immature Cat mind--he was only a cub, after all--was seeking a replacement for a mother figure.  With his own mother out in the city, temporarily distanced from him, Dolanna came the closest to that role.  So he was starting to react to her differently than before.

        He was much calmer now.  A night spent in sleepless joy had mellowed into a simple feeling of contentment, though if he thought about it too long he would get worked up again.  That helped him focus on what he was doing a bit more, and the Weave was out there.  He could feel it.  He raised his chin and reached out with all his senses, reaching to make contact with the Weave.  Thoughts and memories were centered on the Weave.  Memories of the feeling of drawing in, and the fragmented memory of the only time he had ever managed to use Sorcery, were working with his active attempts, trying to shape his reaching out to seem to fit in with the memories of Sorcery he held inside.  There had to be a middle ground there, and that was where he thought he'd finally manage to make a touch on the Weave.  He had to push out and draw in at the same time, he reasoned.  That seemed illogical, but he had noticed that logic rarely had a leg to stand on where magic was concerned.

        Realigning his thinking, he bowed his head and emptied out his mind, then took a crack at it.  At first, it made him seem further away from the Weave, but then he began to feel it on the edges of his awareness.  He tried to reach out and draw in at the same time, directing his attempts at the feeling of warmth and pulsating, heart-beat like throbbing that surrounded him.  It tantalized him, staying right where he could sense it but just out of reach, and his serenity slowly began to erode into aggravation.  He began to rise up out of his chair, eyes opening and lit from within with that almost glowing radiance that meant he was angry.

        "Calmly," Dolanna said in a soothing voice.  "Do not work yourself up, Tarrin."

        Blowing out his breath, Tarrin sat back down.  Waiting for something to happen was getting to him, and his good mood quickly disintigrated into something more unfriendly.

        "I could feel you more active with the Weave before you lost yourself," Dolanna told him in a calming voice.  "Whatever you were doing, continue.  Maybe it will be what you need to succeed."

        Nodding, panting a bit, Tarrin bowed his head and closed his eyes--

        --closing his eyes.  No wonder.  Smacking himself on the head with a paw, he groaned in dismay.

        "What is it, dear one?" Dolanna asked curiously.

        Opening his eyes, Tarrin reached out while trying to draw in, focusing his eyes where he could sense the energy of the Weave.  The strand slowly wavered into a phantasmic form before his eyes, and he felt himself make contact with it.  The sudden influx of power into him felt like the glory of a god.  It was warm, tingling, and it filled him like a vessel, saturating his body with a feeling that came close to rapture.

        "Tarrin!" Dolanna gasped.  "You did it!"

        "I did it," he said, trying to both ignore and revel in the sensation at the same time.  The strands in the room became visible to him as wavering, ghostly tendrils, and he could feel the pulsating power of the Weave, almost like a heartbeat, roaring through him.  And it was building up.  He wasn't drawing it in anymore, but it was still flooding into him, and that pleasure was starting to turn into pain.  "Now how do I let go of it?"

        "Cut yourself off, dear one!" she said quickly.  "You are building up too much power!"

        "I'm not doing anything!" he objected, feeling the pulsating like a hammer to the back of his skull.

        Dolanna's body seemed to shimmer, and then he realized that she had touched the Weave.  He felt something sever his connection to the Weave like a knife, and then the power inside simply bled away, leaving him feeling cold and strangely empty.  It also left a sharp headache, but the pain in his head began to fade almost as quickly as the power had.

        "Tarrin, when you make contact with the Weave, you must resist it," she told him.  "It will try to fill you, for it will see you as a part of the Weave, and as I said, the magical energy always follows the path of least resistance."

        "Why didn't you tell me that before?"

        "Because most students are not so in tune with the Weave," she said, pursing her lips.  "Your raw power must make me change my methods, I see.   You are so strong, the Weave tried to fill you in a flood.  For most Initiates, it takes hours to build up so much magic.  It will trickle into them, usually without them noticing it.  But your power gives you the ability to instantly gather up enough energy to work.  That is something that we usually have to teach to our students."

        "Why did it start to hurt?"

        "Our bodies are fragile, young one," she said.  "They were never made to withstand so much power.  That pain you felt is what happens when a Sorcerer attempts to do something beyond his ability.  If I had not cut you off, the energy would have built up, and the pain become worse, until it would have destroyed you."

        Tarrin blinked.  "Consumed?"

        She nodded.  "Let us calm down, then try again.  This time, when you feel the Weave connect to you, hold it at bay.  You must allow it in and push it away at the same time.  The balance of them is what will determine how much energy you allow to fill you."  He nodded, remembering that he used the trick of reaching out and pulling in at the same time to make the connection.  It was only logical, in the illogical sense of Sorcery, to have to draw in and push out at the same time to resist the flood of the magic.  "Why were you so angry before?"

        "I've been sitting here for four days fighting to touch the Weave, and I was doing it with my eyes closed," he said in disgust.

        Dolanna considered it for a moment, then she laughed wryly.  "You are too grounded in your senses," she realized.  "Unless you could see what you were reaching for, you would fail.  Your Were nature makes it difficult for you to work with anything that you can't experience with your natural senses, and the Sorcerer's unnatural sense dealing with the Weave is unfamiliar to it."

        He nodded sourly.  "Four days of aggravation for nothing," he growled.  "I should have realized that closing my eyes was stopping me."

        "You are still growing into your Were nature, my dear one," she said gently.  "You still have much to learn.  Do not kick yourself for things that you cannot know easily.  But you should feel happy that you have done it," she told him, patting him on the shoulder.  "Four days is very quick for an Initiate's first touching."

        "I'd be happier if I didn't feel like an idiot," he grunted.

        She chuckled.  "As they say, the man who looks behind can see all, where the man who looks ahead only sees the bend in the road."

        He blew out his breath, then finally managed to give a rueful chuckle.  "Yes, well, it doesn't help," he told her.

        "We still have a few hours, my dear one," she said, sitting back down.  "Let us practice on touching the Weave.  As you know, just one time is not enough to make it automatic.  It is a learned skill, like any other.  Once you make a touch, we will work on keeping your touch without losing control of it.  We will also work on letting go.  Your raw power will make that a vital lesson."

        Tarrin looked over at her with a resolute expression.  "Alright, let's get on with it."

        He was expecting it to still be difficult, but much to his shock, the Weave was right there the next time he tried to touch it.  He made contact immediately, and he felt the power rush into him.  He tried to resist it, but it was like trying to dam a river with a blueberry bush.  "Let go, Tarrin!" Dolanna barked.  "Push it away!"

        It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.  He stood in the face of that torrent of power, then he somehow did something between him and it, almost like cutting a cord with a knife.  The power rush stopped, and he felt it drain harmlessly away from him.  But it did cause him to have a momentary headache.  "Good, Tarrin, good," she said.  "You must still learn to resist, but you have managed to cut yourself off.  You must still learn to let go of it on your own."

        "Isn't that what I did?"

        She shook her head.  "You used your power to cut yourself off from the Weave," she explained.  "You did to yourself what I did to you.  You should simply let go of it, push it away from you.  It would be much less unpleasant."

        "Alright, let's try again," he said, blowing out his breath.  He was starting to feel worn out.  He reached out again, and once again, the Weave responded instantly to his call.  He felt the power flood into him, and he gritted his teeth and stood fast against the torrent, then found purchase against it.  He physically pushed out with his arms, and that helped his mind push the power away, faster than it was coming into him.  He felt it slow, waver, and then it simply stopped.  He blinked in confusion and looked to Dolanna, who was smiling slightly.  "You let go of it, dear one," she explained.  "Was that your intention?"

        "No," he said in confusion.  "I was just trying to stand against it."

        "You are strong, my dear one," she said.  "You tried to choke off the power, and instead choked it off completely.  And I must say, I am impressed that you have managed to touch the Weave every time so far."

        "It seems, easy," he said after thinking about it a moment.  "It's just right there.  It's like I was just trying to find it before, and now that I know where it is, it's very easy to touch."

        "We shall see," she said with a smile.  "Now, touch it again.  This time, try to simply maintain your touch."

        He nodded, reaching out for the Weave.  And it was there for him.  Again being flooded with magical power, this time he had an understanding of how it felt to control that power.  Pushing against it with his will, he made it stop flowing into him, choking it down to the barest trickle.  He already understood that if he totally choked it off, he would lose his connection to the Weave.  It took effort.  Alot of effort.  Sweat formed on his brow as he worked to keep control of his power, fought against the raging torrent that was battering at his wall of willpower.  "It's fighting me," he said shortly to his instructor.

        "And it always will," she replied calmly.  "You will learn how to keep control of it for long periods of time as you gain experience with it, dear one.  It too is a learned skill.  But for now, let it go."

        With an explosive release of breath, Tarrin choked off the power, and let go of the Weave.  He wiped his forehead with the furred back of a paw, feeling a bit winded.  "I didn't realize that it was so much work," he told her.

        "That is why you do not see very many portly Sorcerers," she said with a smile.  "It is physical work to control the power."

        "I noticed," he said.  "Will it always feel this hard?"

        "No, over time, you will strengthen your ability to control the power," she replied.  "It will always be work, but it will seem less and less strenuous as time progresses.  It is here where your strength works against you, dear one," she warned.  "You have much more power to control than most others, and that means that it will tire you much more quickly until you learn how to manage it."

        He considered her words for a moment.  If other Sorcerers didn't feel that raging flood the way he did, he'd have to agree with her.  It was like trying to hold back the tide, and what amazed him was that he could manage to do it.  But he wasn't sure how long he could keep it up.

        "Now, let us continue," she said.  "Touch the Weave, and then let it go.  And keep doing so until I tell you to stop."

        When he left the training chamber a few hours later, he could barely walk.  He felt so utterly exhausted that he could probably fall down and go right to sleep on the floor.  He was too tired to even be happy over his successes for the day.  Dolanna had been almost merciless in her instruction, making him touch the Weave, hold it for a moment, and then let it go, over and over and over.  Tarrin never failed to touch the Weave, but as he began to tire, his control over it and his ability to let go of it began to get unstable.  More than once, Dolanna had to step in and cut him off from the Weave.  After she had to do it three times in a row, she finally relented and called it a day.

        Numb with fatigue, Tarrin stumbled back to the north tower and to his room, taking almost half an hour to manage the three flights of stairs, and he crawled up onto his bed.  He was too exhausted to take off his clothes, and it would be much faster, easier, and more comfortable to simply shapeshift and sleep in his cat form.  It had never seemed like an effort to shapeshift before, but that time had nearly put him out.  Once comfortably settled into his cat form, he flopped down on the pillow of his bed and fell immediately into a deep slumber.

        Wake up, a voice seemed to call to him.  You have to wake up.

        Tarrin's eyes opened.  It was night.  Deep into night, by the light coming into the window.  Tarrin was still laying on his pillow, but he had curled up into a less slapdash position during his slumber.  His ears and nose detected no present threats, but Allia's scent lingered in the room from when she had come in a few hours before.

        Uncertain of what woke him up, he looked around one more time, and then put his head back down.

        Tarrin, you have to wake up now, the voice said sharply.

        Ears picking up, Tarrin lifted his head again and looked around.  Tarrin, you must get up! the voice said again.

        Tarrin finally managed to place that voice, and when he realized who it was, he instantly stood up.  "Goddess!" he gasped in the unspoken manner of the cat.

        There isn't time, she replied urgently.  You must get up and go to the main Tower.  Do it now, kitten!

        "What's the matter?" he asked as he dropped down from the bed.

        Take your staff! she ordered.  There is a Doomwalker on the grounds!

        "What is that?"

        An undead creature, she replied.  It has enormous power, my kitten.  It has come to kill you, and you must face it on ground of your own choosing.

        "To kill me?  Another attack?" he asked as he returned to his humanoid form, and then picked his staff up from the corner.

        This goes far beyond anything you've yet seen, kitten, she warned.  A Doomwalker is nothing to take lightly.  The Wraith you fought is like a little baby holding a stick compared to it.  You can't run away from it, you can't bargain with it, and unless you fight it on your own terms, you're not going to be able to beat it.

        "Why there?" she asked.  "I'd rather face an enemy outside, on open ground."

        You never fight a Doomwalker when its feet stand on natural earth, she warned him.  It can directly draw power from the earth when it is.  It has to have metal or stone under its feet to cut it off from that power.  You want to be deep in the Tower when it comes for you, so it can't possibly draw you outside.  It will definitely want to do that.

        Nervous, Tarrin darted from his room and quickly ran down the stairs, then dashed down the corridor and out of the north tower.  He passed several guards at the door and on the grounds, then raced into the main Tower through a small entrance that led to the kitchens.  If he had to be deep in the Tower proper, he had a good idea of where to go.  To the main core chamber that most called the Heart of the Goddess.  It was in the exact center of the Tower, and it had both alot of space and alot of vertical openness.  If worse came to worst, he could climb or jump up to one of the many balconies that peppered the walls all the way up the Tower.  He worried quickly at exactly what this Doomwalker creature was, and he shuddered at how the Goddess had described it.  The Wraith had nearly killed him, and if this creature was more dangerous, then he had a good reason to be afraid.  But he was Ungardt, and he would face the challenge like any proper warrior would.  It was alright to be afraid, so long as he didn't allow his fear to rule him.

        He reached the long corridor with its metal gate when he first smelled it.  Its scent was that of corruption and decay, like an open grave, but it had a sharp ozone smell that he couldn't identify.  It was coming directly towards him, and that smell, that unnatural scent, triggered the Cat into activity.  Ears laying back, Tarrin growled in his throat as the Cat registered its hatred of that scent.  It reacted much like that whenever he had faced unnatural beings, such as the Wraith.  Opening the gate to the chamber, he slipped through it and closed it again, then looked up.  The ceiling in the passage was higher than the threshold holding the gate, creating a solid overhang that was nearly three spans long.  What a perfect place to lay in ambush.

        A short vault up to the ceiling and some claws driven into the stone was all it took.  He tucked himself up into the corner and pulled in his tail, holding his staff against the ceiling and going statue-still, using his inhuman strength to hold himself absolutely motionless.

        After only a moment, he could hear the sharp metallic sound of armored boots on stone.  It was a methodical pace, from the sound of it, coming towards him.  As they got louder, the smell of it became stronger and stronger, until it threatened to make him gag.  He closed his eyes and reined in his nose, using all his will to deaden and ignore what his nose was telling him, even as he struggled to keep the Cat from charging from its place in the back of his mind and take control, so it could hunt down and destroy the unnatural being it could smell.  After a few seconds, he found that he could tolerate that smell, and he had overpowered the instinct to drop down and attack his opponent head-on.

        There was a high-pitched, raspy cackle, sound made by vocal cords long dried and in disuse.  It was a hollow sound, and it froze Tarrin's spine.  "I can smell ye, Were-cat," it said.  "You know, you do, that Jegojah has come for you, yes.  Clever clever Were-cat, you are."

        The gate opened under him.  The top of a helmet became visible, as a skeletal being in archaic plate armor stepped through the gate, holding a sword stained heavily with blood.  It had obviously killed its way to the Tower, and that no alarm had been raised told Tarrin how good it was.  It held a shield in its other hand, and it was advancing into the passage slowly and carefully, head scanning back and forth.  But, like most creatures, it never bothered to look up.  "Close, ye are, Were-cat, close indeed," it cackled.  "Come taste the steel of Jegojah's blade.  Come out, and quick and clean I will be, yes.  I hold no ill will to ye, but kill ye I must, yes."

        Tarrin dealt the first blow.  Dropping down from his hiding place, he coiled up and then exploded into motion like a bow, curling his entire body as his arms brought his staff over his head.  The end of that staff struck the undead being directly on the top of the helmet, with enough force to cleave a human being in half.  But the creature merely staggered forward from the force of it, and Tarrin's staff recoiled from the helmet with enough force to spin him back around and miss putting his feet down.  He landed unceremoniously on his rump as the skeletal thing went down to its knees, and both of them returned to a vertical base almost instantly.

        Tarrin had to swallow the urge to flee in terror when it turned around.  Its face was gray, dead flesh pulled so tautly over the skull that its face was but a mask over the bone beneath.  Its eyes were pools of unholy red light, unblinking and steady, and bare yellowed teeth, without lips to cover them, sat below a grisly hole where a nose had once been.  It was tall, but still half a head shorter than him.  It cackled gleefully as it approached, making Tarrin go into a ready stance.  "Foolish boy," it said in that raspy voice, "your stick, it can't dent my armor, no."  It raised its sword into a ready position.  "Come then, foolish Were-cat, come face Jegojah in honorable combat!"

        Hissing, baring his fangs, Tarrin put his ears back and answered the challenge in a primal threat display.  Embracing the Cat to keep it from taking control of him, his two halves met to pursue a unified goal, and then rushed in for the attack.

        There was little grace to the first blows exchanged, but clear skill showed on both sides.  Tarrin was taken aback with the first couple of blocks, when he realized that the creature before him was every bit as strong as he was, if not stronger.  It looked ungainly, but it moved with viperlike speed, and what was most important, Tarrin felt he almost recognized the forms the creature was using.  It may be an undead creature, but it was fighting with very real skills of sword and shield.  And those skills were impeccable.  The creature moved sword and shield in perfect harmony, blocking a rapid and savage series of broad strokes of his staff designed to take advantage of his inhuman strength and smash an opponent to the ground.  After nearly losing his head in a stunningly fast swipe at his neck in response to that, Tarrin backed up and reassessed his opinion of this opponent.  The advantages Tarrin usually enjoyed over an enemy, speed, strength, and skill, were nonexistent here.  They were actually in the creature's favor.

        Tarrin waded back in, much more hesitant this time.  He began testing the creature, using forms and routines that baited, stressed, pushed, as he tried to feel out the extent of the creature's skill and speed.  His staff blurred as his power moved it about like a stick, blocking sword slashes and swiping and stabbing at his enemy in return.  He knew that it was also feeling him out, but there was little to be done for that.  He parried a  thrust at his chest, tried to come around and strike it on the opposite side, only to find its shield slamming up against his side.  Tarrin was pushed back by the heavy blow, and he screamed as a furiously hot line of pain ran up his side.  Blood flowed from the wound as the creature tried to reset its blood-trailing sword for a fast stab in the belly, but Tarrin planted his foot directly in the thing's hideous face, knocking out three of its teeth and driving it a few steps backwards.

        Hunching over the wound, Tarrin felt it burn and throb savagely.  There was something about it that kept it open, long after his regenerative power would have stopped the bleeding.  The creature had injured him, injured him for real, for the wound wasn't closing up the way it was supposed to.  Pushing the pain out of his mind, he saw it spit out another tooth.  He saw that his claws had punched five holes into its forehead and cheek, one of them deep enough to gouge a piece off its cheekbone.  It advanced quickly after shaking its head, and he twisted around another attempt to skewer him, then put his shoulder into another attempt to slam him with the shield.  It was the creature pushed back this time, and Tarrin bulled it out of the reach of its sword.  He whipped his staff around with only one hand, holding it by the end as he spun in a complete circle.  The move gave the staff horrific speed and force as it came around his body, and it cracked into its helmeted head with a sharp metallic clang, snapping the head to the side forcefully.

        But it merely righted its head and gave him an evil grin.  "Ye be good, Were-cat, good indeed," it complemented.  "Jegojah's head would have bounced on the floor if Jegojah were human."  Much to his dismay, Tarrin realized that its helmet wasn't even bent.

        Tarrin couldn't hurt it with his staff.  It was somehow invulnerable to it.  But why did the Goddess tell him to bring it?

        Because it was the only weapon he had, and though it couldn't hurt it, it was still useful.  And though it couldn't be hurt by his staff, his claws had quite visibly damaged it.  Just like the Wraith, Tarrin could injure this opponent if he attacked it with his natural weaponry.  Attacking it one magical creature to another.

        He had to get that sword away from it.  He understood that clearly.  If he didn't, it would chop him into fishbait.  It moved in quickly to re-engage, and Tarrin worked feverishly against the sword, keeping it away from him at all costs, fighting from a purely defensive posture.  Blood began slicking the floor from the wound in his side, and his foot slipped in it just enough to make the undead creature charge in for the attack.  But Tarrin simply let the foot slip out all the way, sinking underneath the blow meant to take off his head, and then he used a Selani form to rise up with his free paw leading, a deceptively slow move that carried tremendous power in it.  It hit the creature in the breastplate, and Tarrin's momentum carried it into the air, then sent it flying backwards.  It landed on its back a few spans away, and Tarrin capitalized on that by vaulting into the air after it, the butt of his staff leading as he tried to impale its face on the end of his weapon.

        But it wasn't there anymore.  Tarrin heard it behind him as he landed, so he rolled forward and came up facing it.  Its breastplate was caved in at the abdomen from the force of Tarrin's blow.  It pointed its sword at him, and before Tarrin even knew what was going on, he was on his back, pain blasting along his chest and arms.  He could feel the shirt against his chest burn from the impact with whatever magic the creature had thrown at him.  The smell of ozone was strong in the air, and the passage echoed loudly with a thunderclap.  Magic!  The Goddess warned him that it was a powerful creature, and it was only logical that that meant that it also had some magical capability.  It was on him instantly, and the only thing that saved him from having his head split in half was a raised foot.  He caught its wrist on the pad of his foot, bending his back impossibly tight and bracing his body with his arms as his leg absorbed the force of the attack, stopping the edge of the blade mere fingers away from Tarrin's forehead.  Tarrin's leg was much stonger that its arm, and his body uncoiled like a spring, hurling the creature away from him as his leg and body pushed against it.  But it didn't fall down, and Tarrin's backwards roll didn't get him far enough away.  He ducked under another blow meant to chop his head in half, but he didn't get down far enough.

        Tarrin screamed in pain as his right ear fell to the floor beside him, and that pain triggered the Cat in a way that he could not suppress.  The animal in him took over, and his eyes blazed from within with a greenish aura that consumed them.  Jegojah actually backed up as Tarrin exploded from his crouch and threw his staff aside, assaulting the undead creature with a blind, mindless fury that took the creature by surprise.  He was quickly bleeding from several shallow cuts and slashes in his arms and upper body, but he completely ignored the pain as the Cat in him sought nothing less than ripping off the creature's head.  The creature contained Tarrin's mindless fury, understanding that he had lost control, and it made him pay for it every time Tarrin's claws sought out its face by cutting another bleeding line in his hide.  Grabbing the edge of the creature's shield, Tarrin ripped it off of its arm, but it cost him a deep stab to his left shoulder in reply.  And just as the pain had triggered his loss of control, that deep injury, to the bone, somehow shocked him back into rational thought.  He grabbed the sword with his other paw, ignoring the blade's edges digging into his fingers, then pulled it out of his shoulder, then twisted it to the side.  He spun away from that motion and planted his clawed paw right in the creature's face as it tried to recover its position, staggering it back and giving Tarrin a chance to see what he had done to it while he was in his rage.

        At least he had given back as good as he got.  The creature had several very deep rends in its armor from his claws, and its face bore no less than four quartets of deep slashes that dug into the bone.  And now that it didn't have a shield, Tarrin felt that it evened things a bit.  His left arm was still movable, but it caused a shockwave of pain in him every time his shoulder shifted.  His head was pounding, and he could feel blood pour into his ear canal like water, dulling his hearing on the right side.

        It cackled again, giving him what Tarrin felt was a leery grin.  "Oh, clever, clever Were-cat," it rasped.  "Ye be better than Jegojah expected.  Professional trained, ye be, by a master who knows his fighting."

        "Let's get on with it," Tarrin snarled.

        The creature moved as if to advance, but then it called out a single unintelligible word, then slammed its booted foot into the floor.  It created a seismic shockwave that sizzled up the hallway like a tidal wave, and when it hit Tarrin, it picked him up and hurled him twenty spans down the passage.  His back slammed into the ornate gates to the inner chamber, and the shockwave drove them open and spilled him onto the floor beyond.

        Dazed, Tarrin lay on the floor, knowing that the creature was coming but unable to figure out how to make his body move.  Each bootstep seemed to be an eternity apart, and time seemed to slow to a crawl.  His eyes came into focus just in time to see it swinging its sword in a broad overhanded chop, meaning to put him down for good.  He managed to find out how to move his arms, and a blast of pain heralded his success as his paws arced up and over his body, then slapped together on either side of the broadsword's blade.  The blade cut into the pads on his palms, but the pressure he exerted on the sides halted its forward motion just above his chest.  Shock registered on the undead creature's face as Tarrin's foot smashed into its knee, buckling it and making the creature roll to the side as its supporting leg crumpled under its weight.  Tarrin pushed the sword along with it as he rolled in the other direction, coming to his feet as the creature also regained its footing.  Its left leg was bent at an unnatural angle at the knee, but it didn't seem to be in any pain or discomfort.

        With a grim look on its face, the thing advanced and engaged, but it limped on its damaged leg.  That gave Tarrin an advantage, and the Were-cat suddenly became like smoke, always just within the reach of the creature's sword, but never quite where the sword was trying to go.  Tarrin evaded and dodged the still-fast sword, moving like a reed in the wind, folding and slipping around the blade as it sought his blood.  He was trying to work the creature into a position where he could give it a finishing blow, but the cagey undead creature seemed to sense each of his attempts to work it into a bad position.  They traded futile blows for a long moment, until the creature managed to slash Tarrin across the thigh with its sword when he again slipped on a small pool of his own blood.  Sucking his breath in from the pain, Tarrin staggered back with a paw over his leg.  Something suddenly seemed to seize his tail in a hellish sensation of fire, but something that seemed to burn and freeze at the same time.  His tail flinched away from that feeling, and he didn't dare look back to see what it was.  The undead creature was coming at him in a rush that startled the Were-cat, too fast for its damaged leg, until he realized, too late, that it had lunged with every intention of falling onto the Were-cat after it its sword spitted him, using him to break its momentum.  Tarrin managed to slither around the point of the sword, but the creature slammed into his side, right against his injured shoulder, and Tarrin screamed and was staggered back from that painful force.

        Then all the world became pain.

        Jegojah stumbled forward after ramming its shoulder into the wounded shoulder of its opponent, forcing it back.  The Were-cat seemed to cross some sort of invisible boundary, and then its entire body was surrounded with some kind of blazing white light!  It was almost like smoke, surrounding the Were-cat, floating up and away from him in wisps and tendrils as if caught in some kind of wind or current.  Jegojah recognized it as Magelight, and he had only seen it once before.

        When his living body was killed on the battlefield, destroyed in the fires of High Sorcery, what the current Sorcerers called Ritual Sorcery.

        Jegojah staggered back, in awe, and it was then it realized that it was too late to run.

        Never had Tarrin experienced such pain.  It infused his very being, blazing into every tiny part of his body, seeking to fill him until he exploded.  The transformation into a Were-cat, long buried in his mind, was a candle held up to the bonfire compared to what sought to erode his very sanity now.  Only dimly did he understand that it was the power filling him, seeking to charge him to the bursting point, flooding into him in such a rush that he could not hold it all.

        Tarrin had stepped into the massive Conduit that ran up the center of the Tower, and the tremendous magical energy within it had touched him.

        His mind floating in a tidal wave of agony, Tarrin desperately realized that if he didn't do something with the energy filling him, it would destroy him.  His eyes focused through the wispy white light surrounding him at the awestruck Doomwalker, and he let out a primal scream of pain and rage, focusing it on his opponent.  His frenzied mind attempted to embrace the power, channeling the power, trying to harness it, to control it ever-so-slightly before it could incinterate him from within.  Raw power blazed from his incandescent body, striking the Doomwalker in the chest, and then filling it with the same energy that was filling him.  But the Doomwalker was not a Sorcerer, could not even begin to hold the power that Tarrin was forcing into it.

        In a brilliant pillar of fire, the Doomwalker's body was reduced to ash in mere instants.

        Incapable of focusing his awareness on anything else, still screaming, Tarrin raised his arms and did the only thing he could, release the energy back into the Conduit, allowing it to flow through him without building it up.  The entire Conduit suddenly flared with blazing white light, pulsing up along the current of magical energy, then shattering the crystal dome that stood at the very top of the tower, sending the column of incandescent light through the Ward surrounding the grounds.  It saturated the magical matrix of the Ward, forcing it to glow with the same brilliance, but did not disrupt its integrity.  The column of blazing light shot high into the sky, to illuminate the entire city of Suld with the light of the daytime sun.  The desperate act gave him a fleeting instant of rational thought, reducing the incredible pain to a level, however brief, where his mind had the chance to react.

        Out.  He had to get out of the Conduit.  Even allowing the power to flow through him was searing him from the inside out, trying to burn his body to ash.  Finding his legs through the whirlpool of pain that sought to suck him into oblivion, Tarrin managed to command his legs to push off and forward, a desperate leap to get him clear of the Conduit before the power burned him to a cinder.  Unable to feel anything other than the pain coursing through him, he had no idea if he had left the ground, had even moved, before the pain overwhelmed him, and he knew no more.

        The brilliant pillar of white light remained for several seconds, catching the attention of every man, woman, and child in the city of Suld.  It was beautiful and silent, a column of white light, so bright it stung the eyes if one looked directly upon it, standing over the city like some fantastic finger of a god.  And then it flickered and vanished.  The light of the Ward, forming a dome over the Tower grounds, remained for a moment more, pulsing and flickering, and then it too faded from view, leaving the entire city to wonder what magic the mysterious Sorcerers were conjuring.

        To most, it was simply an interesting event, something to talk about the next morning.  To others, it was a sign.  An omen, a warning of things to come.

        To them, it was the beginning.  And also perhaps the end.

        With a ragged gasp, the Keeper was shocked awake by what was happening around her.

        The entire Weave was shuddering!  The delicate magical matrix of energy to which all Sorcerers were linked suddenly pulsated and writhed, and for a fleeting instant the Keeper thought the entire Weave would tear itself asunder, generating another magical cataclysm similiar to the Breaking.  Intense force caused the strands near her to shudder and shake, like an earthquake in the Weave, and she could almost sense the unnatural energy coursing through the strands.

        And outside her large window, the night suddenly became as daytime, as brilliant white light flooded into her chamber and illuminated the city beyond.

        It had to be caused by an outside force.  There were natural shifts in the Weave, even the occasional violent raealignment of the strands, and sometimes even the breaking of a strand.  But none of those things came close to what she was feeling around her, feeling the power of it tingle against her skin, almost as if the power were seeking to touch her.  She dared not try to touch the Weave and assense what was happening to it.  To open herself to it while it was unstable could destroy her.

        It lasted for several seconds, and then the Weave settled back into normalcy.  She sat in her bed, staring at the light outside the window, then jumped up and rushed to it in time to see the magical light within the Ward begin to wane, flickering and dimming until the night was as it was supposed to be.

        So it was true.  The task for which they were training their nonhumans was truly at hand, and those who had objected to the precaution would have to hold their tongues.  Just as predicted, the turning of night to daytime in the city of the Goddess' children had come to pass.

        It was time.

        The first guard to arrive in the Heart of the Goddess found only Tarrin, clothes, fur, and hair burned away, with savage burns all over his body, laying prone on the floor.  He also found a bloodstained sword, a broken, dented shield, and a large pile of black ash.  The tip of the Were-cat's hairless, charred tail had wispy white tendrils of magic floating and dancing around it, which broke away from it like smoke to flow up towards the heavens.

        At first, there was only a sensation of nothing.  But that eventually faded, and Tarrin realized slowly that he wasn't dead.  Scents began to touch his nose, and muffled sounds began to creep into his awareness.

        He was laying on a soft sheet, in a soft bed.  He was on his back, and a warm, soft blanket covered him.  The coppery smell of Allia was near to him, as was the human scent and lavender and ivory that always identified Dolanna.  He also could smell the sharp scent of his mother, and the leathery smell that always tinged his father's scent.  He wanted to open his eyes, but he found himself to be so tired that even that simple act would have been a momumental achievement.  The very act of breathing, of beating his heart, were efforts that forced his body to focus all of its attention on those tasks.  His awakening also brought pain, dull ache in his shoulder and head, along his side, and over about every square finger of skin he had.  He felt like he had the itching sickness, and was covering his entire body.  It wasn't severe, just enough to be annoying, but even that sensation was welcome compared to the oblivion from which he had climbed.

        But Tarrin's magical nature was strong, and soon he felt himself strengthen, even as the voices around him sharpened to the point where he could understand the words.  He took stock in himself, and found that he could move, if only just, flexing his paw around the hand that was placed within it.  A hand that he hadn't felt until the pressure of it squeezing back overwhelmed the burning itch dominating his sense of touch.

        "Tarrin?" his mother's voice called.  "Tarrin, open your eyes.  You can do it."

        His eyelids were hard to open.  Something was crusted over them, and they didn't want to fold properly.  The best he could manage was a half-open right eye, but the left refused to cooperate.  But there was nothing but grayness past his eye.  With detached interest, he realized that the eye was blinded.  "Tarrin, what happened?  What did this to you?"

        It was hard to make his voice work, and it required a supreme effort on his part.  His voice came out in the barest of whispers, and his eye fluttered close even as he spoke, as if he could not support speaking and keeping his eye open at the same time.  "D--Doom...walker," he managed to gasp, and it was enough to send him spiralling back into the blackness.

        It was a long time before he clawed his way back to consciousness.  He wasn't sure how he knew that, but if the condition of his body was any indication, it had been quite a while.  The burning itch was gone, and the play of light against his eyelids bled through them and registered to his eyes.  His shoulder and ear still ached a bit, but on the whole he felt much stronger than before.  He was still weak, but the simple act of opening his eyes wouldn't exhaust him this time.  The scents in the room were the same, but also different.  His parents and Allia were still there, as was Jenna.  There were two or three other humans in the room also, scents he didn't know.  No, he did know one of them.  The blond Sorceress, Jula, whom he had met in the baths some time ago.  There was very little talking, and Tarrin was keenly aware of a hand holding his paw.

        His eyes fluttering open, he squinted against the bright light in the room, then they focused on his mother's haggard face.  She had dark circles under her eyes, and strangely, her braid had been cut off.  She smiled warmly at him as his eyes focused on her, and she patted his cheek lovingly.  "Good morning, my son," she said with a smile.  "How do you feel?"

        "Like an army marched over me," he replied in a weak voice.  "What happened to your hair?"

        She put a hand to her short locks, an annoyed look on her face.  "I'll explain later," she told him.  "The important thing is that you're alright."

        "My brother, you must stop scaring me," Allia said in a stern voice, squeezing his other paw.

        "I'm sorry, it's not like I planned that."

        "Anything feel broken?  Do you want Jula to heal something for you?" his mother asked.

        "No, I feel alright," he said after a pause, sensing his own body.  It was all there, including his severed ear, though the ear was still a bit tender.  He was weak as a newborn kitten, but he could tell that his body had healed what the Sorcerers had not reattached or closed.  Now all it had to do was recover its strength.

        The pretty face of Jula crowded into his vision, and she put her hands on his face.  He felt her touch the Weave, and then a slow, warm influx of energy flowed into him, seeking to invigorate his depleted body.  Most of the energy was lost, but enough of it took hold in his muscles that he felt well enough to move.  He still wasn't sure if his legs could hold his own weight, though.

        "I'm getting tired of waking up with people hovering over me," he grunted, which made his mother smile.

        "Better to wake in a sickbed than not to wake at all," she told him.  "Now, tell me what happened."

        "It called itself a Doomwalker," he began, seeking to edit the story so that the Goddess' warning was removed.  It required a bit of creative rearrangement of the facts, though.  "I saw it from my room while it was coming across the grounds, and I knew it was there for me.  I came to the central Tower to try to find some Sorcerers, but I got lost.  It caught up with me in a passageway.  We had a fight, and then I--" he shuddered at the memory of the pain, and his body seemed to twinge in response.  "I was knocked into the Conduit in the Heart, and after that, I don't really remember very much.  Just pain."

        "Well, that explains the fireworks," Jula said with a warm smile.  "It seems that your little visit to the Heart made the Conduit light up like the sun.  I heard that they could see it miles offshore.  It also explains the burns.  You came this close--" she held up her thumb and forefinger the barest of distances apart-- "to being Consumed."

        "Huh," Tarrin grunted.  He didn't remember anything like that.  Then again, the only thing he could remember about the experience was that he never wanted to go through it again.  There was pain, and more pain, and different kinds of pain, and the sensation of being boiled in his own skin.  There was a fleeting image of the Doomwalker in a furious column of fire, its silhouette disintegrating in a span of two heartbeats.  But not much else.  "Is it dead?"

        "Dead?  The Doomwalker?  There wasn't enough left of it to put into a bottle," Jula told him.  "Whatever you did to it, it was a pretty thorough job."

        "Thank goodness," he sighed.  "It was using magic against me, and I couldn't beat it in a fight.  It almost killed me."

        "Almost doesn't count, my son," Elke said gently, putting her hand on her forehead.

        "What happened to your hair?"

        She was quiet a moment.  "That, thing, didn't come right for you.  It attacked us first.  It tried to kill Jenna."

        Tarrin's heart froze in his chest, but she gave him a look that quickly soothed his fears.  "She's alright.  The Sorcerer that was tutoring her managed to beat that thing back long enough for me to plant an axe in its face.  There were several people there, so it became a nasty fight.  The thing was throwing bolts of lightning everywhere, and a couple of times it simply disappeared from one place and appeared in another.  And it was fast.  It gave us all a serious fight.  It gave your father a nasty slash on the belly and killed two of the people the Tower have at the house as guards, and injured several others."

        "How is father?"

        "He'll be alright," she said gently.  "The wound was pretty deep, and it came close to spilling his guts on the floor, but after he dropped his sword, the thing stopped coming after him.  It was almost bizarre."

        Tarrin remembered it saying something about an honorable battle between them.  "Father wasn't armed," he realized.  "It wouldn't attack someone that didn't try to fight back."

        "Well, it certainly didn't think that way about Jenna," she said, her temper rising.  "Jenna used her magic after the other Sorcerer was hit by some strange bolt of lightning the thing threw at him, and that sent it running with its tail between its legs.  I've never seen such a display.  She really gave it what-for."

        "What happened?"

        "She picked it up in her magic and almost beat it to pieces against the floor," she replied with a wicked chuckle.  "Then she crushed it between the ceiling and a shaft of stone she pulled out of our floor, and then she set it on fire.  It ran from our parlor trailing flames, and the last we saw of it, it was running to jump into the river."

        Tarrin smiled weakly.  "Jenna always did have a temper," he said.  Little Jenna, his sweet little sister.  It was strange to think of her as an avenging Sorceress, wielding her powerul magic with skill and precision.  But that seemed to be exactly what she did.  Tarrin was too unfamiliar with his own power to even think of trying to use it against the Doomwalker, and he much preferred to fight opponents hand to paw.  But for Jenna, it was the only weapon she had.  She was, after all, only a young girl.  But it seemed to be a weapon she could wield with power and skill when she needed it.

        But it was important.  The Doomwalker wasn't just after him.  It was also after his sister.  But why?  Why did they want him, Allia and Keritanima, and now Jenna, dead?  It didn't make any sense.  He had to figure out what was going on.  Everyone around him knew something, and it was something that they wouldn't tell him.  And without that information, he had no idea what was going on, or why he seemed to be so important.

        The attention of half the world is set on your shoulders, he remembered the Goddess telling him.  But why?  Why?

        "Well, she's a bit shaken up, but other than that she's fine," she told him.  "She's in the Tower now, resting.  She'll come see you later, when you feel better."

        "I'd like that," he said, laying back into the pillow, his mind whirling.  It was too much, too quickly.

        "You just lay back and rest, my son," Elke said to him in a crooning voice.  "I'm here now, and I'll watch over you."

        He closed his eyes, letting his weariness sweep over him, taking comfort in the fact that his mother was there, watching, and that made him feel oddly safe and secure.  He fell back asleep quickly.

        A Sorcerer had repaired the damage to his body, and a night's rest had replenished his strength.  By morning, Tarrin was up and about, feeling a bit tired, but otherwise whole.  The trauma of the day before had faded in his concern for his father and family, so he was up and out of the room well before anyone from the Tower could stop in and check up on him.  Although the memory of the pain had faded, other thoughts and worries had taken its place.  And Tarrin was worried.

        For some reason, he had the feeling that something very bad was going to happen soon.  What had happened with the Conduit--Tarrin shuddered at that thought.  But he knew that he had done something, or had something done to him.  He could feel it inside him.  The sense of everything had changed, ever-so-slightly, and the sense of the Weave was with him all the time now.  Without even reaching out for it, he could sense the Weave all around him, and its power beckoned him, called out to him, sang to him, begging him to complete the circuit and become one with it.  Almost like he had awakened a part of himself in the fiery gauntlet of the Conduit.  But with that newfound sensation was a gnawing fear that it was not normal, that it was what set him apart from the others, that it was what made them so interested in him.

        It wasn't a sensation of power, it was more like a clearer understanding of what was around him.  The Weave was a part of the world, though it was invisible and intangible to the majority of the world's population.  Tarrin felt more in tune with it, and though he couldn't see the strands, he could sense them around him, could almost feel the energy flowing through them.  It was strange, unusual, and yet at the same time, he realized that he had always felt those things.  They had just never been so clear to him before.

        And again, as always, the fear of what was going on around him had resurfaced.  Now more than ever, he had to find out what was going on, and why he was of such great interest to the Tower, and most likely many others.  Things had changed, he knew.  He could feel it.  Things had changed, and he had the feeling that unless he found out what was going on, he was going to pay dearly for his failure.

        Following the scent of his mother wasn't that difficult, and he managed to get to their door by dawn.  As he expected, they were not alone.  Two Sorcerers, one of them Jula, sat in the sitting room of the apartment, and Tarrin could hear his family moving around in the room beyond.

        "Tarrin," Jula said in surprise.  "How do you feel?"

        "I'm well enough," he replied, crossing the room quickly and opening the door beyond.  Inside was a well-appointed bedchamber, with a large bed, chest, armoire, and a writing desk.  Bedtables held an oil lamp and a pitcher of water with washbasin, but Tarrin's attention was focused on the three figures on the bed.  Eron Kael was laying in the bed with Elke sitting on one side and Jenna on the other.  They turned to look when he came in through the door, and Tarrin found his sister buried in his arms only seconds later.  She began to cry, clutching onto him tightly.  He picked her up easily and carried her to the bed, then he sat down with Jenna clinging to him, putting his paw on his father's shoulder gently.  "Good morning," Tarrin said with a slight smile.

        "I'm getting too old for this," Eron said with a chuckle.  "I see you're well, boy."

        "You can't keep a good Were-cat down," Tarrin said with a shrug.  "How is it?"

        "The Sorcerers fixed it well enough, but you know how that healing takes it out of you."  Tarrin nodded.  His experience with being healed was intimate.  "I'm starting to feel well enough to move around, but this taskmaster here won't let me out of bed."

        "They said he wasn't to exert himself until noon, and that means that he doesn't get out of bed," Elke said fiercely.

        "I don't think getting up and sitting in a chair counts as exertion," Eron said testily.

        "Deal with it," she said in a flinty tone.

        "What choice do I have?"

        "None."

        "Then why say it?" he asked in a sharp voice.

        "I never said anything.  You're the one that keeps trying to put words in my mouth."

        Eron blew out his breath, and Tarrin had to surpress a grin.  Jenna had gotten over her outburst, and she was giggling a bit. Tarrin squeezed her gently.  "I heard that you had a scare yesterday, brat," Tarrin told her.

        "Scary isn't the word," she said with a shiver.  "That thing--"

        "Don't dwell on it, dear," Elke cautioned in a gentle voice.

        "Well don't worry about it," he told her.  "From what they told me, I didn't leave enough of it to put into a jar.  It won't be bothering you for a long while.  If ever."

        "That's my big brother," Jenna said in a quivering voice.  "Always there to kill the boogey man."

        Tarrin chuckled.  "Well, I don't think I'll go that far," he said.  "I see they gave you a nice room."

        "I'd rather be home," Eron growled.  "What's left of it, anyway."

        "That bad?"

        "The roof caved just as we got out," Elke told him.  "The fight wasn't very good for the house.  It will take some time to repair it."

        Tarrin glanced at the door.  "Have you made any other plans?"

        "We were thinking of staying here," she said.

        Tarrin shook his head.  "This isn't a good place to be, mother," he warned.  "You should find other arrangements."

        "There are any number of inns--" Eron began, but Tarrin shook his head again.  He reached over to the writing desk and picked up a piece of paper and a quill pen, inked the pen, then set it on the bed by his reclining father.

        "You know the city pretty well?" Tarrin asked.

        "Fairly," Elke replied.

        Tarrin wrote a set of directions on the paper, using the Ungardt language.  He slipped it to Elke, who read it quickly, reached it over to the lamp, and then burned it.  "When you get there, tell the owner of the house that you're friends of Shadow," he told her in Ungardt.  "He'll know what that means, and he won't turn you away."  He closed his eyes, memories of Janette and the orderly house of Janine the wife flooding through him.

        "I take it that they're friends of yours?"

        "More than friends.  If they remember me, anyway."

        "Oh, you mean that they're them?"

        He nodded.  "Be nice to them, mother."

        "Of course," she snorted.  "Why shouldn't we stay here?"

        "If you two don't stop that, I'm going to get surly," Eron said waspishly.  Eron couldn't speak Ungardt.

        "Hush," Elke commanded her husband absently.

        He glared at her, but said nothing.  "Something's going on here, you know that," Tarrin told her.  "I don't know, but I get the feeling that what happened yesterday is going to make things tense here for a while.  It would probably be a good idea for you to be somewhere where nobody knows your name, if you understand my meaning."

        She gave him a penetrating look, and finally nodded.  "Maybe you're right," she said.  "But Jenna--"

        "I think Jenna has enough control of herself not to have an accident, at least for a ride or two," Tarrin said.  "She can continue after things have a chance to settle down."

        "I think you have a good point," Elke said after a moment.

        "Well, I'd better get moving before they send a posse after me," Tarrin said, reaching down and patting his father's shoulder.  "I'll come visit in a couple of days.  You'd better get better, father."

        "If I don't, your mother will kill me," he said with a smile.

        "Nothing like motivation," he teased, then he squeezed his sister gently again.  "Time for me to go, Jenna."

        "Be careful, Tarrin," she said, letting go of him and going around the bed to sit beside her mother.

        Without thinking, Tarrin reached out to his mother and put his paw under her chin, cupping it.  After thinking about what he wanted for a moment, he touched the Weave and quickly wove together the proper flows of fire, water, earth, and divine energy, then released them into her.  Elke's hair suddenly grew at a shocking rate, quickly extending well past her waist.  She scrubbed furiously at her scalp for a second, then felt the weight of it.

        Tarrin felt something different about it this time, something strange, and something that scared him.  That tremendous power that he remembered from the day before seemed to be right there, and it all came at him in a sudden flood that took him quite by surprise.  He almost didn't remember how to sever himself from his own power, because it came at him in a flood that he couldn't hope to choke off or control, and it happened to him so fast that he didn't even have time to think about what to do to stop it.  Just as the day before, severing himself had been a reflex action, a defense against what he was feeling.  He wouldn't be able to let go of the Weave, he sensed that, so he had to cut himself off before he lost control.  He blinked, trying to understand what had happened.

        He had touched the Weave, but when the Weave noticed it, the Weave had tried to touch him.

        She stared at Tarrin in surprise, but he only smiled at her, covering his sudden shock at what had nearly happened to him.  Losing it in front of Jula was not a good idea.  "You don't look natural without your braid," he told her, standing up.  "Be well, mother.  I'll see you soon."

        "How did you do that?" she asked.

        "I've been healed so many times, I should know how it's done by now," he said in a rueful tone, shrugging.  "But I really have to go.  I'll see you soon."

        "Be well, my son," she replied.

        After taking her hand, he was quickly out and away.  Out in the hall, he allowed himself to slump against the wall, paw to his head.  He felt drained, as if the sudden influx of power had taken his own strength with it.  What happened?  By the end of that first day when he first could touch the Weave, he could easily manage to flow of power.  But that had been...more, different.  It wasn't the same as it had been before his fight with the Doomwalker.

        "Let's talk about it, Tarrin," Jula's voice called from the door.  The slender, pretty blond came up to him and touched him on the cheek, and he felt gentle warmth flow into him.  "I felt a sudden, radical inflow of power, and then it cut off.  You didn't mean to do that, did you?"

        "I, no, I didn't," he said.  He didn't know Jula well, but the few times that he had spoken with her, she had always left him with a good impression.  The only katzhi-dashi he even came close to trusting was Dolanna, but Jula was right here, and she already seem