"Truly?" Denai said in wonder. "What could have made something like this?"

"A god," Tarrin replied, standing back up. "Only a god could do this."

"Why would they make something like this?" Var asked curiously. "It serves no purpose."

"Not now," he replied. "But five thousand years ago, I'll bet that this made one terrific barrier."

"The Blood War!" Sarraya said in surprise.

Tarrin nodded. "It fits. This is from the Blood War. Probably a barrier to keep the Demons on one side of it. That side over there, if I remember my history right," he said, pointing to the far side.

"Huh," Var grunted. "My people always thought that it was shaped by the wind."

"It has been since it was made, but it would take wind a million years to eat out a rift this size," he replied. "You said there were plants, Denai. That looks like a jungle down there."

"The land below is below the water level," Var told him. "It seeps out of the rocks and pools up, so it can support plants. Most don't know that a verdant belt exists in the middle of the desert."

"Do your people try to go down there?" Sarraya asked.

Var shook his head. "The lands below are too dangerous," he replied. "There are a great many inu and kajat below, and the Cloudracers claim that area as their own. We respect their claim."

"Cloudracers? What are they?"

"Wait long enough, and you'll see one," Denai told the Farie. "Tall people with wings."

Tarrin raised an eyebrow and looked down at the Selani. "Tall? Thin? With feathered wings?"

Denai nodded.

"So that's why she flew north," Tarrin said, piecing it together.

"Who?" Sarraya asked.

"Ariana," he replied. "The Aeradalla. Remember her?"

"Oh!" Sarraya said in realization. "They live in the desert?"

"That would explain why nobody ever sees them," Tarrin reasoned, then he turned to Denai. "Do you know where they live?"

"Everyone knows," she replied. "They live at the top of the Cloud Spire. We'll begin to see them now, since we're moving into what's considered their territory."

"Allia never said anything," Sarraya said, a bit annoyed.

"We keep them a secret," Var told her. "It's part of our pact with them. No Selani will tell outsiders about the Cloudracers."

"She wouldn't even tell me," Tarrin grunted. "That must be a serious oath. Wait, why did you tell us?"

"Because it's something you would have found out on your own," he replied calmly.

That surprised him a little. Allia had kept a secret! It made him wonder what else she hadn't told him, what else her Selani honor would not allow her to reveal. He didn't really blame her, because he understood how she felt about oaths, but it made him a little curious. He wondered what else she knew, how many more mysterious secrets she kept locked up inside her.

Tarrin looked down again. The Aeradalla would wait until later. "Where do we cross this thing?" he asked.

"That way," Denai said, pointing northward.

"May as well camp here," Sarraya noted. "It's getting dark, and you definitely don't want to wander too far in the wrong direction around here."

"Truly," Denai said with a smile. "I'll find a good site for us."

"Not if I find it first," Var said in a swaggering tone.

"We'll see about that, Var," she said, and then they both turned and raced off in different directions.

Those two would turn absolutely anything into a competition.

"Heh," Sarraya grunted. "Want to wait, or find a site while they're busy trying to outdo each other?"

"There's a good place right there," Tarrin said, pointing to a slight depression in the sandy, barren soil that would serve well to capture the heat of the fire and keep the site warm.

"Boy, will they be disappointed," Sarraya grinned as the two of them moved to erect a campsite for the night.

They settled in for the night, but Tarrin found himself unable to sleep. He wandered away from the campsite, away from the protection of the fire, and found himself standing at the edge of the Great Canyon again, staring down into its black depths. The rift ate at him in a strange way, both its presence and how he had sensed the magic that created it. The land here had been a beautiful grassland when the rift was made, and in five thousand years, it had degenerated into this formidable desert. It made him wonder what had caused such a drastic change, what had turned the rain away from this area and turned it into a sandy wasteland. Could the rift itself had played a part in it? Had it altered the water table in the region so drastically that it changed the weather patterns? Anything was possible, but he knew that something outside of the natural order had to have a hand in changing this place.

The memory of the magic was quite fresh, and he could still feel the tingles of the magical residue. He had never had so sensitive a feel for magic before. He hadn't been able to feel that before, but then again, he knew that everything about his magic was different now. He had little doubt that such a sensitive feel for magic was common for Weavespinners, since from what he'd managed to piece together, they were much more attuned to magic than other kinds of magicians. He couldn't make magic yet, but he knew that he had already awakened some parts of his magical ability, and this sensitivity had to be one of them.

He touched the amulet around his neck and found that the sensation of active magic was quite different, kind of like a buzzing sensation along his fingers as they touched the black metal. Touching it made him realize that he'd been feeling it for days now, rides, but the weight of the amulet and its presence, and everything that had happened, had made him ignore or overlook the sensations that the amulet caused in him. The metal felt alive to him, and in a way, he guessed that it was. His touch told him many things about the amulet. That the magic that made it was ancient beyond understanding, from before the Blood War, and that it had been re-enchanted recently to add to its basic abilities. One of them, he knew, was the magic that kept it around his neck. He picked through the magical abilities of the amulet more closely, realizing that it was enchanted to do more than he thought that it could.

That surprised him. He thought that he knew everything of which the amulet was capable. The magic was ancient, but it was still powerful, so powerful that it survived the magical rupture of the Breaking. He closed his eyes and delved into the amulet, sorting through its many magical enchantments, magicks laid down successively over thousands of years. Almost as if every owner of the amulet had added his or her own personal addition to its magic before passing it on to the next. The roots of its magic were founded in the dimmest past, thousands of years before the Blood War, during the time of the True Ancients. A time during which nobody knew its history. That startled him. The amulet around his neck had to be one of the most ancient relics on the face of Sennadar!

Most of the enchantments within had faded or lost their potency over the years, but some of them were still active, still strong. The elsewhere was its primary function, the original enchantment created into the amulet, but inspection of those magical enchantments told him that he hadn't even scratched the surface of the true power of the amulet's abilities in that direction. Searching through the weaves of creation showed him their pattern, and he found that he could read those patterns like a book, read them to understand how they worked. The elsewhere as he used it was its basic operation, what took no active will on the part of the wearer. What he didn't know was that the wearer could banish to or summon from that elsewhere any object held or worn, with nothing but the will for it to happen. The elsewhere was a non-place, but it behaved like a real place in respect to the objects stored within it. They had physical location, so objects couldn't be placed in the same area within it. That meant that if he had something in the elsewhere that had gone there from his left paw, he couldn't send something else into the elsewhere from that same paw. Something would already be occupying that area of elsewhere. He also couldn't send more into the elsewhere that, when taken all together, weighed more than he did. That was its limit. Size or volume were no barriers, it was its weight that mattered. He also found that nothing alive could be sent into the elsewhere. He found that by concentrating on it, he could sense what was within the elsewhere at any time he desired, an inventory of sorts of what he was carrying, and where it was in respect to knowing where and how it would appear when it was summoned forth.