But that power had had its effect on this one. He could feel it now. He had become totally enslaved to the power of the crown, had become like an object himself, devoted to the intoxicating aura the crown emanated. He could feel it infuse the wretch, infuse and corrupt the harmony of his body with its power. Such power could not help but corrupt the weak, or those with motivations that weren't grounded in the real world. He would waste away and die sitting there being close to the object of his obsession.

"Is that crown it?" Sarraya asked.

Tarrin nodded. "It supports the city somehow. That's what it was made to do, but it's too complicated for me to figure out. In any event, we'd better go. The crown radiates a power that can entice the weak, and though I don't much care for what it offers, I'm not so certain about you."

"I'm a Druid, Tarrin," she said with a teasing grin. "If I need something, I can just make it. The crown can't offer me anything I don't already have, or can't get."

He nodded calmly. That was the exact attitude she needed to be immune from the crown's enticing allure. "This one wasn't so lucky," he said, motioning at the wasted figure.

"I almost pity him," Sarraya sighed. "Should we leave him here?"

"What else can we do?" he asked her. "If we heal him, he'll just come right back here and waste away again. The only way to cure him is to free him of the influence of the crown, and that would take Sorcery."

"Well, could you…?" Sarraya asked, wiggling her fingers.

"You know very well I can't use my power, Sarraya," he told her bluntly.

"Well, it just seems wrong to leave him here like this," she said helplessly. "As a fellow flier, I fully understand what brought him here."

"What do you mean?"

"Losing the ability to fly is like a living death, Tarrin," she said earnestly. "Those months I was landbound was a living hell. When this one lost his wing, he probably craved something to fill the void that was left in his life, and that may have led him up here, to that crown. Who knows, maybe he thought it could heal him, and he was willing to risk having this happen to him to get back the one thing in his life he couldn't live without."

Looking at it like that, he could understand her point of view. It would be like him becoming human again. There would always be something missing from inside him, a part of him that had been ripped away, and it would leave a void in him that nothing could fill. Instead of dying, instead of simply accepting it, he very well may have had them bring him up here to see if he could somehow use the crown to restore his lost wing. But he had failed, and now a slow death by starvation and dehydration loomed in his future. He almost felt sorry for the man. Almost. He was still a stranger, and the man's fate was of no concern of his.

And yet…

She was right. It was wrong to just leave him here. He should at least try to use Sorcery. If he tried and failed, then he could leave without feeling bad over not trying. At least he would have tried, and there was no dishonor in trying your hardest and not succeeding. The struggle was more important than the result.

Besides, as it had been before, Tarrin's human half simply could not turn its back on someone in pain, someone in need. As it had reacted to Sheba, so it reacted to this wasted wretch.

He blinked, shaking his head. Those damned Selani had made him soft.

Roughly, he reached out and grabbed the man by the head. It was not a gentle grip. Then he emptied his mind and opened his senses, feeling the Weave, sensing it, opening himself to the sensations it inspired inside. He could sense the crown and the Conduit, could sense the strands that spun off the Conduit. Once he fully felt them, could hear the pulsing of the magic through them, he reached out to them, seeking a contact on the Weave…

And found nothing.

Maybe you're already in contact with the Weave, Sarraya had told him, not so very long ago. He remembered that, remembered that he'd failed because he was trying to find something he already possessed. He had been trying to touch the Weave when he already was connected with it, in ways that extended beyond a simple touch. He was a part of the Weave now, a living extension of it, an extension strong enough to alter it with his very presence. He didn't have to touch the Weave, for he had already found his connection with it.

You've been growing stronger and stronger, even without trying to use your magic, she had said. Could she be right? Could he be ready to regain his powers? He thought that he understood the mistake he had been making before. This time, instead of trying to touch the Weave, he should try to simply use his magic. But with no magic inside him, how would he affect the magic of the Weave? He would have nothing to exert force against it, nothing to push it out of the strands to do as he needed it to do.

The strands bent towards her, as if her very presence exerted force on them, he remembered thinking when he saw the Sha'Kar woman, when she had forced him to find the core of his power.

Could that be it? Could his very presence, the power of his ability alone be enough to cause the Weave to respond to him? He reached out with his senses, closing his eyes tight, reaching into the Conduit, into the strands, into the air around him, sensing every iota of magical power that surrounded him. He could feel the magic there, the strands, the flows, the little surges of power that flowed through them like invisible blood. He could feel the magic, sense it, see it with his mind's eye. And since he could see what he was trying to affect, it allowed him to try to use it.

It was almost ridiculously easy, and it felt much like using Druidic magic. He pushed against the Weave not with power inside him, but with the force of his will and the power of his innate magical ability. He felt the Weave shudder, then vibrate, then burst out into a strange choralling sound that only a Sorcerer could hear, an odd harmonic of energies that seemed to cause the strands to vibrate, almost to sing.

And the flows pulled free of the strands.

He sensed the differences immediately. The strands fought against him, actively resisted him, trying to wriggle free of his will and return to the Weave. He had to clamp down on them and force them to do his bidding, force them with an intense concentration that reminded him of his first days as an Initiate, struggling to maintain his grip on a single flow. They fought against him, but the force of his will finally broke them of their rebellious nature, and they bent to his demands.

They coalesced around him, around his paws, surrounding him with their power. He was so caught up in the exultation of his success that he nearly forgot what he was doing, but he quickly got himself under control. Flows of Water, Earth, and Divine energies wove together beneath his paws, flowing into the Aeradalla before him, the flows of healing. They merged into a powerful weave that scoured the magical contamination of the crown out of the Aeradalla's body much like a wife scrubbed the dirt from her doorstep. Then they assaulted the severed stump that had once supported a wing, overrode the body's refusal to grow out to restore the lost limb. With sickening cracking sounds, a bud of a new wing tore through the Aeradalla's robe, then quickly expanded and filled out, gaining length by the second, until it reached a comparable size as the other wing. Then feathers sprouted from that bare limb, growing as fast as the eye could take it in, leaving behind a wing that was healthy and strong.

Almost as an afterthought, he sent those healing flows through the other wing, restoring muscles melted away by months-years-without use.

"Tarrin!" Sarraya squealed in glee, " you did it!" She threw up her hands and let out a cry of happiness. "You did it! I told you you'd get your powers back within a ride!" she laughed in delight.