"I knew it would come to this, Tarrin," she told him evenly. "Your power has been growing ever since we met. Every time you use it, you're stronger the next time. Almost like every touch on the Weave brings it closer to you. What this means is that now you can't use Sorcery unless we really don't have much choice, and when we do it, you have to be very calm, very collected, and know exactly what you intend to do. And you can't do anything that I can't control."

"I figured that already," he replied. "I was going to use Sorcery to sweep out the Trolls at the border, but now we're going to have to find another way." He looked up into the sky, at the Skybands. "She said something funny. She said that she couldn't teach me how to use Weavespinner magic, but she said it in a strange way. I think she was trying to tell me that there is someone that can teach me that."

"But all the Weavespinners are long gone," Sarraya protested. "They disappeared with the Ancients and the Sha'Kar."

"I know. That's why I can't figure it out. There's just nobody left to teach me something that disappeared a thousand years ago."

"There has to be someone. She wouldn't have told you that otherwise."

"I know, but I haven't got the faintest idea who. Not even the katzh-dashi know, and if anyone in the world would know, it's them."

"Why wouldn't she teach you?"

"She said she's not allowed. She's my patron, and she can't give me that kind of help. It's against their rules."

"Well that's no big deal, Tarrin," Sarraya said impishly. "Answer me this. Do you think a God would know something like that?"

"Well, they've been around since the age of Power, so they might," he said after a moment. "I don't know if gods use Sorcery."

"You're being very narrow-minded, Tarrin," Sarraya chuckled. "Gods know lots of things that really don't do them any good. It's part of what being a god is all about. You know, that omniscience angle to impress the peons."

Tarrin had to laugh at her irreverent tone.

"And you've forgotten, you're an equal-opportunity peon. You're walking around with more than one god under your belt. I remember what Dolanna said about you, and about these," she said, and he felt her finger touch his shoulder, touch the fabric of his shirt, under which were his Selani brands. "That when Allia put them on you, you became subject to the Selani goddess. When you get into the desert, you think you could convince her to teach you what you need to know? After all, she's not your patron. She's just a goddess that has partial ownership of you. She isn't bound by the same rules that your Goddess is."

Tarrin sat up, then he looked down at the reclining Faerie with wide eyes. What a clever idea! Of course! Fara'Nae wouldn't be bound by the same restrictions as the Goddess! If he could convince her to teach him, she very well may be able to do so, provided that she knew about Sorcery. When he passed into the desert, he would pass into her lands. He would be right where he'd need to be to learn anything she was willing to teach.

"Sarraya, if you weren't so small, I'd kiss you," he said sincerely. "That's a very good idea. She may not know what I need to know, but it's still a great idea."

"Well, you finally admit to my superiority," she said with a wink.

"Don't push it, bug," he teased with a smile, then he flopped back down onto his bedroll.

It was certainly possible. Only a god would really know what he needed to learn, and Fara'Nae did have a stake in him. If she did know how Sorcery worked, she could conceivably teach him what had been forgotten by man for a thousand years. It gave him a new reason to get into the desert, a greater motivation.

All that stood in his way was an army of Trolls.

He hadn't forgotten about that. He couldn't just blast them out of his way now, so he had to come up with something else to get around them. But he was a clever Were-cat, with a devious companion. If he couldn't use brute force, then he could always use deception and subterfuge. Tarrin could handle deception and subterfuge, and Sarraya was born with vast quantities of it.

If there was a way around those Trolls, they would find it.

But that was something that was still days away. They had quite a bit of travelling to do first, and plenty of time to come up with a good plan to get them safely into the desert. When the time came, they'd be ready.

But until then, there was time to plan. Time to prepare. Time. It was something that he'd felt was in short supply lately, but here, now, at least for this problem, he still had a great deal of it. He felt nearly luxuriously afforded that precious item, at least for a little while. Until his time ran out, anyway.

Tarrin looked up into the bright sky, looking at the narrow white lines that were the Skybands as they crossed the empty, cloudless sky. Yes, just this once, he had time.

He would make the most of it.

To: Title EoF

Sometimes, Sarraya's cleverness amazed him.

If it wasn't enough that she was a strong Druid, her devious nature would still make her an invaluable companion and friend.

What she had done, quite simply, was make Tarrin Kael disappear.

Tarrin sat on the top of a rather beaten wagon, patches and slapdash repairs obvious to any onlooker, being pulled by a pair of old, tired-looking horses with reins that had been broken and tied in a knot. The wagon was filled with baskets of carrots and bushels of raw wheat. Tarrin drove the wagon, scratching at his bare forearm, cursing the nagging pain that came with holding the human shape. Though it was Tarrin, the human driving the wagon looking nothing like the Tarrin that his opposition was probably expecting. They were looking for a young, tall man with long blond hair. What they were getting was a man with a curiously ageless face, looking neither young nor old, with short black hair, wearing a plain undyed robe and a turban.

Sarraya had helped with what he could not fake. They had gone back to the overturned wagon during the night that Sarraya had engineered the plan, and found the two humans gone. Tracks and marks showed that someone had arrived in a wagon from the city by the river, picked them up, and gone back. They had left the wagon, which was what Tarrin had returned to get. He fixed it so that it was good enough for their plan, and then Sarraya conjured the two nags to pull it. Then she conjured all the vegetables and wheat, and Tarrin had used the remains of the wagon's cover to fashion reins and some other things to make the wagon look well used. After they were done with the wagon, Tarrin had taken the human shape to test out their plan.

And that had been the first real surprise. Sarraya had stared for nearly ten minutes, and he stared at himself in the reflection of water in a conjured pail. He looked so different. He still had his own features, but the young man that had been Tarrin was gone. Replaced with it was a male version of Triana, an ageless face that emanated its own power, as if the twitching of an eyebrow could pronounce doom upon the onlooker. Though he looked ageless, it was apparent to anyone looking at him that he was very mature, as if he was wise beyond his indeterminate years. In human form, his features were a little sharper, and he was nearly a span and a half shorter. He was still an immensely tall human, but nowhere near the towering height he possessed in his natural form. Tarrin's human form was now just as tall as his hybrid, humanoid form had been before Shiika's draining kiss. And because of that, it felt more correct to be at that height than it did in his natural form, for he still wasn't entirely used to the gain in height yet.

The major blessing of the disparate heights was what it caused the amulet around his neck to do. When he was in human form, the manacles went into the elsewhere because they would fall off his human wrists. And when he changed from human to his natural form, it caused any shoes he was wearing to go into the elsewhere, because they were too small for his hybrid feet. Now, when he took the human form, the backpack holding the Book of Ages also went into the elsewhere, because it was fitted for his much larger humanoid body. What that meant was that it would not lead them to him while he was in human form, and it also meant that when he had the time, he could bring the backpack back, take it off, change back into human form, shorten the straps and put it on, then change back to his natural form. Because the backpack's straps would be too small, it would put the book in the elsewhere. It meant that he now did have a way to stay in his much more mobile natural form, yet not have the Book of Ages out to draw every enemy in range right to him.