"It's safe now," he told them, wearily. "Miranda, could you help us carry Jula back to the Tower?"

"Is it safe?" Miranda asked.

"I was told it was," he replied.

"Then come over here. I'm not carrying her over to you, you know."

"What just happened, my mate?" Jesmind asked. "I felt… something. Just on the edge of my senses."

Tarrin remembered that Jesmind had minor Druidic ability. It was enough for her to sense that. He padded over to Jula with them following him. "The Goddess showed me how to banish the Demons," he explained. "That's why they disappeared, and the Goddess told me they were the last ones. That magic you felt was the Firestaff," he said grimly. "It's revealed itself, just like the Goddess said it would."

"What does that mean?" she asked fearfully.

"It means, love, that now we'll have to race everyone to get there first." He reached down and picked up Jula, his bond-daughter, and looked down at her. She really was a pretty young thing, her wary expression softened by her slumber. His mind was racing, but he kept enough about himself to assign priorities. If he didn't have to stay in the courtyard anymore, he could go help. But he couldn't leave the Tower grounds, so if he saw any more fighting, it would have to come to him. Before he worried about that, though, he wanted to get Jula into a warm bed, and make sense out of the two major events that had just happened.

Why couldn't these things ever come at him one at a time, when he had time to digest them before the next big shock came along?

"You realize that there was a direction in that," Miranda told him. "We're going to have company."

"You felt it too?" he asked, then he remembered what Miranda was.

"Who wouldn't have felt that?" she asked. "I thought my blood was going to freeze."

He didn't answer that. If he told her that it came through the Weave, and she shouldn't have felt it, it would leave open all sorts of questions he wasn't quite sure for which she was prepared to accept the answers. "I know," he answered her original question. "But they won't know exactly where they're going, only a general sense of it."

"That's still enough to make it a crowded journey."

"It's a big ocean, Miranda."

"Not that big."

"I can't argue with that. I'm sure they'll find some way to get in our way."

Things weren't quite so peaceful for Allia, Keritanima, Jenna, and their group of Sorcerers. They had paused at that strange event, but were again locked in battle. The ki'zadun had established quite a foothold in the city, and had pushed most of the defenders off the walls around the east gate. Savage fighting was taking place on the walls, accented by the spells of the minor Wizards not important enough to join in the main battle of magic that had been won by the Sorcerers earlier. These were war mages, assigned to the front lines to use magic to support their troops directly. It was against these that the Sorcerers now battled, breaking the large Circle and forming a large number of smaller Circles among the katzh-dashi that were defending the walls, to spread their magic around for best effect. The Wizards could help their Goblinoid troops to overwhelm the Sulasians, but they found themselves vulnerable when a company of Wikuni musketeers opened fire on them, or the Were-kin hidden among the Wikuni soldiers made its presence known by tearing through the Goblinoids struggling to take the walls and rob the defenders of the high positions to kill the invaders with missle weapons.

The screams of the dying and the wounded were drowned out by the sharp cracks of Wikuni muskets, their deadly weapons withering the advancing Goblinoids along the walls. One brave Were-kin had turned one of the massive cannons, fully loaded, and set it off in the face of a large group of Trolls that had just ripped through a phalanx of Sulasian regulars. The courageous Were-bear then waded into their ranks with his huge claws flailing, felling those not killed by the cannon's discharge. Keritanima led a Circle of four, with Dar and Ahiyira in her host, and they moved along the walls, targeting and killing any Wizard they spotted even as they used their magic to kill Goblinoids by the score. She spotted Jenna on the ground below with her Circle of seven, which included the Keeper and Koran Dar. The sister of Tarrin was still fresh, still impressive, weaving spells that quickly made any who had recognized her and her group flee in terror at the sight of her, for few survived long enough to escape once she noticed them. Allia was in the host of a Circle on the other wall across from the east gate, led by Dolanna, but the Selani was too busy killing Goblinoids with her short swords to worry about granting her power to Dolanna. All the Circles had formidable protection to isolate them from harm. Szath, her massive bodyguard, and Azakar were just two of a host of assorted Vendari, Knights, and Ungardt that had been assigned to defend the Sorcerers, and they did so with a ferocious efficiency that even made Trolls wary to try to get through them to reach the magicians behind. There were ten defenders protecting Keritanima's Circle, and though all of them were a little battered, bloody, and bruised, their weapons were drenched in the blood of their enemies. Szath and Azakar had entered something of a competetion to see who could kill the most enemies, and they led a squad of ten frightfully nasty warriors that were just as dangerous as they were. With them to protect the Sorcerers, no enemy had gotten within spear's length of Keritanima.

"Watch it, watch it!" someone shouted, and a Sulasian used a long pole to push a ladder of Waern off the wall. Though they had breached the gate, they still tried to come over the walls to surround the defenders. Keritanima shouted for her bodyguards to get clear, and they melted out of her path immediately as the Sulasian soldiers scrambled out of the way themselves. A host of Trolls tried to surge forward as the soldiers blocking their way suddenly fled, but all they managed to do was rush headlong right into a savage blast of pure fire that lashed over the battlement at the top of the wall, frying a good fifty foot length of the wall's top and everyone atop it.

Keritanima blew out her breath, panting. Jenna looked like she could go on forever, but Keritanima was getting tired. She had given so much of herself in the large Circle, it had taken so much to act as a link between her Circle and the larger one Jenna led. But she would not shirk off her duty! They needed her magic, and only Ahiriya in her Circle had the aptitude, ability, or experience necessary for a highly volatile situation like fighting in a battle. It required split-second reactions and decision making. Ahiriya would be a competent lead, but Keritanima wasn't going to give up quite yet. It would be better if Keritanima waited until she was too tired to lead anymore, to give Ahiriya the longest possible time to act as lead before the stress of it forced her to pass it to someone else. Hopefully, by then, they wouldn't be needed anymore.

The soldiers closed ranks before Keritanima, the Sulasians using their pikes to push the burning Trolls back among their own burning kind, or forcing them to fall from the walls. The ones that were burning shrieked and flailed wildly, some of them impaling themselves on Sulasian pikes in a mad attempt to run in their pain. But more Goblinoids advanced over the burning bodies of their cousins, Waern and Dargu, filling in the hole she had made before they could advance to retake that section of the wall.

That was enough! Keritanima could see that they weren't going to be able to stop the Goblinoids from taking the wall, unless they took the wall away from the Goblinoids! She looked down, where Jenna had just annihilated a large formation of undead zombies, and shouted down at her with a voice augmented by Sorcery. "Jenna, the wall!" she shouted. "Take out the wall from here back to the gate!"