He sat up, causing her to have to move out of his way, finally feeling the wild emotions and terror flow out of him. Those were not his emotions. They were shades, memories of a past horror so powerful that they had been branded into the magic of the Weave for all time. They were ghosts from the past, and they couldn't harm him now.

"Sarraya," he said a bit wildly. "I could hear them!"

"Hear what?"

"Voices from the past," he told her. "Voices from the Breaking. They're still in the Weave, Sarraya, echoing inside it for a thousand years, echoing until the end of time. So many!"

"Well, let's not dwell on that right now," she said, and he felt her touch her Druidic magic. She put her hands on one of his ears, and felt her magic urge the bleeding to cease. Somehow, some way, the wounds didn't immediately heal. "Did you make any progress?"

"I… I think so," he replied. "I didn't find my power, but I did come into contact with the Weave, somehow. I can't explain it."

"I don't think I'd understand if you did," she said seriously. "What did the voices say?" she asked curiously.

"The Breaking happened because something terrible happened, so terrible that it made a Conduit break. Some kind of an attack on a Tower. It destroyed the Tower, and the broken Conduit destroyed the Tower at the other end. So many Sorcerers died that it weakened the Weave, weakened it to the point where it couldn't support the magical demands placed on it, so it ripped. Sarraya, the Sorcerers didn't cause the Breaking. Whoever attacked that Tower did," he said seriously.

"How could that happen? Why would the Weave tear if too many Sorcerers died?"

"Sorcerers are the Weave," he told her. "Without Sorcerers, there would be no Weave. The Goddess grants the power, but it's the Sorcerers that draw it out from the Heart. The more Sorcerers there are, the more power gets drawn, and the more magic there is that comes into the world. The more magical demands on the Weave, the more Sorcerers have to be alive to sustain it."

Sarraya gave him a very long, very penetrating look. "Tarrin, what you just said, you can never repeat it," she said in a voice so serious, so grim, that it took him aback. "Do you understand me?"

"Sarraya-"

" Do you understand me?" she said fiercely.

"I-alright," he said, uncertain in the face of such vociferousness from the usually capricious Faerie. "Why?"

"Because you just said the one thing that shouldn't be known," she said in a hiss. "If people knew what you just said, the entire world would be in danger."

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew!" she said in a heated voice.

"Then why did you ask?"

"To see if you knew," she said in a muted tone. "If certain people knew what you just said, and given how few of you there are right now, do you see why it's so very important for that not to be common knowledge?"

He looked into her eyes, and understood immediately. Sorcerers were rare. In all but a very few kingdoms, they were reviled as the bringers of the Breaking. They had to travel with Knights for their own protection from ignorant mobs of peasants who believed that Sorcerers were really witches. If someone knew that the Weave depended on Sorcerers, they could conceivably kill off so many that the current Weave would collapse into another Breaking.

"How did you know that, Sarraya?" he asked in surprise.

"I'm a Druid, Tarrin," she said in a hiss. "And I've been along a long time. I know alot more than you think I know." She flitted back a little, and composure returned to her. "Are you feeling alright? Ready to move?"

"I think so," he told her. "I'm just a little overwhelmed, that's all."

"Let me go down there and assure Denai and Var you're alright. That should give you enough time to recover yourself. When you're ready, come down, alright? There's no rush, Tarrin. Come down when you feel ready."

"Alright. I'll be down in a little bit," he told her.

The Faerie flitted down, leaving Tarrin to his thoughts, and to recover from the harrowing experience. What had happened? It was as if his consciousness had merged into the Weave itself. But how was that possible? To do something like that, he had to be in contact with the Weave, but at no time did he feel such a connection. He could still sense the Weave, sense its every minute detail for over a longspan in every direction, but at no time did he take in any power, or even feel the sensation of touching the Weave.

It still didn't explain what had happened. Somehow he had communed with the Weave itself, and the Weave had granted him knowledge of events from a thousand years ago. He had communed with it without directly touching it, from as near as he could tell. He wasn't sure which was more perplexing, that he somehow gained contact with the Weave without actively connecting to it, or that it had imparted upon him lost knowledge without even his asking for it. He had just thought about the Breaking, and all those voices seemed to bubble up out of the Weave, as if to give him insight into an ancient, misunderstood disaster. Of its own volition. The Weave had sensed his thoughts, and responded to it without his direction. And it did all of that without him touching it.

Maybe… maybe he couldn't touch the Weave because he was already connected to it.

The thought just drifted by in his mind, and he locked onto it with ferocity. He analyzed it, considered it, turned it over in his mind, seeking the truth of it. He could sense the Weave, sense it in ways far beyond mere senses. He could feel its power, and it was a sense of it very similar to what he had felt beforehand, when he used to touch the Weave and draw in its power. That had to be a symbol that he was actively connected to the Weave. Its power pooled around him, and the strands pulled towards him as he moved across the desert, moved through the Weave. It explained why he was failing to find his power.

He was trying to touch the Weave, when he was already in contact with it.

Of course! How stupid could he be! The power wasn't responding to him because he wasn't trying to get in touch with that power! He'd been trying to touch the Weave so he could try! But he was already touching the Weave! The contact was very light, very gentle, because the power of the Weave wasn't flowing into him, but it was a connection nonetheless.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! He was trying to use his power the way he was trained to do it, when the Goddess herself told him that his power was different. He had to try something new, something he'd never tried before, in order to find his magic again. He was pretty sure that he could use High Sorcery the same way he did before, but first he had to learn the new way to bring the power of the Weave to him, a way that didn't include wasting days and days trying to do something he had already accomplished.

Quite deliberately, Tarrin leaned down and smacked his head against the ground.

He felt so stupid!

There was a chiming, cascading bellpeal of laughter from the Weave itself. Don't beat yourself, kitten, the voice of the Goddess reached him. Sometimes it takes a while for you to comprehend what you already know. It happens to everyone now and again, even gods.

"So I'm right?" he asked quickly, hoping she would answer before she thought about whether she was allowed to tell him that or not.

Yes, kitten, you're right. You've been trying to do what you've already done. Now you just have to figure out how to make the power respond to you.

He felt… triumphant. Like he had solved one of the great mysteries of life. But he knew that he had really just opened his eyes to a truth that he could have discovered if he'd spent five minutes thinking about it. "Mother, what happened to me?" he asked. He knew she would understand what he was asking.

Nothing, she replied. You were simply discovering for yourself one of those things that separate you from all other Sorcerers. Your connection to the Weave runs so deeply that it defies a Sorcerer's normal concepts. The Weave is much more than just a storeroom of magical energy, my kitten. I think you're starting to see that now.