It was yet another aspect of being a Weavespinner he hadn't expected. Entering the Weave was much like sending his soul out of his body and joining it with the power that was now so entwined through him that it would be impossible to separated it from him without killing him. It was so large, so… intimidating. He had no idea where to go, where anything was. He could reach the Heart only because all strands eventually went there. Without somehting to guide him through the vast labyrinth of the Weave, he could not use it to visit other places as he had done so with Jenna. He had a feeling that he could learn how to get to a few places, if they were important enough. Since the main Conduit that came from the Heart came out through the Tower, he thought he could reach the Tower in that projected state. It would take a little trial and error, but he felt that he could do it. He'd just have to make sure that he was fully rested when he tried. Entering the Weave, and trying to use any magic while inside it, took a tremendous amount of effort. The episode with Jenna had already taught him that very important lesson. It was like a standard Sorcerer trying to weave a spell from ten longspans away. The effort to push the magic over such a great distance was exhausting.
It was something about which nobody had ever said anything. He thought it was one of the abilities of the Weavespinners that had been forgotten by the modern katzh-dashi, one of the many things lost because they could no longer read the historical annals left for them by their ancestors. It made him wonder what else he could do, what else had been forgotten.
Clearly, Sorcery wasn't as simple as weaving spells. It had several different disciplines within that broad definition, and it would take many, many years of study to come to an understanding of his own abilities. Weaving spells was just one of the aspects of Sorcery.
But thoughts of the future yielded to thoughts of the present. They were still travelling northwest, and Tarrin was still looking for an ideal place to stop, an ideal battleground that would stack the deck in his favor. Jegojah was coming, and he was just starting to feel… twinges, little variances in the Weave that he thought were being caused by something unnatural. That could be Jegojah, for it was an undead being, and it was also possessed of formidable magical abilities. He couldn't pin a location to that feeling, but it was not close. That was all he could tell. But if it was close enough for him to sense it, then it had to be a maximum of twelve days away. That was when he started feeling the crown of the Aeradalla. And since the crown was such an incredibly powerful artifact, he doubted that he would feel Jegojah coming from a similar distance. Jegojah's probable effect on the Weave was nowhere near that. That meant to him that Jegojah was much closer than twelve days away, if that sense was actually him. That made finding a suitable location to challenge the Doomwalker his highest priority, because he would take no chances in this.
Jegojah was… special. It had killed Faalken, nearly killed his family, and had hounded and tortured him for years, by either deed or fear. It was going to end. This would be the last time he crossed swords with Jegojah, one way or another. Thinking of it made his hackles rise, but it also made him remember the vision that the Goddess had given him about Jegojah. That Faalken had been standing in front of the Doomwalker, his decayed body making it obvious he was a corpse, holding a flaming sword. What did it mean? Was it a warning for him not to get too carried away? Would Faalken's memory interfere somehow, as the vision suggested, or would it cause him to come into danger? Just thinking about that fateful day when Jegojah killed Faalken, killed him because Tarrin had lost control, made him suddenly furious. Jegojah had killed Faalken, but Tarrin had abandoned him to his death just so he could destroy Jegojah. The anger was directed at Jegojah, but some of it was focused on himself. That day had shown him the consequences of his actions. That day, his rage had cost him a friend, and caused him to vow that no one else was going to die if he could help it. Killing Jegojah would bring closure to him, he felt. Destroying the Doomwalker once and for all would avenge Faalken, and would act as atonement for allowing the valiant Knight to die. Jegojah was a physical embodiment of the demons that had plagued Tarrin since becoming Were, and he meant to destroy the Doomwalker, and them, and vanquish those demons back to the nether realms.
They stopped for lunch and to wait out the heat of the day in the shade of a large overhanging rock, then moved on again. The hilly terrain of the desert became progressively more and more rocky, and rugged foothills of respecatable size had begun to show through the heat haze that made looking at distance in the desert an uncertain pasttime. Tarrin and Sarraya found themselves running from valley to valley to avoid climbing the steeper and steeper hillsides, moving through terrain that very nearly seemed mountainous.
They travelled up one such valley near sunset, looking for a good campsite, when the valley opened up into a vast depression in the land like a great bowl with a flat bottom. The bottom of that wide valley-like feature was dotted with boulders and rocks strewn about the floor of it like children's toys, and rock spires, hundreds of them-
– -not rock spires. Towers!
It was a ruin! The remains of a great city were hidden in those crisscrossing valleys, a city that had completely filled up the depression in which it had been built. The city was buried in sand here and there, and it was obvious that a recent sandstorm had carried away much of the sand that had once buried the city. A city built of the same sandy colored stone that filled most of the desert, but it was a city that was remarkably well preserved. Buildings still stood here and there, and they stood out against the fallen debris that cluttered what had once been wide avenues. The architecture of those buildings were blocky, with many right angles, and as he and Sarraya approached them, he began to realize that the builders of this vast city weren't human.
The doorways to those buildings were only about six spans high.
Tarrin reached the edge of the city, and looked at the nearest building still standing. It was three stories high, but its compact construction made it only as tall as a human's two story building. It was made of sandy colored stones that showed the erosion of the years, but the wearing away did nothing to hide the exacting precision with which the stones had been fitted together. The architects and builders of this place had been engineers of the highest degree. These sprawling ruins put modern cities to shame with the durability and craftsmanship of the buildings.
"Who made this place, Sarraya?" Tarrin asked, looking at one of the buildings.
"I don't know," she replied. "The doorways are small. If I were a gambling Faerie, I'd say it was one of the Lost Races. Maybe Dwarves, or Gnomes."
He'd heard those names before, but they belonged in bedtime stories. The Dwarves and Gnomes had lived a long, long time ago, but had been wiped out during the terrible Blood War. The Gnomes had died out by attrition, but the Dwarves had fought to the very last man, even their women, fighting to protect the world from the dark evil of the Demons. Even now, five thousand years after the fact, the heroism of the Dwarves was honored in song and story from one side of Sennadar to the other. The Race of Heroes, they were called. Both races were supposedly short. The Dwarves were stocky and strong, the Gnomes thin and willowy. Both races were respected as stoneworkers and builders without peer. If this place was built by one of their races, it was no wonder that so much of it had survived the destruction wreaked upon it by the years and the harsh desert sands.