It had been two days, so they were expecting Andos and Ariana any time now. They were camped in an open area just outside the boundary of the city, where he said they would be, and he had no doubt that the Aeradalla wouldn't easily see them. He had passed that time in quiet recuperation, recovering his strength after exhausting himself in the battle with Jegojah and the conferences with his sisters. He felt fully recovered now, and what was more important, he realized that it was exactly as it had been before. He was still growing, still coming into the fruition of his ability, and that meant that his powers would grow stronger over time. He knew that he was stronger now than he had been before fighting Jegojah, because he had exercised the use of his powers. Just as his power of High Sorcery had grown stronger and stronger every time he used them, he realized that his powers as a Weavespinner would mature over time, until he reached his full powers. All he had to do was use his power, exercise it, study it and experiment with it, allow it to strengthen in him until it could strengthen no more.

He had also explored this strange ability to join with the Weave. For the last two days, he had entered the Weave for extended periods of time, and had explored the Heart. It was a place of utter vastness, yet it seemed to have defined boundaries. Finding those boundaries, he had discovered, was not as easy as it seemed. It was populated by the stars of all the living Sorcerers, both awakened and yet to be discovered, and he could float in that dark void and watch the stars awaken and fade away, representing the births of some and the deaths of others. The brightness of those stars denoted the raw potental of the Sorcerer in question, and the color of the star, he learned, was an indication of how experienced the Sorcerer was with his own power. The Sorcerers who hadn't awakened their power yet were reddish, while the progression from unawakened to fully experienced was a progression from red, through white, and into blue. After hours of watching, he came to understand that many more were appearing than were disappearing every day. It was the revigoration of the Weave, he realized, the return of the power of the Weave back to its former glory. As more and more Sorcerers were born, their hearts enriched the Weave, made it stronger and more able to carry powerful magic. The Goddess didn't speak to him while he was exploring, and he felt that she did that on purpose. She was letting him explore on his own, draw his own conclusions.

It was strangely peaceful within the Weave. He was separated from himself, and that gave him quiet time, time to ponder and reflect, time to get closer to the Weave by trying to fathom its vastness. But was lonely there. He was the only one, the only being in that empty sea, and that was a pretty frightening experience in a way. And it made him understand how the Goddess must feel. This was the Heart, where her Weavespinners would come to rejoice in her presence, and she had been alone here for a very long time. She had that Sha'Kar woman, but somehow Tarrin got the idea that she didn't come here very often. Now there was Tarrin, and Jenna. Three souls to give the Goddess company here in the Heart.

It was when he was there that he felt that the Goddess truly was a Goddess. Almost at all other times, she was little more than a voice that spoke to him, and spoke to him as a friend. She didn't seem like an all-powerful deity when she was like that. But here, when he could look into her eyes, could feel and sense and be enveloped by the awesome might of her power, a power that defied his ability to quantify it, he understood the true majesty of his rather unusual Goddess. It was there, in the Heart, that he worshipped the Goddess for what she was, his Goddess, and felt indescribable joy when she responded to that adoration with the power of her love. She had told him long ago that the worship relationship of mortal and god was a give-and-take operation, where the mortal received what he gave to the god. And she had been right. The love he felt from the Goddess more than made up for anything that he gave to her in worship, love, and friendship. Knowing he had a place with her was more contenting to him than nearly anything else in the world.

There were other reasons to visit the Heart. Sometimes, while he was there, memories and echoes of lost knowledge reached him, like distant calls. They were random, and most of them made no sense, but sometimes he heard something or caught a sight of some visual echo that did mean something to him. He saw Myriam Lar, the Keeper, as a young woman, accepting the sceptre of leadership of her station in some hasty ceremony. He never knew that the Keeper had assumed her office at such a very young age, for the schooling he had received there had little to do with the modern history of the Tower. He had seen images of the Sha'Kar as they had been back in the Age of Power, and they did look just like the Selani. Almost. Some had dark skin, some had very pale skin. Some had blond hair, some had blue hair, some had black hair. But what all of them shared was that thinness, that delicate bone structure, and those pointed ears and four-fingered hands. The Sha'Kar of the Age of Power were much shorter than the Selani, but he realized that that was because by then, they were two separate races. The history of the Selani went back five thousand years, at some division that had taken place back in the dimmest past that had led them down different paths. The Selani were the descendents of the Sha'Kar, and the desert had changed them.

Thinking of that made him recall what the Goddess had told him while he was there, something that had altered his view on the races of Sennadar considerably.

"Not quite, my kitten," the voice of the Goddess spoke to him from the Heart, directly from her presence there, when he had pondered the relationship between the Selani and the Sha'Kar. "The Selani and the Sha'Kar are related, but the Selani aren't descended from them. To put it in relative terms, they are siblings, not parent and child."

"Siblings? What do you mean?"

"Both races are descended from a parent race. Their relations stretch back through that parent race, not with each other. That's why Selani and Sha'Kar are similar, not exactly alike. Had the Selani been descended from the Sha'Kar, the similarities between their languages would have been much more prevelant."

That made a great deal of sense. He drifted closer to the Heart, looked up into the eyes of his Goddess, and felt her power and her love. He had to fight through the adoration of that to form his thoughts. "What caused the division, Mother?" he asked.

"Would you like to hear a story of ancient times, my kitten?" she asked. "It's been a very long time since I've told a story, and this one has always been one of my favorites."

"Of course I would," he replied, hovering closer to her.

An image appeared before him, an image of four beings. One was human, one looked Dwarven, and the other two were unknown to him. The first looked vaguely like a Bruga, with a wide nose and tusks, and the other was a very lithe form, much taller than a human, tall and thin and delicate, with pointed ears and long, four-fingered hands. He would call it Selani, but this being looked nothing like a Selani. "In the very beginning of this world, my kitten, the Elder Gods set forth on the land these four sentient races. The Humans, the Dwarves, the Goblins, and the fourth, whose name has been lost over the mists of time."

"You know what it is, don't you?"

"Of course I do, but until someone discovers it, I have to keep it a secret," she replied with a light voice. "They were placed in the world and allowed to go their own way, to build their own places in ways that pleased them, but they were only given a basic understanding of things like tools and society. Those prehistoric beings used rocks tied to sticks for weapons, and the ones that did wear clothing wore untanned skins. Such basic knowledge was not known to them.