"I'm fine," he said, yawning widely, showing his formidable canines. "Just a little tired yet, but that'll be gone by tomorrow. Why all this worry over me? If you've talked to mother, then you know that this is a normal side-effect of magical exhaustion."

"Well, excuse me for caring," Jesmind said icily.

"It's not just you. It's this, and her, and everything," Tarrin said, bouncing Jasana meaningfully. "What happened?" he asked. "Something had to happen to make you all act like this."

Jesmind looked at Kimmie, who nodded. "Well, when you were using your magic in Torrian, it, well, it affected Jasana."

"Really? What happened to her?" he asked curiously. He sat patiently as all three of them started babbling at once, then he calmed them down and had them tell him their impression of the events one at a time. Jesmind first, then Kimmie, then he heard what Jasana had to say.

"And I felt you wrap yourself all up with magic," she was saying, getting into the core of the story after about ten minutes of talking about stones and books and where they were staying. "When I felt that, I felt it reach out and grab me. I did what you did when I did that to you, pushed myself away from it, but when that happened something else reached out and grabbed me, like the magic without anyone moving it. It scared me, but when it got me, I could feel you, so I didn't push it away right at first. I could feel what you were doing, and it scared me, cause I could feel how hard it was for you to do it. I was afraid it was going to hurt you. I wanted to try to make it stop, but I couldn't do it," she said in a small voice, lowering her eyes. "The magic inside me was fighting with me. It didn't want to do what I was telling it to do, the way you tell it to do things. I never knew it misbehaved like that," she fretted. "It always does whatever you tell it to do, every time you tell it to do it. Why wouldn't it listen to me?"

Tarrin looked at her, a bit perplexed by the way she described it. But hers was the mind of a child, and her manner of comprehending things was fundamentally different from an adult. The magic misbehaved? Oh, of course! She had pushed the magic away, then tried to use it. Since it reached out and grabbed her, that meant that she had been in touch with High Sorcery. And when she tried to use the power against him, since she had pushed it away, it meant that she didn't have the magic built up to do anything with it. Odds were, the weaves she tried to weave simply evaporated, being nothing but empty shells with no substance.

Two things became clear to him. Firstly, that since Jasana was so much stronger than him, it gave her the actual ability to control High Sorcery, much better than he could when he had first struggled with it. Her power was so great that she could exact at least a modicum of control without being angry. He'd been very wrong about her. High Sorcery was still a danger, but it wasn't as great a danger for her as it had been for him. Her raw power allowed her to control it, so long as she didn't allow it to build up past her ability to control it. And second, since she had actually tried to weave a spell, that it would probably be best if he taught her what to do, before she accidentally burned down the forest. A Wildstrike coming from a Sorcerer of her caliber could be devastating to everything around her.

"I think I understand, kitten," he assured her, scruffing her hair with his paw, flattening her ears in the process. "Why did it make you so upset, though?"

"Because I felt how much it hurt you, inside," she said in a small voice. "You told me that you don't like doing things like that. I saw what it did to you to do it, papa. I really understand what you meant now."

He looked down into those luminous eyes, then hugged her with exquisite tenderness. She had shared his pain. It hurt him to know that she had seen what it had cost him to make that decision, to actually carry through with it. But it, too, could be a good thing. Now that she understood what it could cost to kill so indiscriminately, perhaps it would teach her to be as responsible with her magic as he tried to be with his.

Jasana nuzzled him, patting him on the back of the neck. "Papa, who's the glowing lady in the magic?" she asked curiously.

"What?" he asked, pushing her out.

"There's a glowing lady living inside the magic. Didn't you know she was there?" He stared at her, completely in shock. That must have urged her to continue. "She was a really nice lady, too. She told me not to worry about you, that you'd be just fine, and she'd take care of you. She was really pretty, and she even knew my name! She was so nice to me! She told me that she was really happy that I was here, that you were with me, and she said she wanted to get to know me better. She said she would be waiting for us when we got to Suld. I know mama tells me not to be nice to strangers, but she knew my name and was very pretty and really nice and I could feel it through the magic that she loved me, so I thought it was alright to talk to her. Who was she?"

Tarrin felt his mind turn over. The Goddess! He couldn't help but laugh. "That, my little cub, is someone that's going to be very involved with the rest of your life," he told her with a smile. He saw Jesmind's dangerous look, and thought it best to elaborate. But that could be dangerous, given Jasana's age and her openness. "Think of the glowing lady as the spirit of the Weave, kitten. She's a friend to all of us who can touch it," he said delicately, compromising Jasana's need to know with the need not to tell her too much.

"Does she talk to you too?"

"She's never done it quite like that before, but yes, I've talked to her," he replied. "Every Sorcerer has, in one way or another, even if they don't realize it." His stomach growled demandingly. "I'm really hungry, Jesmind. Is there anything around here to eat?"

"I've got some rabbit stew simmering for you, my mate," she said with a smile. "I'll go fix you a bowl."

"I'll go get it," Kimmie offered, standing up. "I think I can get a loaf of bread from the Rangers, too. Rabbit stew isn't the same without bread."

"Make it two," he told her. "Make that three!" he called as she stepped out of the tent.

"I'm sure she'll just bring in the kettle," Jesmind chuckled.

"What's happened while I was asleep?" he asked her.

"Well, the Rangers rounded up about three thousand naked humans out of Torrian," she said. "You should have seen them. It was almost funny, the way they were all red and trying to make clothes out of tree branches and leaves. The Rangers fanned out to all their bases and the outlying farms and homsteads and started finding clothes for them, and they've had a hard time finding food for them too. So they're breaking them up into groups, and they're going to take them to the other villages and towns, where they can get more help. They're all pretty intent on coming back and rebuilding, though, just as soon as they get some basic necessities. I can't blame them for that. This is their home, after all."

"Well, it's good to know that they're going to be cared for," he sighed in relief. "Has anyone figured out what happened yet?"

"Sathon knew, but he didn't tell anyone," Jesmind replied. "The humans think it's some kind of miracle from their god. They've been running around singing hymns and chanting all day."

"That's as good an excuse as any," he agreed, his stomach growling again. "Where is that female?" he asked irritably.

"Keep your pants on, my mate, she's coming," Jesmind chuckled. "Arren managed to pin me down and drag an explanation out of me. I told Arren what you said, that the Dals knew we were coming and knew our plan. I told him exactly what you said, that there were ten times as many troops here as Arren thought, and that you burned down the city to protect his men. He argued with me about it, until they went out into the ruins and saw all the bones. That was too much evidence for him to deny it, so he's not quite so mad at you now as he was this morning."