The force of her bite was apparent when he rose up from her, for she had a thin trail of his blood on the corner of her mouth. He smiled down at her. "Now then, let me go take care of this, and I'll see you at breakfast," he told her.

"Alright," she sighed. "I'll be waiting for you."

He wiped the thin line of blood from her chin with a finger. "You have no idea how happy that makes me," he told her, then he stood up and looked towards the door. "I'd better go before I get chewed out for being late. I'll see you in a while, love."

"Remember, beloved, you owe me," she called in a smug little tone as he walked away.

"I'm sure the haggling will be very, fun," he said over his shoulder as he went out the door.

Out in the sitting room, Tarrin stopped and closed his eyes. Spyder had to be relatively close, and that meant that she would have an affect on the Weave that he should be able to sense. The proximity of the main Conduit did dull his senses a little, drowning out the tiny shifts in the Weave he would usually be able to sense, but it couldn't hide the Urzani woman's powerful effect on the Weave. She was above him, well above him, from the sense of it, either on the top floor or the roof of the Tower itself.

He'd come to understand that Spyder didn't think in what one would call linear terms. Given the choice between the top floor and the roof, Tarrin would guess that she was on the roof. It just fit in more with what he understood of her. Stepping out onto the balcony, Tarrin wove together a quick spell of Air, forming a platform which would lift him up to the roof. He stepped up onto it, then caused it to rise, carrying him up to the top of the roof.

As he expected, the utter blackness of that strange black cloak she wore was visible on the other side of the roof, back to him, standing on the elegantly sculpted ledge of the Tower and looking out towards the east, towards the impending sunrise. Tarrin had never been on the top of the Tower before, and he was surprised by what he saw. Instead of emptiness, there were several small buildings, what looked like sheds or standing closets, scattered across the pristine white marble rooftop, which was perfectly flat. The dominating feature of the rooftop was the pyramid-shaped crystal cap that stood over the center of the Tower, where the Conduit that passed through the Tower was. The Conduit passed through that crystal skylight, through its exact center. The crystal showed no signs of being worked or shaped, it was perfectly smooth, unmarred, as if one massive crystal had been found and carefully cut down and polished into that final form. It was also fairly large, more than three times his height at its apex; after all, it covered a hole some forty spans across.

As soon as Tarrin put his foot on the ledge and stepped onto the rooftop, the Urzani woman turned around to face him. She was on the opposite side of the rooftop, which put a few hundred spans between them. He started walking towards her, feeling more and more the powerful effect she had on the Weave, so strong that even the main Conduit seemed to want to pull towards her. He glanced at the crystal pyramid as he passed by it, noticing that though he could see the main Conduit clearly, it cast no reflection against the crystal.

"Your sister is late," she said in that crisp, exacting manner of hers, but she was speaking Sha'Kar.

"She's a slow starter," he replied cordially, also in Sha'Kar. "Once she's fully awake, she'll start hurrying. She doesn't want to miss this."

"I would think not," Spyder said, slightly amused. "Can she speak the True Tongue?"

"I don't think so," he replied. "Only a handful of us can. Almost all of my close friends can, just to warn you. Don't say anything in Sha'Kar you don't want them to know if we ever happen to be with them."

"I doubt that will be an issue," she shrugged. "If I mean to say something only you will hear, I will whisper it."

He knew immediately what she meant. "How do you do that?" he asked immediately.

She smiled. "Patience, youngling. Let's wait for the child. I only want to teach it once." She pulled the cloak around her absently. "I'll have to teach the child the True Tongue. I feel uncomfortable passing knowledge outside my native language."

"I take it you know a way to do that quickly?"

She nodded. "Usually it would be impossible for me to use such a Mind weave on someone not my race, but my age and my intimate understanding of the human mind allows me to surpass that boundary," she explained. "You, on the other hand, are quite beyond me."

"That's alright, I already know it," he said urbanely.

"True, but there are some things I will teach Jenna through Mind weaves that I can't teach you. You'll have to learn them from her. Quickly."

"I'm a pretty fast learner," he assured her. Then he connected what she said to what they were doing quickly. "You're not coming back, are you?" he realized. "This is our only lesson, isn't it?"

She looked at him, a deep, penetrating look, and then gave him the slightest of smiles. "You are quick," she complemented. "Mother said you were much smarter than even you realized. But you are wrong, Tarrin Kael. I can grant simple knowledge, like a language, through Sorcery. But passing on a skill, something you have to practice to master, would be foolish to do. To have the knowledge to do something but lack the skill to do it is a very dangerous combination. It would be like a smith's apprentice trying to forge a ceremonial sword. He knows how it is done, but lacks the skill and experience to perform the task."

He worked that out in his mind, and understood that she was right. "What kind of things are you going to teach Jenna through Mind weaves?"

"Obviously, only knowledge," she replied. "I intend to teach her the history of our order. The true history. It will be one of her tasks to set that history in writing and allow the other Sorcerers to read it. For too long I have been the repository of our history and culture. That burden is now Jenna's."

"Why is that important?"

"To understand where one should go, sometimes one must know from where one came," she told him evenly. "To know our history will allow Jenna to guide the katzh-dashi in the proper direction." She gave Tarrin a slightly sorrowful look. "After today, your sister will be a different person, Tarrin," she warned in a compassionate voice. "Just as your own trial caused you to mature too soon, what I will teach Jenna will mature her as well. She will still be your sister, but she will carry a wisdom and knowledge beyond her years. That can't help but change her."

He sighed, for he knew she was right. But Jenna would still be Jenna, and that was all that mattered to him. With her newfound knowledge, Jenna wouldn't help but have a different outlook on life. He only hoped that it would change her for the better, where his own trial had, at least at the beginning, changed him for the worse. "She'll still be my sister, and I'll still love her," he said calmly.

"Indeed," Spyder said with a slight smile. "She is coming."

"I can feel her. It seems she thinks you're on the top floor," he realized. She was approaching from the interior of the Tower.

"She'll learn she's wrong when she gets there and finds I'm still above her," Spyder told him lightly. "She'll come up from that stairwell there," she said, pointing to one of the tiny closet-like doors, which he realized were the tops of stairwells.

They waited in silence for only a moment, and then Jenna burst out of the opening door. She looked a little dishevelled, with her dress buttoned up the wrong way, her hair wild from where she'd slept on it, and one of her shoes in her hand rather than on her feet. She spotted them immediately and hurried over to where they were standing. "I'm sorry, I couldn't find my shoes!" she panted breathlessly.