"It's an area of badlands," she replied. "Raised rock crisscrossed with countless deep crevasses that serve as passages through the region. The passages are infested with inu and kajat, preying off the animals and Selani foolish enough to enter the maze. We'll pass by there in about ten days. It's just past the Great Canyon's northern edge."

"It's a good thing you're here, then," Sarraya said. "Tarrin would lead us right into it, and get us immediately lost."

"You can fly. Why do you care?" Tarrin shot back in reply.

"I don't, but then I'd have to save you again and again, and you know old and boring that gets after about the fiftieth time," she teased.

"Whatever." He yawned. "I'm getting tired. I'm going to bed. You two had better remember that we have a long way to go tomorrow."

With that, he hunkered down and shifted into cat form. Denai's startled gasp as she rose to her feet quickly made him realize that he hadn't warned her or said anything, but in reality, he really didn't care all that much. He curled up near the fire and closed his eyes, allowing the care-free nature of the Cat soothe him and prepare him to sleep. The dreams and the eyeless face had trouble finding him when he was in cat form, and so it had become his preferred way to sleep. In reality, he preferred sleeping in cat form over his humanoid form most of the time anyway.

"Magic!" Denai breathed.

"Not magic, nature," Sarraya told her. "He's a Were-cat."

"What is that?"

"Well, sit back down, and I'll explain everything. I'll even explain a few things to you so you don't make a mistake around him. He may look all cute and cuddly, but he can be as savage as an inu. Well, actually, alot worse than that," she added as an afterthought.

"He's that dangerous?"

"He can be, if you're not careful around him. But like many kinds of animals, he's only dangerous if you trigger a hostile response from him. If you're careful around him, he can be as sweet and gentle as a newborn babe. Just listen, and I'll tell you everything you need to know about Were-cats, and Tarrin, Denai. When I'm done, you'll be an expert."

Tarrin drifted off to sleep as Sarraya's voice droned on, explaining the nature of his kind to the young Selani. Tarrin didn't mind. Sarraya would teach Denai what she needed to know not to get herself accidentally killed around him. That was always a good thing.

To: Title EoF

Chapter 11

Power.

It was all around him. He could sense it in the Weave, he could even sense it through the All, surrounding him, enticing him, causing him to reach towards it the way green things reached for the sun. The Weave was strong in this region of the desert, with an unusual concentration of strands surrounding a minor Conduit and two medium ones. That power pooled around him, coalesced in the strands immediately surrounding him, attracted to his presence by some unfathomable means. It reached towards him the same way he reached towards it, but some unknown force or means prevented them from making contact with one another.

Sitting in the full force of the sun, eyes closed and attention focused inward, Tarrin sought to find his way to that energy. The heat of the sun was actually helping him, soothing him with its warmth, almost feeling like it was flowing through him the same way that the power of the Weave used to flow through him. He could feel every nuance within the Weave, feel it for longspans in every direction, even deep under the earth. He could feel the collection of energies around him, as the energy flowed through the strands to collect around him, to pool up as if to bask in his presence. That strange energy always followed him around, and he still had no real true understanding as to what it was. He knew that it was a residual energy that was created by the interaction of the flows within the strands. Almost like a by-product of the flowing of magical energy through the Weave. It was also created when Priest or Wizard magic entered and exited the Weave. Like a harmonic or echo of magical power, a harmonic spawned by the original, yet the harmonic remained inside the Weave long after the original was gone.

Voices disturbed him. Sarraya and Denai were chatting again, taking advantage of the break in their journey northwest to eat lunch and talk. The two of them seemed to have struck up a good friendship. Denai was even calling Sarraya shaida now. The Selani hadn't really annoyed him so far today, but it was just the day before when they met. She was bound to annoy him eventually. Tarrin had spent the morning teaching Sarraya more and more Sha'Kar as they moved, and the little Faerie had so far proved to be an exceptional student. She never forgot anything. He felt some fringes of Druidic magic around her while he was teaching, so he had some suspicions that she was using her magic to boost her learning. The same way that Dolanna had when she learned Sha'Kar in a matter of days. The idea of teaching Sarraya with Denai in earshot had concerned him at first, but then he realized that she was Selani. If he forced her to swear blood oath never to teach what she learned to someone else, then it would go no further than her. He didn't entirely trust her, but he knew the Selani. He trusted their culture more than their members.

Nowhere. He was getting nowhere again. No matter how he tried to reach out to the Weave, it simply wasn't there. Just a short time of trying had worked up his temper, and he knew that he had to stop before he got so aggravated that Denai's presence became dangerous.

Opening his eyes, he blew out his breath. He hadn't tried last night, and he wasn't about to let that go. They had stopped twice to rest or eat, and both times he had sat down in a meditative position and tried to find his power again. This was the third time, and it was no more successful than the other two. He rubbed his eyes gingerly with a finger and a thumb, then uncurled his tail from around his legs. The mental effort of reaching for the power was surprising, leaving him feeling a little tired every time he tried it. That fatigue would fade quickly, so it wasn't a real problem for him.

What was the answer? It almost drove him crazy. He knew that he could do it. He'd seen that Sha'Kar woman use her power, and he knew that he could do it too. But it was like trying to cage the wind. He had tried so many different ways to reach out to the Weave, but it was like it was a ghost. He could see it, but he couldn't touch it. What made it worse was that his sense of the Weave grew sharper and sharper in the days since the fight with the Sha'Kar woman. His sense of the Weave grew more and more clear, more precise, and he could sense it from greater and greater distances. He had gotten to the point where he could almost see the energy flowing through it, like pulses of light travelling along the ghostly tendrils that hid behind the reality before him. And it still pulsed in that sound that was like a heartbeat, expanding and contracting in time like blood flowing through vessels, like he was somehow inside the bodiless form of the Goddess herself, and could see the true workings of her wonders from the inside.

At least today there were no real distractions. The eyeless face was still there, lurking just underneath his conscious, but for some reason it had been unusually subdued today. The emotions it incited in him were also more subdued today, allowing him to think more than feel, and not feel as if his world was floating on the blood of the innocent, innocents destroyed by his own hand. He could still feel it there, but for a change, it did not attempt to torture him this day.

Denai approached him. She was about average height for a Selani female, which made her unnaturally tall to a human, but she seemed almost laughably short to him. She only came up to his chest. With him seated, he nearly came up to her shoulders, putting his eyes on a direct level with her breasts. She stopped a few paces from him, making sure that he had seen her and acknowledged her presence, then came within arm's reach of him slowly. That close to her, her coppery scent washed over him like rain, making him miss Allia. Denai's scent was markedly similar to his sister's. The idea that she was standing but he was seated flitted through his mind, reminding him that he was at a disadvantage. At first, he wanted to stand, but the part of him that chanted over and over again that there was nothing to fear from Denai made him stay seated, to stay in a vulnerable position, to see what she would do. If she attacked, he was confident he could take her down with his tail, and then it was a simple matter of finishing her off. "I made oatcakes, Tarrin," she offered. "I even have some honey to flavor them."