Chapter 9

There were a great many things to do, and it almost seemed to Tarrin like they weren't going to have enough time to get to all of it.

After they split up from the meeting at the courtyard, Tarrin and Jenna withdrew from the others and returned to her personal rooms, one of the few places where nobody would disturb her, and Tarrin got to work. After Jenna used the Priest spell to augment her ability to retain knowledge, he started training her in the many, many spells that he'd learned through his unusual turning. There were a great number of them, and having to think about each one to teach Jenna let him get a little better understanding of them and how they were used. Some were battle spells, like one nasty one that created a very powerful acid out of flows of Earth, Water, Fire, and Divine, which was sprayed forth to injure an opponent. There were many new Transmutation spells, including the one that allowed the Transmutation of a being into another kind of being. Shapeshifting. It was one of the spells, though a Sorcerer wouldn't use that particular spell on himself. Sorcerers were wary of spells that altered the body, because it may damage or destroy their connection to the Weave. There were few ways a Sorcerer would Transmute himself, and crossing over, changing the body to make it invulnerable to heat and fire, was one of them. Sorcerers could Transmute themselves in other ways, but a tiny mistake could strip them of their powers, so Sorcerers, even the Ancients, were very wary about doing so. It was such a dangerous and unused sphere of Sorcery that even Tarrin's knowledge of it was strangely incomplete. Then again, given how extraordinarily dangerous it was, there was little surprise in the fact that a very, very rare few katzh-dashi would even dare to experiment in that area. Some were spells of an aspect of Sorcery the modern katzh-dashi had never even seen before, Divination. The reading of signs and portents to predict a possibility in the future. Divination was terribly unreliable, for the future was not set, and elements of the present changed constantly to alter the lines of possibility in the future. The one spell that Tarrin had learned in that field of study that had any kind of reliability at all was a rather interesting little weave that predicted the probability of success of an impending action, provided that the action was accomplished within a minute of the casting of the spell. But even that one was unreliable if other factors influenced the possibilities of success, especially when other sentient beings were involved. So, the spell would be fairly accurate if Tarrin used it to see if he could successfully break down a door, but it wouldn't do him very much good in predicting a winner if he and Allia decided to race down a passageway. There was another spell that tried to gauge the severity of possible danger in the near future, but the spell couldn't determine the type of danger, nor its cause. But it did operate with at least a modicum of success, but it was notoriously fickle about what it considered danger. The concept of danger was a very personal one, and what Tarrin felt was not dangerous, others would. That made the spell very erratic, especially when the danger would be caused by another sentient being, or the danger another caused was purely accidental. That made it moderately useful for a Sorcerer trying to detect the possibility of being attacked by brigands in an alley, as they intended to cause danger to the Sorcerer, but would not warn of a thief on a rooftop above that accidentally knocked a roof tile loose that fell on the Sorcerer's head and killed him.

There were a great, great many useful spells, many of which Auli had demonstrated in their endless games of fun. Sorcery was capable of battle and other things, but the Ancients had concentrated on finding ways to make Sorcery useful. That was why there was a weave to do almost any kind of chore or labor, there were weaves that affected clothing, mended broken items, and even trivial ones that changed the color of things. The Ancients placed greater value on spells that could do things for them, not spells that could kill people. Then again, back then the Sha'Kar dominated the katzh-dashi, and their pacifistic ways had influenced how they researched the ability. Tarrin taught Jenna an absolute plethora of handy little weaves that did any number of small, useful things, as well as a few that weren't quite so small, like weaves that determined the age of an object, or a weave that would tell the Sorcerer who had last touched an object, and more importantly, exactly where that person was, or even a weave that

After that, they moved into a more serious aspect of Sorcery, and that was healing. There were many spells of healing that had been forgotten, even by the Sha'Kar, and many of them were spells that affected more than just injury. There were weaves for helping the body fight disease, though the weave couldn't outright cure the disease itself. There were weaves that helped a Sorcerer heal mental damage, such as trauma or shock, but only a Sorcerer of the same race could do that. The boundary of species was a constant throughout all of Sorcery when it came to using Mind weaves, even to the Ancients. Only under truly extraordinary circumstances could that barrier be breached. Spyder was the only example of such an extraordinary circumstance. After ten thousand or so years, the Urzani had come to understand humans to such a detailed, exacting degree that it allowed her to use Mind weaves against humans. There was even a weave that partially reversed insanity, though it was not a permanent effect.

After that, they started with sphere-specific spells, going through a myriad of different Air weaves and Fire weaves and Water weaves and Earth weaves, which weren't really anything new. Sorcery was a very fluid, dynamic magical power, which allowed for a great deal of lattitude in its use. It didn't demand the exacting words and gestures of Wizard and Priest magic, and it didn't require the immense clarity of intent and discipline of Druidic magic, which meant that the results of Sorcery could often be quite different from casting to casting of the exact same spell. It was also why a spell's effect often had different potency from one Sorcerer to another, depending on any number of variables, including the concentration and experience of the caster. This margin of relaxation gave Sorcery a unique aspect that didn't exist for the other orders, except perhaps Druidic magic, and that was the ability to improvise. Experienced Sorcerers could improvise on the spot, make up new spells as they needed them, and many of the things he'd learned through his turning were more formal variations of spells that he or Jenna or Keritanima or Dolanna had invented when they had a need for them. Druidic magic was capable of such improvisation, but the consequences of failure were so drastic that making things up as one went along was a very dangerous practice.

The only sphere-specific spells that were carefully used were Mind weave spells, because of the risk of damage to the mind affected by them. One did not improvise when using Mind weaves, so the spells that he taught Jenna, a great many of them, were new to her, new and somewhat useful. Spells to intefere with a mind's operation, spells to put a victim to sleep, spells that were more refined versions of the phantasm aspect of Mind weaves, spells that made someone believe that he could see or hear or smell or touch something that actually didn't exist. Illusions fooled the senses, but Phantasms tricked the mind. They were well researched because not many Sorcerers were very adept with Illusions. Dar was one of a very rare few that showed such aptitude for Illusions, for it was a very demanding field of study and also required a very vivid imagination. There were spells to delve into the memory of a victim, allowing a Sorcerer to access memories of another, and spells to hear the thoughts of others. There was also a spell that instantly allowed a Sorcerer to lift an entire language out of another's mind and learn it, but it was a Weavespinner spell, meaning that only Jenna and Dolanna would have any real use for it, since it too was restricted to only being able to be used against members of the caster's own race.