"Where are Kerri and the others?"

"Still in Ungardt," she answered. "Kerri's Teleported back here a few times already to check on you, but the rest are holding firm there."

"Bring them back," he said emotionlessly. "There's no reason for them to continue with the charade, especially since it didn't do any bloody good." He snorted shortly. "Let's get everyone in one place, and this is the safest place for them to be right now." He looked at Sarraya. "Why didn't Triana have Kerri Teleport her here?"

"Kerri was out," she answered. "She, Dolanna, and Jula did something to repel the Demons, but it wiped all three of them out. By the time Kerri woke up, Triana was already gone. And nobody can contact Triana while she's travelling, Tarrin. Not even me. When she's doing what she does, it's like she's outside the boundaries of this universe. Nothing can reach her."

Tarrin thought a moment, still holding his son close to him with one paw. It was all very carefully planned and executed. Had it not been executed against him, he would have been impressed by it. Whoever had planned it had identified all their strengths and weaknesses, carefully prepared their plan, then executed it with flawless precision. They had done everything they needed to do to get Jasana. They had lured Jenna off the grounds and then pinned her in one place long enough to keep her from interfering. They had eliminated the danger he posed when they forced the Sorcerers to recall him and burn off all his power defending the grounds against the horde of Demons who were nothing more than a means to deplete him and occupy his attention. They had trapped Keritanima and Dolanna in Ungardt to keep them from stopping what was happening here, and they had cleverly also targeted Jula, his other daughter, in case the attempt to kidnap Jasana failed. That way, they'd have at least one of his daughters to use as leverage to make him hand over the Firestaff. This was a broad, intricate plan, and somehow he just knew that it was the brainchild of that six-armed Demoness. The marilith were supposedly the brains of the Demons, their planners and generals. This was a plan that reeked of her supernatural touch.

"Where is Kimmie?"

"She and Phandebrass are setting down a Wizard barrier around the Tower grounds, just outside the fence," Jenna said stonily. "I have about fifty Wizards and Priests working on it."

"Where did you find them?"

"Some are the Priests of Karas. The rest are Wizards who happened to be in Suld at the moment. After the Demon attack, they agreed to give us some help. Phandebrass is in command down there, believe it or not. I'm not sure how Wizards rank themselves, but Phandebrass seems to be at the top of the pecking order."

"When it's Demons, it concerns everyone," Sarraya said grimly. "There are no groups. It's them and us."

"Well said," Jenna said with a nod.

"It's not a surprise to me," Tarrin said shortly. "He may be a little scattered, but you won't find a better Wizard than Phandebrass."

"What now?" Allia asked him in a calm yet steely voice.

"Now? Now I find out where they have Jasana. Then I go there and destroy everything standing between me and her," he said in an ugly tone, sweeping Mist and Jesmind out of the way as he swung his legs out of the bed. They'd undressed him, but his unclad condition meant absolutely nothing to him as he got out of bed, still holding Eron in his arms. His son was picking absently at the black fur on Tarrin's arm, seemingly content to be held by his father.

"I've tried searching for her, but I can't find a trace of her," Jenna frowned. "She crossed over, Tarrin. As strong as she is, I should be able to sense her anywhere on the planet, but there's nothing. It's like she dropped off the face of the world."

"Or they have killed her," Allia said grimly. "I am sorry to say it, but it must be considered," she said quickly when Jesmind laid her ears back and hissed at the Selani threateningly.

"They won't kill her," Tarrin said shortly. "As long as I have the Firesetaff, they won't dare. If they do, they know they will never get it. Even if I have to live for all eternity, they'll never so much as see it." Without even thinking, Tarrin Conjured new clothes for himself. With as much Demon blood he got on himself during the battle, he was surprised the old ones didn't melt off of him. "And I know exactly where to start to find her."

"Where?" Jenna asked.

He was reluctant to set Eron down, but he needed both paws to dress. Eron immediately ran over to his mother, clinging to her leg. The assault had to have been very traumatic for him. Another reason to pay that Demoness back for everything she did. He jerked on his new trousers, barely registering that his claw ripped them from the lower thigh down He pulled on the vest without a shirt and flexed his paw briefly. "The place where I found Faalken's Soultrap," he finally answered. "I can find my way back there again." He turned a powerful stare on Jenna. "Is Amelyn still in the dungeon?"

"Yes, but she's told us everything she knows."

"I doubt that. Take a Circle down there and drag everything out of her."

"That may destroy her, Tarrin."

Without batting an eye, without even so much as a shiver of warning, Tarrin's paw lunged out with blinding speed and grabbed a pawful of Jenna's dress. He hauled her off the ground and brought her up to look him eye to eye, to stare into two green glowing pools of utterly ruthless determination. " I did not say that you had a choice ," he said in a seething hiss so cold, so brutal that it made Jenna pale. He put her back on the ground so hard it made her teeth click, and his paw tore away part of the bodice of her dress as he recoiled it from her, threatening to expose her breasts. What was revealed of them showed that each had a pair of bloody lines running down them, from the claws on his fingers. He had not been gentle with her.

At that moment, everyone in the room realized that in his present state, he would kill anyone who stood in his way. Even a sister.

With a brief snort, he smoothly seated himself right in the middle of the room, legs crossed. He reached out a paw and set himself against the Weave, spinning out a strand that led back to the main Conduit that looped directly through him, then he crossed his arms, hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, then wrapped his tail around his legs and closed his eyes. "You can tell me what you found out when I get back," he told her in a tone that grew more and more distant as he spoke.

"What is he doing?" Jesmind asked, a voice that grew further and further away as he pushed himself into the Weave.

"Going out into the Weave," Jenna's voice replied, as if from half the world away.

He hovered in his strand a moment, feeling the Heart tugging at him. If he let himself go, that's where he would end up, but he held his position just aside from his body. He could see into the real world from the strand, but everything was oddly discolored and wavering, like looking through the heat shimmer of the desert at a distant object. Just as his eyes could see the Weave in a kind of background sense, so could he see into the real world from the Weave, though it was just as insubstantial as the Weave was from the real world. He could feel every tiny bit of magic flowing around him, through him, the tiny eddies and currents within the strand, currents that had altered the currents in nearly every other strand around the Tower because of its creation.

He had never done what he was trying to do, but he knew that he could do it. His anger was not rage, it was that cold, focused anger of the Human, an anger that actually made him concentrate harder on the task at hand to complete it. The anger swept out all the panic and worry of a parent, left behind nothing but a burning need to accomplish the task at hand, a task that his daughter's life depended on him succeeding.