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.
In a blur, Tarrin moved himself back to the desert, back to the ruins of Mala Myrr, back to the exact place where he'd started when he released Jegojah and Faalken from the Soultraps. He sent his senses into the strands, seeking out the path he had taken so many months ago, hoping that there would be some trace of it remaining in the Weave. Then, rather foolishly, he realized that all he had to do was send himself back to that dark, emotionless room where the Soultraps had been the same way he sent himself to Mala Myrr. He didn't have to know how to get there; he just needed to know where he was going. That was all.
And he was. Just wanting to go there was all it took. He found himself looking out through the strand into that room, but it was a room that, even through the distortion, looked much different than it had before. Tarrin wove a spell that opened a clear window between the Weave and the real world, an undistorted image of what was beyond the strand, and he was quite surprised to find that the room had been emptied of the furniture and the vials and the bottles and the books and strange objects that had been there before. The room was empty. Completely empty.
A little puzzled, Tarrin cast out his senses, looking for another strand that intersected with the building. He found one, which wasn't very easy, given that the Weave was much thinner where he was than it was in the Tower. He
moved himself into that one, which required him to double all the way back to a major Conduit and then come all the way back, a journey that would have been a hundred leagues up and back had he had to travel it in the real world. He changed his position instantly, moved into a strand that moved vertically through the building where the room was located, a strand that would let him see the inside of the place a little better. He moved up and down floors, looking out into the real world using his window, but found the place empty. Most of the furniture was still there, but all the small things were gone, and he found the place was devoid of occupants. In some rooms, snow had piled up in corners, blown through open windows. Rising up out of the building, he looked down on it from the strand from overhead and found himself looking down on a huge castle, more like a citadel, sitting on top of a huge grey mountain while snow and howling winds swirled around it. In the distance, he could see a large body of water surrounded by rugged grayish peaks, but he couldn't see much beyond that because of the wind-driven snow.
A little annoyed, Tarrin wove a projection of himself and pushed himself into it, which would allow him to move about in the real world. He used it to explore the castle, every room of it. He combed it level by level, chamber by chamber, even using Sorcery to ferret out every hidden room and secret passage and checking them as well. There was no one there. Not only was there no one there, they had left absolutely nothing behind to give him any clues or information. They had abandoned this place, he realized, and in that evacuation they had been extremely thorough in removing any trace that they had been there. Tarrin returned to the Weave in disappointment, and because the effort of projecting was going to tire him if he kept it up too long. He may need to project again when he did find where Jasana was, and he didn't want to tire himself prematurely.
There's nobody here, he said to himself, which became a Whisper in the Weave, since he had no body to make sound. Now what?
That is because you look in the wrong place.
Tarrin was startled; that voice was a voice that he had not heard in many months.
It was Spyder.
Follow my thought, her voice commanded. I will guide you to what you seek.
He did so, following the sense of direction from which her voice emanated. It led him back into the major Conduit, back into a Core Conduit, one of the seven of the greatest Conduits that depended on the sui'kun for their existence, and then out through a steadily shrinking series of strands, becoming smaller and weaker and thinner with each intersection or split, until he reached a place where all the strands seemed to have been turned, pushed back away from something that felt like it was as solid barrier.
Come out.
Without much thought about it, Tarrin pushed flows out of the strands at that strange location and wove them into a projection of himself. Once the weave was formed, he pushed his consciousness into it, and then opened his spectral eyes.
He was on a snow-choked plain. There was nothing but snow as far as he could see in any direction, but there were mountains on the southern horizon, and directly ahead of him, about a league, the snow suddenly stopped to reveal a strange swath of grassland.
Tarrin's ears laid back slightly when he saw a vast army of Goblinoids and humans camped in that grass, and they weren't bundled up against the bitter cold that he could sense plagued this area. There was a sea of them, specks of dark breaking up the green of the grass, sitting around fires, training with weapons, sleeping or sitting in row upon row upon row of small tents that were erected in that grassy plain. Standing directly beside him was Spyder, and he realized that she too was a projection. She wasn't actually there.
"Gora Umadar," she said in a distant voice, pulling that black cloak around her a little more. "You are Ungardt. You know the name."
He did. It was supposedly a cursed place far to the east and north of Ungardt, in the tundra north of the Petal Lakes. Ungardt legend said that an ancient beast of evil was imprisoned within it, and it was bad luck to venture out of the Ice Mountains that separated the lands of Ungardt from the tundra holding the fell place on the other side.
"That is where they hold Jasana," she told him in that same dead, sing-song voice.
Tarrin tried to push out into that grassy plain, to try to sense Jasana, but it was like there was a wall holding him out. "Why can't I sense anything over there?" he asked.
"Val's icon is there, Tarrin," she answered. "He exerts a force that the Goddess cannot counter. The restoration of the Weave has restored most of his power, and now he can wield it directly. That is something that no god can counter without bringing his own icon here, and no god will risk that. If Val and another god did battle through their icons, the results would be disastrous."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because they would be fighting directly," she answered, her eyes sweeping out over the snowless plain and the army it held. "Should one god triumph over the other, his icon would be destroyed, and all his godly power contained within it would sweep out like a firestorm. It would destroy the entire region. For any other god, it would mean millenia of banishment from the world. For Val, it would mean death."
"Because he's trapped in his icon?"
"Because he is a child of the Firestaff," she corrected. "He has never existed anywhere else but here, Tarrin. That is the difference between him and the other gods. That is why they cannot allow any more children of the Firestaff. When I sealed him into his icon, I didn't draw the very essence of him out of where the gods are and imprison him in it. That would be impossible for me to do. I am only a mortal." She looked at him. "His essence was already here. I sealed him into his icon to restrict his power, to force him to be physically present in order to use his godly powers, which restricts the range of his reach. Nothing more. And that I could do only because all ten Elder Gods united and gave me that power. For the gods, an icon is a presence in this world. For Val, it is him, just as your physical body is you. Destroy it, and you destroy him, whether he is sealed in it or not."
That filled Tarrin with a kind of grim excitement. "Then I could destroy him," he said in a dreadful voice, his need to avenge himself against those who had abducted his daughter running hot in his mind.
"You are a mortal, Tarrin," she told him pointedly. "Had I had the power, I would have destroyed Val myself rather than seal him into his icon. We, not even all the sui'kun together, have the power to destroy Val's icon, my brother. We may seem godlike to mundanes, but we are as mundanes compared to the gods, and we are as nothing compared to Val, because of the circumstances of his existence."
Tarrin wanted to growl in frustration at that. Val had been the directing force behind everything that had happened to him over these years. The idea that he couldn't avenge himself against him was like bitter medicine in his mouth. Had he been rational and calm, he would have balked at the idea. But in his current mental state, the need to punish was overriding his common sense.
Calming down a little bit, he looked over at the army. That army was going to make things difficult. If Jasana really was being held inside it, then any attempt to get her out meant that he'd have to go through an army of Goblinoids, fight a god, somehow beat him, then fight his way back out through the army of Goblinoids he'd battled to get in. And do it all inside a void that would rob him of his most powerful asset, his Sorcery.
"Hold on. The ki'zadun attacked the Tower to destroy the Goddess' icon. You just said it's impossible."
"It is impossible against Val, Tarrin. You continue to forget that since Val exists in our world both spritually and physically, it allows him to bring more power to bear here than any other god, even Ayise herself." She paused, clicking her tongue absently. "A mortal would have a much better chance of destroying the icon of any god other than Val. Only Val can exert his full and true power in our world, where all other gods are restricted. Someone such as you or I could possibly destroy the icon of a god. It would be exceedingly difficult, but it would be possible. All the sui'kun acting together would have
a respectable chance of success," she admitted. "The ki'zadun used Demons in their assault on the Tower, and Demons would have a good chance of destroying an icon, because of their power. But not Val's. The power he can wield in our world makes him invulnerable to the attacks of a mortal, even invulnerable against the very Demons he summons. It is part of the reason why he has no fear of them."
Tarrin growled in his throat, a little angry with her that she could bring up a valid argument against everything he wanted to do, arguments he couldn't refute. "Where exactly is Jasana?" he asked.
"There is a structure at the center of the grass," she answered, raising her hand. An Illusion appeared, that of a grim black stone pyramid sitting out in the middle of the grassy tundra. "This. This is where Val is holding Jasana, and where Val is himself. He's also assembled the strongest of his servants among the ki'zadun, amassed this army, and has started summoning Demons to do his bidding." She lowered her hand, sliding it back under her cloak, but the image remained. "That is why I am involved," she told him grimly. "He has broken the strictures and brought Demons into our world."
"I thought they couldn't get in because you guard the gate."
"They cannot, unless a Wizard Conjures them. I cannot control that, because when a Wizard Conjures a Demon, they bring them here using the power of their magic, much the same way you have learned to Conjure using Druidic magic. They do not have to use the gate to gain entry into the world. I also cannot stop a god from doing the same thing. Where a Wizard can only Conjure and keep control of one Demon at a time, Val can raise an army of them. And that is what he is doing."
Tarrin paled. An army of Demons? It was going to be another Blood War!
"Exactly my fear," she nodded, somehow knowing what he was thinking. "Val tried this once, and nearly destroyed the world. Now he tries it again, either believing he can control his Demons this time, or not caring about what happens to the world he conquers. He may be content to rule over a wasteland of blasted ash, so long as he does rule. These are here for the same reason," she said, nodding towards the Goblinoids. "Val raised his army believing that when the Firestaff releases him from his icon, he could use them to sweep out of the tundra and begin his conquest."
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