"Jegojah, he forgets about that sometimes," he grunted loudly enough to be heard over the wind.
"Around about noon, I'll try," he called. "It should be calm by then, and Allia will certainly be awake."
"Nothing else, we have to do, no," Jegojah shouted. "The camp, this would be a good time to move it! After all, taken it down already, we have, yes!"
"You have a point," Tarrin acceded. "It's not easy to see in this, but we need to find shelter anyway. Let's go find a good building and wait it out!"
"What about the tents?"
"We'll leave them here," Tarrin shouted. "Sarraya and I can just Conjure them back to us when we want to set them up!"
"Conjure? Ye know Druidic magic?"
Tarrin nodded, pulling his braid out of his face as the wind slapped it against his visor. "I'm a Were-cat, Jegojah. All Were-cats have at least some Druidic talent. And since we're technically not mortal, I get around the stricture against being able to use only one order of magic."
"No wonder Jegojah, he could not best you!" the undead warrior cackled in that hideous voice. "Too many tricks, ye know, yes!"
"Don't sell him short," Sarraya called. "He whipped you fair and square, with and without magic."
Tarrin was a bit startled that Sarraya would insult Jegojah that way, but the undead warrior just laughed. "That he did!" he admitted. "It was an honor to battle you, Tarrin of the Were-cats! It was a loss for Jegojah, but an honorable loss, it was, yes!"
"Let's save the reminscing until after we're in shelter!" Tarrin called.
Finding shelter was a very simple affair. They had but to enter the closest of the buildings that were still standing. Tarrin was too large to fit in the door, and had to shift to cat form to get inside. Jegojah just barely cleared the door, and the ceiling was literally scraping his helmet as they entered a dust-choked chamber with a stone table in the far corner, by the door. Tarrin was careful to shapeshift back so he was squatting down, shifting from a seated position as a cat, which allowed him to clear the ceiling by a comfortable amount. He couldn't stand erect inside the buildings, but he had a very flexible spine, and could stand if he stayed severely stooped over. But it was easier for him to simply sit.
"Small buildings," Jegojah noted. "Not human."
"We think it's a Dwarven city," Sarraya told him.
"Mala Myrr," Jegojah said immediately. "Even in Jegojah's time, the rumors flew. A lost Dwarven city swallowed up by the desert. This place, it must be it, yes." He looked out. "Jegojah, he remembers other rumors. Mala Myrr was supposed to be close to a fabled city called Amyr Dimeon. The Heavenly City."
Tarrin knew exactly what Jegojah was talking about. The city of the Aeradalla would fit that description perfectly, but Tarrin wasn't going to tell him that. That wasn't his secret to divulge. "If there is another ruin from the past out there, we haven't seen it," Tarrin told him.
"Nope," Sarraya mirrored. At least she picked up on that and wouldn't make any embarassing comments.
They waited out the storm in relative silence after that. Tarrin napped with Sarraya curled up inside his furry ball, and Jegojah sat and read from books that Sarraya had conjured for him. Being undead, Jegojah didn't sleep, and the books gave him a means to pass the time. They'd also let him catch up on modern history. Jegojah's world was still five hundred years in the past. He had alot of catching up to do.
The storm blew over by midmorning, and they moved on. They left the city and set up a good camp right on the edge of it, with a half-crumbled city wall giving them a border on one side, and a pile of rubble hemming them in from the west. The result was a nice little niche that would catch the light of a fire nicely, and it was large enough to accomadate five tents. What made it most attractive was that a strand ran vertically from the ground just inside that old ruined wall, giving him easy access to the Weave.
As Sarraya conned Jegojah into helping her erect tents, Tarrin sat down directly within the strand, achieving physical contact, then grabbed hold of his amulet. "Allia," he called.
"Kerri told me you'd call out to me," she replied immediately. "And that you'd want me to do something for you. Given Kerri's excitement when she talked to me, it must have been something pretty interesting."
"I do need you to do something for me," he said. "First, are you alone?"
"Dolanna and Dar are with me. I'm in Dolanna's apartment."
"That's good enough. Alright now, listen carefully, sister. Touch the Weave, and hold as much of it as you can. Do that for about fifteen minutes. If nothing happens in fifteen minutes, let go and then try to contact me."
"As you wish, my brother. I'm ready."
Quickly and effortlessly, Tarrin separated his consciousness from his body and joined with the Weave. As before, he found himself hurtling through the strands, into a Conduit, and then he was again in the Heart. It was as it always had been before, an unfathomably huge abyss of utter darkness, that darkness pierced by the stars that represented all the Sorcerers, and the strands wavering very faintly behind them, barely visible in the consuming darkness held at bay by those stars. The sense of the Goddess was as it had been before, and the glorious blazing light of her illuminated the very core of the Heart, destroying the inky blackness that sought to consume the light. He looked up into the black sky of the Heart and found her eyes looking down on him, felt her smile, was infused by her love, and he felt utterly content.
But he wasn't there to bask in the radiant aura of the Goddess, no matter how lovely it was to do so. He reached out with his senses, reached out and felt for that distinctive sensation that identified his sister in the Weave. Allia's star was out there, and after a few moments of intense concentration, he managed to identify it. Using that star as a reference, he cast out his senses into the Weave, feeling for the physical reflection of the energy he felt from Allia's star. Allia wasn't as strong as Keritanima, so her presence wouldn't be as striking as it had been for his Wikuni sister. But she was close to the Heart, both physically and spiritually, so it didn't take him long to lock onto her. As he had done before, he travelled through the Weave, travelled to her physical location, then constructed an Illusion, cast it into the space near her, then pushed his consciousness into that projection.
He opened his spectral eyes, and found the three of them staring at his Illusion in shock. Dar, who was a natural with Illusion, had mouth hanging open, and Dolanna looked as if she was staring into the eyes of a Wraith. Allia stared at him a bit wildly, then laughed. "Tarrin? Is that you?" she asked. Allia was hard to surprise, and even harder to keep surprised. Tarrin felt a wild surge of joy at seeing his beloved sister once again, but the emotion of it was overwhelmed by the pressing need to tell them what was going on, while he had the strength to do it.
"Yes and no," he replied. "What you see is nothing but an Illusion, Allia. I'm still in the desert, but I've learned a trick to allow me to reach through the Illusion. It's very draining, so I can't stay this way for long. Only long enough to pass on certain information and give you a few warnings." He turned to Dolanna. "Dolanna, could you Ward this place? As tightly as you can?"
She seemed to recover from her surprise. "Certainly, dear one," she smiled. "Is that a factual representation of you?" she asked.
"Unfortunately, it is," he grunted. "I know, I'm taller. I'll explain how that happened when I get to the Tower, because it'll take too long to explain, and I can't waste any time."