After that, Tarrin Conjured a good meal for them as Spyder trained Jenna in Mind weaves, from simple ones to make people forget what they just saw, all the way up to the most powerful, which could utterly control a subject. There were Mind weaves for experiencing the sensory input of a subject, literally seeing through his or her eyes, and weaves for sensing the mental energy left behind in an object, just enough of it to make out the appearance of the object's owner, or know where the item had been or how it had been used. Spyder called that Psychometry, and she said it was an exceptionally useful weave. It was also a weave that Tarrin could perform, for it didn't rely on affecting a living mind, only merely read the impressions left behind by that mind. There were even Mind weaves for affecting emotion, digging out submerged memories, editing a victim's memory on a large scale, and making people see and hear things that weren't really there. Spyder explained that it was commonly how people with little aptitude for Illusion made up for that lack of ability. Mental images worked much like Illusions did. Some of the Mind weaves, Tarrin could use against any person, or against objects; in reality, he could use all of it, and did indeed memorize those weaves, but some part of him considered it to be unfair to wield such an advantage over the other Were-cats. Certain Mind weaves, he had to admit, would come in very handy, like the ability to see through the eyes of another.
After that lesson, Spyder moved on to advanced Elemental magic, and that included spells to control the weather. She showed them how they would look but did not release them, unravelling them so they wouldn't take effect. "Listen to me closely, pupils," she said in a stern voice. "Absolutely, under no circumstances, do you ever attempt to affect weather on a scale more than a few square longspans. The power of weather is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, and when you begin to tamper with the weather on a large scale, you are meddling with forces you cannot begin to understand. But it will never get that far. If you try, the Goddess of the weather and the air, T'Kya, will strike at you for interfering with her work. And believe me, if you manage to survive that retaliation, you will know to never try such a thing again. Do I make myself clear on this?"
"Very clear," Jenna nodded. "Only local effects of weather."
"Very good," she nodded. "Now, let's move on to some advanced uses of elemental magic. Such as summoning Elementals."
Tarrin drifted off as she taught Jenna how to summon her own Elementals, and Jenna proved she could do it by summoning her very first, a Fire Elemental. For some reason, all Weavespinners summoned a Fire Elemental first, Spyder confided to them. He came back when she started showing them spells for manipulating Elemental material he'd never seen before, such as making stone melt into lava, or air actually become a liquid, turning so incredibly cold in the process that its merest touch was universally lethal. After those spells, she moved onto Transmutation, and it was here where Tarrin learned a great deal more than in other subjects. Spyder taught them spells for turning anything into just about anything, living or dead or in between. She taught them a group of weaves she called polymorphing, the changing of one living thing into another. There was another group of weaves for changing inamimate things into other inanimate things, spells to animate objects so they moved by themselves and obeyed the Sorcerer, and even spells for changing inamiate objects into living creatures. Those were the hardest, for it intruded somewhat on the power of creation, a realm exclusively granted to Ayise, the Elder God of creation and the creator of the world. Ayise permitted some delving into her realm, but she drew the line in some regards. "You can't make what's already dead and extinct, it violates the balance of nature," she warned. "You can't change an object into a sentient being, like a human, and you can't make it exist outside the normal boundaries for its species. That means no changing stones into fifty-span tall mice," she told them. "Whatever you make has to be possible in the bounds of nature, and when you make it, it can not be unmade. When you change that rope into a lethal Sand-backed viper, you can't turn it back into a rope. Once life is granted to the object, it can't be taken away. If you want to get rid of the creature you create, you have to kill it the old-fashioned way."
"That's why there's no weave for changing living things into inanimate objects," Tarrin reasoned.
"Precisely why. We can cause Ayise to breathe life into the animal we create, but she will not allow us to take that life back."
"I never realized that other gods had so much say in our magic," Jenna mused.
"They have much more say than in any other order," Spyder nodded in agreement. "In truth, Sorcery is the most powerful and most versatile of all the orders of magic, even Druidic magic. Because of that, the gods have a very great hand in where our powers are concerned."
"I always thought Druidic magic was stronger, but with what I've learned tonight, now I'm not so sure," Tarrin admitted. "I never dreamed you could do so much with Sorcery."
"What these untrained wretches you call katzh-dashi know is less than what we taught our Initiates before graduating them," Spyder said scornfully. "They embarass me, truth be told. To think that our order has degenerated so far." She actually bristled. "But that won't be much longer. We digress again, and it is getting very late. We've been out here for nearly fourteen hours now, and I find myself tiring. Let's try to finish the lesson, because I will have more to teach you later."
And so they listened intently as Spyder went over a few more things, such as defeating the powers of Wizards and Priests. Tarrin knew it could be done, but had never gotten around to learning it. He was glad he waited for her. Spyder taught the process in moments, showing them how their powerful influence over the Weave was so strong that they could actually manipulate it directly. One of the forms in which it could be so influenced was causing it to stop transferring magical power that was not Sorcery. By a mere thought, Tarrin or Jenna could rob any Wizard or Priest of his connection to his magic, rendering him powerless. Spyder had been serious when she said that no Wizard or Priest should ever manage to blindside them with a spell, because they'd feel it forming in the Weave. All they had to do was will the Weave to block the power, and it would be so.