She darted up and was in the Sha'Kar woman's face in a heartbeat. "Who are you, and how dare you attack him!" she demanded hotly in her piping voice, her face showing her outrage.
The woman fixed the Faerie with a calm look, a look that shook the little Faerie's outrage-fueled indignation. She flitted back and away from the woman, getting a full taste of the sheer aura of intimidation the woman exuded. But Sarraya had spent much time around Triana, and the intimidating effect of the woman's presence didn't affect her for very long. She returned to a dangerously close distance from the woman's eyes quickly, and recovered her look of furious outrage.
"I did not attack him," the Sha'Kar snorted in a rich voice. "I did what was necessary. I hold no grudge against him."
"What kind of lame answer is that!" Sarraya flared, putting her hands on her hips. "I saw it with my own eyes!"
"If I meant him harm, he would be dead," the woman said flatly. "The Goddess sent me to test him."
"The-The Goddess? Tarrin's Goddess?"
She nodded. "As you may have realized, we are brother and sister," she said, reaching under her burned shirt and producing an amulet of untarnished silver. Unlike most Sorcerer's amulets, hers was a little different. The little concave star in the center had little lines running to the triangles, and it almost looked like a little spider. "Mother was getting cross with him, so she sent me to provoke him into losing control."
Sarraya's face turned a pale blue. "Why would she do such a thing!"
"Because he could not grow any more unless he faced his power," she replied with marked casualness. "It is an ordeal that all Weavespinners must undertake if they are to realize their true potential. Only in the moment of destruction can a Weavespinner attain communion with the Goddess. If they succeed, they may progress and discover the secrets of the Weave. If they fail, they die. Mother was getting angry that he kept finding ways to avert fate, so she sent me to make sure of it. His time is growing short, and he has no more time to waste floundering about."
"What would have happened if-" Sarraya said, but the look in the woman's eyes said it all. She swallowed. "He would have died?"
"It would have pained me to cause the death of a brother, but it had to be done," she said with genuine compassion in her voice. "But now it is ended. And I must go."
The woman turned and started walking away, the utter-black cloak absorbing the light, making her look like a two-dimensional figure against the hellish backdrop before her. "Hey, wait!" Sarraya shouted. "You nearly kill him, and now you leave him here?"
"He has you," she called without looking back.
"You think I can move him before he gets baked by this heat?"
She actually laughed. "Think, you foolish sprite. Should he not already be dead?"
Sarraya had no answer. If the heat was so intense that she had to protect herself with Druidic magic, then he should have been killed by it long before she reached them. And yet he was unharmed.
"Wait!" Sarraya shouted, but the shadow of the woman was gone, and something inside her told her that she was no longer there, even if she chased after her.
Sarraya bit her lip, fretting. What had just happened? Why did this figure from the past return to the present, return to attack Tarrin, but not to hurt him? What was this test the woman spoke about? How did Tarrin survive? It was madness! She looked down at him, and then she remembered the woman's words as her eyes locked on his amulet, an amulet that had changed.
Only in the moment of destruction can a Weavespinner attain communion with the Goddess.
It was a test! All this time, all those times he had nearly destroyed himself with Sorcery, they all were just precludes to this! If he was to ever find his true power, to find the answers that his Goddess told him to find, he would have to face the possibility of destruction by the very power he sought to master.
It certainly looked like he found that mastery. He was still alive, for one, and his amulet now looked exactly like the Sha'Kar woman's amulet. It had that same strange spidery-like alteration to the central star.
Of course. Sarraya chuckled. If they were called Weavespinners, what better symbol to represent them than a spider?
"I'm getting too old for this," she sighed, using Druidic magic to pick his inert form off the blisteringly hot ground.
Light.
There was light all around him. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it deep inside, feel the radiant warmth of it as it shined upon him. It flowed, this light, flowed and pulsed and shimmered from one place to another, moving in a vast cycle of uncountable paths that all eventually began and ended at the same place. It was a heady feeling to sense the light, mystical in its underlying intent, moving of its own without rational rules to define its existence. Beneath the flowing of the light was a strange sound, a sound he could not hear, yet he could. It was a steady, rhythmic thumping, a gentle pulse of lifeblood through this ether river, a river that began where it ended and existed within a neverending cycle of self-replenishment.
It was a heartbeat.
That heartbeat was the collective energies of thousands and thousands of beings, all beating in perfect unison, hearts that sustained this vast web of interlaced rivers of light. They did not know that they worked together. They did not know that their lifeblood was also the lifeblood of this grand network. From the wellspring this light flowed, flowed through the hearts of those who circulated it, flowed through the heart of the world, and then it returned to the wellspring from whence it had come. It was an endless cycle, like the tides, the currents, the winds, the seasons. It had a beginning and an end, but the end was naught but the beginning of the next cycle.
He opened his eyes. He found himself adrift in a sea of vast black emptiness, except for the crisscrossing rivers of light that flowed around him, in all directions, extending into infinity to light the void, but never so numerous that the void was consumed by their presence. Those rivers nearest to him were warped, leaning towards him, yearning for him the way plants yearned towards the sun. The sight of it was beautiful, so beautiful that his heart felt like the most breathtaking sunrise would seem as dull grays on slate in comparison. His heart also sustained this vast web of light, but unlike others, he fully sensed what was happening, was aware of it.
The Goddess gives the power, but it is the hearts of the Sorcerers that bring it from the wellspring and deliver it to the land, he thought in a moment of revelation. Without the Sorcerers, there would be no magic in the world.
"You see truth, my son," the voice of the Goddess shimmered through the rivers of light, through the strands of the Weave. She was close, yet distant, near yet far, existing in a place that was both near him and beyond his imagination. "You see the truth of things that few have experienced. You have become what you were always meant to become."
"But what is that, Mother?" he called out into the void. "What good does it do me to know these things, when I can't do anything with them?"
"You underestimate the power of knowledge," she replied from her unseen place. "Did your battle not teach you that knowledge is the greatest form of power?"
He blinked. That was easy enough to agree with. That Sha'Kar woman had taken everything he did and twisted it back on him, with contemptuous ease. It wasn't because she was more powerful than him, it was because she had a greater knowledge about the Weave than he did. That knowledge made her the better of them.
"To influence a thing, you must first be aware of that thing," she told him. "You cannot master things you cannot understand. You cannot master your power without first understanding its truth."
That made sense. He couldn't deny that. "Mother… what was I meant to be?"
"What you are," she replied cryptically.