"Can we prove it, though?" Keritanima asked.
"Actually, yes," Dolanna said. "We have two humans here, and Dar knows how to circle. Dar, Keritanima, join into a circle. Keritanima, you lead it."
Tarrin felt the edges of it. Dar reached out to Keritanima in the oddest way, almost as if he were trying to touch the Weave. But instead of touching the Weave, he was trying to touch Keritanima. He felt Keritanima respond to that searching probe, and when they met, he felt their power pool together and expand.
"Very good. Now, Keritanima, join with me in another circle. I will lead it."
Tarrin felt it again, as Keritanima simultaneously maintained her contact with Dar, and reached out to touch Dolanna in the same manner Dar had reached out to her. He felt Dolanna's reply, and then they too were linked together into a circle. The pooled power of Dar and Keritanima suddenly expanded into Dolanna, joining the two human Sorcerers through their non-human conduit.
"Yes, I think it does work!" Dolanna exclaimed. "I can barely feel Dar at all! Keritanima is isolating him from me, yet I can still access his power!" She looked at Tarrin. "Did you feel it? How it was done?"
Tarrin nodded. "It was like trying to touch the Weave, except she was trying to touch you."
"Try it," she urged. "Reach out to me. Try to touch me."
Tarrin nodded and closed his eyes. He knew how to touch the Weave; it was almost instinctive now. He used the same sensation to begin, but instead of trying to touch the Weave, he reached out for Dolanna instead, using her scent and her feel and her presence to guide his awareness.
It was shockingly easy. He touched Dolanna, almost as if she were the Weave, and he felt her mind respond. There was almost something of a door opening between them, and he found he could peek through it and look into her mind. But she could also look into his, and the Cat took immediate notice of this unknown, strange sensation, of this strange presence. It rose up to investigate, to challenge the interloper.
Dolanna gasped audibly as the Cat invaded her through the contact between them, and he felt her mind attempt to push it back away from her. He tried to rein it in, convince it that the mind in contact with them was a friend, not an enemy, not an attack, but the impulse was powerful and it was irresistable. He felt the Cat rise up and smite the doorway between them, shattering it like a window.
Both Tarrin and Dolanna cried out, reaching for heads that were suddenly splitting with pain. The Sharadi Sorceress sagged in her chair and Tarrin's head banged into the wall behind him. Keritanima winced, flinching away from the other two, but Dar made no outward motion at all that he felt anything. "That was very unpleasant," Dolanna said delicately, rubbing her temples.
"I felt it too," Keritanima said. "What happened?"
"Tarrin rejected the link," Dolanna replied. "Violently. The disruption of the circle fed back into us as a backlash."
"I didn't do it on purpose," he said defensively.
"I did not say that you did, dear one," she assured him. "I do not wish to try that again any time soon."
"I warned you it may happen."
"So you did. But we do seem to have unlocked a forgotten secret. This is something I must write down and send back to the Tower for further study."
"You're going to tell them?" Tarrin flared. "I don't trust them, Dolanna!"
"True, but we cannot allow knowledge to be cast aside," she said calmly. "If we fail in our quest, we very well may perish. I will not allow this to die with us." She patted his paw. "Besides, dear one, how can they possibly use this against us? All of the non-human Sorcerers are right here. This provides them with absolutely no hold over us. Because of that, I see no reason not to share it."
He looked for a good logical reason to object, but he couldn't find any. He decided that logic was a great deal overrated. "Well, I still don't like it," he snorted, crossing his arms.
"I do not like it very much either, but I see little recourse," Dolanna assured him. "Because of my newfound headache, I think we will stop for now. After I recover some, we will continue with normal lessons."
"That's fine with me," he said flatly. But then the words of the Goddess, about how he chose his own path, echoed in his mind. "We'll try it your way, Dolanna," he said, with considerably less hostility in his voice. "I guess I can trust you to do the right thing."
"I appreciate that," she said, standing up. She swooned slightly, but Dar was there to give her a reassuring arm. "I think I need to lay down a while," she announced.
"I'll take you to your room, Dolanna," Dar said in a gentle voice.
"Thank you ever so much," she said with a bright smile to her pupil.
"Are you alright, brother?" Allia asked in Selani as Dar helped Dolanna from the room.
"I'm fine, just a little headache," he replied. "I think Dolanna took the brunt of it."
"I think she did too," Keritanima agreed. "It was about the same as being hit in the head by a cannonball. I can only imagine how bad it was for her, since she was the lead."
"Sorry," he apologized to Keritanima.
She snorted. "It was a calculated risk," she replied. "At least it wasn't a complete failure. I doubt we'll get you into a circle, but at least you remembered that part about non-humans. That's new information, and that's always good to have."
"Whatever," he yawned. "How are dance lessons going?"
Keritanima visibly bristled. "You have alot of nerve to ask that," she said ominously.
Allia giggled like a little girl. "She has the other dancers in a state of terror," she told Tarrin. "They're afraid she's going to pull out a knife and stab them."
"What about you?" Keritanima challenged. "Didn't you break Jak's arm this morning?"
"I can't help it if he can't land on his feet," she shrugged.
"Renoit's talking about making you dance instead," she told the Selani in a light tone.
"Fine. Unlike you, I find nothing wrong with dancing. I enjoy it."
That seemed to take the wind out of Keritanima's sails. She gave Allia an irritated look, then took Tarrin's paw. "Well, at least Tarrin understands," she grunted.
"No, I don't," he said bluntly. "But I'm not going to tease you about it. If you don't like to dance, then that's fine."
"Hmph," she snorted. "I'm going to spend time with Miranda. At least she doesn't make fun of me."
And with that, she stormed out.
"She'll never learn," Allia chuckled.
"What were we teaching her?" Tarrin asked curiously.
"That fear is there to be conquered," she replied easily. "Keritanima is afraid of dancing in front of people. Stagefright, I think Renoit called it."
"That's a strange condition for someone who lived her entire life in the public eye," Tarrin mused.
"True, but she was always in a position of control before, or at the very least she was on familiar ground," Allia reminded him. "This time, she must dance to the beat of another's drum, in unknown territory. It's an entirely different situation."
"If you say so," he shrugged.
"I do say so," she teased, poking him lightly in the ribs. "And I also say that it's time for you to take a nap."
"But I'm not tired."
"But I am, and I miss napping with my brother," she said. "I'm starting to chafe at the time they take from me to train."
"I don't mind. You don't have to be right beside me for me to know you're near."
"Yes, but we don't talk as we used to do, deshida," she sighed. "The loss of private conversation could make us drift apart again, and I won't have that." She scooted up onto the bed more fully. "Now make room."