"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.