Come out.
Without much thought about it, Tarrin pushed flows out of the strands at that strange location and wove them into a projection of himself. Once the weave was formed, he pushed his consciousness into it, and then opened his spectral eyes.
He was on a snow-choked plain. There was nothing but snow as far as he could see in any direction, but there were mountains on the southern horizon, and directly ahead of him, about a league, the snow suddenly stopped to reveal a strange swath of grassland.
Tarrin's ears laid back slightly when he saw a vast army of Goblinoids and humans camped in that grass, and they weren't bundled up against the bitter cold that he could sense plagued this area. There was a sea of them, specks of dark breaking up the green of the grass, sitting around fires, training with weapons, sleeping or sitting in row upon row upon row of small tents that were erected in that grassy plain. Standing directly beside him was Spyder, and he realized that she too was a projection. She wasn't actually there.
"Gora Umadar," she said in a distant voice, pulling that black cloak around her a little more. "You are Ungardt. You know the name."
He did. It was supposedly a cursed place far to the east and north of Ungardt, in the tundra north of the Petal Lakes. Ungardt legend said that an ancient beast of evil was imprisoned within it, and it was bad luck to venture out of the Ice Mountains that separated the lands of Ungardt from the tundra holding the fell place on the other side.
"That is where they hold Jasana," she told him in that same dead, sing-song voice.
Tarrin tried to push out into that grassy plain, to try to sense Jasana, but it was like there was a wall holding him out. "Why can't I sense anything over there?" he asked.
"Val's icon is there, Tarrin," she answered. "He exerts a force that the Goddess cannot counter. The restoration of the Weave has restored most of his power, and now he can wield it directly. That is something that no god can counter without bringing his own icon here, and no god will risk that. If Val and another god did battle through their icons, the results would be disastrous."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because they would be fighting directly," she answered, her eyes sweeping out over the snowless plain and the army it held. "Should one god triumph over the other, his icon would be destroyed, and all his godly power contained within it would sweep out like a firestorm. It would destroy the entire region. For any other god, it would mean millenia of banishment from the world. For Val, it would mean death."
"Because he's trapped in his icon?"
"Because he is a child of the Firestaff," she corrected. "He has never existed anywhere else but here, Tarrin. That is the difference between him and the other gods. That is why they cannot allow any more children of the Firestaff. When I sealed him into his icon, I didn't draw the very essence of him out of where the gods are and imprison him in it. That would be impossible for me to do. I am only a mortal." She looked at him. "His essence was already here. I sealed him into his icon to restrict his power, to force him to be physically present in order to use his godly powers, which restricts the range of his reach. Nothing more. And that I could do only because all ten Elder Gods united and gave me that power. For the gods, an icon is a presence in this world. For Val, it is him, just as your physical body is you. Destroy it, and you destroy him, whether he is sealed in it or not."
That filled Tarrin with a kind of grim excitement. "Then I could destroy him," he said in a dreadful voice, his need to avenge himself against those who had abducted his daughter running hot in his mind.
"You are a mortal, Tarrin," she told him pointedly. "Had I had the power, I would have destroyed Val myself rather than seal him into his icon. We, not even all the sui'kun together, have the power to destroy Val's icon, my brother. We may seem godlike to mundanes, but we are as mundanes compared to the gods, and we are as nothing compared to Val, because of the circumstances of his existence."
Tarrin wanted to growl in frustration at that. Val had been the directing force behind everything that had happened to him over these years. The idea that he couldn't avenge himself against him was like bitter medicine in his mouth. Had he been rational and calm, he would have balked at the idea. But in his current mental state, the need to punish was overriding his common sense.
Calming down a little bit, he looked over at the army. That army was going to make things difficult. If Jasana really was being held inside it, then any attempt to get her out meant that he'd have to go through an army of Goblinoids, fight a god, somehow beat him, then fight his way back out through the army of Goblinoids he'd battled to get in. And do it all inside a void that would rob him of his most powerful asset, his Sorcery.
"Hold on. The ki'zadun attacked the Tower to destroy the Goddess' icon. You just said it's impossible."
"It is impossible against Val, Tarrin. You continue to forget that since Val exists in our world both spritually and physically, it allows him to bring more power to bear here than any other god, even Ayise herself." She paused, clicking her tongue absently. "A mortal would have a much better chance of destroying the icon of any god other than Val. Only Val can exert his full and true power in our world, where all other gods are restricted. Someone such as you or I could possibly destroy the icon of a god. It would be exceedingly difficult, but it would be possible. All the sui'kun acting together would have a respectable chance of success," she admitted. "The ki'zadun used Demons in their assault on the Tower, and Demons would have a good chance of destroying an icon, because of their power. But not Val's. The power he can wield in our world makes him invulnerable to the attacks of a mortal, even invulnerable against the very Demons he summons. It is part of the reason why he has no fear of them."
Tarrin growled in his throat, a little angry with her that she could bring up a valid argument against everything he wanted to do, arguments he couldn't refute. "Where exactly is Jasana?" he asked.
"There is a structure at the center of the grass," she answered, raising her hand. An Illusion appeared, that of a grim black stone pyramid sitting out in the middle of the grassy tundra. "This. This is where Val is holding Jasana, and where Val is himself. He's also assembled the strongest of his servants among the ki'zadun, amassed this army, and has started summoning Demons to do his bidding." She lowered her hand, sliding it back under her cloak, but the image remained. "That is why I am involved," she told him grimly. "He has broken the strictures and brought Demons into our world."
"I thought they couldn't get in because you guard the gate."
"They cannot, unless a Wizard Conjures them. I cannot control that, because when a Wizard Conjures a Demon, they bring them here using the power of their magic, much the same way you have learned to Conjure using Druidic magic. They do not have to use the gate to gain entry into the world. I also cannot stop a god from doing the same thing. Where a Wizard can only Conjure and keep control of one Demon at a time, Val can raise an army of them. And that is what he is doing."
Tarrin paled. An army of Demons? It was going to be another Blood War!
"Exactly my fear," she nodded, somehow knowing what he was thinking. "Val tried this once, and nearly destroyed the world. Now he tries it again, either believing he can control his Demons this time, or not caring about what happens to the world he conquers. He may be content to rule over a wasteland of blasted ash, so long as he does rule. These are here for the same reason," she said, nodding towards the Goblinoids. "Val raised his army believing that when the Firestaff releases him from his icon, he could use them to sweep out of the tundra and begin his conquest."
"Why can't the gods stop him?" he asked. "And why can't they just destroy him?"