But the pain eased. It eased, turned into a strangely warm feeling inside. He found newfound strength, newfound determination. He felt a strange presence, a feeling of something greater, but not something that was the Goddess. It came from beside him. He opened his eyes and looked down.
Sarraya. He had nearly landed on top of her. Her eyes were open, and she had a single, tiny hand on his side. She was using her Druidic power on him, for him, healing his horrific injury by giving his body the energy it needed to heal itself, and accelerating his body's natural healing processes. She infused him with new strength, replenishing his exhausted body, even gave him enough strength to get a handle back on the Weave.
She looked up at him, a wan smile on her face, and then her eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed.
There was no thought. He put a finger to her head, assensing her, forgetting about the Demon. She was alive. Hurt, unconscious, but alive. She would survive long enough for him to deal with the Demon, then come back and heal her.
Tarrin snapped to his feet as the Demon thrashed for another couple of moments, then blinked its eyes and focused them hatefully on the Were-cat.
"Now it's personal," Tarrin hissed at it with utter contempt, raising his limned paws before him, raising them to the sky above. He drew in energy from the Weave, and then he turned it against the Weave itself. His power radiated from him like an invisible sun, waves of intense power that the Weave itself could not resist. "Let's see how tough you are without your magic, Demon!" Tarrin suddenly screamed at it, slashing his arms across his body, to the sides, in a snapping motion as he used his power to directly affect the Weave itself, throwing absolutely everything, power, Sorcery, anger, rage, will, even a part of his own soul, into the gargantuan task which he was trying to accomplish.
The Weave shuddered. The strands of the Weave, crisscrossing through the sky, coming up from the ground or disappearing into it, suddenly began to glow with a noticable radiance, mesmerizing the citizens of Dala Yar Arak from their daily activities. They began to glow, then they shuddered again and then they began to move. They spread away from the Imperial Palace like the opening of a curtain, sliding silently as if some titanic hand were working a loom, shifting them until there was no strand within fifty spans of the outer wall of the Palace.
And then they winked back out of sight.
Within him, Tarrin felt something disappear, something that seemed close to his soul. There was no pain in it, no sensation, only that feeling of sudden disjointedness. He felt the Weave escape him, drain away from him, leaving him without a backlash for the first time in a while without Sarraya's aid. And when its power fled from him, it left him severely weakened, a strange kind of weakness that both took its toll on his body and seemed to reach all the way into his core, into the heart of his soul. It even drained away his fury, leaving him curiously aware, curiously calm. He tried to reach across the gulf to the Weave.
But there was nothing.
He could not afford to try again. The Demon looked at him in confusion, then seemed to stand there for a moment.
And its eyes went wide.
"Don't be surprised," Tarrin hissed in a nearly gutteral snarl. "No magic can flow without the Weave, and I control the Weave," he finished in a fierce declaration. He was utterly exhausted, utterly drained. Shifting the Weave had been what he desired, but his knees shook and he couldn't find the Weave again. Had his ploy deprived him of magic as well as the Demon? It certainly seemed that way. But it had evened things considerably. It still had his sword, still had an advantage, but it now had to come to him to kill him. It couldn't stand back and assault him with magic, or vanish and reappear somewhere else every time Tarrin got an advantage. He crooked his paw at the Demon tauntingly. "Bring it on," he hissed, laying his ears back.
If he was trying to enrage the Demon, he was monumentally successful. With a raging howl, the monster threw his sword to the side, behind the bookstand holding the Book of Ages, then charged towards him with its huge pincers readied to either catch him or stab him. Tarrin moved out so Sarraya wouldn't be trampled, staying near the wall, readying to receive its charge. He let it rush him, rush him madly, blindly. For once, Tarrin would use someone else's rage against them, rather than be the victim of his own fury. When it was almost close enough to spear him, he suddenly jumped straight up, over its head, catching it by surprise. It tried to reach up and grab him, stab him, but he pushed off of the dome above and out of its reach, and it turned and slammed its back into the wall, making the whole chamber shudder, as Tarrin landed well out from the wall and simply dashed for his sword, dashed for his very life.
But in his wildest dreams, he would never have thought that something so large, so ungainly, could move with such speed. It closed the distance between them quickly, and Tarrin had to dive aside to avoid getting impaled through the back by its mauled pincer-arm's claw. He rolled to his feet, but it was right on top of him so quickly he barely realized it, and its pincer again managed to lash out and close around his waist. It picked him up yet again, and he screamed when the tip of its other pincer claw drove into his side, not deeply, but deep enough to threaten to scratch his rib.
No sliding out this time, mortal, the Demon's hideous voice echoed in his mind. I think you can't do that with something sticking out of you. I will crush you slowly, savoring your screams, delighting in your every agonized cry. It will be delicious.
Separated from the Weave, with Sarraya unconscious, with no way to injure this Demonic foe, Tarrin was out of ideas. He simply had no tricks left. There was nothing he could do but squirm under the crushing vice of its claws, cry out as it increased the pressure, then released it just enough for him to draw breath, then squeeze him again.
Just to listen to him scream.
Desperately, Tarrin sought to touch the Weave, to join with its power, but it was beyond his senses, beyond his reach. He could not touch it. He was the victim of his own cleverness, caught in his own trap. Desperation turned to fear, soul-consuming fear as his own death stood before him, and that fear unleashed his other half once again. He struggled even harder, injuring himself in his attempts to wrest free of the Demon's crushing grip, but it had him too securely. It would not let him go.
The sword. He could see it, laying not ten spans from him. Right there, waiting for him to pick it up, but it may as well be in Suld for the good it did him. His eyes locked on the weapon, and a dim memory of something tickled him. A memory of an exploding ship's wheel, a memory of an explosion of force that cause a collapsing building to fall away from him instead of upon him. It had that same feeling of expansion that Sarraya's Druidic magic caused within him, a feeling of connection to a greater whole, a power that was warm and gentle. Those things, they had not been Sorcery.
The katzh-dashi have minor priest powers because they're technically not mortal, the Goddess had told him, long ago. By rendering them ageless, they get around the stricture that no mortal may use more than one order of magic.
Please don't experiment, my kitten, he remembered her saying. My constitution couldn't take it if you did that.
Not you can't do that, but my constitution couldn't take it.
Were-cats don't die of old age, Jesmind had told him. We live until something kills us.
All Were-cats have a touch of Druidic power, she had also told him. Mine is very weak, but it's enough to know a Sorcerer's weaving from a Wizard's spells. It's how I know a Sorcerer put that damned collar on me.
Of course!
His eyes lighting up from within, Tarrin gave the Demon an evil smile. It made perfect sense! He wasn't mortal! All Were-cats had at least some minor Druidic power! Those instances of strange power, they hadn't been Sorcery, they had been Druidic magic!
And Druidic power didn't depend on the Weave!
Reaching into himself, for the first time, Tarrin attempted to find that power, to touch it. He needed it, needed it like he had never needed it before. He had no idea how to use it, only wild, instinctual responses to threat. And he was under threat now. But his rational mind knew exactly what it needed done. He reached out with his instincts, the Cat, the soul of the animal within, seeking the power he knew was there.