"That's Mistress Dolanna," Ahiriya said in an icy tone, glaring at him.
"Don't push me, woman," Tarrin said to her in a cold voice that promised violence.
"Tarrin, mind your manners!" Dolanna said in shock.
"Save it," Tarrin told her bluntly. "I'm not going to do tricks for the Council, even if I could."
"You go too far, Initiate," Ahiyira said in a tightly controlled voice. "I think a few days of penance is in order."
"I'd like to see you try," Tarrin said in an ominous tone, his eyes lighting from within with their greenish aura.
Dolanna, who knew him so well, understood immediately what that meant. "Mistress Ahiriya, perhaps it would be wise for you to leave for now," she said in a calm voice.
"I'm not letting this impertinent whelp get away with such outrageous disrespect," Ahiriya said in a hot tone.
"Yes, but if you keep going, he will most definitely cause me to Heal one of you," Dolanna told her in a blunt voice.
"You wouldn't dare attack a member of the Council!" Ahiriya said in shock, staring at him.
Tarrin laid back his ears, extended his claws, and growled at her.
"Oh my," Dolanna breathed, backing away from him.
If anything convinced Ahiriya that he was serious, that could. She backed up to the door, keeping her eyes on him, then opened it behind her. "We'll talk about this later, Initiate," she promised in an ugly tone. Then she backed through the door and closed it.
The instant the door was closed, Tarrin's ears rose up to their normal position, and he stood up straight from the crouching stance he assumed. He looked at Dolanna, his face sober, then he gave her a slight smile and winked.
"You staged that?" she asked in a gasping voice. "Tarrin, what on earth are you doing?"
"I don't need an audience today, Dolanna," he told her. "I have, I have a problem. I need your help."
"What is it?"
"The fight with the Doomwalker, it…injured something inside me. I can't control Sorcery. Every time I touch the Weave, the power just floods into me, and I can't stop it."
Dolanna looked at him for a moment. "Floods into you? I taught you how to control it, dear one. It is no different."
"Yes, it is," he replied, sitting down. "The touching still feels the same, but the instant I do, it's like the Weave tries to reach out and grab me. When it does grab me, it tries to flood me with power. I can't resist it, Dolanna. It's way too much for me."
"I was told you caused your mother's hair to grow out," she said. "That is something that even I cannot do, Tarrin. I would not know where to begin. So you can still use your power."
He nodded. "But if I hold onto it for more than two heartbeats, the Weave realizes I'm in contact with it, and then it tries to burn me alive. And there's more."
"What?"
"I can almost see the Weave now, Dolanna," he told her. "Even without touching it, I can sense it around me. And if I concentrate, I can almost see the strands. Ahiriya touched the Weave when I threatened her. I could feel it."
Dolanna nodded. "I knew, because I was in touch with the Weave myself," she told him with a rueful smile. "I really thought you meant to attack her."
"I wanted her out of here," he said bluntly. "The Council will find out in time, but I don't want the pressure of having to explain all of this with her looking over my shoulder. I…I can't talk about things with strangers around. You're the only one in this Tower wearing a shaeram that I trust."
"I appreciate your trust, dear one, but there are many here worthy of it," she told him gently. "I understand that you and Sevren have a friendship. Could you not trust him?"
He chuckled ruefully. "Well, he did save my life, so I guess I could. But I don't know him that well."
"And what of Jula? She stood vigil for you when you were injured, and she has befriended your parents."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I was there also," she said. "Jula likes you, dear one. She told me that she met you before you entered the Novitiate, in the baths, and you impressed her."
Tarrin remembered indeed, how she braided his hair, and how she joked about it. She didn't seem like a Sorceress. "Well, maybe," he said. "But we're getting off the point, Dolanna. Can you help me work around this, this problem? Or at least tell me what's wrong?"
"I will have to understand what the problem is before I can see about finding a solution for it," she told him. "Touch the Weave, dear one, and allow it to respond. I will be here to cut you off if it threatens you."
He nodded, reaching out. Just as he told her before, touching the Weave was simple for him, where most Initiates spent months mastering the techniques of achieving contact with the Weave. As simple as breathing, he touched the Weave, allowed it to charge him with a small amount of the six flows in even measures. He held it thusly for but a second or two, and then the raging torrent of power found him, and assaulted him. In instants he was being saturated with more power than he could control, and almost more than his body could withstand, and then it was severed away from him. That power dissipated quickly and harmlessly back into the Weave.
"The Weave reacted to you!" Dolanna said in an awed voice. "I have never seen it act so before!"
"What do you mean?"
"When we touch the Weave, it tries to fill us with the same energy it holds itself," she told him. "It is not a great amount, for the Weave is vast, and most of its energy is stored in strands. The energy in a strand is not that great, or we would not have to draw from multiple strands at once to build up the magic necessary to weave spells. But the Weave tried to fill you with more than that. It actively tried to build up the power in you over the level of magical energy that the strands themselves carry. To put in other terms, the Weave tries to fill us with the power of a strand, but when you touched it, you somehow opened a pathway directly to a Conduit, and it tried to fill you with its power."
A Conduit. "But that's what happened to me," he said in a quiet voice. "The Doomwalker pushed me into the Conduit running through the Heart. That's what caused all the light, because it was all I could do to keep from getting incinerated."
"Oh, Tarrin," she said in awe. "Tell me what happened. Leave nothing out."
Step by step, Tarrin recanted his memory of the fight, and being knocked into the Conduit. "I don't remember very much after that," he said helplessly. "The power tried to fry me to ash, and I just had to do something with it to keep from exploding. They tell me I burned the Doomwalker to ash, and it lit up the Conduit and the Ward."
"No one could survive direct exposure to the Heart," she said in a quiet voice. "But you did, somehow."
"Why is it called that?"
"Because that is what it is," she replied. "The Conduit running through the Heart is the largest, most concentrated Conduit known to man. The Tower was built around it so the katzh-dashi could be very close to it. The closer we are to the Heart, the stronger our Sorcery becomes. You have never known anything else, but when you leave the city, leave Sulasia, you will understand. Far away, it takes us longer to build up the energy to weave spells, because those areas are not as rich in magical energy as the Tower. The Heart charges the strands around it with much more magical energy than you will find, say, back in Aldreth. The Heart is literally the heart of our power, and when we are close to it, it makes us stronger."
"I didn't know that," he said. "So that's what's happening to me? Do you think I somehow was affected by the Conduit?"