Approaching them, he stepped up onto the table, but as soon as he looked down at the shaeram, memories of the fight with the Wraith flooded into him. He almost couldn't bring himself to step across that green circle, and it made him extremely nervous and unsettled to seat himself cross-legged atop the concave star that represented the Goddess. He wrapped his tail around his body and rested it in his lap.
"Very good. Now, reach out and touch the Weave. If you feel yourself losing control, let it go, wait a few minutes, and then touch it again."
Silently, Tarrin assensed the room. It was in very close proximity to the Heart, and the air was almost saturated with very large strands that carried alot of magical energy. There was alot of power in the room. Touching the weave was almost instinctual for him, and he achieved communion with the Weave as easily as others may pick up a basket. He felt that sudden heat approach, the avalanche of raw power that always sought him out when he touched the Weave, and he broke away before it had a chance to find him.
"That was too soon, Tarrin," the Keeper's voice called to him. He looked down at her, and could see her form shimmering in a curious way that seemed to tell him that she was touching the Weave. "We have to see what happens, and you broke contact too soon."
"I'm not going to let that happen, Keeper," he said adamantly.
"We're here to cut you off, Tarrin," she soothed. "We won't let it get away from you. Just touch the Weave again, and this time let whatever happens happen."
"That's easy for you to say," he snorted under his breath, then he reached out and touched the Weave again. Almost immediately, the onslaught of magical power was upon him, and he gasped reflexively as it tried to fill him with the full power of the Weave. It overwhelmed his ability to let go of the Weave instantly, creating a connection so powerful that just letting go wouldn't be enough.
He felt something try to fall between him and the Weave, an invisible something with no substance, yet had a palpable effect on the magic trying to flood into him, but it was rebuffed forcibly when it tried to choke off the flow of power into him. In half a heartbeat, his body was saturated with power, energy that built and built and built and had nowhere to go. He felt another attempt to limit that influx of magical energy, but it was again slapped away by the raw magnitude of the energy it was trying to stop.
In sudden desperation, he opened himself to the Weave more fully, allowing the energy to flow through him rather than build within him. That helped, but not by a great amount. The power still sought to build inside him, but it did slow it down. That gave him the time he needed to recover his wits, to remember how to sever himself from the Weave, and he slammed the door in the face of that power. The backlash put spots behind his eyes and a sudden pounding in his head, a shockwave of intense pain through his body, and it even made the seven Sorcerers studying him reel back in their seats as if struck by a physical blow.
"Amazing," he heard Koran Dar murmur.
Tarrin sagged a bit, paws to his head as the pounding eased. The pain faded quickly, but it left an imprint of itself in his mind. He opened his eyes just in time to see a ghostly white radiance, wispy like smoke, fade from around his paws.
It had been the first time he'd let it go that far, foolishly trusting that the Council could control him, and the pain of disconnection was almost intolerable. His body was trembling from the lightning-fast wave of pain the rushed through it, as if some intangible being had flown through his body. Panting, he put his paws on the table to brace himself, letting the trembling cease and the memory of the pain dim.
"Alright, Tarrin, try it again," the Keeper said.
"No," he snapped. "I felt you try twice, and you couldn't stop it. If you didn't know, that hurts. I'm not going to torture myself just so you can study me." He felt the Cat rise in his mind, and a sudden irrational fear began to choke off his reasoning. He had no idea where it came from, but it was incredibly powerful. It was all he could do to stop himself from jumping off the table.
"Tarrin, you have to trust us," the Keeper said in a reasoning tone. "We can't help you until we have a complete understanding of what's wrong. If you let us try again, we could succeed this time." He felt them all join into a circle, and the Keeper's body almost began to glow in a white aura to his eyes. She was the lead of the circle. How he knew that, he had no idea. "Now, one more time," she said. "Try it again."
That they joined in a circle meant something. Perhaps joined, they could control the power. Tarrin pushed that irrational fear away enough to get a center on himself, then reached out and touched the Weave.
Almost instantly, he was overwhelmed by power. There was more of it, and it came faster and harder than it did before. Thought disintigrated before that tidal wave of power, and only sensation told him that something was trying to stop the energy. But again, to no avail. The incoming power simply flowed around the attempt to block it, overwhelming it, pulling it into him.
And in the instant it was carried into him, Tarrin was forcibly joined to their circle.
He felt an expansion of consciousness as his own power and even his mind reached out and made a connection to a greater whole. The Group Consciousness of a circle. And in that fleeting moment, he understood several fundamental truths. Sorcerers could join in circles no larger than seven, for an eighth member with a similarly structured mind created a permanent group consciousness, a mass mind that existed independent of the bodies of the Sorcerers involved, an amalgamation of the personalities of the victims. And when the circle was broken, the mass mind faded away, leaving the linked Sorcerers nothing but empty shells.
But that mass mind was formed because of the similarities between the minds of those forming the circle. Seven humans, who thought in similar ways, could form a safe circle, but eight would push the similarities over that intangible border, and create a permanent mass mind. Tarrin was not human, and because of that, human weaves of mind couldn't affect him. The human mind could not comprehend the way his mind worked, and thus could not affect his thoughts. But Tarrin's dissimilar mind joined to a circle of seven and made it eight.
And the dissimilarity of his mind prevented the formation of a permanent mass mind.
In that glimmer, he understood why the Ancients could do what legends said they could do. The Sha'Kar had been living then, and the Sha'Kar were not human. The Ancients could safely join into circles larger than seven. He wasn't sure of how the actual mechanics of it worked, but it was now obvious that the Ancients could join into circles of at least eight. And who knew what limit the Ancients truly had? Perhaps they could form circles with a specific arrangement that allowed even a hundred Sorcerers to combine their powers into one massive effort. A circle of a hundred Sorcerers with the power of the Ancients could move mountains. That was how they earned their reputation.
In joining into the circle, Tarrin had wrested control of it away from the Keeper. He felt the power flooding into him dissipate into the other seven, reducing the burden it was placing on his body, returning rational thought into his mind. He had never been in a circle before, and the sudden intrusion of the alien minds into his consciousness caused the Cat to instantly and savagely react, pushing the unknown thoughts away with such force that it disrupted the tenuous bonds that kept them linked in a circle.
Instead of a violent tearing away from the Weave, Tarrin simply let it go. But the backlash he had suffered the first time was now placed fully on the Council, as the power inside them evaporated like smoke and caused that shockwave of pain. The Keeper almost fell over backwards in her chair, and the little blond Water Seat fainted dead away. The remaining six all had looks of agony on their faces, which passed quickly into holding their heads in pain.