Var and Denai made no indication that they had expanded their relationship, but Tarrin wasn't all that worried about that. His mind was on other things right now.
It was sunrise the next morning, and his attention was captivated by what stood before him. It was a huge cloud, hanging on the northern horizon, blurring in the great distance. But it was apparent what it was. A massive cloud that obviously gave the Cloud Spire its name.
He didn't realize that they were so close to it, but the sudden emergence of Selani scouts should have hinted that they were very close. They began to see them yesterday afternoon, standing on rock spires, hiding in the denuded scrub that marked the passage of the Selani herds, perched on boulders watching the desert for possible dangers. None of them approached them or tried to talk to them, and that made sense. Selani from different clans didn't often go out of their way to talk to one another. They were forbidden to fight among themselves, but the clan mentality made Selani from other clans potential enemies, so there wasn't a great deal of communication between them outside the Gathering. They passed through them without incident, making camp in a small cave eaten out of the side of a rock spire by the scouring wind. Tarrin was atop that spire, eyes shielding from the sun coming up on his right, staring at the cloud bank intently.
It had to be magical. Clouds couldn't form out here because there wasn't enough moisture. And if there was, the sun would burn them away with its intensity. It was very possible in his mind that the cloud that gave the Cloud Spire its name was an effect of that magical object he was sensing, because as soon as he saw the cloud, the distance and location of that object seemed to click in his mind. He saw an immediate relationship between the object and the cloud, and had realized that the odds were, the object made the cloud. Or the cloud hid the object, one or the other.
That put him off a little bit. If the object made the cloud, then it was possible that the object was at the top of the Cloud Spire. He already knew that that was the domain of the Aeradalla, and he had little doubt that they wouldn't welcome him as a visitor. Despite trying to come up with reasons to believe it wasn't there, hard evidence wasn't easy to refute. The distance was too perfect, the direction too perfect. The object was somewhere either on, in, or immediately around the Cloud Spire. He hoped that it was something the Selani gathered around it possessed, but that cloud told him that most likely that was a longshot. He'd know as he got closer to it, as the sense of its location was more exact, but he had already begun to prepare himself for the possibility that he may have to climb the Cloud Spire to find out what it was. His curiosity was just too piqued, he just had to find that object. It was very possible that it could be the Firestaff, and he couldn't leave the desert without discounting that possibility.
"Morning," Sarraya called as she flitted up to him. "Didn't see you get up."
"I've been up since about midnight," he replied. "This many Selani so close make me nervous. I couldn't sleep."
"They're not going to bother us, Tarrin," she chided.
"Tell that to my suspicious nature."
"Attention, Tarrin's suspicious nature," she called in a booming voice. Tarrin looked at her, and saw her grinning like a naughty child. "You have nothing to worry about. The Selani will not bother us. That is all. Return to your prior paranoid delusions."
Tarrin gave her an unamused look, then went back to studying the cloud. "That's the Cloud Spire, alright," Sarraya said when she looked in the same direction. "A cloud like that, out here? Can you say magic?"
"I figured the same thing," he sighed. "It's possible that the object I'm sensing has something to do with that cloud. There's a chance we may do some spire climbing, Sarraya. Just so you know."
"That's not going to be easy, Tarrin. Maybe impossible. Denai and I were talking last night, and she says that the spire goes up into that cloud. It may be longspans high."
"Then I'll just be climbing a while," he shrugged. "I can't leave without finding out if it's the Firestaff, Sarraya. I'll kick myself for ten years if we pass it by, and then have to turn around and come back here to get it."
"Why don't you let me go look?" she offered. "I can fly, and the Aeradalla won't see me."
"Fine. Just tell me how you intend to find it, and you're free to do it yourself."
She looked at him, then laughed ruefully. "I get the point," she acceded. "I wouldn't be able to find it, would I? At least not like you could."
Tarrin nodded. "If it's up there, I could point to it. I'm hoping that we don't have to do that. There's a chance it may be some relic the Selani are holding. Or it may be hidden in the Cloud Spire itself, without me having to climb to the top. I know it's somewhere around the spire, but not exactly."
"Well, we can hope," she agreed.
"Where are Var and Denai?"
"I heard Denai giggling as I flew up here. It's no stretch to imagine what they're doing."
"Then we'll leave as soon as we eat," Tarrin said. "Leave them behind."
"They'll catch up with us," she warned.
"I know, but it'll give them the sense that I'm not going to wait for them. And when we leave them at Gathering, they'll look back on this and realize that I warned them."
"Fine. What's your pleasure today?"
"I'm feeling evil. I want pancakes. And syrup."
Sarraya laughed. "One confused cook, coming up," she said grandly.
Tarrin did just as he warned, left Var and Denai behind. They loped north at a smooth pace, Tarrin continuing Sarraya's education in Sha'Kar. But that wouldn't be for much longer. Sarraya had been cheating with her magic to make sure the lessons held in her mind, and she was nearly fluent now. He was only teaching her some of the more archaic words, and some of the more obscure rules of grammar. Sarraya was competent in Sha'Kar, but Tarrin was a perfectionist. It was silly to learn a language without being able to think in that language.
Var and Denai caught up with them about lunchtime, as Tarrin and Sarraya stopped on a curious boulder that had a flat top. They were sitting atop it, as Sarraya amused herself by frying conjured eggs on its surface. Tarrin didn't even notice heat anymore, heat or cold. It took something like watching an egg fry on the surface where he was sitting to realize that it was just that hot. The flat boulder certainly was like a natural skillet, sitting out where the sun heated it like a fire.
"Tarrin, why did you leave us behind?" Denai demanded from the ground. She knew better than to try to get up there with it being so hot.
"Because I didn't feel like waiting for you two to finish playing," he said pointedly.
Denai blushed.
"How far are we from the Cloud Spire?" he asked.
"If we move fast and don't stop as often to rest, we can get to the outside edges of Gathering by sunset," Denai told him. "We could reach the spire itself just a few hours after that."
"The Gathering is that big?" Sarraya asked.
"When all the clans assemble, it takes up some space, Sarraya," Var said mildly.
Tarrin looked towards the north. The cloud was hidden in the wavering haze of the midday heat, but his sense of that object told him exactly how far they were from it. And the distance was about as Denai said it was.
"Then you two had better sit down. I'm leaving in just a little while."
And he did. Var and Denai had to scramble to their feet and rush after him as he loped away from them, towards the north. And the pace he set could be called murderous. Var and Denai could run with him, but he'd pushed them over the last few days, and their endurance was playing out. They were breathing heavily after about two hours, and they began to lag behind after three. He ran them for about another half hour, and then pulled up for a short break. Not for them; he wanted water, and it was hard to drink while running. Var and Denai caught up with him a few moments later, and both knelt down and tried to catch their breath. "What's your problem, Tarrin?" Denai panted.
He said nothing, just looking down at her with his tail swishing back and forth at a stately pace.
Then he was off again. After another half hour, they spotted a Selani tribe on the move some distance east of them, and Tarrin slowed down to study it. Selani were nomads, and they carried everything with them on their backs or on tamed chisa. Chisa were the only thing close to pack animals that could keep up with the fleet-footed Selani. They ran along in a disorganized column, with the herd animals bringing up the rear and a contingent of Scouts ranging ahead. Tarrin saw that even the children ran, though the youngest were either carried or were riding sukk. The ability to keep up with the tribe while on the move was considered to be the first step to adulthood.
"My clan," Var said, shading his eyes and peering in that direction as they ran. "Not my tribe."
" Our clan," Denai said archly. "Who leads them?"
"A tall one with his head bare. He has a scar on his cheek."
"That's the tribe of my sister's husband," Denai remarked. "Should we join them?"
"If you want, go," Tarrin said bluntly. "I'm going this way."
"Then that's the way I'm going," Var said calmly.
"Oh well," Denai sighed, and they picked up the pace again.
The cloud he'd seen in the horizon only got bigger and bigger as they approached it, and for a little while he wondered if it took up the entire sky at the spire. Sarraya took a look at it and estimated that it had to be absolutely humongous, longspans and longspans across, probably even further across than the Great Canyon was wide. His sense of the location of the object became more and more precise as he approached it, allowing him to get more accurate with his estimation of where it resided. But he was still too far away to discern if it was on the ground on on the spire.
They spotted more and more Scouts as they penetrated the area reserved for Gathering. There seemed to be a Selani watcher on every rise, on every spire, and hiding behind every scrubby bush or large rock. They didn't bother them, but their presence unnerved Tarrin just a little bit. The idea of strangers with weapons hiding in every nook and cranny didn't sit well with his suspicious nature, but he kept reminding himself over and over that they were Selani, and they wouldn't attack him so long as he was in the company of other Selani. He had no doubt that they could see his brands, so that only lent credence to the illusion that he was supposed to be there.
And still the cloud grew in the distance, and still his sense of that object sharpened more and more.
They reached the edge of the cloud about a half hour before sunset. It was circular, a flat, featureless cloud much akin to fog, and there was no raggedness to its borders. It simply began, and it looked just as thick at the edges as it did towards its center. It was apparent that the cloud was indeed a huge thing, swallowing up the entire northern sky. And his senses told him that the magic was indeed a product of some kind of magic. He could sense it, even from that distance. It felt a little strange stepping under it, almost as if he had entered someone's house.
About five longspans inside the boundary of the cloud, they reached an area where buzzards, vultures, and jackals congregated in very large numbers. It was very odd, because there didn't seem to be anything that he could see that could support them. But being who they were, they wouldn't hang around the area unless there was something there to eat. Tarrin knelt as they entered the area when something caught his eyes, and he found a grotesquely misshapen steel head of a crossbow quarrel, affixed to a shattered bolt. The sight of the thing sent a shiver of pain through his chest, as the memory of the crossbow quarrel that nearly killed him tingled through his awareness. Selani didn't use crossbows… could this be from the Aeradalla? Maybe one of them had dropped the bolt while flying, and the fall destroyed it.
There was a strange sound some distance to the right of them. Tarrin looked to see several vultures and jackals converge on the area, then immediately begin fighting among themselves for whatever it was.
"Weird," Sarraya mused.
"Very," Tarrin agreed. "Why are they here?"
"We think that the Cloudracers hunt in the clouds above us," Var said. "Things fall from the cloud from time to time, and the scavengers have learned that some of it is edible."
"That, or they dump their garbage here," Sarraya added, pointing to a fragment of pottery laying on the sandy ground.
"Either way, it's no concern of ours," Tarrin surmised. "Let's move on."
Near sunset, they crested a small rise, and found themselves looking into a very shallow yet absolutely vast valley. Tarrin pulled up at that crest and stared down in astonishment. The Cloud Spire hovered in the distance, the base of it and its pillar visible now, and from where he was he could see that it was nothing like any other spire. It was a monster, the king of all pillars, and it had to be an entire longspan wide at its base. And it didn't particularly narrow as it reached into the sky, reached into the vast cloud that hovered almost over their heads now. It was the tallest, highest thing he had ever seen in his life.
And that was only half of the astonishment. Swarming around the land inside that shallow valley, protected by the sun from the shade of the immense cloud that hung overhead, were hundreds of thousands of Selani. They gathered together in small enclaves separated by huge flocks of the herd animals upon which the Selani depended. Their campfires were like stars spread out on the ground before them, and they extended to the Cloud Spire, and even beyond it, like an immense army besieging the solitary pinnacle of rock.
"Gathering," Denai said in a kind of dreamy, excited manner.
"There are so many," Tarrin said in disbelief.
"What did you expect?" Sarraya asked him as she landed on his shoulder. "A cozy little group like your old village?"
"It looks like only about half of the clans are in," Var said critically. "Odd for it being so late."
"Maybe there are bad storms out there," Denai suggested. "We've been very lucky not to have any storms slow us down for a while now."
"You getting a closer sense on that thing, Tarrin?" Sarraya asked. That made him pay attention to the other half of his senses, the ones that could sense magic. It was like a beacon to him, and the sense of its location was now exacting. Tarrin followed the feel of it with his eyes out over the shallow valley. They locked on the Cloud Spire… then they went up.
Tarrin looked up into the cloud, and he felt not a little bit of trepidation and disappointment. The object was a good distance past that cloud. Obviously, it was in the possession of the Aeradalla. If he wanted to see what it was, he was going to have to climb that imposing monstrosity. The thought of it nearly made him afraid.
"I take it that it's up there?" Sarraya asked.
Tarrin nodded only once. "Right there," he said, pointing into the cloud.
"What's up there?" Denai asked curiously.
"Something that doesn't concern you," he said pointedly. "They've already seen me, so there's no use trying to hide," he reasoned. "But I'm not going down there and have them swarm all over me." He looked at Var and Denai, then moved off the ridge. He couldn't hide from the Scouts, but at least he'd have some time to hide himself by the time they got back to the Gathering with the information they were about to pick up.
What he was about to do didn't sit well with him, but he didn't see much choice. He'd attract too much attention to himself as he was, and it would look very odd for two Selani to be moving at a pace so a cat could keep up with them. The idea riled up his feral nature, and he had to force himself even to think about it. He couldn't even say it. "Denai, you're the lucky one."
"For what?"
Before he could answer, his form blurred and compressed, and the giant Were-cat was replaced by a rather large black cat. He sat on his haunches patiently and looked up at her, his eyes steady and his cat expression sober, as the suddenly displaced Sarraya managed to recover herself, giving Tarrin a furious look. That expression and calm nature hid a violent whirlwind of conflicting emotions in him, as his fear of strangers-even Denai-battled with both his reasoning that there was no other way, and the fact that he liked the Selani girl. He knew she wouldn't hurt him, but that was little consolation as the Cat in him conjured up any number of reasons or images of the ways she could hurt him or betray him. It was by an extreme act of will that he sat there, that he allowed her to do what he knew she knew to do.
"Oh. I can handle it," she said with a bright smile, reaching down and picking him up.
It felt decidedly strange being held by someone that was not part of his little family, and it caused an irrational surge of fear in him. But Denai's hands were gentle and her hold on him reassuring, enveloping, surrounding him with a sense of peace. He settled down after a moment, and with that calming came a peculiar feeling of safety that could only be found while being held in the arms of a protector. Tarrin actually found himself able to relax in her comforting hold, and he settled in against her arm and closed his eyes as Denai carried him down the ridge, down towards the massive throng of the Selani Gathering.
It was a small victory, but he'd take them any way he could. He had managed to allow a stranger to pick him up. Like Mist, he had allowed himself to come into a position where he did not have full control, and the idea of that was not as terrifying now as it seemed but a moment ago. There was fear-there was still fear-but he found that he could tolerate it.
It was more than he would have allowed a month ago.
The Selani were much different to him now.
Var and Denai had reached the outside edge of the massive Gathering about a half hour after sunset, and the lights of the fires illumated the barren, sandy landscape. The Selani here were boisterous, but not reckless. There was loud music, drinking, dancing, talking, laughing, but no carousing or improper behavior that one would see in a group of drunk humans. Even in drinking, the Selani dignity and sense of honor overwhelmed the loosening effect of their drink, making the sounds coming from campfires one of celebration and togetherness rather than a drunken row. The Selani were family, even in such a huge gathering of them, and they acted like such.
That didn't mean that there wasn't activity. Around some campfires, some watched as others battled one another in the Dance, or even with weapons. But after watching a moment, he saw that it was more of a friendly challenge, a competition, not a fight. The Holy Mother forbade the Selani from fighting each other, and that prohibition was strong enough even here to hold true. Around others, there was dancing. He never thought of the Selani as dancers-their word for dance was the name of their fighting art form-but they were well suited for it. Both males and females danced, either alone or with one another, and their steps were light and well measured. These were ritual forms, dances taught, not the random undulations that passed for dance in some societies. It was graceful and delicate, where even the motion of a finger seemed to carry meaning and importance. He didn't have time to watch a full dance, since Denai was carrying him, but he saw enough to be impressed by both the Selani aptitude and the gentle beauty of the dances they performed.
"Ask Denai where we're going," Tarrin told the nearby Sarraya in the manner of the Cat.
"Tarrin wants to know where we're going," Sarraya relayed from her invisible position.
"I'm following Var," she shrugged.
"I'm looking for my mother's tribe," he announced. "They're very good friends with my tribe, and my grandmother will offer us hospitality until one of our tribes get here."
Tarrin kept watching the Selani as he was carried along, and after several moments, he realized a fundamental difference between them and humans. Humans who didn't know one another didn't care. They were unfeeling, indifferent. It wasn't so with the Selani. They cared for one another, even complete strangers, greeting one another in a benevolent fashion, where complete strangers could sit down at the fire of a tribe and find welcome. Allia told him that there was occasional friction between tribes or clans, but from what he saw watching them, those frictions had to be nothing like frictions between human societies. The Holy Mother's forbiddance to fight with one another had settled into her people in a very good way, making them cordial and compassionate to one another. Even bitter enemies could sit side by side at one of those fires and find acceptance. And while the rival may not like the Selani, he would respect his honor and afford him proper treatment. They treated their children with love and gentleness, he saw, a child finding complete safety no matter where he or she went, since every Selani around the child would keep an eye out for the child's safety and well being, would give the child the attention he or she needed. Allia had told him that all Selani took a hand in raising the children, and watching them, he understood her meaning. A Selani child had a mother and father, but the child's tribe were aunts and uncles and cousins. To be raised in an environment of such love! Tarrin was lucky to have been raised in a similar environment, since the farm had been out and away from the village. He could identify with them.
It was so much different than humans. A human sitting at a stranger's fire would be treated with hostility at best, outright violence at worst. But these Selani were kind, something he wasn't used to seeing out of strangers. It explained a little Var's strange need to travel with them… he felt it only right and proper to help Tarrin. Not because he got something out of it, but because it was the right thing to do. It relieved him that he finally understood that, since Var's insistence of travelling with him had confused and annoyed him more than a little bit.
He saw a fundamental truth. Out in this barren wasteland, the Selani only had each other, so they made the absolute best of it. It explained their hostility to outsiders, whom they saw as interlopers, threatening the peace and security of their lands. The Selani had made the correct assumption of the dark nature of the human being, and treated them like the natural enemies that they surely were. Most humans saw Selani as savage barbarians, because of their habit of killing all members of any invasion into their lands. If they only knew how terribly wrong that conclusion was.
His view of the Selani changed significantly in that walk through Gathering, but it did little to calm his irrational fear of them. No matter how impressed he was with them, no matter how kindly he looked upon them, he still could not see them as anything other than strangers. That disappointed him, it made the eyeless face lurking within him to stir and threaten his peace, but he just couldn't get away from it. Though the Selani would accept him without reservation, he simply could not accept them.
Var veered away from the Cloud Spire, and that immediately did not sit well with Tarrin. The spire was his destination, and he wasn't about to delay by letting Denai carry him all over the Gathering. He was well inside the Selani now, and he doubted that any of them knew his true nature. His cat form hid his true nature from them, and he doubted he'd have much trouble navigating his way to the spire on his own. They didn't own domesticated dogs, so there were no threats of animals threatening him; all the herd animals were being kept in a huge ring around the Selani gathered around the spire, protected from predators by Scouts and guards.
He didn't intend to take them from the Gathering anyway. He decided that it was best to just leave them here and now.
He was surprised at how that made him feel. He felt unwilling to do it. Because he liked Denai, he felt he was starting to understand Var. Why would he feel that way? After all, no matter how much he got to know them, they were still strangers in his mind. They weren't his friends… and yet…
They were.
Not as good a friend as Sarraya or Dar, but he had to admit to himself that he liked Denai, that he understood Var. He had enjoyed their company, at least after he'd built up a tolerance to them. Looking within himself, he realized that he had been protecting them, and it was because he favored them. Just as he watched over and protected his sisters, his family, his friends, just as he absolutely would not allow them to be harmed, he had started treating the two Selani the exact same way. Without ever realizing it. He acted hard towards them, but it was because he would not admit to himself what he was feeling. And despite his harsh treatment, they remained with him. Because they saw in him someone that needed their help, and their Selani nature would not allow them to turn their backs on him. Without even realizing what they were doing.
The idea of leaving them didn't sit very well with him now, but he still had little choice. He couldn't take them away from their tribes, from their lives, to traipse across the desert and be open to whatever danger came looking for him. They couldn't be there when Jegojah arrived. The Doomwalker would try to use them to get to him, he was sure of it. For their own safety and his own, he had to leave them behind.
Tarrin suddenly began to writhe, and it surprised Denai enough to make her loosen her grip on him. He wriggled out of her grip and dropped to the ground, then bounded a few jumps away from them and stopped. He turned around to face them, see that they had stopped where they were, both of them a bit wary of approaching him. They both knew that he was unpredictable, and were afraid of him. That stung a little bit, but it was nothing more than what he had instilled in them to begin with. "Tarrin?" Denai called hesitantly.
"Sarraya, tell them, thank you for what they've done. Tell them that I appreciated it, and I, enjoyed our time together. Tell them that I'm grateful to have met them, but now I have my path to follow." He looked away from them. "Tell them it's a path that they can't follow, and no matter how much I may like them, if they follow me, I'll kill them."
He didn't want to say that, but he knew those two. They'd be tracking him ten seconds after he left their sight. "Tell them to be well."
And then he bounded off into the darkness, quickly lost behind a throng of Selani legs and feet as he scampered into the milling crowd.
Sarraya dutifully repeated his words to the startled pair, even going so far as to become visible again to address them. The surprise on their faces was considerable, but it was more because of the hidden feelings Tarrin carried for them rather than his threat to kill them if they would follow.
"I never knew," Denai said in wonder. "I never knew he liked me that much."
"Where Tarrin is concerned, if you're still alive, he likes you," Sarraya said in an offhanded manner, but she was deadly serious. "But I'm warning both of you now to take his threat seriously. He doesn't want you following him, because he's worried you'll get killed."
"Nothing in the desert can threaten us, Sarraya," Var said calmly.
"True, but what's coming is not of this desert," Sarraya said grimly. "It's something that's been dogging Tarrin's trail for a long time, and it's every bit as dangerous and deadly as he is. He has to face it again, and he can't do that with any distractions. And you two would definitely be a distraction. Jegojah has used his friends and family to try to get to him before, and there's little doubt that it'll do it again. So, for everyone's sake, please don't follow us."
"Alright, I promise that we won't follow," Denai said after a moment, but the Faerie knew insincerity when she heard it. It came out of her own mouth too much for her to miss it coming from another.
"Var," Sarraya said archly.
"I'll make sure she won't follow him," he promised.
"Good enough. Be well, you two. I hope we meet again."
"The Holy Mother works in strange ways, Sarraya. I feel that we will indeed meet again," Var told her piously.
Sarraya gave him a strange look, then turned and flitted away, even as her form dissolved from sight.
"Are we going to do that?" Denai asked after the Faerie was gone.
"I promised that I wouldn't let you follow him. So you can follow me instead," he said casually.
Denai looked at him.
"I never promised that I wouldn't follow, did I?" he asked with an innocent look.
Denai looked wildly at him for a moment, then she laughed. "We'll get in trouble."
"My honor won't allow me to let them go off into danger alone," he said bluntly. "We are Selani. His brands makes him one of us, and I won't abandon him."
"Mine either," she agreed. "And if this thing is that dangerous, maybe we should go talk to the chiefs of our tribes, or the priests of the Holy Mother. They may have something to say about this invader to our lands."
"Now I know why I was so taken with you, Var," Denai said with a winsome smile. "You're so clever."
Navigating the Gathering had become harder than he first thought.
It wasn't that he was harassed or attacked by children or animals. That was no problem. It wasn't that he couldn't see where he was going. The Cloud Spire was easy to see, at least for Sarraya, who was guiding him in the right direction.
The problem was the Selani.
Every time he passed a campfire, he was invariably picked up by some Selani stranger and carted off to the fire. He had miscalculated when he thought that he could slip through them unnoticed, because it seemed that cats like him were unknown in the desert. Because he was unique, it made the Selani stop what they were doing and pick him up, then take a good look at him. They actually tried to spoil him, offering him cuts of roasted meat at every fire and petting him at almost all times. They were trying to lure him into staying at their fire, he realized after about the fifth time, luring him with offers of food and attention. That caught him off guard, and what was worse, it slowed him down significantly on his journey towards the spire. But he couldn't bring himself to be nasty to the Selani, who, after all, were only trying to be nice. The Cat in him liked the attention, and it very much liked the food. It wasn't above a bit of mewling to get what it wanted. It began to get distracted from the mission, and the human in him had to remind it that they were on a schedule.
It was a simple schedule. He had to climb the spire, but he had no idea how high it was. So it was best in his eyes to start in the darkness before sunrise and be a good distance up before the light of day gave him away to the Selani. He also didn't want to be caught on the spire after dark once he got up into the cloud, because the cloud would make it dark enough for even his eyes to struggle to see. He had no idea how long it would take to get through the cloud, so he could take no chances.
The problem was convincing the Selani to leave him alone.
"This is starting to get annoying," Tarrin fumed to Sarraya as he was rather firmly held on an adolescent girl's lap, held down gently and petted while a child tried to feed him what was roasting over their fire. "Why all this interest?"
"I think they've never seen anything like you before," Sarraya told him, but he already knew that. She didn't realize that he was asking a rhetorical question. "I've seen some pretty big cats out in the desert, but nothing as small and cute-looking as you."
"Well, I'm getting tired of it," he grunted. "I mean, all the attention is a bit flattering, but this is too much of a good thing. And if I eat one more bite, I'm going to explode."
"They don't realize you came from another fire," Sarraya said in reply, stifling making any audible noise.
Tarrin was about to reply, but the Selani girl managed to find his submission spot, scratching him just behind the ears. That was his favorite place to be scratched, and he became very compliant very quickly, closing his eyes and pushing his head up against her fingers.
"Looks like she has your number," Sarraya teased.
"Shut up."
He lingered there a little longer than he should have, but eventually managed to get free of the girl with the pleasing fingers and get back on the path.
After that, he was much more careful. Sarraya led him around the fringes of each Selani fire where they had staked their tents, letting him move at a zigzagging route that kept him outside the grasp of most of the Selani. Many tried to pick him up, but in the generally unpopulated areas between the fires, he had too much room to maneuver, too many tents to hide behind, and he could see them coming. But fortunately for him, the night was moving on, and more and more of the Selani were taking to their tents. With fewer Selani to avoid, he was able to move more and more straightly.
The Cloud Spire had seemed rather close when he had first seen it from the ridge, but that was scaled to his humanoid form. For his cat form, it was like trying to travel twenty longspans. More than within his ability, but a distance that would take time to traverse. He moved on through the night with the sounds of the hauntingly beautiful Selani singing and the crackling of fires to keep him company as he made his way to his objective.
He stopped to rest near a rather large tent, made of a curious material that smelled like plants, laying down on his belly by the edge of it and keeping his senses open as he took a break.
"What troubles you, my heart?" a voice from inside the tent asked. A male voice.
"He is close," a female voice replied. "I can sense it."
"That dream again?"
"It hasn't gone away, my husband. The Holy Mother sings to me in my dreams. Have you told our people to show him kindness?"
"Of course I have, my heart," he replied. "If he appears, he will be shown kindness." There was a pause. "Before we took to our tent, a runner from another clan told me that a tailed stranger was seen south of Gathering at sunset. Could he be related to him?"
"Has anyone else seen this stranger?"
"Not that I was told."
Tarrin was a bit startled. Were they talking about him? How did they know about him?
The Holy Mother. Of course. She knew he was in the desert. It seemed that she was taking steps on his behalf. From the sound of it, the woman was shaman, one of Fara'Nae's priests. It seemed a bit weird that she would be telling her children to be nice to him, but it made sense. She probably didn't want any friction between him and them. The best way to go about that was to make themselves as inoffensive as possible.
Tarrin moved on before anything else came to light. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear any more.
It took him half the night to reach the Cloud Spire. He found that the area immediately around it was devoid of Selani occupation, almost as if they were giving the rock pinnacle a wide berth. But this close to it, it seemed less a rock spire and more a solid wall that stretched into the heavens. It was rough-hewn by the wind, with many ridges and irregularities, but unlike the rock of the desert, this rock was black, like obsidian. He shifted into his humanoid form and sniffed at the rock, and he realized that it was basalt, where most of the desert was soft sandstone. This was volcanic rock, a rarity out here in the desert.
That meant that the climb wasn't going to be easy. His claws could dig into sandstone. Basalt would only grind them down.
"Oh well," he grunted. He shifted back into cat form and skulked around the base, until he found a large rock pushed up against the pillar, forming a small hollow. He entered it and killed the rock snake that had been taking up residence, which was sleeping through the cold night, then settled down for a little nap. It was too early yet to try the climb, and he wanted to be fully rested before making the attempt.
Fueled by a breakfast of rock snake, Tarrin was on his way.
The idea of what he was doing still seemed just a little bit insane, but he couldn't see any other way to go about it. He absolutely had to find that object, to identify it as either the Firestaff or not, and since it was very high above him, he had to climb. He wasn't afraid of heights, and he was confident in his abilities as a climber. Cats were natural climbers, and those instincts would serve him well as he scaled the dizzying expanse of the rock spire, trying to get to the top before the next sunset.
Tarrin saw the sunrise well before the Selani, because he was at least half a longspan up the rock face by the time the sun reached him. He had started about three hours before dawn, and the going had been relatively easy. He had begun his ascent on the east face of the spire, so the sun would shine on his back and never have the chance to get in his eyes until after it ascended past the cloud. The rock was riddled with creases, holes, pits, lines, and vertical gulleys, and that gave him an abundance of handholds. That meant that he moved very quickly up the rock face, nearly as fast as a human could walk on flat ground, but his progress was slowed significantly because he stopped every so often to check his claws for damage, survey the rock above, and look down to gauge his progress to that point. He spent as much time moving laterally as he did verically, lining himself up to take advantage of features in the rock that would make his ascent easier. Speed wasn't his concern, his main concern was making this as easy as possible. He had no fear of heights, but he fully understood that he was so high up that a mistake could kill him. So he made very sure that his planned path was generally seeded with suitable paw and footholds. Fortunately, he realized, the spire was made of basalt, for soft sandstone had a frightening tendancy to break off when too much weight was placed on a spur or hold. The rugged basalt was much stronger, and a tiny spur of rock could support his entire weight if necessary. Sarraya rode on his head, burrowed into his hair so his moving head didn't dislodge her, and she remained quiet while he climbed. She didn't want to distract him in any way, because of the great danger in which they were now placed.
Tarrin stopped for a moment to rest inside one of those vertical gullies, so wide that he was climbing up the inside of it. It opened and shallowed about a hundred spans above him, and from there he would decide which path to take after he could get a good look at the rock. He turned and looked at the sunrise absently, and felt the sudden warmth of it against his back. "I wonder if the Selani have noticed by now," Tarrin mused as he looked down. The ground wasn't nearly so far away as it had been when he looked down into the Great Canyon, but it was still such a formidable height that it gave even him just a bit of pause.
"Maybe. Want me to scout up ahead and see if there's an easy way up?" Sarraya offered.
Tarrin pulled his waterskin from the cord tied around his waist, then took a deep drink. "I'll settle for you refilling this," he told her.
"No problem. How are your claws holding up?"
"So far, so good," he replied. "My pads are starting to wear down a little, though. It's a good thing I regenerate, or my paws would be a bloody mess about now. This stone is coarse, and some of its edges are like knife blades."
"At least it gives traction," Sarraya said.
Tarrin held out the skin, and Sarraya filled it with water using her Druidic magic. He stoppered it and lowered it, then let it go so it could hang from his waist. "Thank the Goddess for that," Tarrin grunted. "If we can find a good ledge somewhere around here, I think we'll stop for some lunch."
"It's a date," Sarraya chuckled, and he reached up for the next handhold.
That ledge was an elusive prey, but he finally managed to find one about an hour before noon, well after the sun had risen above the massive cloud that hung over their heads. The heat from the sun hadn't diminished, but he had noticed a definite cooling of the air as he climbed, as if the cloud above were absorbing the heat. The rock too at first was noticably hot-black stone with that sun shining on it would doubtless be hot-but it too cooled as he climbed higher and higher, either protected by the cloud or having its heat drained off by the cooler air, one or the other. That cloud had been getting closer and closer, and when Tarrin pulled himself up onto the narrow ledge of rock, about three spans wide, he guessed that he'd reach the lower edge of it in about an hour. He looked down, and the astounding height separating him from the ground reached out and grabbed him by the throat. He was now even higher up than they'd been when they stood at the edge of the Great Canyon. The air at that altitude was cool, curiously cool, and the first damp smells of the cloud were beginning to reach his nose. That wasn't all, the air seemed… thinner. That was the only way he could describe it. It didn't have its usual sense of weight about him, and his ears had popped more than once as he climbed upwards. He found himself breathing faster than normal, even though he wasn't winded.
This was something for which he wasn't prepared, and it was a bit eerie. So eerie that he had to ask Sarraya. "Sarraya, is it me, or does the air seem different to you?"
"Air thins as you get higher off the ground," she said, which affirmed his suspicions. "It's natural."
"Good. I was starting to wonder if I was imagining things. It's quite a view, isn't it?"
"I may be a flier, but this is a little bit too high for my taste," Sarraya admitted. "I get dizzy looking down. I do my flying a little closer to the ground, thank you."
Tarrin actually laughed. "A flying Faerie, afraid of heights," he said. "What an amazing thing."
"It's more than that," Sarraya said defensively. "My wings have to work harder up here, and it'll tire me out if I have to fly too far. That gives me all the reasoning I need not to like being up this high."
"Sure," Tarrin said with a slight smile. "Look, you can see the Great Canyon from here," he said, pointing south, towards a black slice across the sand-colored terrain.
"That's not the Great Canyon, Tarrin," Sarraya said. "That's that gulley we saw two days ago."
"You're sure?"
"Trust me. We're too far away to see the Great Canyon, at least from here. Maybe if we were higher, but not from here."
"Whatever. So, what's for lunch?"
"Since you're doing something strenuous, you're going to have bread soaked in honey," she told him. "You need to keep up your energy, and honey is perfect for that."
After a meal that was entirely too sweet for him, they started again. It was past noon now, and he had no idea how far he had to go, so he was starting to get a little worried. If he couldn't get to the top before sunset, he'd have to climb back down below the cloud and wait until sunrise. The idea of spending a night clinging to the side of the spire was something that he absolutely did not want to experience, so he started off again with a sense of urgency, and a swifter pace. He spent less time looking for the easiest path and started moving almost purely vertically, scrabbling over areas of smooth stone by clawtips and brute strength to save precious time.
He reached the edge of the cloud about half an hour after eating lunch, and it was like climbing up into thick fog. He could barely see past his own paws, and the stone suddenly became wet and slick. That combination was enough to make Tarrin's heart race, and make every step up the spire something to worry over and take carefully. He was surrounded by misty white, a mist that was surprisingly cool, nearly cold, and it isolated him and reflected back the sounds of his own climbing. The barest whisper of claw on stone was a ragged scrape to his ears, and a whisper seemed to boom across the foggy, surreal, vertical landscape. Even the sound of his own breathing, which was more rapid now in the thinning air, seemed to reverberate back from the fog, and he wondered if they could hear it on the ground for one irrational moment.
The fog did more than make his sounds louder. It caused him to forget just where he was and how high he was off the ground, causing him to lose his sense of fear of the dizzying height from which he was off the ground. He could barely see past his own feet, and it reinforced the illusion that he was not far from the ground. The wet stone was slick, but the sense that he had somehow climbed into another world didn't make his heart jump if his claws slid on the stone.
He had no idea how long he had climbed, or how far. The cloud-or the fog, as he thought of it-blurred his sense of time and of distance, making him feel like he was climbing the same wall over and over. He simply kept moving, aware that when the filtered light in the cloud began to dim, he was going to be in trouble.
He kept moving until his paw hit something solid above his head.
That startled him. He looked up a bit more carefully, and then pulled himself up enough to get whatever it was into view through the foggy cloud.
It was a shelf of rock that extended out horizontally from the rock spire, and it was absolutely smooth.
What was it? He couldn't see very far to either side, but it was apparent that it was not a natural feature, just by looking at it. It was too smooth, to level. The sense of the object, and of the Conduit that ran through the middle of the Cloud Spire, had dulled his sense of magic, but now that he was close, he could sense that this shelf of rock had been magically shaped.
Was he at the top? Was this the lowest edge of the dwellings the Aeradalla had made? No, it couldn't be. They wouldn't be crazy enough to put dwellings inside the cloud. They wouldn't be able to see to fly. This had to be something else. Some kind of brace or support, or something he couldn't imagine.
On the other hand, it could very well be an Aeradalla dwelling. For all he knew, the cloud's upper edge was only spans above him-going by pure altitude-and all he had to do was either go around this obstacle, or find some way to climb out onto it and get high enough to get above the cloud.
Going out onto it seemed insane. It was smooth, wet, and it was horizontal. He had no way to climb out onto it, because there was nothing for his claws to snag. He had to go around it.
A thought reached him. If he was caught above the cloud by the Aeradalla, his spire-climbing career may be cut brutally short. He had no idea how they may react to an invader climbing up into their domain. He realized that he might have to wait just inside the cloud until darkness, and then continue up by the light of the Skybands and the moons. But that was an issue to take up once he found the top of the cloud.
He almost chuckled inwardly. He did it again. The Cat did it to him again, made him form a half-baked plan that he'd have to abandon early, and continue on by the seat of his pants. The cat was a creature of impulse, and planning things out was an alien concept to it. It lived in the moment, and thinking ahead required going against that instinctual concept of life. One of these days, he was going to sit down and think one of these wild ideas all the way through.
Then again, if he did that, he may not be willing to do things like this.
"What is that doing here?" Sarraya finally asked.
"I have no idea, but we have to go around it," he told her.
"It looks like it was made," she said, peering through the thick fog.
"Magic," he told her shortly. "Now keep quiet, if you don't mind. I don't need to be distracted right now."
But moving along the base of that horizontal barrier proved fruitless. It seemed to extend as far as he went on both sides, and he realized that it had to be something placed there to do exactly what it was doing to him, keep him from going any higher. He had the sneaking suspicion that it went all the way around the rock spire.
Since he couldn't go around it, he had to go over it.
"Sarraya, I need you," he said after realizing that.
"What do you need?"
"I think this is a barrier put here to keep people from getting up there," he told her. "I can't climb over it myself. Do you know any spells that will help me get over it?"
"Um… yes, I know something," she said after a moment of thought. "A spell that will make your paws and feet stick to the stone, like a spider. It's not an easy spell, so I can't maintain it for more than a few minutes."
"Sarraya, I have no idea how far we have to go," he said in protest. "I'm not going to hang my tail out there unless I know we can get back to safety."
"Well, it was a thought," she said glumly. "It's the only thing I know to help you climb out there."
Tarrin looked at the rock. And he got an idea. "Sarraya, can you look into the rock and see if there are any caves in there? Something that goes up to the top?"
"Clever," she said in appreciation. She got off his head and hovered in the air over his head, her little wings beating frantically at the thin air to keep her stable, as he felt her probe the rock with her Druidic abilities. "Clever boy," she laughed. "There's a small lava tube about a hundred spans into the rock, and it goes pretty far up. I think it may go up to the very top. But it's too small for you."
"Is it too small for my cat form?"
"Clever!" Sarraya said brightly. "Your cat form will fit in it, but it'll be cramped."
"Now, how do we get in there?" he asked.
"We can burrow into the rock," Sarraya offered. "We could look to see if it opens somewhere that we can reach, or we could try to use magic to penetrate the rock and reach the tube."
"How long would it take if we burrow?"
"I could burrow a tunnel all the way in, but I can't make it very large," she told him. "We have to figure out some way to get you into that tunnel while in cat form, and that won't be easy. If you try to shift hanging on the rock, you're going to fall."
"Can you make an opening large enough for me to squirm into, then go with the narrow tunnel the rest of the way?"
"I think I could," she said after a moment. "I'll be pretty much wiped after this, so you'd better not ask for anything else."
"Then let's try it," he said. "If anything, it'll give us a place to rest for the night, if we can't get to the top."
"Alright. Move down some so I have some room."
Tarrin did that for her, moving about ten spans from the barrier. Sarraya hovered in a position over his head, then put her hands on the stone. He felt the sudden surge of power from her, a visible aura around her for just a moment, and then there was a sound like cracking stone. The stone around her suddenly shattered. Not exactly like that, but it did instantly turn into dust, and that dust suddenly billowed out from the huge hole she had made, falling over him and making him sneeze. She disappeared from his view, going into the hollow she had just made, and then he felt another powerful surge of her power, and a crack sound that seemed to go deeply into the stone. He felt it through his paws.
What he wasn't ready for was the sudden explosion of wind that came through that newfound passageway, sending dust streaming out on that sudden, fierce wind. More than dust. Sarraya came spinning out of the new tunnel like a leaf on the wind. He felt a wild surge of panic when she spiralled into the fog and out of sight, but then he heard her wings in the fog, and saw her. Her damp body was now covered with sticking dust, making her look like she'd fell into mud. Her tiny face was drawn, and she could barely fly in a straight line. She was panting heavily, and she landed on Tarrin's back and grabbed hold of his braid, sucking in air.
"That's it for me," she wheezed. "I couldn't even conjure up a pebble right now."
"You've done enough, Sarraya," he told her. "Let me climb into the hole, and we'll rest a while before we move, alright?"
"Fine," she puffed.
The wind continued to flow through the tunnel, funneled by its small size. She had made an opening just big enough for him to slide into, and it narrowed considerably to something that would be a tight fit even for his cat form. He pulled in and shifted quickly, feeling the wind tug at his fur and dry his eyes. Sarraya flopped down against his side, and he curled up around her to keep her warm and give her something soft to rest against. "Where is this wind coming from?" he demanded in the manner of the Cat.
"The tube has to open to the outside," Sarraya said aloud weakly. "When I opened this tunnel, it gave the air in the tube a new way to go."
"Is it going to stop? I really don't want to have to crawl with it in my face."
"I have no idea," she replied. "At least thank it for blowing out the dust, or we'd have had a very unpleasant trip through it."
Tarrin hunkered down against that chilly, damp wind and waited. He needed to rest, and Sarraya definitely needed to rest. They did so for a considerable time, as he noticed the light in the cloud starting to dim. "It's getting close to sunset," he realized. "And the wind is starting to die down."
"I guess the sun was making it flow like that," Sarraya said, her voice stronger now. She had cleaned the dirt off of herself, at least after Tarrin started trying to groom her. The dust didn't taste very good, but his compulsive need to keep clean was enough to make him try to clean up his friend. "When do you want to go?"
"When you feel up to making light. It'll be pitch black in there, and I don't want to move around in there in the dark."
"Good point."
They rested a while longer, and Tarrin spent that time listening. Not to any sound, but to the eerie harmonic echoing that reverberated through him. It was a magical effect, caused by his proximity to the Conduit. It ran through the center of the rock spire, and now that he wasn't so intent on climbing, or sleeping, he had a chance to notice it. He had the feeling that if he got closer, its song would become more clear to him. It was nothing of any great importance or danger, however. He had passed through strands, even Conduits before. If he had to pass through that one, it shouldn't do any harm. He looked at Sarraya, who was sleeping against him, then out into the cloud. It started right after the entrance, hiding everything and muffling all sound, giving him the sensation that he and Sarraya were now the only people left in the world. At least in this world. That silence lulled him to put his head down, and since he had nothing else to do, he promptly went to sleep.
A considerable time after the cloud outside became dark-he wasn't sure, keeping track of time while in cat form was very difficult for him-Sarraya stirred from her nap, waking him. She yawned and stretched, then gave him a light smile. "Alright, I'm ready," she called. "I'll go first with the light. I'm smaller than you, so I shouldn't have too much trouble navigating. You can come along behind me."
Tarrin nodded, feeling the wind starting to move again. But this time, it was coming from the entrance and blowing back down the tunnel, not coming out of the tunnel. And it was only a gentle breeze, not the stiff wind that he'd felt when he crawled in. Sarraya held out her hands, and a little ball of soft white light appeared over them. She looked back at him and grinned, then started walking into the very small tunnel she created that reached what she called a lava tube.
It was a tight squeeze. Tarrin had to wriggle his way through the tunnel, leaving a little fur behind in a few places. The tunnel wasn't uniform in size, it tended to drift in size as he moved through it. Not by much, but since it was a tight fit in the first place, a small amount of shrinking meant that wriggling became necessary to get through it. He squirmed along after Sarraya for what seemed to him to be quite a while, and then she stopped. He came up behind her and saw that her tunnel joined with another tunnel that was eerily circular in diameter. Almost like a wellshaft, but it ran up and at a rather steep angle. It was a bit larger than Sarraya's tunnel, and its walls were covered with strange, glassy rock that had a rippled surface, almost like ice.
"Here we are," Sarraya said, holding her little ball of light out into the strange cave. "One lava tube."
"Why call it that?"
"That's what it is," she replied. "This used to be a volcano, a long time ago. These little tubes form in volcanos when the lava hardens on the outside, but stays liquid inside. The lava inside forms these tubes."
"I didn't know that," he said, looking at it. The air within smelled dusty, but it did move. There had to be another exit from the place, and from the feel of the air, that exit was above them.
As near as he could tell, the tube ran parallel to the outer edge of the spire, slowly curving inward. Tarrin found it very hard going, for the rippled rock was as slick as glass, and his claws had a hard time finding purchase. More than once he slipped, and slid along the glassy surface for long distances before catching himself, forcing himself to climb the same expanses of tube again and again. For every span he managed to climb, he usually slipped back half of it. The tube was large enough for Sarraya to fly, but the thin air in the tube tired her quickly, and she had given it up for simply riding on Tarrin's back like she had done when she lost her wings. The angle of the tube didn't change much as he scrabbled his way upwards, but he did notice that the slope did level out a little bit as he managed to get further into the tube.
Time was hard to keep track of in cat form, so he had no idea how long he had been climbing when they reached its end, when a splash of light began to reflect off from the glassy surface just around a sharp turn in the tube above them. "There's the end," Sarraya said.
"I see it."
What he didn't count on when he turned the corner was that it was indeed the end. It opened to the sky, a daylit sky, and that the mouth of the tube was covered by a metal grate. The Aeradalla had noticed the tube, and had barred it off, probably to keep children from getting too curious. The metal grate was thick, heavy, and the bars were too close together for him to wriggle through them.
"Daytime? Did I sleep that long?" Sarraya said in confusion.
"Don't ask me, you know I can't keep time like this," he told her. "Can you get that out of the way?"
"Sure, hold on," she told him confidently. She flitted up to it and put her hand on one of the bars, and it began to rust away at an astounding rate. In seconds, little miniature rivulets of rust dust were drifting down past his paws, sliding down into the unfathomable darkness of the lava tube. In mere moments, two of the bars were totally rusted away, and that gave him enough room to squirm through it and into the open. It wasn't easy, for it was a tight fit and he had no traction on the glassy surface of the lava tube. But he managed to wriggle through, and put his paws down on a flat, level surface, a surface not of black basalt, but of mortared cobblestones.
Cobblestones? Why cobblestones? That made little sense.
They had come up out of the tube between two tall buildings, covered with a strange wattle-like substance, like dried mud. They were the color of sand, and they towered over him on both sides of what looked to be a small alley between them.
He padded along the alleyway with sarraya on his back absently, curious as to why a race of winged beings would waste time paving over black stone for cobblestones. Maybe to cover the black stone, which must heat up something fierce in the daytime sun. That was a possibility.
He stepped out from between the buildings, and stopped dead in his tracks.
The top of the rock spire was a city.
Not just a city built atop the spire, but extending out past its boundaries. From his vantage point, he could see many tiers with buildings built atop them, gradually going down from the center. He had come out at the edge of one of those tiers, and he looked down on the rest of the city in awe. It extended for longspans, far beyond the radius of the spire, and from the look of it, nearly out to the boundary of the cloud itself.
Amazing! That barrier had to be the beginning of a vast platform, upon which the entirety of the city rested! The Rock Spire was like the neck of a champagne glass!
He was absolutely stunned, and from the silence, so was Sarraya. They looked down on the lower tiers with awe, total awe, unable to believe that anything like this rested above the concealing cloud.
"Unbelievable," Sarraya finally whispered. "It's unbelievable!"
Tarrin looked around, at the city itself. Its architecture was alien to him, full of graceful curves and elegant slopes. There were very few right angles, and none of the buildings seemed to have a door at ground level. They all had a tiered construction like the city itself, with a smaller tier resting upon a wider base, which served as the landing platform and entrance into the buildings. It was upon those ledges that the Aeradalla themselves took off and alighted, and the sky was peppered with individual Aeradalla as they flew here and there on their daily business, much as a human city dweller would walk along the streets.
Looking out at the incredible city, he now understood the extents that could be reached with magic. The place screamed of it, radiated it like heat, but it was not active magic. The magic that had created this floating city was ancient itself, and it had seeped into the stone of the city's bowl and the Rock Spire itself, making it strong enough to support its own weight. It was certain to him that without magic, this place could not be. The stone could never survive the stress of such weight upon it without any support, not without magical reinforcement. The Conduit running through the heart of the Spire probably sustained the ancient magic that had created this place, since the proximity of such a power would prevent the magic that made this place work from fading.
"Unbelievable," Sarraya muttered in awe. "How could this be here?"
"Magic," Tarrin told her, shaking off his astonishment. He still had something to do. He had to find that object and make sure it wasn't the Firestaff. He could wonder at this place all he wanted after that task was accomplished.
"It must rest on top of the Rock Spire like a plate balanced on a pole," Sarraya said quietly. "How does it stay up?"
"Magic," he told her again. "There's magic permeating everything here. It keeps the stone strong."
"An entire city," Sarraya said in disbelief. "Who would believe me if I told them?"
"I would," he said calmly. "Then again, I know you're not lying."
Sarraya laughed, and that seemed to snap her out of it. "It is pretty amazing, isn't it?"
"Only to us," he shrugged. "They're probably used to it."
An Aeradalla landed on the edge of the tier not twenty paces from them, next to the building to his left. He ducked back into the alley and looked at this winged person. He was tall and thin, and he had those large white-feathered wings on his back. His hair was a long blond braid hanging down his back, his skin bronzed from the sun, and he was quite attractive by human norms. He wore little more than a cross harness and trousers with a wide leather belt, upon which hung a small crossbow and a slender sword, and soft half-boots of leather. A crossbow was a clever weapon for a winged warrior, since it didn't need to be held in a drawn position, and they were relatively easy to aim. For a highly mobile warrior, it was a sensible weapon, for landing to engage with a sword was taking away from one of the Aeradalla's fundamental advantages. It was smarter for them to shoot crossbows at their enemies at a distance from which the opponent could not retaliate. That crossbow looked small enough to be recocked without a windlass. Tarrin would bet that learning to reload that thing while on the wing took a great deal of practice.
The Aeradalla didn't seem to notice him, instead moving up to the building before him. He knocked on a door that Tarrin didn't see before-mainly because the city itself had swallowed up his attention-and was soon allowed inside. When the door closed, Tarrin padded back out towards the edge of the tier, looking at the building. He saw the door now, which was a set of double-doors that, when taken together, were significantly taller and wider than normal doors. To give room for the wings, he realized.
He stopped at the edge of the tier and looked down. It was about forty spans to the next tier, but some of the roofs of the houses and buildings below were close to the level of the floor of the tier he was currently occupying. The effect wasn't one of blocky descent as one looked out over the city, but rather one of gradual sloping towards the edges of the magical city. There were a few holes in that sloping regularity, but they were too far away for his cat's eyes to see much. Tarrin's vision wasn't very sharp in cat form, more geared for seeing motion than making out details. Seeing at distance required vision able to pick out details. He could see to the end of the city, but that far away was little more than a blur of different colors against the continual sky. Those empty areas were dark splotches against the tan backdrop of the city.
"What are those empty places?" Tarrin asked Sarraya.
"Looks like marketplaces," Sarraya replied. "I see alot of Aeradalla in them. I can only guess they're buying things." There was a pause. "I wonder how they keep from running into each other in the air," she mused. "There are alot of them, and only so much airspace overhead."
"Who knows?" he asked, turning around. The magical object was up, and from the sense of it, it was in the Conduit at the heart of the spire. That would place it more or less in the exact center of the city itself. "We have to go that way," he told her, looking back towards the wall of the next tier up, which was about half a longspan away. As far as he could judge. "We'll have to move at night. I'll have to change to get up the tier walls, and I can't do that in the daytime without getting spotted."
"Good plan," Sarraya agreed. "Let's go find some dark, quiet place that can't be seen from above, and we'll rest."
"Why so it can't be seen?"
"Aeradalla are probably related to hunting birds, Tarrin, and if you didn't know, raptors have eyesight that rivals Allia's. They can see a mouse in high grass from a longspan away."
"You have a point," he acceded. "Alright, but I'm not going to spend the rest of the day hiding in that tunnel. We'll just have to find some other place."
"I think we can find something," she assured him. "If worse comes to worst, I'll just conjure up something to hide us until nightfall."
"Good enough," he said calmly as he padded back into the alley.
To: Title EoF