He had never faced such a puzzling problem before.
Sitting in the middle of the large chamber full of hot springs with his legs crossed, arms folded and head bowed in thought, stripped down to a pair of ragged trousers, Tarrin continued to mull over the problem. It was the same problem he'd been thinking about for four solid days. Any time he was not eating, sleeping, or spending time with Jesmind, he was considering this most bedevilling of obstacles.
How to get around the Demons.
The problem was a tricky one. The amulets he and Jesmind wore protected them from any attempt to locate them using magic, but they didn't hide Tarrin's effect on the Weave. That was an indirect indication of where he was, and he didn't doubt that the Demons or the Sorcerers that may be working with the ki'zadun weren't going to overlook that for long. They also didn't protect them from purely visual searching, such as what the vrock were doing from the air. The solution he needed had to hide his effect on the Weave, but it also couldn't require such an expenditure of Sorcery that it would be like a beacon to attract Val's attention. They also needed something that would hide them from the airborne searchers, who would only have to find the tracks they left in the snow and follow them back to them. That was where he was running into the problem. Every solution he came up with required too much power to be exercised outside of himself, and that power would be like a beacon to attract Val's attention. Personal magic, contained within, like the magic of his amulet, wouldn't be noticed because the amulet's power of non-detection hid things like that from others. So long as it wasn't too powerful, anyway. Having to both conceal his physical and magical presence would mean using too much magic to escape Val's notice, especially as they got closer and closer to the pyramid.
He knew Val was there. He'd felt… brushings. That was the best way to explain it. Sweeps of detection from a mind and power so vast that Tarrin's consciousness shied away from them when they passed over him. Val was searching for him, but for some reason, the imprisoned god had yet to find him. Tarrin had no explanation for that, aside from the possibility that him being so deeply in the mountain was somehow interfering with Val's ability to detect him.
Every time one of those brushings swept over him, it chilled his soul and scattered his thoughts. There was an utter, unmitigated hatred behind that power that terrified him. For some reason, Val hated him with a passion that was almost a religion unto itself, a hatred that was a paragon of example for any who hated another. Feeling that hatred worried him even more. Not for himself, but for the very real worry that Val would kill Jasana just to spite him. But that hadn't happened yet. For some reason, he was sure of it. Jasana was still alive, he knew it.
Those tentative brushings told him that things were getting very serious, and he had redoubled his efforts to find a solution. His distance from her had annoyed Jesmind, who had quickly grown restless and impatient in their restrictive wonderland. She could only take so many hot baths before the luxury of them got old, and the heat and humidity in the place had caused her to go around with progressively fewer and fewer clothes, until she finally decided to forego clothing altogether. Her nudity didn't bother either of them in the slightest, since Were-cats had no sense of modesty, but her nakedness had an effect on Tarrin that was quite human. She was his mate, and he was very attracted to her. Seeing her nude was like dangling a waterskin just over the head of a man dying from thirst, and sometimes he had trouble concentrating on what he was doing when she was close by.
The four days hadn't been spent completely in work, though. Tarrin and Jesmind had taken the time to talk to each other, to get some things out in the open, and the time had reconciled them. His anger for her disappeared when he understood how hurt she'd been when she found out that he'd fallen in love with Kimmie, but she understood after he talked to her that his love for Kimmie did not in any way change how he felt about her. There was no competition in his eyes. When Jesmind and Kimmie were together, Jesmind had precedence. Not because he loved her more, but because she was first. She had been his mate first, he had been with her longer, and because he had an obligation to her that superseded his duties to Kimmie. Kimmie understood that, probably much better than Jesmind did, and it was a testament to her mild nature and her understanding that she was willing to accept the situation. He loved them both, but when his duties and feelings for them came into conflict with one another, he would choose Jesmind over Kimmie nearly every time. Jesmind finally understood that, and it had smoothed over the most glaring wound of their relationship. Her hurt and her fear of losing him forever was why she had acted so poorly towards him when he was a human, and though he had hated it, he did understand her motives. When he wasn't working on his problem, he was spending time with Jesmind, renewing the powerful bonds that existed between them, restoring the intimacy and openness that had been missing from their relationship since he'd come back from Sha'Kari. When he wasn't deep in contemplation about their problem, he was lounging in hot baths with Jesmind, or talking with her, or making passionate love with her, or just enjoying her company.
But the marching of time had reminded him that they were on a tight schedule. Finally growing tired of not having a way to keep track of the passing of time, Tarrin broke down and did something that he rather regretted doing. He remembered the gold pocketwatch that the rabbit Wikuni Jervis owned, a marvel of Tellurian design that made it keep accurate time despite its tiny size. Tarrin Summoned that watch, and then used Druidic magic to send back to the place where he'd stolen it a note explaining to Jervis how sorry he was for taking it, and a large, uncut, Created ruby that was worth about five times what he'd paid for the watch. Tarrin didn't mind Conjuring away from people things that they could easily replace, but taking something as treasured and priceless as Jervis' beloved watch was quite another matter. Unfortunately, since the watch was a manufactured thing, Tarrin couldn't Create one of his own; such a technological contraption was beyond the bounds of nature, and as such he wasn't about to experiment to see if he could indeed Create something like that. Stealing someone else's was much safer and easier, and at least Jervis would understand his desperate need for it.
Jervis' watch turned out to be the one thing he needed, because it not only told time, it also had a little dial on it that showed the White Moon, Domammon, travelling through its phases. It had little marks on the dial to denote days, and with that he could count how many days until Domammon was again full, which was when the conjunction would occur. By looking at the watch, he could see how many days he had left, and that was critical down in the tunnel, where he had no way to mark the passing of the days.
Now that he had a way to tell time, Tarrin fretted and grew more unsettled as the days passed. He was still no closer to solving his problem, and there were only twenty-eight days left. It would still take them about eighteen days to get out of the mountains, and he estimated five days to cross the tundra, so he only had five days of working time to come up with a solution. And he did not want to use up all that time. If they had an emergency, they may need an extra day or two to get everything settled and back on track. He did not relish the idea of burning up all his time here and now and end up being behind after something happened to delay them.
Being late was not an option.
Jesmind shared his impatience. The time alone had allowed them to become close again, but they both shared the desperation of needing to recover their daughter. He was just as impatient as she was, but he understood that this was not the time to rush off without being prepared and without a plan. They had spent several hours talking about Jasana, and though the speaking of her hurt both of them and made them both want to fly over to the pyramid on the back of an Elemental and tear the place apart until they found her, he constantly reminded her just who had their daughter. But it was still hard. Every time he was with her, all either of them could think about was the fact that their daughter was not there with them. Even in the intense throes of passion, the emptiness that their daughter had once filled was like a hole in each of them, taking much of the joy and pleasure out of it. It was hard to find joy or happiness without Jasana, but they both tried, intentionally tried to distract themselves from the fact that their daughter had been stolen from them. They knew that they couldn't succumb to depression, or what was worse, couldn't surrender to their anger. So they went through the motions of being mates, even engaged in lovemaking, trying to keep their grief and fury from overwhelming them, and in that overwhelming commit a grievous error that would lose their daughter to them forever.
It was hard for Were-cats to keep such control of themselves, but both of them somehow found a way. Tarrin was utterly focused on their little problem, and spent every waking moment not engaged with his mate searching for a solution. Jesmind had little to do in the hot spring, but she tried to keep busy. Tarrin had Conjured her a great deal of material, and she passed her time fashioning large white cloaks for both of them to wear, cloaks that would blend in with the color of the snow and make them very hard to spot. Jesmind had a surprising number of hidden talents and skills, and her ability to sew was probably one of the most surprising. She had to take on human hands to do it, but Jesmind's knack for holding the human shape-or parts of it-for extended periods of time was still a matter of pride for her. Not even Tarrin and Triana could match Jesmind in her endurance for withstanding the discomfort for taking on the human form. She had learned it because she wanted to learn how to play the lute, but it served her well in many hobbies and skills that she had learned from the humans that necessitated the smaller, more agile human hands. Because she could tolerate it so well, her fingers remained supple and agile long after the pain stiffened the fingers of other Were-cats, so she could enjoy her hobbies for much longer than any other Were-cat could practice them. Because of that, Jesmind was much better at such things than any other Were-cat, and she had often been asked to sew garments or make things for others.
"Tarrin," she called, nudging his shoulder.
He opened his eyes, and found himself looking at her thighs, right where her white fur ended and her skin began. She didn't have any pants on, and that fact caused his eyes to immediately drift up to certain parts of her that most human women struggled mightily to conceal.
"Ogle me later, love," she said seriously. "It's back, and it wants in."
It was proof that the caves were not devoid of animal life. It was a strange, curious thing, looking like some kind of gigantic lobster. It was about ten spans long, its armored shell grayish brown, and had wicked, powerful claws like a lobster, as well as ten armored legs and long, whip-like antennae. The animal had no eyes, or at least none that Tarrin and Jesmind could find. It had shown up the day after Tarrin raised the Ward blocking the entrance, but Tarrin had lowered the Ward for the animal after talking to it and finding out that it came here to both get water and feed on the moss-like plants that grew on the walls and cast the reddish light in the chamber. Tarrin would not deny the animal its right to graze, and it promised not to bother the Were-cats or disturb their things in exchange for right of passage in the hot spring. It told Tarrin that there were carnivores in the cave system, so Tarrin didn't lower his Wards. He would let the lobster animal in, let it graze and water, then let it out again once it was ready to go.
"Alright," he said, looking towards the opening that led to the passage beyond. It was there, alright, a huge armored monstrosity waiting patiently for Tarrin to permit it entry. Though it was ugly, Tarrin rather liked the big brute. It was surprisingly intelligent, and had exquisite manners. Jesmind kept wanting to throw it in one of the boiling springs and cook it-she adored seafood-but he had to remind her again and again that a Druid just didn't do such a thing. As Triana had said about talking to animals, it was very bad form to talk to an animal, then turn around and eat it. As soon as he opened communications with the animal, it was his word and bond that he would do it no harm. The fact that the big lobster-creature was an armored juggernaut and had no fear of predators was why it was so polite and willing to engage the obvious carnivore in conversation. This beast was on the top of the food chain, too large for any normal cave predator to kill without seriously risking its own life. Those huge pincers could tear through solid rock; in fact, it used them to burrow into the rock to make dens and widen constricting chokepoints to gain entry to the tunnels beyond them. It too engaged in the occasional hunt, being omnivorous, but tended to prefer the blind cave fish found in some of the larger underground lakes over hunting down other landwalkers.
It took only a thought to lower the Ward. "It's clear," he called in a strong voice, and the huge beast scrabbled in, its legs making a tik-tik-tik sound on the rock as it passed. Tarrin raised the Ward again after it cleared its boudary. It ambled along the edge of the wall, its antennae flicking out to touch the bare stone it had stripped of the luminescent moss two days before. It moved along until the antennae struck the glowing plant, and then stopped and immediately began to feed. Jesmind turned to watch it, her eyes intent. Her tail twitched peculiarly as she regarded the animal, and he could tell that she was thinking of trying to cook it again.
"Leave it alone," he warned her. "Even if it didn't have passage, I wouldn't want to try to catch it."
"I'll bet it tastes like lobster," she said musingly, her tail slashing back and forth, slapping him in the side of the head a couple of times.
"Get your tail out of my face, woman," he told her irritably, slapping at the offending appendage, then finally grabbing it and pulling it to the side. Jesmind was forced to back up to keep the tail attached to her backside. She glared at him for a moment, then slid down to sit on her feet beside him.
"Any luck?" she asked.
He snorted shortly, giving her all the answer she needed. "No matter what I think of, it uses too much magic," he told her. "Hiding us from the air won't be easy, because I can't think of anything easy to do that will hide our tracks. Using Illusion to hide will be easy enough, they don't use much magical energy, but the tracks we leave behind have me stumped. Trying to hide a trail like that or wipe it out by any means other than magic will take too much magic for us to avoid being noticed."
"It'd be nice if we didn't leave tracks," she grunted. "Like those white-furred foxes I saw before we got here. They walked on top of the snow."
It was like a light appeared in his mind. "Jesmind!" he said suddenly. "That's brilliant!"
"What is?" she asked.
"That solves the big problem!" he said enthusiastically, "and I think it won't leave too much of a mark!"
"What?" she demanded irritably.
"Walking on top of the snow!" he told her excitedly. "And it'll make travelling up there alot easier to boot!" He considered it. It was possible, a weave or Air, Earth, and Water, that would make the snow like solid ground, like firm soil to them. There was a weave for walking on water like it was a solid surface, and it would be easy to alter that weave to suit his purposes. It couldn't just be a weave, though; he'd have to, for the first time, create a permanent magical object. Two of them, actually.
He rifled through his store of magical knowlege, granted in his turning, and found what he was looking for. He'd need items of exceptional craftsmanship, but the creation of those objects was not a demanding issue. He only needed items of exceptional quality. If he Created suitable items with Druidic magic, they would serve his purposes, so long as they were items of exceptional quality. He had to prepare the items, infuse them with magic of the Weave that would then turn and cause any subsequent spells cast into them to become permanent. That required High Sorcery. That worried him a bit, since that would be serious magic, but it was worth the risk. He'd also have to figure out and program in the triggers, the variables that would give them the ability to control the magical operation of the items. That was going to be the tricky part, he saw as he studied the problem. That meant he'd have to adjust the weaves he placed in the objects by the feel of them. If he got it wrong, the spells would fizzle, the fizzling would destroy his preparing weave, and they would stain the objects with an magical residue that would make them unusable until he purged them of it and prepared them again.
The more complicated he made things, the harder it was going to be to make it work. He pondered what he needed the items to do, and then pondered how he would want to control that operation. The items would need to do two things. Firstly, it would need to hide them in some fashion. An Illusion would work best, a very special kind of Illusion that picked up the background and projected it forward, that curious trick that Dar had thought up that was as good as being invisible. The Illusion would have to be form-fitting, with only their eyes not covered by the Illusion so they could see. The non-detection aspect of their amulets would subsequently cover over the magic of the Illusion, providing even more protection by hiding the magic of the spell itself. The only control he'd need over that Illusion would be the ability to activate it and deactivate it.
The second thing he needed was Jesmind's clever idea to walk on top of the snow. That wouldn't be a completely internal weave, but the field of its effect would be limited only to whatever it was that had contact with their feet, or whatever parts of them were in active contact with the surface. To make the weave simpler to use, and subsequently simpler to alter, he'd have to restrict its operation to only working against water or water-based substances, like water, thin ice, snow, and mud. The weave would function in such a way that their weight did not change, but their weight over the watery substance would barely register to the substance upon which they stood. It was very easy to do, and the magical imprint it left would be greatly subdued by the amulets. What little that would be left over would probably be hidden by the background power of the Weave. The only control he'd need over that was the same as the Illusion, the ability to activate it or deactivate it as necessary.
No, he'd need it to do three things. The non-detection aspect of his amulet was a spell, and he could cast that into the items he created, interlacing it with the other weaves. He could tailor it specifically to masking the magical imprint that the Illusion and the water-walking power would make when they were being used. Restricting it like that, making it function in a very specific manner, would make it much easier to weave into the device without it causing the device's magical matrix to collapse or malfunction. The more targeted a spell was, the easier it was to implant into a permanent device. That spell needed no triggers or alteration, but it too would be rather tricky because it had to interlace very tightly with the other magic, covering it over and hiding it behind a mask of nondescript background energy, much the same as the weaves in the amulets that Grand Syllis made, weaves that cleverly hid what they protected by making them appear to be something else. That was how the non-detection worked. Syllis had used the weaves in the amulets. Tarrin could make them appear to be nothing more than just strands in the Weave.
It was possible. It would take two days of constant activity, and he wouldn't be able to sleep. He couldn't leave his device, couldn't so much as let them out of contact with him. The preparation weave would hold his work for brief amounts of time without him having to actively maintain it, but it wouldn't last long enough for him to get any sleep. He'd have to weave carefully and delicately, a flow at a time, carefully interlacing it into the material of the object itself and into the binding weave that he would place on it first, the High Sorcery that would envelop his work and make it permanent once it was complete.
Yes, it would work. He saw that clearly as he considered, as he worked out what had to be done. It would take him about two days to make each one, and that would cut his margin for error down to one day. But on the other hand, the ability to walk on top of the snow would make the journey drastically easier, and would allow them to go much faster. So he could gain that time back during the trip over the mountains. There'd be no plowing through snowbanks if they had those devices. They could move effortlessly over them like they were solid ground, and it would make the movement through the tundra even easier. That would be flat terrain, and the snow would be like the ground to them, allowing them to outrun anything that didn't have wings or wasn't fifteen spans tall. The Illusions would hide them from prying eyes, and the non-detection of their amulets and the new devices would hide them from magical probes. The only thing he'd have to worry about was his impact on the Weave. But then again, Spyder didn't seem to have that effect, so there had to be a trick to not having such an impact that he could be sensed from great distances.
And the worry that his work on the objects would be strong enough for Val to find him.
"Hello!" Jesmind said imaptiently, waving her paw in his face. He blinked and looked at her. "What's the matter with you?"
"I was thinking," he told her. "What did you say?"
"I asked if you were serious," she repeated.
"Very serious," he replied. "I can make something that will let us walk on top of the snow, and I can also fix it so it casts an Illusion over us that will make virtually impossible to find."
"Virtually?"
"It won't hide our eyes," he told her. "So unless they look directly at us and they have very good eyesight, they won't see anything."
"That will make the going alot faster," she said after a moment. "No more slogging through snow."
"That's what I was thinking. The only bad part is that I'll have to create permanent magical objects. That takes alot of time and alot of effort. A lot of effort. I won't even be able to sleep while I'm doing it."
"How long?"
"I'll have to make two objects, one for each of us, and each will take two days. If I don't stop to rest between them, it will take four days."
"You'll need to rest," she admonished. "At least a day, so you can catch up on your sleep."
"Probably," he grunted. "So let's call it five days. The problem is that that's all our available free time. So if I do do this, we'll have to move quickly to make up time."
"We'll do that easy if we can run on top of the snow," she told him. "We could clear the mountains in fifteen days instead of twenty, and still have plenty of time to get across the tundra."
"That's what I was thinking," he agreed. "If I do this, Jesmind, I'll have to lower the Wards. Their magic will interfere with what I'm doing. That means that you'll have to defend the chamber by yourself. I won't be able to help you. I may never notice that anything happened. I'll be completely out of it."
"Just leave me enough food, my mate," she told him. "I won't let anything hurt you. That's a guarantee."
"So, you like the idea?"
"I don't relish the idea of being a living snowball, my mate," she grinned. "I really like the idea of being able to walk on top of the snow without us having to plow through it."
"Alright then," he said, standing up. "Let's get this started."
"Now?" she asked, standing up with him.
"Why not?"
"Shouldn't you get a little rest before you start?"
"Maybe, but I also need to ask the Goddess a few things. I'm going to be vulnerable while I'm doing this, and I'm worried that the magic I'm expending will let our enemies find us. I need to make sure that won't happen."
"How can she do that?"
"She said she'd help me in any way she could," he told her. "Maybe she can hide me while I'm making the objects."
You've already been hidden, my kitten, her whimsical chuckle came to him. Why do you think Val's mind has yet to find you?
"Mother!" he said in surprise. "Is that why he can't find me? Are you doing it?"
No. You're deep in the heart of the earth, and that is Darian's domain. Darian was the name of the Elder God of earth, and it was one of the peculiarities that both Darian and Ahiriya were also the names of two of the humans on the Council. Ahiriya had been named for the goddess of fire since the day she was born, to honor the goddess of fire to give her name to a child with flame-red hair, but Darian may not have been the name of the Earth seat. Men sometimes changed their names, and it was possible that the Earth seat may have changed his to honor the Elder god whose element he represented on the Council. The Sorcerers worshipped Niami, the Goddess of Magic, as their patron, but they also ackowledged and revered the other Elder gods as representatives of the natural forces that Sorcery represented. Darian agreed to hide you from Val while you were within his realm. Remember this, my kitten; any time you need to hide, just put earth over your head. Darian will protect you from being found so long as you are surrounded by earth and rock.
"I'll remember, Mother. Could you find Spyder for me? I need to ask her how she hides herself in the Weave."
You've already stumbled across that trick, kitten, she answered. Remember when you let the Weave flow through you to keep you warm? That is how she does it. When you let the Weave flow through you, the effect you have on it is significantly reduced. Jenna was almost in a panic when you first started doing it, because she couldn't keep track of you anymore. I had to calm her down.
"How are things going on that side?"
Busy. I've finished making the arrangements, so now everyone is scrambling to have their forces in place before Gods' Day. Shiika is in Suld along with General Kang. He and Darvon are going to be the tacticians responsible for the plan of attack.
"Good choices."
I certainly agree. Kang is a thorough professional, and Darvon's credentials are already well known and respected. She chuckled. Kang got quite a nasty shock when he met Sapphire.
"Have the dragons met and discussed it?"
They have. There will be some three hundred dragons participating in the attack. The rest won't fight in the battle, but they will participate in the defense of Sennadar if we fail to stop them at Gora Umadar. I think that's a wise choice.
"Why not commit them all?"
Because if we fail, there won't be any more dragons left to fight, she answered. The dragons are the reason we won the Blood War, kitten. When they committed to the cause, we started winning the war. Their power is tremendous, more than even you can imagine. Three hundred dragons may be all we need to help battle a force the size of the army that Val has collected.
"Even more reason to commit all of them to this battle," he said stubbornly. "Put an overwhelming force on the field."
Yes, and put them all within Val's striking distance, she said pointedly.
"Oh. I forgot about that," he said sheepishly.
I rather thought you did, she answered. I must go now, kitten. Remember what I told you. Whenever you must hide from Val, simply surround yourself with earth and rock. Darian will protect you.
"What was that about?" Jesmind asked as the Goddess withdrew from him.
He told her quickly. "As long as we stay underground, the Elder god of the earth will hide us from Val," he concluded. "So we'll be safe until we leave the caves."
"Too bad we can't take caves all the way there," she fretted.
"I know, but since when are things ever that easy for us?"
She laughed. "No doubt there." Then she frowned deeply, glancing at him. "If the Goddess is worried about this Val frying the dragons in the army, what's going to stop him from frying the army?" she asked. "Are the other gods going to protect them?"
"They won't interfere directly," he said grimly. "They're too afraid."
"Then who's going to stop Val from killing our army?"
"The gods won't interfere directly," he told her. "They won't attack. But as long as Val doesn't directly attack them, they will defend the army against his power. They can do that much without inciting a direct confrontation. You know, one of those things that may destroy the world."
Jesmind glanced at him, her eyes suspicious, then she seemed to understand. She snorted, putting her paws on her hips. "A silly way to have a war," she said. "Where half the people on our side are too afraid to do what they have to do."
"Well said," he nodded. "Now, if I'm going to do this, I'd better rest a while."
"Why don't you take a bath with me?" she invited, grabbing the end of his tail and tugging lightly. "That will relax you."
"And we'll end up doing something more strenuous than what I'll be doing when I'm making the objects," he said dryly.
"Well, at least you'll sleep soundly afterward," she said with a naughty smirk, pulling on his tail more insistently. "Come on, my mate. Let me pamper you a little before you have to wear yourself out with your magic."
"How can I refuse a naked woman?" he asked with a smile.
"Why do you think I took off my clothes?"
He laughed and let her lead him to her favorite bathing pool by his tail.
It was, by far, one of the hardest things he had ever had to do.
It had cost him two days of sleepless, continuous effort, but now, two days and alot of energy later, he held the final result of his toil in his paws. It was an unassuming-looking leather belt with a gold buckle shaped in the fashion of a cat's head. The leather was as supple as silk but as strong as steel, leather of the highest quality, and the gold pure, alloyed with other metals just enough to allow it to retain its shape-in its purest state, gold was a very soft, malleable metal.
It had certainly been worth the effort. After Jesmind had indeed pampered him a little bit, massaging him, paying him very gentle and loving attention, he slept a while and got to work. He decided on using a belt because it was a rather mundane item, not the kind of thing that one would identify as a rare magical object. And besides, the phsyical characteristics of his race made a belt more practical than other things. He already wore a necklace, earrings and rings were impractical for a Were-cat, and they couldn't wear boots. Their claws made any kind of magical garment a dangerous proposition, since an errant claw may tear the garment and disrupt its magical properties, and some kind of token or object that wasn't worn could conceivably be lost or dropped by accident. A belt wouldn't come off unless it was taken off, it served a useful purpose other than that of its magic, and it was the last thing someone would suspect was a magical device. It was safely out of the way of a Were-cat's claws, and its sturdy leather would resist any incidental claw that may brush across it.
After he decided on using a belt, he bent to the task of Creating one. He tried several times until he got one that he felt was good enough to accept a magical enchantment. After that was done, he then proceeded with the very difficult task of infusing it with magical power. He had never done it before, but the knowledge of how it was done was solidly in his mind, part of what he'd learned when he was turned. He went very carefully nonetheless, not wanting to waste precious time by messing it up and having to start all over again from scratch.
It was alot harder than he thought it would be. He had to use High Sorcery to start the process, preparing the object to receive a magical enchantment, and that was alot more critical to the process than he first realized. The better he did with the preparation, the more magic the object could accept, and therefore the greater its potential. Preparing an object was purely a function of art, not spellweaving, for he had to pattern his preparing weaves carefully to take the material and feel of the object into account. The preparing weave had to fuse with the belt's leather and gold seamlessly, flawlessly, becoming so united with it that it was as if it had always been there. Since every object was different, that made every attempt to prepare an object a unique exercise in being able to bring out the utmost potential of the object in question. This was why the object had to be of the utmost quality, he realized after he had begun. If the object was shabbily made, its impure nature would taint the process of preparing it to receive a permanent magical enchantment. An object of quality would be much more receptive to the preparing spell, more attuned to the purity of the magic it was being prepared to contain.
This was where Tarrin ran into his first problem. The belt he had Created was an object of quality, but it had a certain sterility to it that the magic had trouble overcoming. A normal object made by the hands of a master craftsman showed in its very nature the effort the craftsman had expended to make it, but Tarrin's Created belt had no such sense in it. It made it unusual, and magical spells as delicate as the one he was using did not like unusual. But the mutable nature of the spell allowed him to work around this little problem, and as such it served more as an educational tool that would better prepare him when he made the second belt.
After he solved that problem, he finished with the preparation of the belt, infusing it with a weave that would bind to the magic that was put into it afterwards, and render them permanent. Once that was done, he began on the work of placing the magic itself. He had to do it flow by flow, carefully, painstakingly, interlacing his work with the binding weave, carefully placing it, then checking it, then double-checking it. He had to maintain the flows he was setting the entire time, every flow, and the effort of keeping a steadily growing and more complicated weave organized was part of the exhausting effort of doing what he was doing. The flows did not set, the flows did not hold themselves. He had to place each one and hold it right where it was as he started with the next.
The binding weave that would make the whole thing permanent did help in that regard. By altering it in a very slight way, he caused a portion of its binding effect to become active, which held the flows he already set down where they were and give him a chance to rest. But the binding was very temporary, rarely lasting more than an hour, and the flows tended to drift a little bit while they were being artificially maintained by the binding weave. Every time he paused to eat or rest, he had to go back over all the work he'd already done and correct minor shifts in the flows that, had he not fixed them, would have caused the whole thing to be ruined if he tried to activate the object. After he finished that, a process that could take anywhere up to two hours by itself, he could continue the slow, painstaking process of weaving the spell flow by careful flow.
It took him nearly a day and a half of constant effort to complete the three weaves. They would have been very easy to weave on their own, but the demands and requirements of putting them into the belt were very, very different from usual Sorcery. He had to interlace the weaves so they could work together, yet be separate. He also had to very carefully overlay the weave of non-detection so the magic of the belt wouldn't be apparent to anyone but someone with as much power and skill as he, who was the creator of the item, had. It would take a sui'kun to get around the powerful weave of non-detection in the belt and recognize it for what it really was. He also had to carefully program in the triggers that would give the wearer the power to command the magic the belt made available. Tarrin had already decided that the only triggers needed were the ability to activate or deactivate both the Illusion and the ability to walk over water-like surfaces like they were solid ground. The non-detection would never deactivate, forever defending the belt and its wearer from magical detection of the magic the belt contained, but only the magic that was contained within the belt. He had to very carefully find where in the structure of the weaves to place those two triggers, which would cause the magic to activate and deactivate without disturbing the function of the belt or the operation of its other two functions. That was not easy. If he put it in the wrong place, a trigger to deactivate one function could cause all the belt's magic to stop working. If he really messed up, he could set the trigger in a place that would permanently disrupt the magic he'd placed in it, rendering it nonmagical. The setting of triggers was a very delicate operation, which was why magical devices like the Cat's Claws, which had many functions and also had the ability to change its operation depending on a great many possibilites, were so incredibly rare. His respect for his sister reached new heights when he realized how staggering the effort to make those bracers had to have been. The many layers of triggers concerning the operation of the blades was eclipsed only by the raw power of the magic she'd placed into them to make them serve as magical armor. It had to have taken her rides to make those things, rides of constant effort and no sleep.
But he finished that, and after he was done, he meticulously went over every single flow to make sure it was all where it was supposed to be. Once he was utterly convinced he had it all right, all he had to do was fully activate the binding weave he had placed in it before he started. The binding weave clamped down on the weaving he'd done, searched through it, then it snapped down his weaving on its own and released all the magic of the belt in one simultaneous act, causing the magic of the belt to flare into life.
It had been alot of work, but it was done.
He held the belt up as Jesmind lounged nearby, reading a book he had Conjured for her before starting his work, sighing in relief. He was tired. He could stay up for days if he had to, but this was two straight days of no sleep and exhausting work. For a moment he wondered how Jenna survived when she made the Cat's Claws. It looked rather normal, and what was more important, he could feel the weave of non-detection hard at work, hiding the magic of the belt by making it have the same feel and sense as a tiny capillary strand, the smallest and weakest of all the strand structures. If anyone ever felt anything at all. Only a strong Sorcerer or magic-user would even notice anything unusual about the belt, and those who did would mistake it as nothing more than background magic, nothing they'd think was coming from the belt itself.
Standing up, stretching, he decided to test his new creation. He put it on and stepped up to the nearest pit of water, one that was bubbling rather angrily, and willed the water-walking aspect of the belt to activate. He felt a strange surge, and a weird tingling in his feet that quickly stopped, and that was a good sign.
"Tarrin! You're done?" Jesmind called from where she was laying on her side, still unclothed.
With a short hop, Tarrin jumped out over the pool of bubbling water. His feet struck its surface, and they did not sink. It was something like trying to stand during an earthquake, for his weight did not in any way impact or change the surface of the water, a surface that was boiling and shifting beneath his feet. Jesmind laughed as he threw his arms out and quickly stepped to the edge, forced to use his arms to keep himself from falling over. He made it to the edge, turned and knelt down, then pushed his hand against the water. It too struck the surface and then stopped, and what was curious to him, no amount of strength he tried to exert against the water would change its surface in any way. It was like the water was impenetrable stone. The surface was boiling, and that meant it was hot enough to burn an unprotected paw, but Tarrin's immunity to heat protected him from the dangerous temperatures.
"It works," he told her with a slow smile. He willed the power of the belt to cease, then he pushed at the water with his finger once again.
His finger easily sank into the boiling water.
"It definitely works," he said confidently, then he willed the Illusion to activate. It was hard to feel anything with the non-detection actively trying to hide it from him, but he made it, so he knew what to flook for. He felt a surge of magic that quickly surrounded him, then seemed to solidify into an Illusory image. "Did I disappear?"
Jesmind gaped at him, then she laughed. "There's a little disortion around your silhouette, and it gets a little worse whenever you move, or I change my vantage point," she told him, moving around him to check from different angles. "Is that invisibility?"
"In a sense," he answered. "The Illusion picks up what's behind you and projects that image forward."
"So it's like camoflage. I guess that's why there's that small distortion on the edge. It's the border between the magic and reality." She walked completely around him, then stopped before him. "I can definitely see the green of your eyes, and they certainly stand out. But from a distance and from behind, I'd never notice you."
"That's what matters," he nodded, willing the Illusion to stop. "Am I here again?"
"In all your wondrous glory," she told him. "That's amazing, my mate! Is that mine or yours?"
"If you want it, it's yours," he shrugged. "But you're going to look a bit silly running around with nothing but a belt."
"Who's here to notice?" she asked.
"Did you have any trouble while I was working?"
"Nah," she sounded. "That lobster thing hasn't come back yet, but it's about due. I was kinda hoping that it would show up while you were working."
"Don't bother it, Jesmind," he told her.
"What you didn't know wouldn't hurt me," she grinned.
"It would have been a little hard to to hide that much," he chided.
"I'm curious."
"If you're that desperate for lobster, I'll Conjure you some," he told her. "Just don't try to eat the one that comes in here."
"Spoilsport," she teased. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been dragged behind a horse for a few months," he answered honestly. "I'm hoping the second one won't take me as long. Since I made the first one, and it seems to work, I'll know what I'm doing a little better the next time."
"Well here, let's get you into one of the springs," she said, taking his paw. "I'll fix you something to eat, and you can soak before you get some sleep."
"That sounds wonderful," he sighed sincerely, letting her lead him away.
After a long, relaxing soak in a hot spring and a filling meal, Tarrin got some much-needed sleep. he slept longer than he intended to sleep, and because of that he started on the second belt almost immediately once he got up, almost forgetting to Conjure Jesmind the food and some things to help her pass the time before he committed himself to his work.
The second belt took him only a day and a half to make, but just because he had experience now, that didn't make it any easier. It did make the process of laying down the weaves a little faster, and he had to rest less often. But when he finished with that one, he was even more worn out than with the first, as the concerted effort of making both belts without proper rest between the two projects had taken its toll on him. He finished when Jesmind was taking a light nap, dozing in cat form just outside the circle he'd drawn on the stone that told her not to come any closer to him than that. Tarrin didn't disturb her, moving to a stable pool of water to test the belt. He put it on and activated it, then stepped out onto the surface of the water as if it were solid ground. Nodding to himself, he returned to solid ground and deactivated it, then went over to the food pack he'd Conjured and pulled out a meal of bread, cheese, and salted ham. He fell on the meal ravenously, finishing it and continuing to deplete the pack, until he realized that he'd eaten everything he'd left for his mate while he was working. He solved the problem by Conjuring a large side of beef out of some inn's kitchen somewhere, one that hadn't been cooked yet, but the meat's raw state in no way discouraged him from starting to devour it.
"Mmm," Jesmind hummed in her humanoid form, coming up behind him and sitting down beside him. She was still nude, but to his relief, she wasn't wearing the belt. That would look a little silly. She had probably played with its magic for a while, then got bored with it and put it away. "Done already?"
He nodded, taking another piece of meat off the flank with his claws. "When are you going to put on some clothes?"
"As soon as we leave here," she told him. "You may not notice it, but it's rather hot in here. I'd rather sweat into the open air rather than my clothes." She ran her paw up his back sensually. "Besides, I think you enjoy the view."
"I can't argue with that," he admitted with a slight smile. "As soon as I get some sleep, we'll be on our way again, my mate. and we'll have to pick up the pace."
"That's fine with me. I'm starting to get restless in here. It's hard to sit and do nothing while-" her voice broke a little, and she looked away.
He put his paw around her shoulders. "It was necessary," he told her gently. "But now we have the tools we need to move swiftly and without worrying about being seen, and that's going to give us a much better chance to get there and get her back."
"I know," she said, putting her head against his shoulder. "Someday we'll have to bring Jasana here," she said. "I kind of like it here. It'll be quite a journey, though, just to take a bath in a hot spring."
"I've been here long enough to get a good lock on this place, Jesmind. I can Teleport back here whenever I please."
"You can?" He nodded. She smiled up at him, then kissed him lingeringly on the lips. "I knew there had to be some good use for all that magic of yours, my mate."
"Yes, it can do alot more than amuse you, can't it?" he asked dryly.
She laughed and slapped him on the back with a paw. "Move over," she commanded. "I haven't had any meat that wasn't crusted with salt for two days."
After a heavily filling meal, Tarrin caught up on his sleep, lounging in the heat in his cat form, laying on one of the heavy fur coats he'd made. It was quite relaxing, and the coat had Jesmind's scent all over it, which pleased him. He always seemed to sleep better when surrounded by the scent of a mate.
When he woke up, with Jesmind sleeping up against him in her cat form, he realized that their time in the hot spring was at an end. That saddened him a little. He had spent good time here with Jesmind, had healed their relationship here, and though the circumstances of their visit were dire, he would leave the place with fond memories. He had taken his break from reality, though, and it was time to get back to things. He had to rescue his daughter. Though he had enjoyed his time here, that thought had never been far from his mind.
The vacation was over.
Rising up, he licked affectionately at his mate's cheek and ear, grooming her. It woke her up, but she submitted to his attention, lifting her head to give him more access to her fur. For the first time in quite a while, he heard her purring. Though the loss of their daughter had deeply pained them both, at least for the moment, she had found enough contentment to purr. He groomed her for quite a while, prolonging her pleasure as much as he could, but the inexorable ticking of the clock that so ruled them intruded on his intimate moment.
Sighing inwardly, he stopped, then rose up and padded away from her, giving himself enough room to shapeshift. He did so without thought, rising up to his full height and looking around the chamber, knowing that it was time to go. "Pack up," he told her in a sober voice that was all business once again.
Jesmind shapeshifted laying on the coat, then rolled over on her back and sighed. "We have to come back here," she told him, putting a paw on her stomach as he found his vest and slipped it on. She had piled the clothes they weren't wearing by the food pack, so he reached down and grabbed her breeches, then lobbed them at her. They landed on her shins, and she sat up and looked at them. "Ah well, back to silly human customs," she mused. "I forgot how free it feels to go without clothes."
"You just like me staring at you."
"Of course, but there's still something nice about being naked."
"Be glad you're Were. After five hundred years, could you imagine how you'd look if you didn't regenerate?"
Jesmind laughed. "Gravity would have done a number on me, that's for sure," she said as she started pulling on her pants. "My breasts would be hanging down around my hips."
"So, there's at least one thing clothes are good for," he told her calmly as he picked up the food pack. He made sure it was empty, then tossed it aside. He had no more use for it. He tossed Jesmind her shirt, which she pulled on, then made sure to hand her the magical belt he'd made, which she'd placed at the bottom of the stack of folded clothing. She took it and put it on immediately, touching the cathead design of the buckle gently.
"You have the hang of how it works?"
She nodded. "I practiced with it while you were working on the other one. You should have warned me," she accused.
"About what?"
"That if I stepped out onto boiling water, it would burn my feet!"
"I thought you'd have the sense to realize that, Jesmind," he told her.
"You did it!"
"I can't be hurt by heat either," he said mildly. "Forgot about that, didn't you?"
Jesmind glowered at him, then made sure the Cat's Claws were settled on her wrists.
They were ready to go in a matter of minutes, and Tarrin stopped to look back. It had been a good stop. He and Jesmind had repaired their damaged relationship, and he had made items that would help them greatly in the journey to come. They had lost eight days, but with the ability to move on top of the snow, they could quickly regain some of that lost time. He checked his book, then his watch, and realized that they had actually lost ten days. His pause before making the objects, the pause in between, and the pause afterwards added up to two days. There was only eighteen days left. They were far behind schedule!
"Come on, we have to go!" he said with sudden urgency. "We're behind!"
"We are?" she asked in surprise.
"By two days!" he said with a growl. "I knew I shouldn't have rested so much!"
"You had to rest, Tarrin!" she protested. "It wouldn't have done you any good to start out if you couldn't walk without your knees buckling!"
"I should have let you carry me," he said, sick with himself. They had to make that time back up! "I should have given you the map and let you carry me while I rested!"
"Calm down, my mate," she told him. "These belts you made will let us go very fast. We can make the time back up. Don't get stressed."
He was about to give her a nasty retort, but he blew out his breath and collected himself. She was right. They would move much faster with the belts, and the combination of the Illusion and the fact that they would leave no trail would protect them from aerial hunters. "You're right," he growled. "But we can't lollygag around anymore. We have to go, and go now."
"Well, let's go then," she said, touching the belt around her waist, then bending down and picking up the two heavy coats he'd made and the white cloaks she'd made. She handed him his, and he tied them in a roll behind his shoulders again, a cushion in case he accidentally rose up into the roof of a cave. Jesmind did the same, pulling a bit in discomfort at the fur-lined heavy shirt he'd Conjured for her. "Let's go before I melt," she complained.
The passages on the other side of the hot spring were much easier to traverse than the ones down which they'd originally came, and that, he realized, was why the ones on that side had animals in them. They moved with great speed, almost haste, rushing along the passages and galleries, pausing only when a fork in the tunnels made him pause to use magic to determine the path they needed to take. The caves turned into a labyrinth of interconnecting passages, and they were inhabited. They saw several smaller lobster-like creatures, some huge flying bats, slugs and a centipede that had to be twenty spans long. Some of them fed off of mushrooms and fungi that grew on the walls, and the rest fed off the ones that ate the fungi. There were some pretty big animals, but none of them actually attacked the swiftly moving Were-cats. Tarrin guessed that since they'd never seen anything like them before-or sensed, since some didn't have eyes-they decided to leave the strange creatures alone, uncertain as to how dangerous they were.
Since they weren't harassed, the two Were-cats managed to get to the cave opening on his map in less than a day. The fact that they'd not once had to creep or crawl or climb cliffs or swim across lakes helped significantly. The light that flooded the tunnel made both of them move a little faster, knowing that they had come to the end of their journey, but Tarrin was a bit wary of leaving the safety and protection of the caves. But it was necessary; they could move much faster overland, and the route to the pass on his map was much shorter going through the passes than trying to find a way to get there through the caves. They reached the cave opening, which was a small ledge looking down into a deep chasm. The sky was cloudless and a deep blue, the air thin-they had come up a great deal since entering the caves-and it looked to be about noon or so. Jesmind stopped at the edge of the ledge and looked down into the chasm as icy stiff wind whipped at them.
"How do we get across?"
"Magic," he answered, putting his arm around her waist. "Don't wriggle."
"I'm all yours, love," she said lightly, putting her arms around his neck.
After scanning the skies to make sure nothing could see them, Tarrin set about the task of getting across. It was a simple matter to weave a bridge of Air across, but it angled down, and the bridge had no friction to give the Were-cat traction. He ended up having to slide down his ramp carefully, and activated his belt just before jumping over onto the snow. The snow took his weight completely, and he didn't leave so much as a clawmark in the snow. But unlike the water, the rough surface of the water gave the pads on his feet good traction. Jesmind's foot sank into the snow, and she quickly pulled it out. "Oops, I forgot to turn it on," she admitted, then set her foot down again, this time having it tread solidly on the surface of the snow. Jesmind took off the roll of her coat and cloak, put on the coat, then pulled the cloak on over her shoulders over it. The wind whipped it around her body, but she made no real notice of it. "Put on your cloak," she ordered. "When we're not hiding behind the Illusion, they'll still make us hard to spot against the snow."
Tarrin nodded, pulling out the cloak and putting it on. Jesmind winced as she looked around. "It's really bright," she said, shielding her eyes from the sun. The sunlight was reflecting off the unbroken surface of the snow, creating a blinding glare.
Tarrin Conjured two of the crystalline visors the Selani wore and handed Jesmind one of them. "These will cut down on the glare," he told her, fixing his over his eyes, causing the world to be stained with shades of dark violet. It did help reduce the blinding light reaching his eyes.
"Handy," Jesmind said, putting hers on and looking around as Tarrin knelt down and took out the map.
"We go that way," he said, pointing south after studying it a moment.
"How long to get to the tundra?"
"I'm really not sure," he frowned. "Maybe fifteen days. But we have to do it in twelve."
"Why twelve?"
"So we can stop to rest before hitting the tundra, and I can figure out how long it's going to take us to make it to Gora Umadar."
"Oh. Are you ready?"
"Hold on. I don't want to have to stop every half hour to check the map. Let me get a good sense of it."
"Take your time, my mate," she assued him, settling the visor on her face a little better. "This thing isn't going to sit very well without ears," she grunted.
"I must have sized it wrong," he said, standing up and pressing his paws to the sides of it. He set his will against the Weave and sent flows of Earth into it, causing the crystal from which it was made to retract. He fitted it to her face, sot he bride of her nose and the ridges of bone just over where human ears would have been would support the visor on her face, then extended the tips so they just slightly wrapped around. That was how he'd fit his, and he'd found that it was both comfortable and made it very hard for the visor to come off. It would even stay on in a fight. "Just remember to pull it up before you try to pull it away from your eyes," he warned.
"That's much better," she said with a thankful smile.
Tarrin finished studying his map, then put it and the book away. "Let's get moving," he announced, activatingthe Illusion that would hide him on the open snow.
"That is so weird," Jesmind laughed as she activated her own, and the two figures of the Were-cats disappeared behind projections of white snow.
They moved surprisingly fast in their new mode of travel. Being able to run on top of the snow both allowed them to treat it like unobstructed ground and prevented any trail from being left behind. Alot of the time Tarrin expected to take in the mountains was plowing through deep snow, and that too had been removed as a hindrance. Tarrin led with Jesmind following, and since she was so close, she followed the slight distortion the edges of the Illusion created, giving her a visible reference point that would be much harder to see if one was further away. The Illusion wasn't perfect, but it was still enough to hide them from scanning eyes.
That first day, no less than six vrock soared over their heads. Every time they saw one of them, they immiedately stopped and knelt, spreading out their cloaks to widen out the distortion effect and make it less noticable, and waited for the Demon to pass over them. They didn't see them-or at least he didn't think they did-and they were poignant reminders that they were being hunted.
Their presence was proof to him that it had been as he expected. Val knew what he was doing, knew the plan he'd given to the others, and had set out his Demons in the mountains to catch him before he got the pyramid on his own terms. If Tarrin could reach Gora Umadar, Val would be forced to bargain. If Val could catch him before he got there, his bargaining position would be severely hamstrung. Without the immediacy of the Conjunction to give Tarrin weight, he wouldn't be able to demand Jasana's release.
That gave Tarrin a rather grim satisfaction. Tarrin's plan seemed logical, if a bit dicey in some parts, but that was only consistent with his rather unique approach to plans. Find something that seemed good and go with it before it was entirely thought out, which often forced him to go by the seat of his pants once he ran out of plan and still found problem in front of him. It seemed that Val had bought it, had swallowed it hook, line, and sinker… or it seemed that way. Whether it seemed that way or not, all Tarrin needed was for Val to believe that long enough for Tarrin to get to him on Gods' Day. If he could do that, then it didn't matter what Val thought or believed or planned. Tarrin would have the advantage, and it was an advantage that, if played right, he would not lose.
Not even Val would, in his wildest dreams, expect Tarrin to do what he was intending to do. It was crazy, and it was just slightly dangerous, but it would get Jasana and Jesmind out alive, because he could guarantee that Val's attention would not be fixated on them. And after all, that was all that mattered.
Sometimes crazy works.
Though the vrock were looking for them, Tarrin's magical belts seemed to conceal the two Were-cats from their notice, and so they were able to move very quickly. They went on very late into the night, found small caves to rest in, then set out again well before sunrise. It was bitterly cold during those nighttime hours, so cold that Tarrin had to put on his heavy coat, but the cold did not slow them down. The exertion of running kept them warm when that heat was trapped in by the heavy coats they wore. Tarrin paused less and less frequently to check the map, as its contours slowly set themselves into his memory to the point where he had the whole thing memorized, but those stops were for more than just checking the map. They were also chances to take a short break and get a little food or water, so they continued even after the need for the main excuse for them was taken away.
The first serious attempt to find them came on that second day. A penetrating wave of power swept over them, another searching sweep by Val, which caused Tarrin to instantly stop and kneel down to hide his movement. But this time it stopped when it touched Tarrin, stopped for a heart-seizing amount of time, as if it could sense something beneath the powerful non-detection his amulet provided. But it could not breach the amulet's protection, so it moved on after a moment
"What's the matter?"
"Val just tried to find me," he answered. "He almost did."
"Can we do anything about that?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. So we just go on."
Jesmind looked decidedly nervous. "Alright," she said uncertainly.
That established a pattern of activity that lasted for ten days. Tarrin and Jesmind would move swiftly over the snow, stopping only when a vrock appeared in the skies over them, Val's searching magic swept over them, or they needed a short break. The probes against the power of his amulet became stronger and stronger, as if Val knew there was something there, but just couldn't find any evidence to prove it. They also saw a party of Trolls, trudging along the far side of one of the interconnecting valleys, their large frames plowing a path through the snow. They didn't slow down when they saw them, for they were too far away, and the light snow that was falling would make it even that much harder for the distant monsters to make out the very subtle visual evidence that they weren't alone in the pass. The weather didn't entirely cooperate during those ten days, going from sunshine to light snow mostly, but there were two rather strong snowstorms that rolled through and buried the land in another six spans of snow. The first happened when they were asleep, but the second struck late in the afternoon of the seventh day, and it was when it hit when one of the strange peculiarities of the water-walking power of the belts became evident. They could move in the snowstorm, but if they stopped in any one place long enough for snow to fall around their feet and cover them, it was as if they'd been set down into stone. They made that mistake, stopping as Tarrin checked the map, and when he went to move again, he found his left foot stuck under the snow. It had taken shapeshifting to get clear of it, but when he shapeshifted, the belt was put into the elsewhere, and its magic was removed from him and he sank deeply into the newly fallen snow. Jesmind had to pick him up and literally toss him into the air, so he could shapeshift freely, then reactivate the belt before his feet hit the snow.
As they travelled, both of them became much more intense. All banter and playful chatter ceased as they got closer and closer to their goal, and they got even more grim every time a vrock appeared in the sky. They were getting deeper and deeper into the heart of their enemy's power, and both of them were completely focused on the tasks at hand and very serious. They both knew that this was not the time for fun and games. Their hunter's instincts had taken over, and they knew that in this situation, they were not the hunters, but the prey. So they had to be eternally vigilent against attack, else they would be captured and the life of their daughter would be forfeit.
After ten days of travel, with only seven days left until Gods' Day, they came over a high pass and could finally see a break in the jagged peaks, and were looking down over a great distance to the flat tundra. They still had about a day of travel through a series of narrow valleys like the ones through which they had been travelling, steep, often treacherous gorges between high peaks whose floors were nearly as steep as the walls that surrounded them. They had descended several thousand spans, steadily coming down, and now they could see the rest of the way down to the tundra below.
"Is that it?" Jesmind asked as they stopped to look down between the two peaks, look down to a featureless white plain.
"That's it," he told her in a weary voice.
"There don't seem to be any foothills."
"We're too far away to tell. We'll be another one or two days in the mountains. Maybe even three."
"Why three?"
"We might slow down," he said, pausing to kneel and pull out the book of charts. He checked the date, then looked up in the afternoon sky to the eastern horizon, where the faint outling of Vala, the Red Moon, was rising behind the whitish Skybands. It was in an early rising cycle, just a tad past half full, a cycle of rising during the day that would get pronouncedly earlier and earlier for the next six afternoons. All four moons were going to do that, so they could be out in the middle of the day to form the eclipsing conjunction. "And we need to find a cave where we can rest until we come down onto the tundra."
"I don't see anything out there."
"The pyamid is about two hundred longspans northeast," he told her. "We'll find patrols out, but the main army is there."
"Two hundred longspans on flat ground? Tarrin, it won't take us two days to do that."
"I figured on that back when we'd have to go through the snow," he told her. "Since this is alot faster and easier, we may have to meander around up here in the mountains for longer than I anticipated."
"How long will it take us to cross the tundra?"
"Four days," he said. "That's what I'm planning on, anyway."
"Why so long?"
"Because there are going to be patrols out," he told her. "We'll have to avoid them, and that's going to slow us down."
She snorted. "It would be easier to go through them."
"And leave a trail a child could follow," he said shortly, looking up at her.
"Fighting them would make me feel better."
"Yes, well, think about this. If we fight, we can't use the belts."
"Why not?" she demanded.
"What is blood, Jesmind?" he asked bluntly.
"Ohhhh," she said. "Well, we'll have to use weapons. Our claws may not be able to get past the skin, but I don't think it'll stop weapons."
"I hope not," he said.
"Then we'd better make sure," she said, extending the talons on the Cat's Claws. "Make your belt stop for a minute."
He understood what she wanted to do. Nodding, he put his book away and then deactivated the belt. He immediately sank four spans into the snow, his feet hitting enough solid matter to stop him when the snow was up to his waist. It was a little surprising to him, and he nearly lost his balance trying to shift his weight in the snow. Jesmind began to laugh uncontrollably, literally dropping onto her backside, unable to stop.
Tarrin glared at her a moment, then blew out his breath. "While you're laughing, I'm standing here for any flying Demon to see," he told her bluntly. "Now let's test this and move on."
"Sorry," she said, turning suddenly serious. "But it is funny, my mate."
"Fine. We can both laugh when we're somewhere safe." He held out his bet arm, offering his elbow. "Be careful. Those are magical weapons, love. Anything you do to me, I can't heal."
"Then how are we going to test it?" she asked. "I'm sure they'd cut your skin no matter what."
"No they wouldn't," he answered. "There's water in you skin, Jesmind. If you can draw blood, you can sink them all the way into my arm."
She nodded in understanding, retracting all the blades but the one over her index finger.
"You've got the hang of that, I see."
"It's really not that hard. Now hold still," she ordered, reaching the point of the blade towards his bare upper arm, above the fur line. Tarrin felt the icy cold touch of it, and it left blood behind when she drew it away from the gentle touch. Even such a light touch cut him with absolute ease, a testament to the lethal edge on those metal claws. "They work," she said, retracting the blade, then hooking him under his arm and hauling him out of the snow. She heaved him up quite easily, since his weight didn't even come close to challenging her inhuman strength, and Tarrin reactivated the belt before his feet touched the snow. They struck the snow like it was a solid surface, and he settled them down easily as a tiny thread of blood trickled down into his fur. He Conjured a small leather bandage and wrapped it around the cut, not wanting even a single drop of blood to fall into the snow and reveal that he had been there.
"Let's get moving," he announced. "Let's get as close to the tundra as we can, then find a cave to hole up and rest a while."
"I could use some," she grunted. "But it won't be as nice as the hot spring was."
"Welcome to reality," he told her as he reactivated the Illusion, and turned to start back down the valley.
They managed to get quite a distance before they found a cave to rest in for the night, and while Jesmind collapsed in it, Tarrin went up onto a small rock and stared up at the sky. All four moons had set long ago, leaving nothing but the brilliant stars and the Skybands. They had six days now, now that midnight had passed. In six days, he would have his daughter back. His family and Val's forces would be at war, a war in which even the gods were going to participate. They would be there to defend the army against Val's power, as much as they could without forcing a direct confrontation. Tarrin still felt a little angry about their cowardice, but on the other hand, he understood how chaotic things could get if one of the Elder Gods lost an icon. The natural force that god controlled would go wild, and would remain so until the god managed to create a new icon. The only god who could conceivably lose an icon and not have it cause major damage to the world was his own Goddess', Niami. She controlled only magic, but the destruction of her icon would kill any Sorcerer with even a modicum of power or training. That would literally strip the entire world of its magic, killing every creature that depended on magic, like dragons, Faeries, and Were-cats. Niami's banishment would make the whole world mundane, and he doubted that any magic would survive until she recreated her icon. She would return to a world that had been totally stripped of it magic, and that would make her a goddess with nothing to control. Or a goddess supplying a power to the world that nobody there would remember how to use, and as such it would be wasted.
He hated the idea of his sisters and friends fighting in that war. It would be so big, so charged with magic, that their lives were in very real jeopardy. But no matter what happened with Tarrin, that army had to be destroyed. They couldn't let it out of the tundra, where it could wreak havoc in Ungardt, Draconia, and Daltochan, then spread out to threaten all of the West. It was too big for any one kingdom to face alone. At least the gods would be there. If Val could attack the army of his allies, then the Elder Gods could turn around and attack Val's army. That was the deadlock, he saw. If the gods had to defend their own armies, their power cancelled one another out, and it would be up to the armies themselves to decide things. Neither god could strike at the other's army without letting down the defense of his own. They either let the armies decide it or both armies were annihilated, leaving a very tense standoff where Val may very well decide to throw caution to the wind and attack the Elder Gods directly.
That was the very thing that the Goddess intended for him to stop when she sent him after the Firestaff. Tarrin couldn't really do anything about Val, because he had used the Firestaff before Tarrin had even been alive, but he still had to keep it out of enemy hands. If Val used it, his power would increase that much more, and he would quite possibly have the power to banish all the Elder Gods and take control of the world himself, capable of carrying out the duties that the Elder Gods had been tending. A world remade in Val's image, where he ruled all with absolute power. That was a world that couldn't be allowed to be. There would be no room in it for everyone he held dear.
Timing. Timing was everything. The battle with the dragon to gain the Firestaff showed him that. An hour earlier, and he would have been killed by the dragon in battle. An hour later, and he would have claimed the Firestaff without a fight. There was an issue of timing in this as well, getting to Val at that perfect moment where the nearness of the conjunction gave Tarrin a powerful bargaining position, a position he would use to get his daughter back. The other issue of timing would be how well the gods timed the appearance of the army with the beginning of the conjunction. They were supposed to transport the army to the tundra and begin the battle the second the conjunction began. That, the conjunction itself, and Tarrin would all be distractions to Val, and Tarrin was going to need for him to be distracted at that moment. That was his one and only chance to make sure Jesmind and Jasana got safely away from the pyramid. After that, it all came down to luck. He freely admitted that, but many of his plans depended on luck for success. Luck seemed to be his ally more often than not, so why not plan for its eventualities?
That was what Jesmind was getting suspicious about. He could tell. His plan to get there and to get Jasana were quite detailed, but his plan to get out seemed to her to be uneasily vague. That was probably the stickiest part of the plan, the one in which luck would play the greatest role. His continued existence after Jesmind and Jasana got safely away depended a great deal on how lucky he was going to be at that particular moment in his life. He'd planned all he could for it, but the fickle finger of luck was going to be the deciding factor.
And that seemed strangely fitting to him. Tarrin was more than willing to gamble absolutely everything on his luck. He prayed Val wasn't quite as reckless as he.
Sometimes crazy works.
Distantly, he became aware of Jesmind. She seated herself beside him on the rock, and spent long moments in silence, staring up into the sky with him. The Skybands were particularly brilliant that crisp, clear night, dominating the entire southern sky, their full color and beauty shining freely without the lights of the moons to shade, stain, or interfere with them. To the north, the lights of Maiden's Ghost flickered in the sky, curtains of bluish light that wavered and shimmered in the night sky. Ungardt legend said that they were caused by an ancient maiden who was lighting the way home for her lover, who sailed away in a ship and never returned. Shining in the northern sky, a beacon to him to bring him home. Between them were the stars, a sea of little flickering lights glittering down like tiny diamonds within heaven's treasure chest, opened to those below so they could stare up and wonder at the riches above them.
Jesmind slid her paw into his, and he clenched it tightly. They didn't have much more time. He was worried for her, and for Jasana. Their escape from the clutches of Val would be very dangerous. He could only hope that his crafty mate could get their daughter out of there alive. But then again, there was nobody else he would or could trust with something as precious as his daughter other than his daughter's mother, the only other living soul that could possibly understand what that little girl meant to him. Because she meant just as much to her. He would destroy the world to save her, he would willingly die to protect her. He would do whatever it took to get her back. Jesmind would do the same.
They didn't speak. They only stared up into the night sky, dreading what was coming, but knowing that the end of the ordeal would return their daughter to them.
Because they had made such good time, Tarrin slowed them to a walk the next day, as they easily began the descent towards the tundra. The easier pace left them with more energy, but that only gave them more time to stew. They were both already wound very tightly, and the delay only seemed to aggravate Jesmind, who wanted to run down there, who wanted to get there and retrieve their daughter now. For Jesmind, everything was now. That lack of foresight cost them dearly way back when they had first met, when her need to take him to her den now rather than after he'd learned what he needed to learn had been what caused the feud between them. The result was that Jesmind became very hostile on the walk down the connecting valleys that would eventually lead to a pass that would bring them out of the mountains. She fought with him constantly over his slow pace, and it was only his repeated reminders that they had to be there at a certain time that kept her from racing off on her own.
Tarrin felt the same way. It was killing him to slow to a walk when his daughter was in the clutches of someone that wanted to hurt her, but he had no choice. She would have to stay where she was until Gods' Day, there was absolutely no way he could change that. No amount of running or racing was going to let him get there a single hour earlier than he needed to be, else his arrival would spell the end for them all. He didn't know how she was, whether or not they were caring for her, if they were hurting her. They had to keep her alive, but that was all. Torturing a child was not something he would put past his enemies. She was defenseless without her magic, and wouldn't be able to fight back-
He stopped thinking about it. Thinking about it was working him up, and he had unconsciously picked up his pace. He had to believe, have faith that the Goddess would protect their daughter from harm while she was in the clutches of Val.
As if thinking about Val brought his attention down on them, Tarrin felt that same oppressive weight appear in the air around him. He immediately stopped and put a knee down on the snow, trying to behave like an immobile magical anomoly in the Weave, to make it harder for the imprisoned god to find him. It hovered around him, probing lightly with light fingers of investigation, then came the familiar press, as Val tested the veracity of this unusual fluctuation in the Weave. Tarrin endured that for a long moment, feeling like someone putting wet wool on top of him, and then it withdrew, but not move on.
What came next caused Tarrin to suck in his breath. It was like a lance of Val's power, driving into him, seeking to penetrate the non-detection of the amulet. The power was staggering, a tremendous might that was necessary to penetrate a magical spell woven by another god. Whether it succeeded or not, Tarrin knew in that moment that Val had found them!
I have found thee, Were-cat, and now thy life is forfeit! came a triumphant cry floating in the very air itself, a cry charged with glee and hideously twisted longing.
The taunting quality of the voice offended him, and the fear and worry he had over his daughter added fuel to that fire. Rising up on his feet, his eyes burning with outrage and barely contained fury, Tarrin reached out and took hold of the Weave. Paws erupting into Magelight as the Were-cat quickly started pulling power in from the Weave, he shaped that raw power into a powerful barrier, something that was not quite a Ward, but not quite a spell, existing only in the magical of magical energy, the other-world in which the Weave existed. It was more of an active control of the raw force of Sorcery, working with it in its pure state. Val's power struck that barrier, a terrible blow meant to kill, but when it made contact with it, it was turned aside. Tarrin sensed the shock on the other side of that attack, felt it gather up and strike again with more power than a mortal could even comprehend, the full power and might of a god, but again it was turned aside.
Impossible! came a gasping denial.
You forget the nature of this mortal, came a surprising taunt from the Goddess, slapping Val in the face for his failure. It is not his power that defeats you, bound one, it is mine. Face it, my worthy adversary. You won't win this easily. My power protects him, and so long as his faith in me is strong, you cannot harm him in such a manner. If you try to strike him down, I will prevent it.
Seek you to unmake all in a direct confrontation, cursed witch? came his hissing retort.
If that's what you want, then bring it on, she said pugnaciously. I'm feeling rather energetic today. What about you?
There was a long silence.
I'm not as cautious as the others, Val, the Goddess taunted. My power isn't vital to the world. The world can survive without me. That's why it's my task to oppose you. So any time you want to gather up your insignificant little power and face me, just let me know. I'll come and strike you down with all the power of a true god.
Tarrin sensed the incalculable levels of insult his Goddess had just unleashed against Val, and he clearly heard the howl of fury coming from his divine adversary. But then the howling stopped, and he could actually sense Val as he regathered himself.
Thy mission will end here, Were-cat, he warned. I will send a servant for what thou carries. Relenquish the Firestaff to me now, or thy daughter suffers for thine stubbornness!
"Listen to me," Tarrin said audibly in one of the most evil voices Jesmind had ever heard come out of him, "if you so much as touch my daughter, I'll make sure you will never get the Firestaff," he hissed with all the sincerity he could muster. "I understand the secret of the amulet, you bastard. If I destroy my amulet while the Firestaff is locked within it, it will be forever destroyed. If you harm her, you will never- never!-get the Firestaff. You'll be cursed to being forever bound inside your icon, with all your mighty power, but no way to bring it to bear against anything you cannot see!"
With some satisfaction, he realized he hit a nerve. The rage that swelled up against him was almost indescribable. Rage and fury and hatred, raw, sheer, utter hatred, a hatred so intense it almost had a life of its own.
"I am coming for my daughter," he said in a cold voice. "If you want a piece of me, you'll get your chance. But if you touch my daughter, if there's so much as a hair out of place on her head, I'll give you a reason to scream!"
That sent the imprisoned god into new throes of furious raging. Val had a temper. Tarrin filed that bit of information away for future use as the god somehow managed to get control of himself. Thou art quite brave to speak so to a god, he said in a smug kind of self-inflating way, as if to remind himself that he was one.
"When my daughter is concerned, I don't care who you are," he seethed.
Tarrin's disrespect seemed to flare the god's anger, but he kept it under control If thou art so insistent on death, then come, he said hotly. Come. I will allow thee to stand in the might of my presence and understand the folly that grips thy mind and soul.
"I'll be there, on my terms," Tarrin flung that back at Val. "So chew on that. I'll come at a time of my own choosing, and you will face me on my terms. What I have is more important to you than what you have is important to me. I know it, you know it. So wait for me, impotent godling, wait for me and know that you march to the drum of a mortal."
Val fled from him then, but it was a retreat marked by infuriated screams. Tarrin had managed to pretty thoroughly irritate and anger the god Val, and that was exactly what he wanted to do. Tarrin had learned the hard way that anger was more a weapon to one's opponent than it was to one's self. He wanted Val angry when they met face to face, because that anger would help him.
If you wanted him mad, you certainly did a good job, the Goddess said to him, her voice amused. Is that a part of your ultra-secret plan, kitten? So secret you won't even let me see it?
"I have my reasons."
I know you do. That's why I've respected your privacy, came her light response.
"I'm surprised you faced him like that."
I took a risk, she admitted. This isn't the first time me and Val have thrown rocks across the fence, kitten. You know that. He knows I'll face him if he pushes me, and that keeps him from trying. Val is just as afraid of losing as we are. When you're a god, you have a lot more to lose.
"Not as much as anyone else."
You misunderstand, kitten. Val won't be banished, he will die. His very soul is caught up in what he is. If he is destroyed, if he dies, that destruction will be utter. Where the soul of a mortal goes on to either reap the rewards or suffer the penalties for the actions they took in life, Val's soul will not do that. It will be destroyed in his death along with him, and he will face total annihilation, kitten. He fears that, as anyone would. That is the price of using the Firestaff, kitten. You become a god, but you commit your very existence to your new state of being.
He was a bit surprised at that, but it made sense, given Val's pattern of behavior. "I understand," he said. "So what's coming will be nothing more than a battle between armies."
I don't know. Val fears me, but he doesn't fear the other gods as much as he does me. He knows I'll take him on, and I won't have much fear in doing it. The other gods will be just as terrified of the idea as Val, but Val would be the one initiating it, so he'd probably feel more confident about it. After all, he'd have gotten himself ready to do it. This is why I've always been the one to deal with him, kitten. My power is the only one that can oppose him significantly enough to reign him in. I've kept him in check for five thousand years, but with the time of the Firestaff's activation so close, he's started gambling. Just as we have.
He understood that, understood it more deeply than she probably realized. Val's fear of destruction had kept him working behind the scenes for five thousand years, preparing everything for the day he got his hands on the Firestaff and could use it to become more powerful than even the Goddess could withstand. He had committed five thousand years of work, planning, sweat and toil to this, to the item Tarrin carried with him, and he had set plans in motion to move forward with his dreams of conquest. And being surprisingly forward-thinking, he had set things up so he could make his attempt to conquer and rule whether he got the Firestaff or not. Val had grown tired of working behind the scenes. He was willing to gamble on how involved the Elder Gods would get and try to conquer, maybe gain a foothold for himself and establish a kingdom in the West from which to operate as he consolidated his forces and waited another five thousand years for the chance to free himself of his prison.
And if he failed, it wouldn't matter. In a few thousand years, after everything had returned to normal, he could begin again.
It was a win-win situation for Val. Win the world, or lose his army and simply pull back and wait to try again. And again, and again, and again, continuing to try, continuing to test, until he did finally win. Because the gods were afraid to put an end to him, he could thumb his nose at them and simply wait for another opportunity to overthrow their power in the world.
Releasing the power of Sorcery, Tarrin felt an icy resolve grip him. If that was the way it was, then so be it.
"I take it something big just happened?" Jesmind asked.
"Val tried to kill me," he said in a grim voice. "Mother stopped him. He can't kill me because I'm under Mother's protection. Now he's waiting for us, Jesmind. He's waiting for us at Gora Umadar."
"Then let's not disappoint him," she said shortly.
"We won't, but we still have to get there on Gods' Day," he told her. "That hasn't changed. But now we can move and only worry about the Demons and the patrols. Val knows he can't kill us directly, so we only have to worry about the servants he tries to put in our path."
"These belts seem to take care of hiding us from them rather well."
"From a distance. We may have to fight our way across the tundra if the patrols are heavy enough."
"I don't see anything wrong with that at all," she said in a dreadfully eager tone.
"Me either," he agreed with a single nod.
Moving at a slow walk, they continued down the mountain valleys. They camped early that night in a small cave, then set out again well after sunrise. Peeks of the tundra appeared between mountains and hills as they continued a zig-zagging descent down the valleys. About noon that day, they reached the pass that split the mountains in two, and the tundra opened beneath them as they stood at the pinnacle of the pass and looked down. A featureless white plain, unbroken snow, as far as the eye could see. Almost unconsciously, Tarin looked northeast, to where the pyramid of Gora Umadar stood beyond the horizon, their ultimate destination.
They moved about halfway down the pass, and then Tarrin stopped them when he saw a rather large cave mouth yawning just along the edge of the pass wall, a perfect place to stop and rest and prepare for the trek across the featureless tundra.
"You know, the snow's thinning out," Jesmind noticed as she pointed to a snowbank by the cave entrance. "It can't be more than a span or so deep."
"The mountains block the weather," he said distantly. "All the snow is forced to fall on the other side and in the mountains. That means the snowstorms that make it over here don't have much left. I doubt there's more than a span of snow on the tundra."
"How long will we camp here?"
"A day," he answered. "We have five days to get there, and I'm giving us four to cross the tundra. We can come down onto the tundra tomorrow and run to make up the time to get down, and then from there we'll just have to see how fast we go."
"I hate this," she growled as they stepped into the cave. "I hate having to go slow."
"I do too, but it's necessary," he said. "Let's set things up and get some dinner started. I'm hungy."
It was a tense layover for both of them. Jesmind was nearly in a fever pitch, but Tarrin was too distracted to notice. Things were nearly over and done with. In just a few days, it would all be over. Jasana would be safe in just a few days. She just had to hang on for five more days. He still had no sense of her inside the void, but he still just knew that she was alive and well. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. Val had not harmed her, at least not yet, because he knew of the terrible retribution the Were-cat would exact against him if he did so. He wouldn't be free to harm Jasana until after he got the Firestaff. Tarrin held in his paws a means to forever deny Val the chance to free himself of his prison, and they both knew it. That gave Tarrin a power over Val that not even the bound god could deny. Val was indeed marching to Tarrin's drum, and the Were-cat knew he had to keep playing as long as he possibly could.
Jesmind stormed around, muttering, cursing, throwing rocks at the walls, and venting on him for her own impatience. Tarrin simply sat there and endured it with a look of disengaged concentration on his face, as he struggled to master his own impatience, tried not to act the same way as his mate. She got worse and worse as the sun set and the moonless night took hold over the land, as the light of their small fire cast warm yellow and red hues across the red-tinged walls of the cave.
"Jesmind," he finally said, opening his eyes after something whizzed by his face so closely that he felt the air it displaced flutter against him. "Sit."
"Don't you dare order me around!" she raged at him. "Doesn't it bother you in the slightest? How can you just sit there!?"
"I sit here to keep from acting like you," he told her, looking up at her with hooded eyes. "If you want a distraction, I'll be happy to give you one."
She looked at him, then her eyebrows rose in surprise when she caught the change in his scent. "How can you think about that at a time like this?" she demanded.
"Because this will be the last chance we have," he answered calmly. "I want one more night with you before we both march off into the face of insanity. And if anything, it will calm you down. I'll get you in bed just to make you stop pacing."
Jesmind snorted loudly, but the invitation was there, and he knew his mate. Even if she knew she was being manipulated, she couldn't pass it up.
"That's low, my mate," she growled, but she had already grabbed the tail of her thick fur-lined shirt.
"I'm sure you'll enjoy the indignity," he said dryly as she shrugged out of her shirt, then sidled onto his lap and started kissing him.
It had been their last night spent together before all was said and done.
Tarrin lay with her in his arms as the light of the morning spilled into the opening of the cave, the fire long died away and the cave cold and unpleasant, but the thick fur under which they lay kept them both comfortably warm. Jesmind was sleeping, and it was times like that, when sleep softened her features, that she was at her loveliest. He could stare down at her for hours, never growing tired of the sight of her. He couldn't see her face now, but he knew exactly how it would look, with her cheek resting against his shoulder, her arms tucked in around him, embracing him even in her slumber, that heart-stealing expression of peaceful contentment that made her so incredibly beautiful. He knew he wouldn't see that expression again until after it was all over, if he ever saw it again, but the memory of it was enough to make him content.
Four days. Four days until they got back their daughter. Four days until the armies of the gods fell on the armies of Val and destroyed his hopes to conquer and rule. He was nearly sick with anxiety over the idea of having to wait another four days, but there was no help for it. And there would be no secure snuggling out on the tundra. Their every waking moment would be spent in wary alertness, ensuring no enemies snuck up on them. They would not sleep together again, as one of them would always be awake from that point onward. So this was truly their last chance to be together, and Tarrin was not going to let it be squandered. It meant too much to him for him to waste it.
But they couldn't lounge around all day. They had a schedule to keep. It was going to take them half a day to get down onto the tundra, and then they would have to run to make up some time. After that, it would be an exercise in careful pacing to try to reach the pyramid at the exact moment he wanted to be there.
But that didn't mean that they had to leave right now. He was content to enjoy it as long as he could, the feel and smell and nearness of his beloved mate, revelling in the love he had for her. Any time they lost now they could make up on the flat board of the tundra below, where their speed would become unhindered by having to ascend or descend.
He did just that for quite a while, as the sun's angle changed in the sky, though it barely managed to clear the horizon. They would only have about five hours of what could be called daylight, and alot of that was when the sun was below the horizon. The winter solstice had come come and gone, and every day now would have just a little more light. Though it really made no difference now.
Jesmind finally stirred, making an adorably cute growling sound in her throat as her claws unconsciously hooked lightly into him. "Morning," she said, raising her head to look at him. "What time is it?"
"Daytime," he said absently, then he smiled when he saw the look in her eyes. "Still indignant?"
She giggled almost girlishly. "A little, but I can't for the life of me say I'm unhappy with the reason for it," she told him, leaning up and kissing him intimately. "You play dirty, my mate."
"Always have," he affirmed with a slight nod, which made her laugh. "I don't really want to get up, but we do need to get moving. It's going to be very, very tense from now on."
"I know. We'll have to take turns guarding the camp when we rest."
"Yah. And we're bound to have company on the way."
"Good. I need something to come along and give me a little release. Val's minions will be nice and convenient for me to work out my peevishness."
"Better them than me."
They packed up and started out after that, and Tarrin was strangely lamentful for leaving the little cave behind. Not because of where it was or where they were going, but for what it represented.
They got down onto the tundra by about sunset, finding the pass surprisingly easy to navigate. They moved out from steep decline to flat plain so suddenly that it seemed like some deranged god had dropped the mountains on top of a vast table. There were no foothills, no rugged terrain leading up to the mountains as there was on the west side. The mountains simply stopped, and the plain of the tundra began. As he expected, there was little more than a span to a span and a half of snow on the tundra, and in some places its smoth surface was marred by the tracks of wolves, caribou, foxes, and any manner of small rodents that burrowed out of the snow. He could hear them under it, in tunnels dug out under the frozen crust of the snow, and pits in the snow showed him that the foxes and wolves also could hear the little rodents, punching through the snow to try to grab the little bite-sized morsels. They passed large herds of caribou, shuffling the snow aside with their noses to graze on frozen mosses and lichens and even some snow-bound grass that grew from the cold ground.
But there were other tracks. Boot tracks, some of them overly large, as patrols of Goblinoids marched in spiral patterns out from Gora Umadar. They saw none that first day, even after they stopped for the night when a storm brought little snow but howling winds down on the plain. Tarrin was forced to resort to magic to build a shelter made out of ice, a rounded one that could stand up to the wind, but was surprisingly warm inside when they got a fire going. He'd made sure to make small windows in all four directions so the one staying up could see, windows clogged up with wads of cotton to keep the light of the fire from spilling out of those holes and to also keep the cold from getting inside.
Before setting out well before sunrise the next day, Tarrin consulted the map, looked at the watch, and then checked the stars. "We need to slow down," he announced to Jesmind. "We'll walk for most of the morning, then pick up after we stop for lunch."
"Alright," Jesmind growled, activating the Illusion that concealed them on the featureless plain.
Tarrin's use of magic the night before had ramifications. Not an hour after setting out, they skirted wide of a large force of about a hundred Goblinoids, being led by an armored cambisi, and they were marching with great haste towards where Tarrin had erected the shelter for the night. The Illusions worked very well to hide them from a force of Waern, Dargu, and a pack of twenty Trolls, for they saw them coming well before they got close enough to be a danger, went very wide of them, then laid down on the snow and waited patiently for them to pass.
"Well, there's your diversion, my mate," Tarrin had whispered to her as they hurried by. "Still feel like venting?"
"I think that's a little too much exercise," she said primly. "I don't want to wear myself out now, do I?"
Tarrin watched them curiously, his eyes narrowing. "Why didn't it Teleport?" he wondered aloud.
"What?"
"The Demon isn't Teleporting," he noticed. "They could have sent a horde of them after us, but they didn't. That Demon is marching to where we stayed last night. Why?"
"I have no idea."
"Neither do I, but I think it's fairly important I found out," he said seriously.
They got their chance to beat up on some of Val's forces later that afternoon, as they picked up the pace after lunch. They caught up to a patrol of about fifteen Dargu, looking to be returning to Gora Umadar, and this time Tarrin had no say in the matter. Jesmind's distortion went flying by him as he slowed to take in the possible threat, and he was forced to rush after her to at least give her some support. Jesmind had meant it when she said she was looking forward to having someone at hand she could use to release her fury, and she had not been joking. She abandoned the Illusion when she caught up to them, letting them look death square in the face, and attacked the lot of Dargu with infuriated savagery. Were-kin hated Goblinoids with a passion, and that only helped spur Jesmind on as she assaulted the tail end of their column with the Cat's Claws. Tarrin barely had reached them by the time she'd cut six of them down, and the remaining nine looked torn between engaging the wild-eyed, cursing Were-cat, screaming hideous obsceneties at the top of her lungs as she tore through Dargu flesh with her metal claws, and turning and running away. But the Were-cat was faster than them and they knew it, so they banded together to mount a desperate defense against her. It turned out that they only lined up in a convenient array that let Jesmind attack them all without having to chase any of them down. She fell on them with mindless fury, ignoring their jabbing spears and their rusty swords, sending blood and little pieces of dog-faced Dargu flying with every whip-like rake of the Cat's Claws.
Tarrin slowed to a stop and leaned on his staff, seeing that Jesmind was in no danger from this lot. She needed the exercise, needed the distraction, and it would do her good. So he stood back and let her have her way with the Dargu, tearing into their lines with wild-eyed glee and killing five of them in the process. The four survivor turned with yipping calls of fright and tried to run away, but Jesmind simply chased them down, grabbed them by the backs of their heads, often by their ears, then slashed a metal blade of the Cat's Claws over their throats, not only cutting their throats, but taking the heads off their bodies. She did that with the first three, methodically killing them one by one, then she loped after the last, who was squealing with fright as he ran as fast as his lanky legs would carry him, a mangy tail up between his legs as he ran for his life. She loped along after him easily, then took the severed head of the last Dargu she'd killed and threw it at him. Jesmind's aim was true, and her inhuman strength made the decapitated head strike with the power of a musket ball. It struck the Dargu right in the back of the head, sending a pink cloud into the air as both skulls shattered from the impact, spilling it to the clean white snow. She caught up with it quickly and drove all ten metal blades of the Cat's Claws into its back in a simultaneous movement. The body did not jerk or flinch, meaning that it had been dead the instant it hit the snow.
"Feel better?" Tarrin asked conversationally.
"No," she huffed fiercely, kicking the Dargu corpse before her. "But it's a start."
Tarrin let her clean herself up, then they started out again.
The problem with the Demons gave him something to occupy his mind as they ran on into the darkness, as the four moons set one after another very early into the darkness, casting the snowy plain in the multicolored hues of the Skybands. Why hadn't they Teleported in to attack? He'd been so worried about that for so long that it really annoyed him that they hadn't. Did the Demons have some kind of limitation with how they could Teleport as well?
The void. Of course. That had to be at least part of it. Inside that void, only Druidic magic would function. That, and he realized that Val, whose power was within him, would also have his power function normally. Everyone else, his Wizards, Priests, and Sorcerers, were powerless. And since the magic the Demons used also travelled through the Weave, they were rendered powerless. That was definitely a part of the solution, but not all of it. Val could herd them out to the edge of the void and then have them Teleport to attack him, but it hadn't happened. Could they not Teleport to where he was? Did they too have to know where they were going in order to Teleport there? He wasn't sure. Shiika could Teleport to the Tower, but then again, he had the feeling that she'd been there before.
Fear could be a reason. Tarrin had decimated Val's Demons, and he showed that he was still more than capable of handling as many as Val could throw at him. His ability to strip them of their power was the great equalizer, that and his deadly sword. Only the Cambisi had any kind of chance against him, and most of them were not up to dealing with an opponent quite like him. The only Demon that Tarrin had never bested was the marilith, that six-armed Demoness. He'd had to resort to Priest magic to defeat her, a testament to her fighting prowess. He hated her with a passion that was nearly holy, but he was not fool enough not to respect her ability.
Tarrin realized that Val had not once tried to find him since the Goddess confronted him. That seemed to click in his mind with the Demon problem… perhaps, just perhaps, Val was letting him come. Now that he thought of it, he hadn't seen a single vrock since then either. Maybe Tarrin had ticked him off to the point that he was moving his forces out of the way to clear a path for the Were-cats to reach him. That was certainly possible, and if that were true, it would explain why Val hadn't sent the Demons after him. He may have sent that column of Goblinoids to find Tarrin and Jesmind, find them and shadow them, perhaps not to attack them. That or to make contact with all the other patrols and recall them. The fifteen Dargu had been travelling towards Gora Umadar, and they had to have crossed paths with the Cambisi's unit earlier in the day. They were travelling in the snowbreak that the Trolls had made when they came out, the same snowbreak that they had been loosely following.
Val did indeed seem to be letting them come. That made Tarrin smile maliciously to himself. He couldn't have asked Val to accommodate him more than he was if that was indeed what he was doing. The idea of getting to Gora Umadar more or less unmolested was going to make this a whole lot easier.
They stopped for the night, and since the wind was relatively calm, they took turns sleeping in cat form out on the flat tundra as the other stood watch. Tarrin spent all his time staring up into the sky with his book of charts in his lap and Jervis' watch in his paw, studying the stars and counting time. He would watch the second hand of that little clock with absolute interest, memorizing the span of time that its movements represented, and began practicing counting backwards to zero the minutes and seconds that passed. He would look at the watch and try to estimate exactly when the minute hand would cross a chosen line, checking the watch when he believed that that moment had just occurred. He was wrong more often than not, because his Were-cat mentality made it hard to keep track of time, but he kept at it. There was going to be a moment very soon that his ability to count time was going to be vital, and him constantly looking at the pocketwatch was going to be like screaming at the top of his lungs that he was waiting for something to happen.
When they moved out well before the late sunrise the next day, with only three days left, Tarrin slowed them to a walk. Jesmind growled and complained and glared at him whenever they weren't hiding behind their Illusions, but he did not step them up at all. They encountered no resistance that day, only tundra wildlife, as if his assumption was correct and Val had recalled his patrols. As if Val was clearing the path for him. He paused often to check his watch, to check his map and track the distance to Gora Umadar, and he saw that he would have to go even slower for a little while. So they stopped for an extended lunch, then set out at a lazy walk, almost strolling along, though Jesmind's cursing and complaining at the slow pace made it seem much less a stroll than an exercise in patience. She just would not get it into her thick head that they had to get there at a certain time on a certain day. Moving slowly didn't please him much either, but he understood that timing was the only thing that was going to get their daughter back.
They camped early, and Tarrin let Jesmind sleep as he stayed up the entire night, studying his watch with single-minded determination, then checked his book of charts and studied the stars. Phandebrass had been right. He'd been calculating the time of the conjunction in the margin of the book, and though his own results took fifty times longer than it had taken Phandebrass, his deciphering of the charts coincided with the Wizard's prediction. He had never doubted Phandebrass, but it had given Tarrin something to do, something to occupy his mind and keep him from dwelling on the plan, a plan that he could not think about. Though Val had stopped trying to find him and attack him, he had no doubt that the bound god was listening. Spyder said that he could hear every thought in Tarrin's head. By not thinking about what had to be done, only thinking about the plan he wanted Val to see, he protected his true intentions from being discovered. When the time came, the Cat would guide him in what must be done. That was an intelligence that did not require thought, and the plan had become nothing more than programmed instinct, nonexistent until the moment the need for it brought it out of him. And since it did not exist, there was nothing for Val to find.
They moved slowly and without opposition the next day, with only two days until the conjunction. Jesmind cursed and complained even more as they moved at an easy walk, but they were only fifteen leagues from the edge of the pyramid's warmth effect, which was itself twenty longspans from the pyramid. Fifteen leagues was nothing to a Were-cat. They could cover that in a single day, but they had to stretch it into two. They had to get to the edge of Val's army just after sunrise. That would give them two hours to travel that twenty longspans and reach the pyramid, and then he would need to play things by ear, depending on his ability to count back the time until the conjunction occurred.
They camped in the open once more, and again, Tarrin simply let Jesmind sleep as he studied his watch and watched the stars. The moons rose about three hours before dawn, all four of them almost at the same time, and it was then that he knew that the conjunction was nearly upon them. They would not rise simultaneously tomorrow, the critical day, with the moons rising in a manner that would cause them to intersect with each other in the sky an hour after noon. They were supposed to come close to conjunction today, with the event was occurring tomorrow, with Domammon and Vala crossing in the sky with the twin moons very close to them. The early rising of the twin moons would prevent the conjunction from happening.
Tarrin watched Jesmind sleep in her cat form, snuggled up on the fur coat laid on the snow, sighing to himself. Tomorrow. It would all be over tomorrow. For good or ill, tomorrow was going to be the day he got back his daughter. After two months without her, two months of agonized torture, he would finally get back Jasana.
And pay back those who took her from him.
They rose late that day, and though he'd not slept for two days, he didn't feel tired at all. They started well before dawn but again moved slowly, a leisurely walk across the tundra, but this time Jesmind did not complain. She knew that tomorrow as the day, and she finally seemed to understand that his pacing was necessary. They were only eight leagues from the edge of Val's void, and they would have to stop well before they got there to wait, to wait until tomorrow. Again they encountered no patrols, no opposition. There were no vrock in the sky, no scouts searching for them. Tarrin guessed that Val really did pull back his forces to allow Tarrin to reach him unchallenged. If only he knew how big a mistake that was. It was the utter proof that even though Val was a god, he was not as godly as he thought he was. If he was, he would have put absolutely everything he could between himself and Tarrin, to try to kill him and take his amulet long before any of the Were-cat's wild plans could be unleashed on him. But Val was confident in his superiority, thinking of Tarrin as nothing but a mere mortal, and too angry with the Were-cat to consider the consequences.
That was a huge mistake.
Time and time again he had learned that lesson. That anger was a weapon only to one's opponent. And for the first time, he had managed to turn that to his own advantage.
He was going to make Val pay dearly for underestimating him.
The seriousness of the situation made both of them silent and brooding all day, a day passed without incident. Jesmind was finally feeling the impending confrontation, and had become quiet and withdrawn. Tarrin had been feeling it in his bones for days now, feeling it coming. And now he only had a little more to wait.
There was no sense of anticipation, no nervousness, no anxiety when they made camp that night, a mere two leagues from the edge of Val's void. That was two hours of slow walking for them. They would get there precisely at sunrise, as he anticipated. And two hours after that, they would be standing in the presence of a god, playing a very dangerous game to reclaim their abducted daughter. He felt no worry, no fear. He felt nothing, strangely empty, as if this were yet another in a long series of exercises that had slowly numbed him to their importance. Even the worry for his daughter faded away, leaving only the knowledge that he had to get her back inside him, a feeling he knew would change when he finally laid eyes on her again.
Not even the strange things he was sensing worried him. He could feel Val's irritation, his worry, his anger that they were not there yet. Val knew that tomorrow was the day, and yet he still did not have the Firestaff in his possession. Surprisingly, though, Tarrin realized that Val had not yet panicked. Val probably knew that Tarrin was lurking very close by, and since his plan depended on him arriving before the conjunction, Val was probably content to allow that to come to pass. Though the Illusion hid them effectively from everything else, he had the feeling that Val knew exactly where he was even without having to actively search for him.
All the better for Tarrin.
He sat there, looking up into the sky, fully prepared for what was to come to pass tomorrow. By this time tomorrow, if things all went well, everyone he cared for would be alive and well and safe, and Val's army destroyed. The Firestaff would not be a problem for another five thousand years, the gods would all go home happy-all but one, anyway-and Jasana would be home safe, and nothing would ever threaten her again.
He would make sure of it.
To: Title EoF