"You didn't!"
"What can I say? I'm a barbarian," Sarraya grinned at him. "You're a bad influence on me."
"The Faerie, she appeared but seconds after you entered the trance, yes," Jegojah said with a calm expression. "She thought I meant to attack ye, yes. When Jegojah, he surrendered his swords, the Faerie, she stood down, yes."
"You have too much attitude for someone so small, Sarraya."
"I'm a big girl now," she grinned as Jegojah studied the map with palpable intensity.
"You think what he says makes sense?"
"It all fits, Tarrin," she replied seriously. "It all fits together a little too well to be a fantasy he conjured up."
"That's what Kerri thought too," he replied. "She doesn't trust Jegojah, but she can refute the logic of his claim."
"Kerri sounds like a smart girl."
"The smartest woman alive, Sarraya," Tarrin said seriously. "When Kerri does your planning, you can't go wrong."
"The Wikuni, she has a point, yes," Jegojah finally announced. "Without the Toothwood, Tykarthia, it is the safest way to go. The Sulasians, they would be trapped between the Dals and the force marching down from the north, yes, and they would be annihilated. That would leave Suld defenseless."
"Kerri figured the same thing," Tarrin said. "You'd make a good general, Jegojah."
"Jegojah, he was a general, Were-cat," Jegojah said with a smile and a glance at him.
"That's getting annoying. Why do you keep saying your name all the time?" Sarraya asked churlishly.
"Jegojah, he knows no other way to speak," the undead warrior said uncertainly.
"You're using Shacèan grammar with Sulasian words, and it's getting on my nerves!" Sarraya snapped at him. "Try saying I or me instead of Jegojah!"
"No wonder it takes a Shacèan ten minutes to say hello," Tarrin mused. "I never knew their language was so complicated."
"Je--uh, I, me will try."
"No, I, me! Just I!"
"I--I will try, yes," he said with a glance at his shoulder, where the Faerie was located. "The Faerie, is she always this way?"
"Usually," Tarrin said dryly. "Somedays she's worse. She must be in a good mood."
"The Wikuni, she has a point," Jegojah repeated. "Je--I will think on this."
"I can't do anything else right now. I burned up all my strength talking to Kerri."
"How is she?"
"Doing fine, Sarraya. It was good to see her again. I thought it would make me homesick, but it had a completely opposite effect. I'm in a really good mood now, for some reason."
"You just found out that you're not as alone as you thought," Sarraya said with a warm smile.
"I guess you're right," he agreed.
"Hungry? I can whip up something refreshing for you."
"No more of that Centaur ale," Tarrin warned. "I dont' see how they move after drinking that stuff."
"They don't," she laughed.
"Let's try for something that won't put me out," he said. "And settle in. We're going to be here a while."
"How long?"
"Until Ariana gets here with her king," he answered. "How long has it been?"
"Ye were sleeping about twenty minutes. After a good meal, time, it will be, to call to her again, yes."
"So, what? Two days?"
"That sounds about right," Tarrin said. "I need to recover, and I don't want to start moving until I'm fully rested. Waiting for Ariana just gives me a valid excuse to be lazy."
"As if you were ever lazy," Sarraya laughed.
After a hearty meal of roasted boar--swiped from some inn's hearth, no doubt--Tarrin helped Sarraya set up a camp and arrange a good store of firewood to last the night. Jegojah stood up after looking at the map and sheathed his two swords, which were laying on the ground nearby. "Jegojah--I need to look about, yes," he said. "There may be Sandmen about, and if there are, needs be to chase them off, yes."
"Be careful," Tarrin said.
"The Sandmen, they cannot kill the dead, no," Jegojah shrugged, then marched off into the night.
As soon as the undead warrior was out of sight, Sarraya zipped into him so hard it stung. She hugged his neck exuberantly, digging her tiny fingers into his skin. "I was worried!" she exclaimed in a hyper voice.
"What's with all this emotion?" Tarrin asked in surprise, prying the little Faerie loose and holding her in his paw.
"I didn't want to look gushy around it," she said primly, though her eyes were bright. "It may think you're a mama's boy."
Tarrin gave her a strange look, then laughed helplessly.
After calming Sarraya down and assuring her that he was alright, he kept his appointment with Ariana. "Ariana," he called.
"I'm here, Tarrin. So is King Andos."
"Good. Will you come meet me?"
There was a long silence.
"I can't hear what Andos says, Ariana. The only one I can hear is you. What did he say?"
"Oh. Sorry, I didn't know that. He agrees. We'll start out in the morning. We should be there two days after that."
"I'll be waiting for you. I'm going to be camped on the northwestern edge of the city when you arrive."
"We'll find you, don't worry. I told you we'd see each other again."
"So you did. See you in three days."
"Until then."
Tarrin broke the connection, letting his amulet go and staring at the fire. Two days of rest. He could use that, definitely. He'd have to exert himself tomorrow to talk to Allia, and probably talk to Keritanima again, but he'd be more than fully recovered by the time Ariana and her king arrived. He was bone-tired now, tired enough to let the important events of that long, busy day drain away from him. He'd ponder the significance of them tomorrow, but for now, about all he wanted to do was sleep.
And sleep he did. Shapeshifting into cat form, he curled up by the fire and immediately went into a sound, deep sleep. With Sarraya and Jegojah--whom he now trusted, for some reason--he would be well protected and secure. So he slept the sleep of the safe, a sleep untroubled by worries or fears.
For now, all was well.
The next morning dawned windy and strangely warm. Sand blew through the city in eddies and swirls, and Tarrin was forced to don his visor. It was obvious that a sandstorm was blowing in the area, but from the look of the morning sky, it was well south of them, and they would only catch the fringes of it. The seasons were turning, and they were coming out of the storm season, into the relatively calm time that passed for spring in the desert. The sandstorms were fewer and further between, and they lacked the savagery that the winter storms packed. By early summer, all the storms would be over, and the Selani would enjoy a four month respite from the blowing sand, until the cycle started all over again.
Breakfast that morning was little more than berries and hard bread, for the wind was too strong to keep a fire going. Sarraya huddled against his shoulder and neck to protect herself from the gusty wind, with its stinging sand carried along in it. He'd been awakened to those conditions, mainly by being showered by embers from the fire, but even in cat form he was utterly immune to their heat. It was strange for the wind to blow so, but then again, the proximity of the sandstorm was the reason. They were catching the edges of it, and the worst of it was about to blow over them. That meant that they had to find shelter.
"Jegojah, he came through blows like this," the undead warrior noted as they moved to knock down a tent before the wind took it with it. "This desert, it is a challenge for the living, yes?"
"The Selani thrive here," Tarrin called over the wind. "They've been here long enough to know how things work."
"The Selani, your friend, you will call her today, yes?"
"After the storm blows over," he shouted back over a loud gust. "It takes concentration for me to do it, and it's hard to concentrate when you're getting a face full of sand." He put stones over the tent canvas, as Jegojah did the same on the other side. "Odds are, Kerri has already talked to her and told her
to expect my call. Besides, it's a few hours earlier in Suld, and that means that she's probably not awake yet."
"Jegojah, he forgets about that sometimes," he grunted loudly enough to be heard over the wind.
"Around about noon, I'll try," he called. "It should be calm by then, and Allia will certainly be awake."
"Nothing else, we have to do, no," Jegojah shouted. "The camp, this would be a good time to move it! After all, taken it down already, we have, yes!"
"You have a point," Tarrin acceded. "It's not easy to see in this, but we need to find shelter anyway. Let's go find a good building and wait it out!"
"What about the tents?"
"We'll leave them here," Tarrin shouted. "Sarraya and I can just Conjure them back to us when we want to set them up!"
"Conjure? Ye know Druidic magic?"
Tarrin nodded, pulling his braid out of his face as the wind slapped it against his visor. "I'm a Were-cat, Jegojah. All Were-cats have at least some Druidic talent. And since we're technically not mortal, I get around the stricture against being able to use only one order of magic."
"No wonder Jegojah, he could not best you!" the undead warrior cackled in that hideous voice. "Too many tricks, ye know, yes!"
"Don't sell him short," Sarraya called. "He whipped you fair and square, with and without magic."
Tarrin was a bit startled that Sarraya would insult Jegojah that way, but the undead warrior just laughed. "That he did!" he admitted. "It was an honor to battle you, Tarrin of the Were-cats! It was a loss for Jegojah, but an honorable loss, it was, yes!"
"Let's save the reminscing until after we're in shelter!" Tarrin called.
Finding shelter was a very simple affair. They had but to enter the closest of the buildings that were still standing. Tarrin was too large to fit in the door, and had to shift to cat form to get inside. Jegojah just barely cleared the door, and the ceiling was literally scraping his helmet as they entered a dust-choked chamber with a stone table in the far corner, by the door. Tarrin was careful to shapeshift back so he was squatting down, shifting from a seated position as a cat, which allowed him to clear the ceiling by a comfortable amount. He couldn't stand erect inside the buildings, but he had a very flexible spine, and could stand if he stayed severely stooped over. But it was easier for him to simply sit.
"Small buildings," Jegojah noted. "Not human."
"We think it's a Dwarven city," Sarraya told him.
"Mala Myrr," Jegojah said immediately. "Even in Jegojah's time, the rumors flew. A lost Dwarven city swallowed up by the desert. This place, it must be it, yes." He looked out. "Jegojah, he remembers other rumors. Mala Myrr was supposed to be close to a fabled city called Amyr Dimeon. The Heavenly City."
Tarrin knew exactly what Jegojah was talking about. The city of the Aeradalla would fit that description perfectly, but Tarrin wasn't going to tell him that. That wasn't his secret to divulge. "If there is another ruin from the past out there, we haven't seen it," Tarrin told him.
"Nope," Sarraya mirrored. At least she picked up on that and wouldn't make any embarassing comments.
They waited out the storm in relative silence after that. Tarrin napped with Sarraya curled up inside his furry ball, and Jegojah sat and read from books that Sarraya had conjured for him. Being undead, Jegojah didn't sleep, and the books gave him a means to pass the time. They'd also let him catch up on modern history. Jegojah's world was still five hundred years in the past. He had alot of catching up to do.
The storm blew over by midmorning, and they moved on. They left the city and set up a good camp right on the edge of it, with a half-crumbled city wall giving them a border on one side, and a pile of rubble hemming them in from the west. The result was a nice little niche that would catch the light of a fire nicely, and it was large enough to accomadate five tents. What made it most attractive was that a strand ran vertically from the ground just inside that old ruined wall, giving him easy access to the Weave.
As Sarraya conned Jegojah into helping her erect tents, Tarrin sat down directly within the strand, achieving physical contact, then grabbed hold of his amulet. "Allia," he called.
"Kerri told me you'd call out to me," she replied immediately. "And that you'd want me to do something for you. Given Kerri's excitement when she talked to me, it must have been something pretty interesting."
"I do need you to do something for me," he said. "First, are you alone?"
"Dolanna and Dar are with me. I'm in Dolanna's apartment."
"That's good enough. Alright now, listen carefully, sister. Touch the Weave, and hold as much of it as you can. Do that for about fifteen minutes. If nothing happens in fifteen minutes, let go and then try to contact me."
"As you wish, my brother. I'm ready."
Quickly and effortlessly, Tarrin separated his consciousness from his body and joined with the Weave. As before, he found himself hurtling through the strands, into a Conduit, and then he was again in the Heart. It was as it always had been before, an unfathomably huge abyss of utter darkness, that darkness pierced by the stars that represented all the Sorcerers, and the strands wavering very faintly behind them, barely visible in the consuming darkness held at bay by those stars. The sense of the Goddess was as it had been before, and the glorious blazing light of her illuminated the very core of the Heart, destroying the inky blackness that sought to consume the light. He looked up into the black sky of the Heart and found her eyes looking down on him, felt her smile, was infused by her love, and he felt utterly content.
But he wasn't there to bask in the radiant aura of the Goddess, no matter how lovely it was to do so. He reached out with his senses, reached out and felt for that distinctive sensation that identified his sister in the Weave. Allia's star was out there, and after a few moments of intense concentration, he managed to identify it. Using that star as a reference, he cast out his senses into the Weave, feeling for the physical reflection of the energy he felt from Allia's star. Allia wasn't as strong as Keritanima, so her presence wouldn't be as striking as it had been for his Wikuni sister. But she was close to the Heart, both physically and spiritually, so it didn't take him long to lock onto her. As he had done before, he travelled through the Weave, travelled to her physical location, then constructed an Illusion, cast it into the space near her, then pushed his consciousness into that projection.
He opened his spectral eyes, and found the three of them staring at his Illusion in shock. Dar, who was a natural with Illusion, had mouth hanging open, and Dolanna looked as if she was staring into the eyes of a Wraith. Allia stared at him a bit wildly, then laughed. "Tarrin? Is that you?" she asked. Allia was hard to surprise, and even harder to keep surprised. Tarrin felt a wild surge of joy at seeing his beloved sister once again, but the emotion of it was overwhelmed by the pressing need to tell them what was going on, while he had the strength to do it.
"Yes and no," he replied. "What you see is nothing but an Illusion, Allia. I'm still in the desert, but I've learned a trick to allow me to reach through the Illusion. It's very draining, so I can't stay this way for long. Only long enough to pass on certain information and give you a few warnings." He turned to Dolanna. "Dolanna, could you Ward this place? As tightly as you can?"
She seemed to recover from her surprise. "Certainly, dear one," she smiled. "Is that a factual representation of you?" she asked.
"Unfortunately, it is," he grunted. "I know, I'm taller. I'll explain how that happened when I get to the Tower, because it'll take too long to explain, and I can't waste any time."
Dolanna skillfully Warded the room against all prying eyes and ears, and then nodded to him. As always, Dolanna's weaves were strong, efficient, and well woven. Dolanna was an excellent Sorceress.
"Alright then, on to serious matters. Dolanna, Allia, you have to convince the Keeper to prepare for war."
Tarrin went over everything that Jegojah told him, then related much of his conversation with Keritanima. Dar and Dolanna blanched quite a few times as he almost casua
lly dropped a cartload of shocking news on them in a very short time, but Allia looked rather sober, almost grim.
"It's a pretty clever plan, Dolanna," Tarrin said, addressing his teacher. "Clever and thorough."
"Very clever," Dolanna said absently, tapping her chin with a finger, as she often did while in deep thought. "It does not leave us with much room. You say that Shiika is sending her Legions?"
"And herself and her daughters," he replied. "She wanted me to have you make sure that her daughters aren't attacked when they arrive. They'll be on our side."
"The same ones that tried to kill you, Tarrin?" Dar asked.
Tarrin nodded. "At that time, we were on opposing sides. Now we have a common interest."
"War often makes strange allies, Dar," Allia told him calmly.
"Very strange," Dolanna agreed.
"In a couple of days, as soon as I'm sure Jenna is up to it, I'm going to have her tell mother to have Grandfather stop the war with Tykarthia," Tarrin said. "Grandfather can do it, especially if mother is standing behind him holding her axe. The Ungardt will be a little sulky over not having someone to fight, at least until we can convince them to help us fight off the ki'zadun. Ungardt love a good, rousing war. This will certainly pique their interest."
"Are you certain that your mother can do such a thing?" Dolanna asked.
"My grandfather can," Tarrin said confidently. "He's chief of one of the biggest clans. He can call all the chiefs together and explain that the Ungardt were deceived into fighting against Tykarthia, when they didn't do anything wrong. Ungardt may love a good war, but they don't fight unless they have a good reason. As soon as they find out that the atrocities that started the war with Tykarthia were actually the work of the ki'zadun, they'll apologize to the Tykarthians and then come after the ki'zadun."
"Sounds like the Ungardt have honor," Allia said approvingly.
"Something like that, but not as refined as you, Allia," Tarrin told her. "Kerri beat it into me that the most critical thing I can do is have you find out what the weather's like in Draconia and the Petal Lakes. That's where the ki'zadun is massing their army, and they can't start marching until the snow melts."
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