That was a strange thought. Why should he care about that? They were both strangers...and yet, being with Denai these days, he felt a little differently to her now. She seemed like a child to him, and he was starting to warm to her under that concept. Tarrin may hate strangers, but he never had nor never would extend his feral nature to children. Var...well, Var was still a little disconcerting, but Tarrin was getting used to him. He'd gotten used to Camara Tal, Sarraya, and Phandebrass as well. Maybe that was a good sign. Var and Denai kept him on edge when they were near him, but the sense of that fear had started to dull over the last couple of days.
That wasn't the only thing. Ever since the fight with the Sha'Kar, the eyeless face that had haunted him for so long had been slowly losing its potency. It was still there, but now it did nothing more than remind him of what could happen if he lost control. There was no more hatred or loathing or fear tied up in its gaze, almost as if it had lost its venom. Jula's rage had reinforced that, reminded him how narrow a path he walked to keep his calm, keep his very sanity.
"Quite a view," Denai said, coming up behind him. Her voice startled him a bit...he thought she was trading stories with Var. Had he been pondering that long? But, to his credit, she didn't invoke a powerful response out of him. Usually he would have turned on the object that startled him and challenged it. But the realization that it was Denai smoothed over any hostile impulses immediately.
"Something you don't see every day," he said mildly. "What do you want?"
"Do I have to want something?" she asked.
He looked right at her. "Yes," he said bluntly.
She gave him a look, then she laughed, giving him that disarming, charming smile. "Actually, Sarraya asked me to come get you. We made dinner, we thought you may be hungry."
He looked down at her. She was so small. She only came up to his chest. She was cute, and had that charming smile, and she had a fearless temperment and adventurous spirit that would exasperate any male she married. But there was something about her, that ethereal quality he noticed when they first met...Denai was affable, likable. It was very hard not to be swept over by her charisma. She was so much like Dar in that respect; Dar had this strange quality that made everyone like him, almost immediately after they met. It was something that he had noticed, and was probably why they had paired Dar with him for his Novitiate. They probably figured that if anyone stood a chance of not getting killed by him, it was Dar. Denai had that same sense about her. It was different in her, because she was Selani instead of human, but it was still there.
"No, not really," he answered her, seeing that she was growing uncomfortable under his penetrating stare. "Go back to the camp."
"Why should I?" she asked petulantly. "I rather like it here."
"Did you think that I might want to be alone?"
She grinned at him. "I've been watching you," she told him. "If you wanted to be alone, you would have growled at me before I got close enough to say anything."
He would have, he admitted inwardly, if he knew she was there. But he wasn't about to admit that she snuck up on him. "Probably," he acceded. "But I don't feel like talking."
"Who needs to talk?" she asked. "You look like you could use some company. That doesn't take talking."
Tarrin put a flat stare on and levelled it at her. "Go back to the camp," he ordered.
"No."
That totally scattered him. She disobeyed him! It shocked him so deeply that it put him off balance. How could she possibly not obey? But then he realized that he was thinking like a Were-cat, and she wasn't a Were-cat. Any Were-cat would have obeyed, because Tarrin was the dominant. But to her, that didn't matter all that much. Denai did as Denai wanted, and if that pushed the envelope of safety, that made it even more fun. It was a part of her irresistable charm.
"You'll go back. Whether its whole or in pieces is your decision," he said threateningly, extending his claws on both paws.
"Oh, put those away," she said with that charming smile. "You're not going to hurt me. I can tell just by looking at you. It took me a while to see that, but now that I do, I'm not afraid of you anymore."
This threw him off, because she was right. Tarrin would never harm a child. And since he saw her as a child, that meant that he would not raise his paw against her. He realized that she was going to use that to basicly flaunt herself in his face. And no matter how aggravated he got with her, it wouldn't come to an end with blood. He didn't accept her as a friend, but he also wouldn't attack her as an enemy. That put Denai in a curious gray area, where her presence bothered him, but he wasn't willing to put her off by force.
"Now that we've established that, why don't you sit down and talk with me?" she invited. "I'm curious about some things, and Sarraya won't answer my questions. She said you had to tell me."
So that's what this was about. Denai was curious, that was all. That was easy enough to assuade. "The less you know, the safer you are," he said honestly. "I've killed men over just thinking they knew too much, Denai. I may not be willing to raise a paw against you for being friendly, but I will kill you if I think you know more than what's needful. Do you understand me?"
The sheer honesty in his voice put Denai back. She stared at him in surprise for a long moment, then finally nodded her head. "I don't think everything I want to know falls into that, though," she said. "Tell me about your daughter. How old is she?"
That, he didn't mind talking about. He looked down at her and gave her a neutral look, then stared out over the chasm in thought. "She's older than I am," he answered. "She's what you may call adopted."
"Strange, but then again, you're not Selani, so you must have customs that seem strange to us. Some of our customs must seem strange to you too."
"Some," he agreed. "Jula is like me, turned. I took her in because she needed someone to help her adjust to it."
"To what?"
"To this," he answered, holding out his paw. "I wasn't born this way. I was changed into this by one of my new kind."
"You're a Lycanthrope?" she asked in sudden intense curiosity.
"I didn't think the Selani knew about them."
"There are some stories," she told him. "Old stories about creatures that wandered the desert, creatures that could change from humans into jackals. One of the Watchers called them Lycanthropes, or Were-jackals. The stories said that they preyed on our herds, so our ancestors chased them from our lands."
"Possible," Tarrin mused. "There are many kinds of Were-kin. I've never heard of Were-jackals, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist."
"What is this Jula like?"
"I don't like her," Tarrin said bluntly. "I did what I had to do because it was my duty, nothing more."
"Honor and blood," Denai recited. "Duty is honor, and the cost of that honor is blood."
"It feels like it sometimes," he agreed.
"Are all your people as tall as you?"
"No," he replied. "Only Triana, my bond-mother, is my size. Everyone else is a little taller than you on the average."
"Bond-mother?"
"My patroness, much as I'm Jula's patron," he explained. "Triana was the one who took me in and taught me how to cope. Unlike Jula, I very much love and respect Triana. She's my second mother."
"It sounds like you have two families."
"I have one, but it's rather large and diverse," he said with a wry smile. "I have my original family, my blood-sisters, my bond-mother, and my friends. They're all family to me." He looked at her. "My world is centered around family, Denai. You're either family or you're not. Family is trusted, everyone else is not."
"Not even me?"
"Not even you," he said bluntly. "I'll talk like this with you because I see you as a child, and my kind have a strong impulse to protect children. If I didn't see you as a child, I would have probably killed you the moment you said no to me."
Denai blanched. "Sarraya explained some of that, but I thought she was joking," she said in a slightly sick voice.
"Believe her," he said gratingly. "I'm not a gentle person, Denai. Some would call me evil, and they'd probably be right."
Denai snorted. "Nobody who cares so much about family can be evil," she stated, looking at him with steady eyes.
"That's your opinion," he told her calmly.
"Well, what do you think?" she challenged. "Do you think you're evil?"
Tarrin was silent a very long time. "Yes," he finally replied.
"Well, you haven't done anything evil to me, so I say you're not," she said with her charming smile. "Now then, I think our dinner is getting cold. Let's go eat."
"I'm not hungry," he told her.
"You haven't eaten all day," she protested. "Come on! You're going to eat!" She grabbed him by his tail and began to pull. She wasn't strong enough to hurt him, but from the force she was exerting, it was clear that she had no intention of letting go. "Let's go!"
"You're toying with death, woman," he warned in a grim voice.
"I live for the danger," she said with an impudent grin. "Now are you coming, or do I have to pull this from your backside?"
That sounded so familiar to him. He had said that to a woman some time ago, and she had replied with the exact same answer. But it had been so long ago, so much had happened, he couldn't remember who it was who said that to him. Was it Allia? Keritanima? Maybe it was Camara Tal, or maybe Sarraya? It irked him a little that he couldn't remember, but he'd had so much on his mind lately, it was amazing that he remembered his own name.
Well...he was a little hungry. Maybe a meal would help him remember. Denai squeaked in surprise when Tarrin flexed his tail, pulling Denai up and off her feet. She probably hadn't realized that Tarrin's tail was almost as long as she was tall, and he pulled it up to where she was yanked off her feet. Her feet dangled only a finger or so off the ground, but it was enough. He then moved her aside, and then dropped her back onto the ground. Denai laughed delightedly at that, then let go of his tail and bounded up beside him as they returned to the campsite.
To: Title EoF
Chapter 13
"This is your idea of a path?" Sarraya said in surprise.
It was late morning, and the four of them were on the edge of the vast chasm of the Great Canyon. Tarrin and Sarraya looked down at what Denai had called a safe pathway down to the valley floor...which amounted to little less than an angled irregularity in the rock that formed a very steep ridge that descended to the valley floor so very far below. The ridge was wind-eaten, and extended out from the chasm wall by no more than four fingers. It was a toehold, nothing more, a toehold at about a fifty degree angle that plunged into the shaded canyon.
"Compared to the rest of the canyon walls, Sarraya, this is as close to a pathway as you will get," Denai said defensively. "We've used it before."
"How can there be so many Selani when all of them are insane!" Sarraya said hotly, throwing up her hands and drifting out into the vast gulf. Drifting out of reach.
Tarrin didn't have his mind on that at the moment. He was still trying to figure out Denai. The Selani girl had slept close to him last night, and her presence had begun to wear on him in strange ways. She didn't seem to be willing to give over on the idea of trying to draw him out, almost feeling as if she were trying to tame a wild animal. He didn't want her attention or her company, but the Selani seemed totally oblivious to that fact. She had some kind of agenda in mind, and she was going to carry through with it. She wasn't afraid of him anymore, and she'd already begun to take some very shocking liberties with him. That morning, he'd been awakened when she reached down and picked him up while he was sleeping in cat form. That nearly startled him into shapeshifting, but he stopped himself at the last minute. She hadn't been trying to hurt him, she only picked him up, carried him a few paces, and then set him down by the rekindled fire. And he had the feeling that she did it on purpose. Not to put him by the fire, but to see what would happen if she picked him up. And since he hadn't reacted violently, it made her even more bold with him. Her actions irritated him, but for the life of him, he couldn't even bring himself to even pretend to warn her off. She wasn't afraid of him, and it felt foolish trying to intimidate someone who had no fear of him. It would have been the same as if he'd tried to intimidate Allia or Keritanima; those two would have just laughed at him. Since Var was not granted the same tenuous liberty, he didn't want to appear to be weak or impotent while the male Selani was within view. So he simply endured the attention she showered on him, doing his best to ignore her.
"There are handholds all the way down," Denai continued. "It takes a while, but as long as you're careful, it's pretty safe."
"I take it there's a similar ridge like this on the other side?" Tarrin asked Sarraya.
"I'd assume so," she replied. "The magic that made this canyon split the earth. The other half of this formation has to be in the wall on the other side."
"That's how we climb out," Denai affirmed. "But that one's not as well formed as this one. We have to go up the wall a ways to reach it."
"In other words, we have to climb out," Tarrin grunted.
"Going up is much easier than going down," Var said. "Going down lends itself to greater mistakes, since you tend to lean out to see where you're putting your feet."
"Well, you absolutely are not going to climb down like this," Sarraya said hotly. "I'll conjure up a rope so you can tie yourselves together. Denai goes first, then Var, then Tarrin."
"Why tie together?" Denai asked.
"Because if either of you slip, Tarrin can keep you from becoming the next meal for the vultures," Sarraya said to her crossly.
"What happens if he slips?"
"Tarrin doesn't slip," Sarraya laughed in her face. "Why do you think he has those big, nasty claws? They do more than rip chunks out of things."
After Sarraya made the rope, they tied themselves together, and then began. Tarrin wasn't afraid of heights, not in the slightest, but it did take a little self-motivation to push his body over that edge. The thought of that much empty air underneath him was more than a little disconcerting, even for someone with no fear of heights. But once he got onto the ridge, felt his foot claws bite into the stone, he knew that he'd be just fine. There were indeed handholds, pits and ridges in the wind-worn stone that made the descent relatively easy for him. Var and Denai seemed to have no trouble either, moving along at a pace that didn't irritate the more agile Were-cat with its slowness.
Or it would have been easy in ideal conditions. The wind seemed to be trapped inside the canyon, so once they descended a few hundred spans, they encountered strange crosswinds that seemed to be generated by the canyon's topography. The wind suddenly made what had been an easy descent much more challenging. It bit and pulled on him, and all three of them began to choose their hand and footholds much more carefully, moving more slowly than before. Sarraya, who had been hovering near them as they made their way along the treacherous ridge, found the buffetting winds too much, and managed to make something of a wobbly landing on Tarrin's head. She anchored herself down in his hair and kept watch over them, prepared to use her magic in case something went terribly wrong.
Tarrin kept an eye on the other two. Both Var and Denai were in very good shape, but this kind of activity was something to which they were not accustomed. The strain of the descent began to show on both of them around noontime, as both of them began to sweat. Denai seemed more tired than Var, so Tarrin called for them to take a short break when all three of them found good foot and hand holds that would allow them to rest while clinging to the side of the canyon wall, while the winds tried to push them off.
It was only a longspan of distance, but the dangerous nature of their path made the going very slow, and the sun was well past noontime in the sky by the time that the ground below seemed relatively close. They managed to climb beneath the buffetting winds, and again found a respectable pace in which to move.
As they descended deeper into the canyon, Tarrin felt the curious changes.
The air took on humidity, and the shade provided by the towering walls kept the air below cool, almost enjoyable. The shade also kept the canyon floor in a pleasantly dim light, not the blasting brilliance of the desert sun, but enough sunlight reached the canyon floor during the midday hours to keep the many plants that carpeted the canyon floor flourishing.
Denai, who had gone first, put her feet on the canyon floor in the midafternoon. Her arms were trembling, and she was breathing hard, and the very first thing she did was drop to her backside on the moist, grassy canyon floor, then splay out on her back and do nothing but rest. Var had to step over her, then he too flopped down onto the soft earth and tried to recover from the strenuous descent. Tarrin dropped down the last ten spans, then proceeded to untie the rope holding them together.
"By the Holy Mother's grace, don't you ever get tired?" Denai complained in a breathless voice as Tarrin stepped over them both and surveyed the twenty spans of terrain they'd have to cross.
"It takes more than that to tire me, Denai. I'm not human," he replied calmly. The canyon floor was not flat. It was irregular, with scruffy little hills that undulated all the way across the canyon floor. The ground close to the walls was littered with rocks of all shapes and sizes, broken off from the walls to plummet to the ground below. The ground was indeed ground, a life-supporting soil that was rich and moist, supporting actual grass.
Looking out over the area, he realized that it was like stepping into another part of the world. The canyon floor was primarily lush grassland, but there were many trees of different varieties here and there through the grass. Some grew together in groves and stands, and to the north there were enough to be called a forest. He realized that these plants were the plants that had grown here before the desert claimed the land, that the seeds had fallen into this vast chasm and found sanctuary from the blight that consumed the land above. There were even streams, and a few ponds within his view, from which several large reptilian beasts drank sedately. But there were more than reptiles. He recognized a flock of deer by those huge chisa, drinking their fill. This place was a refuge for the descendants of the animals that had called these plains home before the desert claimed them, and now they shared their habitat with the animals that had somehow managed to migrate down into the canyon's micro-ecosystem. It looked like the grasslands of western Sulasia, in a way, the strip of grassy plains that buffered the vast forest of the West from the Sea of Storms.
Tarrin Kael Firestaff Collection Book 3 - Honor and Blood by Fel © Page 47