Chapter 10

It was decidedly odd.

That was the only conclusion that Tarrin could draw as he traveled with the Shadows over the course of the day, as they fled to the northeast to swing wide of Pyros, charging back into the thicker ash and the protection it afforded to them from the eyes of their enemies. Riding itself was excruciating, but he didn’t allow it to show on his face or in his demeanor, using Allia’s mental exercises to block out the pain. His Pegasus was trying to be careful, but there was only so much that it could do. Every bounce in the saddle caused a jagged flash of pain, but Tarrin managed to block it out mostly by doing what he did before, concentrating on something to the exclusion of everything else. Earlier he used Dolanna’s mount as his focus, but this time he focused on Lorak.

Lorak mystified Tarrin, who talked as they rode, answering Dolanna’s questions. The first thing she asked him was what race he was. He called himself an Elara, and said that at one time the humans referred to his kind as elves, at least before the One came to dominate much of the world. She then asked him if he had ever heard of the Sha’Kar, and he replied that he did not. When she described a Sha’Kar, Lorak looked shocked, and told her that Elara that looked like that were called Demora, and they were evil and malicious. The Demora lived deep underground, or had at one time, for they were presumed extinct, for no one had seen a Demora for a thousand years.

“Umm, you’re named after the moon?” Zyri asked, then clamped her teeth shut. They were speaking in Penali, because Lorak and the others didn’t understand Sulasian.

“That is the name of your moon?” Dolanna asked Lorak curiously.

“We’re named for the moon because that’s where we’re from,” he answered the girl calmly. Lorak wasn’t the kind that got ruffled, Tarrin noticed. “The moon is its own world, full of life and populated by the Elara. The One will turn his eyes to our moon when he finishes conquering this land, so we work very hard to keep him in check.”

“The maiji-din used to transport us back and forth,” another Elara added, a brown-haired male that had been introduced as Thren. “Our most learned Wizards. They know spells that open gateways between here and Elara.”

“That is why Master Phandebrass is welcome and needed by the Shadows,” Lorak explained. “He is human, but his skill and mastery of the arts of Wizardry are exceptional, even by our own reckoning. He is maiji-din, a Gatemaster.”

“Why do your Gatemasters simply bring your people back to Elara?” Dolanna asked.

“Two hundred years ago, the One altered the nature of the land under his dominion,” Lorak answered. “He changed things so our Gatemasters can’t open gates into or out of his domain any longer. We’re trapped here. The only way we could get back to Elara would be to flee to Auromar, but that’s all but impossible.”

“Why is that?” Dolanna pressed.

“The One’s navy is patrolling the straits between Pyrosia and Auromar,” he answered. “They attack any boat on the water. Even a single man in a rowboat. It’s a two day journey between the eastern tip of Pyrosia and the western edge of Auromar, and there’s simply no way a ship can make it without being attacked. The One knows about the Shadows, and took these steps to isolate the agents from Elara. By blocking the maiji-din from opening gates into Pyrosia, he forces us to run a gauntlet at sea where we have a major disadvantage. But that doesn’t completely stop us,” Lorak smiled. “Some Wizards and Elementalists know magic that lets us cross the straits safely, so we can get new agents into Pyosia. Just not many.”

“That’s why the eastern tip of Pyrosia is the last unconquered area,” Thren informed them. “Those that oppose the One have concentrated there to give our agents a safe place to go when they attempt to make the crossing. The eastern peninsula and the stronghold of the Dura are the last bastions of resistance left in Pyrosia. The One has conquered everything else,” he added with a sigh.

“Hold. If the One can change the land to stop your Gatemasters, why can your gods not simply do the same?” Dolanna asked. “That creates a stalemate.”

“There are permanent gates that lead from Pyrosia to Elara, part of the nature of the universe itself,” Lorak answered. “The One controls them on this side. When he finishes conquering Pyrosia, he’ll use them to try to invade Elara. So, the longer we can prevent him from finishing his conquest of Pyrosia, the more time we have to prepare for his invasion of our home.”

That seemed to be the primary and complete interest of Lorak, and the other two Elara with him, Thren and a female with blonde hair and lovely, delicate features named Neh. As they talked more, heard Lorak explain things, the more he understood the simple fact that protecting his homeland was Lorak’s driving, almost obsessive, concern. He could tell from the way he talked, the words he used. He had that same single-minded determination that anyone would probably have if his entire way of life was being threatened. To Lorak, Thren, and Neh, everyone in Pyrosia was there to stall the One. They were pieces on a chessboard, units to deploy. That was a general’s mentality, and understandable, but there was a certain coldness about Lorak that he didn’t entirely like. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he’d put his finger on it eventually.

Sarraya took complete advantage of the newcomers. With calculating casual remarks, she dropped shock after shock on the Shadows, mentioning just in passing that Tarrin had fought the One, noting to Dolanna that he’d wiped Pyros off the map, then just mentioning that Tarrin and Mist had managed to seriously damage the One’s icon. When they didn’t know what an icon was, she treated them like children, feigning shock that they didn’t understand something so simple.

“How can you do such a thing?” Neh asked.

“All gods are represented in the material plane by an icon,” Miranda explained. “It’s their link to this universe. While they really exist in another plane, they use the icon to direct their power here. The icon makes them invulnerable in the material world, but it’s also their one true weakness. Destroy a god’s icon, and he loses touch with the material world until he replaces it. That takes years. When Tarrin was lured to Pyros to fight the One, Mist managed to nearly cut his icon in half using Tarrin’s sword. That seriously damaged the icon, and that’s why the One himself isn’t charging an Avatar at us right now.”

“I’ve never heard of an icon,” Lorak said mildly.

“It’s not something that only a god’s High Priest would know about,” Miranda told him. “Gods keep it a secret, for obvious reasons. Even if a mortal can’t do any real damage to an icon, if they knew about them, they might be tempted to try. And the resourcefulness of mortals is not something even gods take lightly.”

“If only a High Priest knows, then how do you know?” Lorak asked, his tone mildly challenging.

“Because Miranda is the High Priest of her goddess,” Sarraya said smugly. “High Priestess, actually. Her Grandness might suffice, but I think she likes being called Her Absolute Wondrous Eminence.”

“Enough, Sarraya,” Miranda chided.

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Her Magificent Muckety-Muckness, right?”

“How’d you like a black eye?” Miranda threatened.

“I think you have to catch me first,” Sarraya taunted from Tarrin’s shoulder.

Tarrin felt Fireflash slide over from his other shoulder, then he heard Sarraya squeak in surprise. The gold drake vaulted from Tarrin’s shoulder and flew over to Miranda’s Pegasus, with Sarraya’s wing clamped in his teeth. The Faerie had no choice but to follow along, kicking and screaming at the drake, even punching him once in the side. Fireflash landed on Miranda’s Pegasus, in front of her saddle, and spat out her wing, dropping her to the back of her mount. Then he sat down and looked up at Miranda expectantly.

“Um, hi,” Sarraya said with a nervous laugh, trying to back up, but backing into the drake.

“Hi,” Miranda said with a voice that was both light and cutting at the same time. “You were saying something, weren’t you? Something about my title?” she asked, putting a single finger on Sarraya’s belly, which effectively pinned her to the back of the Pegasus.

“I think Wavemistress sounds really nice,” Sarraya said wheedlingly, reverting to Sulasian. “Traitor,” she snapped at Fireflash.

Fireflash ignored her completely.

“That’s a good little drake,” Miranda smiled, patting him on the head with her other hand.

“I’ll get you, scalybutt,” Sarraya growled at the drake.

Without blinking, Fireflash reared back slightly, then unleashed a small blast of greenish gas directly into Sarraya’s face. The Faerie screamed in surprise, then flopped limply to the back of the Pegasus.

“I think Sarraya forgets that Fireflash understands Sulasian,” Miranda said in Penali with a sly smile. “I do believe that he decided to get you first. Doesn’t that just burn you up?”

Sarraya made several gurgling sounds.

Nodding gravely, Fireflash leaned down and clamped his jaws on Sarraya’s leg, then vaulted off her Pegasus and flew back over to Tarrin. The Faerie flopped bonelessly in the air as she was carried, her gossamer skirts riding up to bare her blue-skinned rump. He dropped the Faerie in Tarrin’s saddle, then lept up onto his shoulder and wrapped himself languidly around the back of Tarrin’s neck.

“Would someone explain what just happened?” Lorak asked.

“Sarraya got to experience my drake’s breath weapon,” Tarrin answered. “It paralyzes the muscles for a short time. She’ll be alright in ten minutes or so.”

“Ah. She won’t require any healing?”

“No, it does no harm. It just paralyzes, that’s all, and the effect is very short-lived.”

Sarraya made several more gurgling noises. Tarrin picked her up by gripping her two upper wings, pinching them between his fingers, then laid her limp body down in the cup of his palm.

“Maybe Fireflash should gas her more often. It seems to be the only way to shut her up,” Ulger said with a rasping chuckle.

“I think it might be the only way to shut you up too,” Miranda proposed.

“I can take a hint.”

“Really? After how many times?” Miranda pressed, which made Haley laugh.

By sunset, they were well away from Pyros, but the blowing winds made the ash and the cloud above even thicker. Gray ash fell like snow, covering everything, blotting out the sky and making the late afternoon blacker than the blackest night. Tarrin had no idea how the Elara was navigating, but he led them arrow-straight on his course and did not waver, so Tarrin suspected that he knew what he was doing. After Dolanna’s power waned and her Ward dissolved, Lorak took over the task of protecting them from the choking ash and dust-like cinders that drifted from the nasty remnants of Tarrin’s battle with the One with his Elemental powers. Tarrin’s entire body was drained from the pain in his wings, and by the time Lorak called for a halt to make camp, Tarrin was sagging heavily in his saddle, with Ulger leading his mount. Sarraya, who had been cowed into behaving by Fireflash’s treachery, kept patting his arm and trying to cheer him up with light smiles and clever little remarks, often at the expense of the others. But Tarrin’s alertness waned with the passing of the hours, as the pain of his wings slowly yet inexorably consumed his ability to think. By late afternoon, there was nothing but the pain, and he stopped responding to the others.

“We will stop here,” Lorak announced. “Bedrolls only. We will be away by midnight. We’re still too close to Pyros to stay in one place too long.”

“Tarrin? We’re stopping,” Sarraya said, which barely registered to him. Goddess, he was so tired. Tired and weary, and he wasn’t entirely sure where he was. He was dimly aware that the horse—if that was what it was, it had wings—wasn’t moving anymore. He saw someone else get down off his horse, and realized that that meant that they were stopping for a while. The throbbing of his wings eased somewhat now that the mount wasn’t bouncing him up and down, and part of him debated trying to move as the other part of him found the idea of remaining absolutely still to be quite a wonderful concept. But in the end, the realization that he could lay down if he got off the mount overruled the idea of staying where he was.

It took him a moment to figure out how to make his leg work. He tried to pull it free of the stirrup three times, but for some reason he couldn’t get it out. He leaned down a little to look, and the shift caused a flash of pain to race through his wings and into his back. Gritting his teeth, he leaned down even further, reaching for the stirrup, and then realized that he was sliding in that direction, that his other foot had come free of the stirrup.

“Tarrin!” Kimmie cried out in surprise when Tarrin tumbled out of his saddle.

The Pegasus tried valiantly to prevent him from hitting the ground. It stiffened its wing and locked it against its side, but Tarrin was too tall, too much weight came over the top. Tarrin lurched over the wing, and the Pegasus swept that black-feathered appendage out and almost fell to the ground itself, collapsing its legs to reduce the distance he would fall. Tarrin landed on the Pegasus’ wing, and the impact of his shredded wings with the flight feathers of the Pegasus was like someone had ripped him in half. He screamed in pain, arching his back to pull them out of contact with everything, but the act did nothing to stop the pain, it only made it worse; he was laying on his side, and the act scraped his wing across the feathers of the Pegasus.

Mist was there immediately. Her powerful paws grabbed hold of his arm and dragged him off the feathered wing of his Pegasus, then turned him onto his stomach. His claws sank into her forearms above her Cat’s Claws, so deeply that blood poured to the ash-choked ground in rivulets as Tarrin’s wicked claws embedded themselves in her flesh, but she did not even flinch. “Grab his feet!” Mist ordered sharply. Kimmie moved to obey, but Azakar reached him first, his powerful hands clamping on Tarrin’s ankles as his arms flexed to resist any sudden convulsive kicks, his face a stoic mask. Outside of Kimmie, Azakar was probably the only one who had the raw power to succeed in that task.

But no convulsions came. The pressure taken from his wings, the sharp stabs eased, and the relief flowed through him. His claws retracted from his mate’s arms, and he suddenly felt weak as a kitten.

“Is he well?” Lorak asked calmly.

“No, he’s bloody not well!” Kimmie shouted at him angrily. “He’s injured! We should have stopped!”

“The fault is his,” Lorak shrugged. “All he had to do was speak. And since no one spoke in his stead,” he added, sweeping his gaze across them, “then I would guess that you didn’t think he needed to stop either.”

Kimmie’s face flushed guiltily, and she raced over to help her bond-mother pull Tarrin off the ground.

The cobwebs clearing from his mind, he slid up onto his knees, then sat back on his haunches. He put his paw to his head, then shook it as the last of the pain bled away, leaving him coherent again. “I’m alright,” he announced in a weak voice.

“That didn’t look very alright to me,” Mist grated at him.

“Just drop it, Mist,” he grunted. “Just someone find me something to eat and let me sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“Let’s get the tents up,” Haley called, putting a scarf around his face to protect it from the falling ash.

“No tents. They take too long to pack,” Lorak called.

“Fine. You can lay in this ashfall and get a volcano up your nose, but I’m pitching a tent,” Haley told him calmly. “Or do you want to sit on your horse and keep the ash off us all night?” he offered in a reasonable tone.

Lorak blinked, then he chuckled. “Point well taken. We will have to make time, I suppose.”

“Not all of us have tents,” Thren fretted.

“I know a spell that creates a magical one,” one of the human Wizards with them called, a youngish fellow with red hair and pale skin that seemed to be permanently burned by the wind and sun, who was named Kord. Kord didn’t look much like a Wizard, because he was built like a Dal, with wide shoulders, a barrel chest, and arms corded with thick muscle. Kord looked more physically imposing than anything else. He wore a simple brown robe, but left it unbelted and open in the front, and underneath it he wore a brown wool tunic and leather breeches. “It’ll be big enough for us all.”

“I say, so long as it leaves no magical impression, it’d be safe enough,” Phandebrass told him. “Demons can sense magic, so it can’t be active, it can’t.”

“Well, then it’s not a good one,” Kord frowned.

“Men,” Shara grunted. “Och, just pitch yuir cloak over the top half of yuir bedroll and weight the sides down with stones, an’ face the opening away from the wind. Yon quiver there has plenty of arrows in it ta’ serve as poles. The ash willna’ blow in.”

“Clever,” Miranda nodded in agreement.

As most of them worked to set up the camp site, Tarrin sat on the ground, cross-legged, slumped over so far his elbows were on the ash-choked grass. Mist and Kimmie checked him in turns, but they didn’t stay with him, because there was really nothing that they could do. Sarraya and Fireflash did, however, Fireflash sitting on the ground beside him as Sarraya walked back and forth on his back, inspecting his destroyed wings carefully. “You know, Tarrin, I think they’ve grown back a little,” she told him. “This piece and that piece were torn back closer to the arch of your wing this morning. They’ve sewn themselves back together a little.”

“I really couldn’t say,” Tarrin told her. “I can’t see them, and they don’t feel any different to me.”

“I wish I could do something for you,” Sarraya said sincerely. “Even if it really didn’t do that much.” She walked back towards his neck. “Hmm, maybe there is something we can do,” she mused aloud. “Fireflash, come up here a second.”

Fireflash looked up at her.

“No, up here. I need you to do something for me.”

He snorted derisively.

“Alright, not for me, for Tarrin. Sheesh,” she huffed. “You can’t still be mad.”

He snorted, a hint of greenish gas billowing from his nostrils.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry,” she growled. “I won’t get you back. I promise.”

“Don’t trust her,” Tarrin warned. “She may mean it now, but she’ll forget all about that promise in about an hour.”

“Tarrin!” Sarraya snapped.

“Truth is truth,” Tarrin said absently.

“Well, do it from down there, then. Let me move, then blast Tarrin’s wings with your fire. I want to see if it makes the pain go away.”

Fireflash looked at Tarrin expectantly, and the Were-cat shrugged. “It can’t possibly hurt me,” he told his drake. “You know that.”

Fireflash nodded.

“Oh, don’t use up all your gas,” Tarrin noted quietly. “She might try something if she thinks you can’t gas her.”

“Grroah!” Sarraya growled in a squeaky voice, stamping her foot on Tarrin’s back.

“See? She thought of that too,” Tarrin said with a slight smile at his drake.

Fireflash nodded to Tarrin with an impish look on his scaly face, then backed up a step. He sucked in his breath, then lunged his head up and forward. A brilliant gout of bright red flame erupted from his mouth, spiralling around itself to form a concentrated cone. That cone of fire washed over his left wing, and it actually did feel somewhat better. The pain eased noticably, at least so long as Fireflash kept the fire going. When he stopped, the pain slowly started creeping back into it.

“Did it help?” Sarraya asked, looking over his shoulder down at Fireflash.

“A little,” he answered honestly, as the drake released another puff of greenish gas, then stared up at the Faerie deliberately.

Sarraya growled in her throat, then pulled up out of the drake’s sight. “We should build a nice fire and let you sit in it,” she mused, touching the base of his left wing gingerly. Even that light touch sent a shiver of pain through him.

“What made you think of that?”

“I remember what happened when the sword came back to you,” she answered. “It surrounded you in fire to try to heal you. Fire is your element, Tarrin. It just stands to reason you’ll feel better if you’re surrounded by it.”

“What is this? Analytical thinking? Logic? Reasoned and controlled conclusions? Is that Sarraya on my back, or an evil copy?”

“I’m not a total ditz!” she objected.

“No, just mostly,” he answered.

“You!” she snapped. “Why do I even bother?”

“Because you love me,” he answered evenly.

“Well, that’s true,” she said with a chuckle, patting his back gently. “I’m not sure we can make a fire, though. We’re supposed to be hiding, you know.”

“This ash is thick enough, the light won’t go ten paces,” Mist said as she passed by. “I’ll get on it right now.”

Mist did just that. Lorak objected strenuously to the idea of a fire, but he learned the first rule of interacting with Phandebrass’ friends…never make Mist angry. Shara managed to heal the fracture in his jaw, and regrow the three teeth that Mist knocked out after Lorak put a hand on her, teeth that Mist collected up in her paw and kept for some strange reason. The Elementalist looked about ready to use magic against her, but quick words from Phandebrass, who pulled him aside and spoke very quickly and very quietly, headed that idea off.

“Give me a hand here, Kimmie,” Mist ordered. “Light this wood, then help me bring Tarrin to the fire.”

“I’ll get burned,” Kimmie protested.

“Get my belt. Sarraya, where did you put it?”

“I gave it back to Miranda,” she answered from Tarrin’s back.

“What good will your belt do?” she asked.

“Tarrin made it for me. Put it on and you won’t get burned.”

“You’ll need it, mother.”

She shook her head. “He did the same thing to my amulet before we went to Pyros. I’ll be safe. That belt gives us four people who can’t be hurt by fire.”

Miranda handed the belt to Kimmie, who donned it just before using a simple spell to light the fire. It quickly burned up to a respectable blaze, then Mist and Kimmie took Tarrin’s arms and helped him over to the fire. Instead of sitting or standing directly in it, Tarrin sat at its edge and leaned back just enough to allow his wings to make contact with the flames. The fire immediately pulled towards him, ghosting up his back like phantom fingers, coalescing around his injured wings. The pain immediately eased, which caused tense muscles to relax, and he sighed in relieved contentment. The flames were like a hundred massaging hands that caressed the pain away, and for the first time all day, he was almost comfortable.

“Better, my mate?” Mist asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “Sarraya actually came up with a good idea.”

“You make it sounds like it’s never happened before,” Sarraya fumed from Zyri’s shoulder.

“The problem is that all your good ideas get lost in the avalanche of silliness,” Tarrin answered her, leaning back on his paws, putting most of his back and the back of his head into the fire.

“Now that is something you just don’t see,” Lorak chuckled as he came to the fire. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“It stopped hurting years ago,” Tarrin answered. “Me and Dolanna are immune to fire, it’s a side effect of our ability to use our magic.”

“I know any number of Fire adepts who would kill for that,” Lorak told him. “Of all the Elemental arts, that’s the most dangerous.”

“Well, you are a bit different from me in that regard, dear one,” Dolanna said with a slight smile. “I would like to inspect your wings, if you do not object. I promise I will try to be gentle.”

“They don’t hurt right now,” he told her.

“Yes, but I am not sure if they will remain thus when I start touching them,” she reminded him.

“True. Go ahead.”

As the others prepared for some rest, Dolanna rolled up her sleeves and put her hands into the fire, inspecting Tarrin’s wings. Her touch didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t entirely pleasant, like fingers sliding over raw skin. She inspected the tattered remains of his wings methodically and thoroughly, then had him try to move them, but with no success.

“It is as I suspected,” she said in a brusque manner.

“What?” Tarrin asked.

“Your wings are still evaporating.”

“What? I thought you said—“ Mist began, but Dolanna cut her off with a hand.

“Parts of them still are,” she said sharply. “But the main sections of them, the top arch where bones would be in a bird’s wing,” she informed them as she touched the top arch of his wing, “are mending, and very quickly. I think that your wings are excising those parts that cannot be saved and concentrating on rebuilding themselves from the core. I suspect that after they have healed the main arch, they will begin working on regrowing the body.”

“Then it’s not evaporating,” Miranda mused. “It’s just pulling wing from one place and using it to patch another. Don’t forget Dolanna, those aren’t real wings. It needs to do that anyway. Tarrin looks like he has monster cobwebs growing out of his back.”

“Thanks,” Tarrin said dryly, which made the Wikuni give him a cheeky grin.

“Everyone needs to get some rest,” Lorak called. “We have a long way to go.”

“Go take a nap, Mist,” Tarrin told his mate. “I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t leave you,” she stated bluntly.

“There’s nothing you can do, I’m actually quite content right now, and you need to sleep,” he said. “I’m going to lay back and take a nap. You need to do the same.”

“But—“

“But nothing,” he said with a hint of sternness in his voice. “Sleep. Now.” He pointed towards the tent that Azakar and Ulger had just finished raising.

Mist lowered her eyes, then nodded. “As you wish, my mate. Come, cubs,” she said, holding her paw out to Zyri and Jal. “Let’s get you put down. You need all the sleep you can get.” She looked back at him. “Are you sure—“

“Go,” he said, pointing at the tent. “Don’t make me get up and spank you. I’ll be in a very bad mood.”

Mist smiled slightly, then leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips before marching off to the tent with the children in tow. Kimmie stood up herself, then chuckled. “I forgot you could do the impossible,” she told him.

“What?”

“Make mother obey someone,” she said with a wink. “You sure you’re alright?”

“I’m just fine. You need to get some rest too, Kimmie. You may not remember it, but you had a very exhausting few days. Even Miranda’s healing’s not going to fix it all. You need some sleep.”

“Yeah, she already warned me that I needed to get some sleep,” she nodded. “Rest well, dear.”

“I’ll be fine as long as I don’t move, and I’m not moving any time soon,” he told her.

She gave him another smile, then got up and went to the tent.

Tarrin laid back, wriggling just a bit to shift the coals and burning wood around so it didn’t jab at him, then drew in a breath laced with flame and smoke, then sighed in contentment. Breathing inside fire wasn’t exactly good since it put smoke and cinders into his lungs, but he never seemed to have much trouble with it, for some reason. The fire soothed the pain of his wings, and that was worth breathing acrid-smelling air for a little while. The sound of it consuming the wood was serene, calming him, and the presence of the element of which he was part, which was part of him, helped along the mending of his wounded wings, and the injured power that they represented.

After all, the wings were but a metaphor for the true injury he had suffered at the hands of the One, even as the blow that Mist struck to his icon was but a metaphor for the actual damage that she had meted out against it. In the world of the gods, metaphor was a powerful symbol as a way for the material world to rationalize the immaterial power that gods wielded within it. What one saw was only a representation of what was really going on. Even with his wings, it was a metaphor. The physical representation of them had been damaged, a metaphor of the real injury he had received, and even their healing was nothing but a metaphor for the mending taking place within him. He could feel that part of himself drawing in the power of the fire around him, using that energy, that power, to help restore the delicate matrix of divine energies that was his power.

Odd, that. Ever since he’d gotten the wings, he had hidden from the power they represented, hated it, denied it. If he could separate himself from it and be a mortal again, he would do it in a heartbeat. But he had come here, to this new world, and had come to depend on that power…even to enjoy it. It had expanded, become stronger, and he had learned to use it in new ways. It had saved Zyri, Jal, and Telven, then saved them again when Telven betrayed them. It rose up and achieved its full potential when he fought the One over Kimmie, and though it had been found lacking, it had done enough.

He was mortal, but had the powers of a god. The others didn’t understand what that meant—well, Miranda certainly did. She was the only one who understood what it made him, and she empathized with him more than the others. She too was a singularly unique being, and she had had to learn what that meant when she left Keritanima and Wikuna and embarked on a journey of self-discovery. But where Miranda had a place in the world, Tarrin did not. He was a walking abomination, something that should not exist, something that the Elder Gods back home would sooner destroy than have around. But as this world had seen, a direct confrontation between Tarrin and a god could have disastrous effect on the very fabric of reality itself. Even hobbled, only able to focus his power in the physical world, Tarrin had managed to do catastrophic damage to the land itself. Had Tarrin been able to wield a god’s true power, his conflict with the One could have devastated the land for leagues in every direction.

He couldn’t remember the battle, but he had visited the twenty longspan hole in the world that his battle with Val had created in Gora Umadar. It was a veritable sea of boiling lava, which would churn and bubble and remain exposed to the air for the rest of eternity, for there was a lingering remnant of the power that was unleashed at that place that would never allow the land to heal. It was a scar, a blight, a curse on the very fabric of reality itself, and not even the Elder Gods could repair it. It would remain a boiling lake of lava until time was no more, and all things ceased to be.

That was what happened when gods fought one another in the material plane. That was why the Elder Gods could take no direct action against him. They feared exactly what had happened at Pyros…or what used to be Pyros.

And here he was, using the power he had vowed to himself he would never use against a god that sought to destroy him as some kind of sick, twisted spectacle to incite more loyalty and worship from the mortals under his dominion. Tarrin could feel him out there even now, feverishly laboring to restore his icon, an icon buried under a mountain of volcanic rock, ash, and lava, wrapped in the fiery cocoon of the earth’s blood, awaiting the moment it was whole once more and could burst forth the One’s power back into the world. The One was not an Elemental god, he could not draw on the power of the fire around him to accelerate his healing as Tarrin could. All the One could do was try to communicate to his Priests, probably through the Demons, that more worship was needed, more adulation, for that was the power that the One would use to heal his damaged icon.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Tarrin closed his eyes and concentrated on what he felt deep inside him, concentrated on that power he always strove mightily to ignore. He could sense the wound, and he could also sense that that power, which always worked of its own volition it seemed, was currently busily at work mending the damage. He could feel the energy in the fire that surrounded him infuse his being, bolster the power within, grant to it its power so that it could be used to heal the damage done. This was his power. This was what he was. And it was both what he did not want to be, and what he had feared he would become. He had used his full power in direct conflict with a god. He had ravaged the land, he had destroyed an entire city. He had become everything that the Elder Gods were afraid he would become. He had become the Aleax, the embodiment of the power of Chaos, the dark manifestation of the power of the animus. A force of primal destruction, which only sought to unmake all and revert the multiverse back into the state of Entropy from which it had been formed.

And they had been right.

Though he lacked the remorselessness of the Demons, he had become no better than them. They sought to rule through destruction. Tarrin, it seemed, could not help but destroy, even when he did not want to. Every time he exercised his power, he brought about ruination and devastation, no matter how hard he tried not to. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Tarrin never exercised his power unless he was angry, and when he was angry, he simply didn’t care. That was most of the reason why he was so afraid of it. He had doomed Pyros for no other reason than to give Mist the opportunity to finish the task the had been unable to complete.

He could sense them out there. The fire was expanding his consciousness, making him more in touch with the divine aspect of his being. Even injured, he could still use those senses. The world lost its reality to his eyes, to his ears, and became overlaid with sounds and sights and smells and sensations that a mortal couldn’t comprehend, a humming continuity of wellness that beat like the heart of a child, surging through this dimension. It was the soul of this universe, the manifestation of the Elder God who had been created to oversee this dimension, a soul that seemed to be in hibernation. He could feel it out there, present but unresponsive, almost as if it was a power without conscious direction. There were other concentrations, other points of dichotomy that were made aware to him. He could sense the dark shadow of the One not far away, an immensely poweful presence hovering over his icon, and he could feel the rage and fury like an acid taste on his tongue. There were other presences on this world as well, and even one a great distance above him—the god of the Elara most likely. All of them were very weak, very distant, and all of them seemed to be trying to reach out to him, trying to make contact with him. All of them were desperate, terrified, almost panicked, even the stronger sense of presence coming from the god whose domain was so high above them.

Why? Why contact him? And why were they so afraid?

The One, of course. Tarrin was a being of divine power who didn’t depend on the faith of the mortals to survive, just like an Elder god. They had probably been hoping for exactly what happened, that Tarrin would fight the One and hopefully destroy him. But it hadn’t been a victory for either side, more like an aggravated stalemate that put their battle on hold until one of them was well enough to take it up once more. Whoever healed first was going to defeat the other, by striking before the other could defend against it. Tarrin’s arrival to those other gods was probably looked upon as a gift from the God of Gods, a savior who would face and defeat the One before he eradicated the mortals who followed them.

He was no savior. He would have came and went without interference, had the One not made the eternal mistake of abducting Kimmie. That was a fatal mistake, for now Tarrin was angry. And it wasn’t rage, it was the cold, seething anger of the human in him, an icy fury that was in its own way ten times more dangerous than the volatile temper of the Cat. It gave him a clarity of purpose that would not be denied, and that was to mete out righteous punishment on the One for daring to lay a hand on one of his mates. Tarrin would hunt down the One, no matter how long it took, and finish him…because now it was personal.

Those were worries for another time, though. Right now, healing himself was the primary objective, so he closed his eyes and bent to the task. The main focus right now should be minimizing the pain that was making him a burden, keeping them from moving as fast as they needed to move. So that was where he began.

The hours in the fire had done a world of good, for when he removed himself from it, his wings had an entirely different look. The ragged remnants no longer dangled from the top arch like cobwebs, for they were gone. The main arches of his wings were now whole, like the bones from which the rest of the wing would sprout, two slender spikes of living fire jutting from his back. Though he could not move them yet, they were locked in a folded position, the majority of the pain was gone. There was only a dull, nagging ache, as his wings had consumed much of what was causing the pain and used that material to rebuild the main arches. When he left the fire, he found he could move without pain, only that dull ache in them was there, and that pain was easily controlled. He felt an entire world better.

He felt so much better than he actually picked up Zyri and twirled her a couple of times in the air when she came out of the tent, making the girl squeal in surprise. “Good morning,” he told her brightly. “Sleep well?”

“Master Tarrin! You’re feeling better!” she said happily.

“I am indeed, little bit,” he told her. “And I told you before—“

“I know,” she sighed, then she giggled when he tapped her nose with a huge finger. “Your wings look better.”

“They are,” he answered. “Most of the pain is gone. They just ache now, and that’s not bad at all. Where’s Mist?”

“She and Mistress Miranda are off talking,” she answered, pointing out into the ashfall, which still was thick in the air. “Everyone else is still sleeping.”

“Not everyone,” Ulger called in amusement from the far side of the three tents that were erected. “Good to see hear up and about. Up to riding?”

“I’m fine,” he answered. “Just some dull aching, nothing I can’t easily ignore. How’s Kimmie?”

“She looked fine last I saw her,” he answered. “She’s probably still asleep. We’ll have to wake up and get moving soon though.”

“Demons?”

“Actually, just soldiers,” he answered, scratching his cheek just below the wicked scar marring it. “I’ve heard them ride by several times. This black fog won’t let you see more than ten spans in front of you, so they haven’t seen us.”

“So much the better for us.”

“Aye.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“About six hours,” he answered. “I was about to start waking everyone up. Want me to go find Mist and Miranda?”

“No need,” he said with a wave of his paw. “They know I’m awake.”

Tarrin picked up Jal after he came out of the tent and, with a child in each arm, he went back over to the fire and sat down. Fireflash flew from the tent and landed on his shoulder, nuzzling his neck, and Tarrin suddenly felt very sedate and content. “I figure we’ll just grab something quick to eat before starting out,” Tarrin mused, then he chuckled as Jal gingerly touched his wings. “They’re better, they don’t hurt anymore,” he told the boy. “How are you?”

Jal smiled shyly, and patted his shoulder.

“That’s good to hear. What do you think of the Shadows?”

He raised his eyes slightly.

“They’re just like you. Give them a chance. They might be able to teach you more than I can. They know how your power works, after all. I’m just guessing.”

He shrugged, the pointed his small finger in Tarrin’s face.

“We’ll see. As you know, I’m none too fond of strangers.”

“I would hope that you’d think different of us,” Lorak stated calmly as he came out of a tent. “Are you feeling well?”

“Well enough,” he answered. “And to me, everyone is a stranger unless they’ve been with me a while. I’m sure Phandebrass took quite a bit of time to explain some things to you while I was sleeping.”

“He did.”

“Then I’m sure you understand what not to do,” he said bluntly. “Just remember, Lorak, I do not take orders. You’ll only try once.”

“Yes, I discovered that little racial aspect from your mate,” he said, rubbing his jaw absently.

“Then we understand one another,” he said, standing up with both children. “You can teach Jal how to use his power, can’t you?”

“I can’t,” Lorak said calmly. “He’s a Water adept. He needs to be taught by someone of his own element. Water adepts are fairly rare, though, we don’t have one with us. But when we join up with others, I’m sure there will be one among them. He can instruct the boy. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get everything ready.”

They watched him go back into the tent, and Tarrin turned back to the fire. Jal, his eyes glittering in the light, held out a hand and caused a rod of ice to form in his hand. Again, Tarrin felt an odd tingling when he did that. He held out the icy dowel, adding to it, until it became a startling likeness of the Elara, then wiggled it back and forth in a fair imitation of Lorak’s flowing stride.

“Jal! Be nice,” Tarrin admonished in a low voice, as Zyri giggled with her hand over her mouth.

After a cold breakfast, and after he got the expected examination from Dolanna, Mist, and Kimmie, they started out once again. This time Tarrin was alert and well, with only a minor dull ache in his wings that was no problem at all for him to ignore, falling back on Allia’s training in how to ignore pain. He rode with his bow in his lap, for almost twice an hour they had to stop and allow Lorak to hide them as soldiers galloped by, or Demons flapped overhead. They rode as fast as they dared in the thick black ashfall, but as it started to thin after several hours of riding, they started going faster and faster. It was impossible to tell time in that endless blackness, but when it started to thin, as they started getting out from under the ashfall, the faint white disc of the sun started showing high in the sky. “Phaugh, noon,” Ulger growled. “We must have got up and started moving at midnight.”

“We’re moving into a large region of farmland,” Lorak told them. “The roads here are small and winding. There is little in the way of cover, so we’re going to be spotted quickly after this ash cloud lifts.”

“Then we just go faster than they do,” Haley said lightly.

Lorak gave him a cool look, but said nothing.

“Open farmland? That should be fast movement,” Miranda mused.

It was indeed. As the ash cleared and they could see further, they picked up the pace, until they were doing a brisk canter through neat rows of low farm crops. They moved in a straight line until a fence got in the way, then, more often than not, Lorak simply knocked it down with his Elemental magic. Farmers watched the horses and Pegasi plow through their crops with slack-jawed astonishment or dark glares, but did nothing to interfere. Tarrin kept his eyes open and kept scanning the skies, looking for the large silhouette that would be a vrock, the church’s primary airborne scout. He kept his bow in his lap and an arrow nocked half the time, ready for whatever might come. They continued to move north, out of the ashfall, until they had finally broken out from under that black cloud. Lorak no longer had to protect them from breathing in the ash with his magic, and they could again see without the ash reducing visibility. They finally rode over land that wasn’t ankle-deep in gritty ash, and the smell of sulfur finally cleared out of Tarrin’s nose. Getting out of the ash was a relief, but it also lent itself to a new set of problems, for it could no longer hide them from the soldiers of the One.

Around sunset, his diligent scanning of the skies paid off. The outline of a vrock appeared from the ash behind them, moving towards them in almost a perfect straight line. Tarrin reined in his mount and turned it, then quickly nocked an arrow, set his legs around his Pegasus to keep it from fidgeting, and drew his bow in a smooth motion. The magical bow bent back as the arrow’s fletching touched his cheek, and he took careful aim at the figure, which was swooping towards them to investigate, to get a closer look. He blanked out all distractions and became one with his bow, with his target. The slightest shifting of the wind was immediately sensed and his aim adjusted, the gleaming metal arrowhead shifting by a hair’s breadth. “Tarrin?” Kimmie asked, but he did not hear her.

With a slight exhale, Tarrin released the arrow. It whizzed away from them at shocking, almost insane speed, as the unbreakable bow allowed Tarrin to put all his inhuman strength behind that arrow’s flight. The arrow disappeared from view almost immediately, and three seconds went by without him even moving. Then the outline of the vrock kiltered wildly in the air behind them, and almost immediately started plummeting to the ground.

“Wow,” one of the Shadows said in a low tone.

“Good shot,” Azakar said appreciatively, coming up beside him.

“Thanks,” Tarrin said. “Want to give it a go?” he asked, offering his bow.

“I doubt I could draw it,” Azakar chuckled.

“Sure you can, you’re strong enough,” Tarrin told him.

“Can you do that every time?” one of the Wizards asked.

“Nobody can do that every time,” Tarrin snorted.

By the time they camped, Tarrin still felt just fine. And he felt fine the next day, and the next, as they continued to ride due north, through huge tracts of farmlands, and down onto a flat plain. Tarrin’s wings started to show a lengthening along the bottom edge, as they slowly began to regrow, and he was in a relatively even temper. The pain was easily tolerable, leaving him only a little sore at the end of each day, and Mist did not give him the chance to see if it would get worse. Six times during those three days, they were run down or ambushed by church soldiers. They were not full columns, only roving patrols of fifteen men, and none of them had stood a chance. Ulger, Azakar, and Haley combined with Mist to hold the men off, away from the numerous spellcasters behind them, as the Wizards, Elementalists, and single Sorcerer rained death upon them with magic. No battle lasted more than two minutes, for half of the church soldiers would die within the first fifteen seconds. The rest of the battle became a stalling tactic by the Knights and Mist, stopping the men from reaching the spellcasters before they had a chance to unleash another volley of death-dealing magic. Mist glared viciously at Tarrin just before the first of those skirmishes, warning him that he would answer to her if he dared enter melee, so he stayed with the Wizards and Elementalists, serving as the last line of physical defense should one of them get past the fighters. He used his bow during those battles, not even bothering to use Wizard magic, firing into the crowd with surgical precision to pick off enemies. Tarrin’s mastery of his bow so impressed Zyri that she all but started ignoring Ulger and his sling lessons, practicing with the bow Tarrin made for her almost every time they were not moving, and often while on horseback as well. If they weren’t at a canter, Zyri had her bow out. She didn’t waste arrows when shooting from horseback, as they couldn’t recover them, so at first she had Jal make ice arrows for her. They lasted more than long enough for her to nock and fire them, but Tarrin chided her for getting her bowstring wet. That ended that, until Shara started creating arrows made of light, strong stone, with vanes instead of fletching. They worked just as well, they didn’t damage her bowstring, and Shara could provide her with a virtually unlimited supply. She had natural aptitude for the weapon, and she showed marked improvement even over those few short days, because she seemed to have a burning desire to get better.

Watching Zyri gave Tarrin some peace, watched as she fired her bow at little targets that Phandebrass was creating with Wizard magic and hanging out in midair for her early one afternoon, but his mind still wandered to the battle, and to what happened afterwards. It was time to face the fact that he had used Priest magic, the he had granted himself the power to cast that spell. And he had done it before changing, before the sword transformed him. And then there was what he felt when he drove his paw into the earth and commanded the magma below to do his bidding…that sense of connection to this world. It wasn’t just then, though. Throughout the battle, it was as if the world, this dimension was…attuning itself to him.

Or…was he attuning itself to it?

Without much thought, Tarrin raised his paw. He reached within, through the Cat as he always did, and searched for the boundless energy, the power, of the All. But it wasn’t there, as he privately suspected. But then again, the Cat knew only the All of home, it would be incapable of fathoming a different All. An All with a different sense, a different presence. In its way, the All was the indirect manifestation of the power of Creation, the power of Ayise, the Allmother, the goddess who had created the world of Sennadar. After all, the All was the collective power of life present on Sennadar, and that life existed because of Niami, the goddess of Creation. The All of this world would be a manifestation of the Elder god of this dimension, and as such would most certainly have a different sense, even if it had the same power.

This time, Tarrin did not reach through the Cat. He reached directly for that power.

And it was there. It was weak, feeble, listless. The All had a kind of sentience about it, a sentience that was deadly to the Druids who used that power, but this power had no sense of that sentience. It was power without guidance, energy without form, magic without direction. It was simply there. Perhaps that was a symbol of the seeming indifference of the Elder god of this world, who seemed to have created the world and then disappeared.

Immediately, his mind wrapped around what it would take to command this power. The All acted on the will of the Druid and carried out the task, but in its own manner. This energy would not do that; it would have to be directed step by step, point by point, walked through the entire procedure to perform any task. Where a Druid only had to create an image of an object and intend it appear, someone here would have to tell the power exactly what they were going to do, then explain to it in exhausting detail exactly what it had to do to carry out the task. That was not something that the average mortal could do, for it would take an intimate understanding of the forces of magic and the aspects of reality.

Phandebrass could probably do it, though, Tarrin reasoned with a slight smile.

But Tarrin…Tarrin most definitely could not. He had no idea even where to begin trying to do such a thing. He may have some divine power, but he did not have the mind of a god. Without that power of sentience to aid the Druid in the use of that power, it was absolutely out of the question. Tarrin wouldn’t even dream of trying to use that.

So…that was out of the question. He put that aside and went back to the troubling reality that he cast a Priest spell. He remembered how it felt, how the power seemed to flow out of his very soul, through his physical form, and then manifested. It felt much the same as when he cast Priest spells powered by Niami, but now he knew what it felt to give that power rather than take. It had been frightening, it had been shocking…and in a way, it had been beautiful. And he knew that he could do it again, at least after he was whole again. It was not just a one-time deal.

It was scary. He knew his power had changed, had grown, but this. This wasn’t just some trick, this was starting to encroach on the power of a real god. He shouldn’t be able to power spells, because he wasn’t a god. He just had limited divine power that was focused in very specific, very rigid forms. Most of his power was locked away in the sword, for crying out loud. There just seemed to be no way he could do it. He couldn’t understand how it happened, he couldn’t even begin to ponder just how he had managed to do it.

Perhaps it was best just to say that he did do it, and that he just couldn’t explain it. When his wings were whole, he’d be able to do it again, he just knew he could.

His wings. He looked over his shoulder, and saw that they were growing nicely. The bottom edges of the arch of his wings was longer, starting to thicken, and the dull red and yellows were starting to sharpen, to become clear, almost like new feathers or scales on the surface of his healing wings.

There wasn’t much else that he could really do, and Tarrin was never one to dwell on things that he couldn’t change. That was the way things were, he couldn’t change it or understand it, so he just had to accept it.

And that, was that.

Farmland yielded to virgin grassland quickly once they entered the flat plain, as they continued to hurry to the north, grass that showed signs of heavy traffic by groups of mounted men, patrols of the One’s church with whom they sparred on four occasions that first day they left the domesticated farmlands. A single look back told them all that the One’s soldiers were following, but they were moving too quickly for enough reinforcements to catch up with them to attempt an assault. The Pegasi were just as tireless on the ground as they were in the air, and the Shadows had had the foresight to choose durable animals capable of extended activity.

The opportunity to ride without pain allowed him to observe the Shadows more closely. Tarrin only knew the names of a couple of them…and he really didn’t care to know any more. They mattered very little to him, they were nothing but extra weight. But Dolanna felt that traveling with them was to their advantage, and he would not gainsay her. But watching them let him understand how things worked among them. Lorak was the utter and undisputed ruler of their group. They deferred to him in all things; in fact, it seemed like they had no opinion that was not his own. Some men or women ruled in that manner through charisma or exceptional leadership, but so far, Lorak had shown neither of those traits. He was too driven, too single-minded to show the kind of charisma that would create that kind of devotion, and so far, few of his command decisions seemed to show a vast intelligence. Tarrin hadn’t quite figured out why they followed him so blindly, but there obviously had to be a reason. He’d figure it out.

They were certainly unsure about Tarrin and his group, however. He could see it in their eyes, even after so many days with them. Tarrin frightened them, Kimmie frightened them, Mist frightened them even more, but oddly enough, Miranda was the one that seemed to frighten them the most. The Were-cats were obviously not human, but they looked somewhat human. But Miranda, Miranda was decidedly inhuman. The only thing that made her even remotely seemed normal was the fact that she wore clothes and could talk. He wasn’t sure why that seemed to bother them, that the fact that Miranda didn’t have a human face made her more frightening than the Were-cats, but it did. Tarrin was cold, Mist was downright violent, but they still were less afraid of them than they were of Miranda, who was as friendly as could be…at least at first. The only one of them that seemed to want to have anything to do with her was Shara, the Earth Elementalist who served as their group’s healer.

They couldn’t see how beautiful Miranda was…none of them could. There was an aura of purity around Miranda that shone like a beacon, the power of Kikkalli that made her what she was. It wasn’t an aura of power or might, it was an aura of love, the love of a mother for a child, the special bond between Miranda and Kikkalli that gave her the power to use her magic in this world. Tarrin had sensed that bond since the moment he met her, but only now could he see it. Again, it was a disturbing alteration in his own power, and he wondered if Miranda could see anything like that about him. Miranda was a very special mortal, blessed by Kikkalli from birth as an Avatar, but only after she had become a Priestess did she really come into that birthright. Of them all, Tarrin probably had the easiest time talking to Miranda about his concerns or his power, for she was the only one that could really understand. Just like him, Miranda was in something of the inner circle of divine ability, a mortal that really did know what was going on, privy to information and knowledge beyond mortal ken.

“Why aren’t there any farms out here?” Haley asked. “This is fertile land, and flat as a board. It’s perfect farmland.”

“That’s why,” Shara said, pointing to the northeast, where the hint of forest lurked on the horizon. “That’s called the Fangwood. Rumor says that there’s all manner of nasty beasties lurkin’ within, so the farmers willna’ till any land within a day’s walk. You willna’ find a single man or woman within a day’s walk o’ that place.”

“It’s all subterfuge, of course,” Lorak said calmly. “We used to use the Fangwood as a base, so we encouraged those kinds of rumors. We stopped using it some ten years ago, but the rumors remain.”

“Why did you stop using it?” Tarrin asked. “It’s a perfect way to lock down a good piece of the One’s army if you can raid his farmland.”

“After the One sealed away his lands from our Gatemasters, we deemed it too much of a risk to try to reinforce the outpost after too many parties were ambushed. We pulled it east, closer to the coast, on the far side of the Goldblade Hills. But that outpost was destroyed after the One cut our lines of communication with the Dura.”

“How far are we from the Dura’s fortress?” Dolanna asked.

“Some twenty days, at least,” Lorak answered, pointing. “We’ll have to cross the Stonespine Mountains first, then through a vast forest that covers the land between the Stonespines and the Ice Mountains. What concerns me most is the Stonespines. There are only a few passes through them, and the Pyrosians have built citadels in the passes to defend them. The One’s church was always terrified of the Dura for some reason, the citadels are part of the defenses they built to protect themselves from the Dura.” He snorted. “Foolishness. The Dura almost never leave their fortress.”

“If they’re anything like the Dwarves from our legend, the Pyrosians have reason to be afraid,” Miranda mused. “They were powerful and fearless warriors. They were regarded as the greatest warriors of their time. I’d love to see how they’d fare against the Ungardt, or the Selani, or the Vendari, though,” she chuckled.

“What I wouldn’t give to have Binter and Sisska here,” Tarrin grunted. “We’ve been lucky so far. It’s just a matter of time before we run into more soldiers than four people can hold off. They could hold off a squad all by themselves.”

“I wonder how they’re doing,” Sarraya piped in from Tarrin’s shoulder.

“Probably trying to keep their patience,” Tarrin chuckled. “Just think about it. Keritanima and Faalken? They must be about to go crazy.”

Sarraya giggled. “Probably,” she agreed. “We might be better served asking for someone we could get though, like Var and Denai.”

“Perhaps they won’t be necessary,” Lorak said, reining in and then suddenly standing in his stirrups and looking to the west. Tarrin looked out in that direction as well, and he saw a small column of mounted men, riding northward. From that distance they were little more than specks against the grass, but even from that distance he could see that they weren’t church soldiers.

“Are they ours?” one of the other Shadows asked.

Tarrin felt that odd sensation again as Lorak used his power, but what he did was quite beyond Tarrin. “They are,” he answered. “Twelve men, most of them guards. I only see two casters with them.”

“That’s ten swords to help defend us,” Neh said in her lilting voice. “Signal them, Lorak.”

Lorak immediately responded to the Elara female in an authoritative voice, using his their native tongue. Tarrin’s ears picked up instantly as he heard that language, for its similarity to Sha’Kar—or more specifically, the ancient root language of Urzani, whom Spyder had used for him once—was uncanny. Neh blushed and lowered her chin, then nodded silently, quite obviously reprimanded in some manner. He went over what Lorak said multiple times, puzzling out the separate words, putting a finger to his chin in furious thought as he struggled to piece together what just transpired.

It did not take him long. Tarrin had a knack for languages, and when it came to linguistics, everyone brought it to him first. Silence, girl. I’ll signal them when I’m sure it’s safe, and not a moment before.

Well, he didn’t see anything in there mean in that, but the tone of Lorak’s voice hinted to Tarrin that the Elara didn’t like any kind of challenge to his authority.

Tarrin’s heart fluttered a moment as he had a revelation of sorts. The orcs were Waern who had come to this world through a gate, and settled in…could it be that the Elara were those beings who existed before the Urzani? Could they be the ancestor race of Spyder, Miranda, and Allia? Tarrin remembered a conversation with Spyder a long, long time ago, when she remarked in passing that the parent race of the Urzani were called elves. Well, Lorak had said that the humans here also called his kind elves.

Tarrin looked at Dolanna, who had a similar thoughtful look on her face, and then to Miranda, who was whispering Lorak’s words over and over to herself, and then to Phandebrass, who was furiously writing in one of his books. “Phandebrass,” Tarrin called, but the Wizard waved him off with his free hand, which caused the book to nearly slip out of his saddle. “Phandebrass!”

“I say, not yet lad,” he replied quickly in Sulasian. “I must write that down. I—“ he started, then he looked up at Tarrin, who simply nodded. Then the white-haired Wizard laughed. “I say, capital! Is it?”
“Yes,” Tarrin said again. “Lorak, how long have your people been here?” Tarrin asked.

“That’s a strange question,” he answered as he used his magic to create another spell. Tarrin had no idea what it did…it was probably some kind of scrying spell of some sort. Some of Lorak’s magic seemed to deal with vision and images. “We’ve always been here, since the day Elara formed our world from the hair of her husband, Keralon, who then breathed life into us.”

It took a significant realignment of his thinking, but he was able to do it. “Are you sure?” he asked, using the same ancient, archaic dialect of Urzani that he was certain that Lorak would understand.

He couldn’t have produced a more profound effect if he’d clubbed Lorak out of his saddle. Lorak’s spell got away from him, then disrupted as all three of the Elara stared at him like he was a live snake. “How do you come to speak our language?” Thren demanded instantly.

“Actually, I don’t. Not completely,” he answered in Penali. “But it’s based on an ancient dialect of Urzani, which is the root language of the Sha’Kar, and I do speak Sha’Kar.”

“Tarrin is gifted in the realm of language,” Dolanna told Lorak with a smile.

“How would some ancient language from a people I’ve never heard of be related to our own?” Lorak demanded.

“I’d hazard to guess that it’s because you’re related to them,” Tarrin mused. “Either you’re also descendents of people from Sennadar, or some of them came over and were introduced into your society. Or, maybe some strange twist caused you to develop a very similar language, who knows. But that seems a bit far-fetched to me. I’d bet you’re somehow related to the ancestors of the Urzani.”

“Possible, but it’s impossible to conceive that we did not come from here,” he said flatly. “If there’s any relation between the Elara and this ancient race you describe, perhaps we traveled there instead of them traveling here.”

“Possible,” Tarrin admitted without much emotion. “If your history goes back some fifteen thousand years. That’s when the Urzani destroyed their parent race and conquered the world, so it would have to be before that.”

“Our noble history goes back much further than that,” Lorak said stiffly.

“Which only helps reinforce my point,” Tarrin said calmly.

Miranda laughed. “We might be distant cousins,” she announced. “The Wikuni are descended from the Urzani, though it’s a bit hard to explain how, given how I look,” she said with a cheeky grin and a wink.

“It is impossible that you would be in any way related to us,” Thren said with sudden hostility.

“Anything is possible,” Miranda told him with sudden seriousness. “Wikuni look the way we do because we were touched by the hands of our gods and changed, a physical reminder of the fact that we were taking up a new life.