Honor and Blood

by James Galloway

  "I'm fine now," he replied. "I, I don't think the Cat was ready to deal with how I'd feel being separated from the others. It's been a pretty rough couple of months."

  "Just hang in there, my son," she said gently. "And you should avoid spending extended time in cat form until the feelings ease."

  "I sorta figured that out already," he told her. "Is Jula going to make it?"

  "I haven't decided yet. The girl has determination, but she's not as strong-willed as you. I don't know yet. Now tell me, what happened to you, cub? You look my age."

  "He got the short end of a fight with a Succubus, Triana," Sarraya cut in with a grin. "It tried to drain him, and you know how their powers work."

  Triana grunted. "That would do it," she agreed. "I thought he'd got tangled up with a Poltergeist. They can age the living too. Have you had any problems with it, cub?"

  "Mother, I didn't even notice it until now," he replied. "I've been in cat form this whole time."

  "Well, you'd better take a bit of time to get used to it. You're taller now, and your Were-cat body has changed. You'll be stronger. A lot stronger. We only develop more as we age."

  "I'll help him adjust," Sarraya told her.

  "Have you had any trouble with being chased?" Tarrin asked.

  "Not at all," she replied. "We did have a couple of episodes with pirates, but they didn't last long. Where are you right now?"

  "Saranam. Where are you?"

  "We just left Tor yesterday. We should be back in Suld by this time next month."

  "That's good to hear," he sighed. "When you get to Suld, would you have someone send a letter to my parents? I think they need to know I'm alright."

  "I think Dolanna's been sending letters to your parents for a while now, though the trees know how she's getting them there," Triana grunted. "She's been heavy with the pen for about a month now."

  "Why?"

  "War, cub, war," Triana replied. "Sulasia and Daltochan are heavy into it. The Dals are occupying most of the northern marches of Sulasia. Draconia and Tykarthia are trying to exterminate each other, and Tor invaded eastern Shacè last month. About the only kingdom that hasn't gone crazy in the West is Arkis."

  "Sulasia's being occupied?"

  "Parts of it, from what we've heard. We may get back to Suld to find it surrounded by a Dal army."

  "That won't last long," Sarraya chimed in. "The katzh-dashi will defend Suld. They'll never get past the outer wall."

  "I know, but it still makes things nervous. No city likes a hostile army camped outside its walls. Have you been keeping my cub safe, Sarraya?"

  "As safe as possible," she replied. "I've started teaching him the basics about how Druidic magic works. I hope you don't mind."

  "No, but don't you dare teach him any techniques," she said sternly. "He hasn't been evaluated yet."

  "Why didn't you tell me that I could use Druidic magic, mother?" Tarrin asked.

  "Because you had more important problems," she replied. "And it's not something you try to learn when you're distracted. If Sarraya taught you anything, it's that there is no room for mistakes when you use Druidic magic."

  "She made that point about a hundred times, mother."

  "Then that was about a thousand times too few," Triana grunted. "I don't have much more time. Do you need anything, Tarrin? Are you alright?"

  "I'll be fine, mother. I just needed to talk to you, that's all."

  The stony mask dissolved from her face, showing the loving parent that she was. "I understand, cub."

  "Don't tell Allia or the others that we talked. It makes me feel better to talk to you, but I think I'd feel worse if I talked to them."

  "I understand that too," she smiled. "What I give you, you can take with you. What they give you only makes you want more of it."

  He nodded soberly. Triana was every bit as wise as she was old.

  "I have to go now. Be careful, cub. I love you."

  "I love you too, mother," he replied sincerely, just as the image of her wavered, then vanished.

  Tarrin sighed, then turned around. Everything he wanted in life had just disappeared. Family, home, children. Peace and tranquility. A place where he belonged. It was the main part of his dreams of the future, if he managed to survive long enough to reach it. Triana was a part of that dream, the mother of his new life, and seeing her made him yearn to be with the others, to be where he belonged.

  But it wasn't as bad as it would have been if he had seen Allia or Keritanaima.

  There was no way to go but forward. He had to keep going, or he'd never find his peace. He couldn't stay in cat form all the time now, not if he wanted to avoid the pain it caused to him. That meant that things were going to be a bit more dangerous. Without his cat form to hide the Book of Ages in the elsewhere, his enemies could track him down. But he really had no choice. Nobody ever said that the road ahead had to be an easy one.

  "Tarrin, are you alright?" Sarraya asked.

  "I'm fine, Sarraya," he replied quietly. "I'm not ready to change back yet, so I have to keep moving. We need to keep moving. I can't stay in one place like this. They'll be able to come right after us."

  "Tarrin, I don't think you're in any condition to keep running. You're exhausted!"

  "Then help me find some food, and then we'll go."

  "There's nobody in sight, you blockhead! What are they going to do, appear out of thin air?"

  Tarrin looked right at her. "I'm not taking any chances," he said bluntly. "If they did appear out of thin air, I wouldn't be very surprised."

  Sarraya threw her hands up in frustration. "You're being paranoid!" she snapped.

  "One of us has to be."

  Sarraya growled in her throat, then landed on the log. He felt her use her Druidic magic, and a small pile of apples appeared on the ground in front of him. "There you go," she said grandly, motioning to the apples. "Eat up, then we'll move on. I'm going to go lay down. Wake me up when you're ready."

  He did just that. He sat down in front of the apples and wolfed them down like a starving man, considering what was to come. Since he wasn't hiding anymore, they'd know where to look for him. The Zakkites probably wouldn't be a problem, since they were so far inland now. But the ki'zadun, that was another story. They used Wyverns to fly around, Jula had told him so. He had little doubt that a flight of Wyverns were right now being readied to come after him. That was his greatest threat. There were local mages and such as well, but they weren't as powerful or well prepared as those coming by air. They knew of him, they knew what he was and how to attack him, where the local yokel did not.

  Even if they did find him whether they would attack him was also an issue. Tarrin had demonstrated in the past that he had power enough to crush just about any challenger. And his power was only getting stronger. He wasn't sure the ki'zadun were crazy enough to throw away more lives to try to take the book. They may try to steal it, but he wasn't sure they'd attack him unless they felt they had a serious counter to his advantage. No, they'd tried that before, they'd learned their lessons. The locals didn't know that, so they'd just come after him. And they'd be no real threat to him. It was the ki'zadun that was the main threat, and in their knowledge of him came his uncertainty. What dirty trick would they try next to try to beat him? They'd tried deception, kidnapping, assassins, they tried driving him crazy, they even sent Jula to ruin his reputation and slow him down. They had to be running out of items in their bag of tricks. They had to be getting desperate, and that made them dangerous. Tarrin respected the resilience and staying power of his oldest enemies. He hated them and wanted to destroy them, but even he had to respect their power. He'd be a fool not to do so. He'd been trained never to underestimate his opposition.

  The emptiness. He still felt its fringes, and part of him dreaded going back to cat form. The Cat lived in the moment, and that was the problem. A feeling like homesickness, longing for family, it was a feeling that the Cat could understand, but could not completely comprehend. That w
as the core of the issue. The Cat could not forget, even as it lived within its eternal moment. They were not with him right now, and right now was the only thing that mattered to it. He'd have to avoid cat form for a couple of days, or use it only to sleep and hide. In sleep, the Cat could forget the pain.

  It was time to go. He'd stood in one place too long as it was, he was just making it easy for anyone chasing him to home in on his location. In a way, he almost wanted them to find him. He wouldn't mind a little bit of therapudic venting at the moment. Take out his frustrations on whoever was unfortunate enough to be his playmate. But with his luck, he'd end up facing an army of Demons, or a Dragon, or some irritated god.

  Better safe than sorry.

  He stood up. It was time to go.

  "Sarraya," he called, shifting the precious pack on his back, with its priceless cargo. "It's time to go."

  "Alright," she said in a yawning voice. "You go on, I'll catch up in a minute."

  He nodded, looking up into the cloudless morning sky. The Skybands showed him east and west, so it was very easy to move west. West was the desert, and the only safety he would find in this hostile land. The only place where nobody would dare follow him. He set out slowly, feeling the poor eating in his muscles as they were forced to work more than normal, feeling the changes. His legs were longer now, allowing him to cover more ground with each stride. It felt strange to him, to feel himself with a higher center of gravity, to feel as if he was less stable than before. He knew that that was just a combination of a taller body and lack of food for a while, but it didn't change the feeling all that much. He ran for a few minutes at a slow pace, then gradually managed to increase it as he felt more and more comfortable with the new way things felt. He finally settled into a ground-eating pace that few horses could hold for long, a pace that made him feel as if he was flying across the surface of the savannah, allowing his long legs to eat up the distance. A pace that he felt he could hold forever, it felt so comfortable. It was a pace that focused him on his running, that allowed his mind to drift just enough to allow the time to flow by easily. It wasn't the eternal moment of the Cat, but it was still good enough to make him blink in surprise when he realized that the sun was directly overhead, and the dry plains of Saranam were decidedly hot. Sarraya was flitting along just beside him easily, leaving him to his thoughts.

  He spotted them just as he began to slow. Three specks to the northwest, close to one another. They didn't have the shape to be birds, not with such unusually formed wings. Tarrin slowed to a stop and pointed in that direction to Sarraya. "What do you think, Sarraya?" he asked without any warning. "Bird or not?"

  "Definitely not," she replied, shading her eyes from the light as she peered towards them. "Whatever they are, they're big. I can't tell which way they're going."

  Tarrin looked around. On the horizon, there was a ridge that looked to be a city's wall. That was possible, because they were standing on a slight rise which had another behind that wall. A shallow valley, and that meant that there either was or had been a river flowing through it. He couldn't tell, because the wind was coming up from his back, bringing nothing but the smell of dust, dry grass, and hiding animals to him. There was supposed to be a good-sized river in Saranam, the lifeblood of the kingdom, where the majority of the Saranam peoples were located.

  "Is this a river valley?" Tarrin asked. "And is that a city over there?"

  "I think so, on both," she replied, rising about thirty spans into the air and peering ahead of them. "It certainly looks like a city, and this is about where the Sar river would be. Think we can make it over to that city before whatever those things are up there reach us?"

  Tarrin reached behind him and unhooked his water skin, then took a long swallow. "I think we can make it," he replied. "It doesn't look all that far." He wasn't really tired, but he was starting to feel a bit sleepy. That would go away as soon as he started moving again.

  "How are you feeling?"

  "A bit sleepy, but not really tired," he replied. "Those apples you gave me did the trick."

  "Well, we'll get a real meal in that city," she told him. "I want you to eat until you can't eat anymore. And you need meat. Lots of meat. That should rebuild what's wasted away."

  "Stopping may not be a good idea."

  "This isn't about a good idea, this is about what your body desperately needs," she told him bluntly. "We don't have any choice, Tarrin. If we don't stop and let you get back what you've lost, you're going to get sick."

  "We can't afford that."

  "Exactly. You should listen to me, Tarrin. After all, I'm much smarter than you," she said with a mischievious grin.

  "I'm so glad you think so," he said dryly, securing his waterskin, then starting out for the city. "Use your towering intellect to keep an eye on those birds, or whatever they are."

  "Child's play."

  "Then it should be a challenge for you."

  "You," she huffed as she flitted up to a matching pace with him.

  There was something of an aire of urgency now. Sarraya kept her eyes on the three aerial forms, who seemed to only get a little closer as the walls of the unnamed city grew more and more in front of them. And spread out further and further. Tarrin was a bit surprised to find that this city was quite large, built on both sides of a very wide, slow-moving river that was a very unhealthy brown color. The stone of the wall was a curious whitish color, just barely tinged with the color of sand. Tarrin wondered where they found that much stone; the plains of Saranam were dusty sand and loose soil, to find anything harder than wood on the windswept plains was an accomplishment. They had to have brought it in from somewhere else, probably the mountains far to the northwest, or from the desert. Either way, the city's walls became more and more distinctive to his eyes as they approached them, and as the flying forms seemed to continue to keep their distance. Were they truly afraid of him now? Were they just tracking him, waiting for reinforcements? That would be the wisest course. Only three would have virtually no chance of taking the book from him.

  He looked over the walls of the city, and saw something that he did not like. It was a darkness, a swirling darkness, like some great cloud.

  A sandstorm!

  No wonder the fliers wouldn't approach. A sandstorm from the desert had managed to come into Saranam, and it was threatening the area.

  "Sarraya, do you see that?" he called as he ran towards the city.

  "A sandstorm," she replied. "It's moving this way."

  "I didn't think we were that close to the desert."

  "We're not. Sandstorms sometimes come halfway to Dala Yar Arak this time of year. It's the beginning of the stormy season. This must be the first one."

  "That must be why those fliers won't approach. I don't think I'd want to get caught in a sandstorm while flying."

  "I think you're right there," she agreed. "Well, Tarrin, now you know why they call it the Desert of Swirling Sands. That storm would be three times as big in the desert. They lose their power as they come into Saranam."

  "When did you learn about all this?"

  "I'm a Druid, silly," Sarraya said, coming up to his head level and looking at him as he ran and she flew. "Part of it is magic, but part is study. We study nature. Weather is part of nature."

  "I'm surprised that you study weather in places you've never been."

  "Who says I've never been to Saranam?" she challenged.

  "Me."

  She laughed. "Alright, not Saranam, but I have been to the desert before. There are Druids out there, and I've been to see a couple of them. They taught me about desert weather."

  "Is that what we're going to be dealing with in the desert?" he asked.

  "Afraid so," she replied. "This time of year, if you have a day where you can see the sky, it's a good one. We'd better buy you some good storm clothes. I'll make you a good visor to protect your eyes from the blowing sand, too."

  "Why is it like that?"

  "Climate," she replied. "The Sand
shield mountains generate wind gusts that expand when they get out over the open desert, fueled by the heat of the sand and rock. It kind of snowballs from there into those big storms. This is the rainy season in Arkis, so that means it's the storm season in the desert. The rain winds get funnelled through the mountains and turn into sandstorms on this side."

  "That Druid taught you that?"

  "Some of it," she replied. "I pieced the rest together based on my knowledge of the weather in Arkis. I live just inside the Frontier on the Arkis side."

  "If you're experienced, then tell me we're going to get there before the storm does."

  "Tarrin, that storm is a long way off. It's just so big, it looks close. When it gets here, it'll be like looking at a wall of dark dust, five thousand spans high."

  "You're serious!"

  "Very," she replied. "Seeing a sandstorm roll in is a unique experience."

  "How long do they last?"

  "This far from the desert, probably not long," she replied. "Now you know why these plains are so dusty. The storms blow it in. Sometimes it takes a month for it to settle out of the air, if was a particularly nasty storm."

  The fields around the city appeared when they crested a slight rise, patches of green around the sand colored walls, but they were dwarfed by the huge number of fences for livestock that dominated the center of the wall, as if they were built there to use the wall to protect against blowing sand. Wrangling seemed to be more important to the city than farming, and given the climate, he understood. It was easier to raise sheep, goats, and cattle than it was to grow food in a land subject to scouring sandstorms. The dusty plains had enough scrubby grass growing in the sandy soil to support herding. He could also see the river better, and saw several ships on both sides of the city. The sandy walls began to seem more and more like the bastion of human habitation as he neared them, and the ground just ahead showed signs that a herd of animals had recently gnawed down the wiry grass that grew in the arid plain.