"Sarraya?"
"I've never heard of them either," she told him. "I could take one, though. If it's made of sand, I can deal with it on that level."
"Good enough for me," he said calmly. "You have until sunset. If you stay here tonight, don't bother trying to catch up."
"You are foolish to challenge the Sandmen," she warned.
"I don't fear ghosts, girl," he replied with a level look. "The ghosts had better fear me. I'm much worse than they are."
She gave him a sidelong look, then dazzled him what that charming smile. "I think I've found someone who will fill the nights of my grandchildren with wonderful songs," she told him, then she started towards the Selani encampment.
Tarrin snorted, then turned to circumnavigate the camp. Sarraya floated along beside his head, looking around him at the Selani who gathered with weapons in their hands to observe them. "They're a pretty paranoid bunch," she noted. "The Selani I met when I was in the desert weren't so mean looking."
"Sounds like this is a pretty rough stretch of desert," he replied. "Allia never talked about these Sandmen, so they must only be native to this area. Sounds like these Selani get lots of exercise."
"That girl certainly seems adventurous. I get the feeling she's so set on going with us just for the excitement of it."
"Possible. If she wants excitement, I'm sure she'll find lots of it. Considering the way trouble always seems to follow us around."
Sarraya laughed. "That's for certain," she agreed with a continuing chuckle. "You sure you're ready to deal with a stranger?"
"No," he answered honestly. "But something inside me wants to try anyway. Maybe the part of me that's so tired of being what I am."
"Nothing wrong with trying," she assured him. "She seems pretty self-sufficient. If we send her away, I don't doubt she'll make it back to her tribe."
"She's just a girl," he snorted. "She shouldn't be off her mother's leash."
"The desert raises them young, Tarrin," Sarraya replied. "Besides, Selani age slower than humans. She looks eighteen, but I'll bet she's probably around twenty-five. She's cute."
"You're noticing the wrong things about the wrong gender, Sarraya."
"Women can appreciate the beauty of another woman, Tarrin," she said curtly. "And besides, she's not half as pretty as I am."
"You certainly have a high opinion of yourself."
"She's the wrong color. All wrong. How can she be truly beautiful unless she has blue skin?"
"I think some racial prejudice is showing through."
"Posh," Sarraya snorted. "She's cute, I'll give her that, but nowhere near me."
"Why all this sudden interest in how cute a Selani woman is, Sarraya?"
"Just comparing, Tarrin. Women like to do that. It's not like I want to date her or anything."
"I'm so glad to hear that. I'm sure she would be too."
"What a thing to say!"
"It's true. You're way too short for her."
Sarraya glared at him, then she burst out into helpless laughter.
Tarrin managed to skirt the camp, getting around on the north side, without too much trouble. He displaced a smaller flock of sukk as he came around, the large birds wanting nothing to do with the Were-cat, and he found a nice rock upon which to sit while he waited for Denai, while Sarraya flitted off to go look at something. He had no idea why he was waiting for Denai. He should have just moved on, and let her decide whether it was worth the trouble to catch up with him. Part of him wanted nothing to do with her. But another part of him did want something to do with her, and for the first time in a very long while, that part of him was shouting louder than his fear. It could have been because he saw her as a child, it could have been because she was Selani, and he trusted Selani up to a point, or it could have been that he was simply ready to see if he could tolerate strangers.
He wasn't quite sure why he was afraid to go into the camp. He'd gone into human cities alone, without his sisters and friends around him to give him some support and some familiarity to keep him calm. He'd managed to go into that Saranam city easily, and though he'd felt anxiety and fear, it had been managable. But these Selani...it seemed different somehow. He trusted their behavior, up to a point, because of Allia and his understanding of them. Yet he was afraid to surround himself with Selani. Perhaps it was because, unlike humans, Selani did pose a danger to him. Allia was more than capable of killing him, and he knew it. That caused him to afford much more respect to a Selani opponent than a human. And that was probably why he was afraid of them. Respect caused him to fear them, fear them more than humans, simply because they could hurt him. With humans, it was different. The average human had almost no chance of doing him any harm, so he wasn't very worried about going out among them. It took an extraordinary human, or one with knowledge that was not commonplace, to do him harm.
Strange. If that were the case, then maybe he was more tolerant than he thought he was. If he was able to differentiate between those that could harm him and those that could not, and give each group a different level of caution, then perhaps he wasn't quite so feral as he believed.
He watched the Selani as they watched him, gathered on that side of the camp, many of them holding weapons and watching to see if he did anything hostile. He knew the sharpness of Selani eyes, so he knew that they had seen the brands. That was probably the only reason they weren't attacking him as an outlander. He was a mystery, an unknown, carrying the brands that would give him safe passage through the desert, but of a species they had never seen before. The combination of those meant that they would simply not pester him.
Well, at least most of them thought that way. One rather tall Selani broke away from the group, holding a longspear in his hand. He marched towards Tarrin calmly and steadily, but Tarrin gave no outward reaction to the man. He simply watched him, with only his tail moving back and forth. A surge of irrational fear rose up in him, but he rose up along with it and stomped on it. He would not be a slave to his own fear. He would not! It was hard to scent the man through the dried blood that still stuck to him, from the fight with the inu, but once he got close enough, the coppery-flavored scent of the Selani reached him. There was nothing in that scent to hint to him what the man intended to do. Usually, a scent gave away fear, anger, even murderous intent. But he couldn't find any of those things in this man's scent.
The man didn't attack. He stopped, about ten paces from Tarrin's rock, and grounded the butt of his spear in the dusty soil. "You claim blood debt on my daughter?"
"She claims it against me," he said evenly in reply. "I already absolved her of any need to satisfy her debt. What she does is by her own choice."
"You carry the brands, so you must know of our custom. You know she would not simply walk away."
"I certainly tried to convince her. I don't have time to shephard a child."
"Speak carefully about my daughter, stranger," the man said with a bit of steel in his voice. "Her brands give her the same rights as any of us."
"Truth is truth," Tarrin said, rising up onto his feet, rising up over the Selani man. To his credit, the Selani didn't flinch away from Tarrin's unnatural height. "All of you are like children to me."
"Seeing you like this, I see the truth of that," the man acceded with a hint of a smile. "What my daughter does is her choice. I have no right to force her. Those rights were surrendered when she took the brands. But I will not allow my daughter to travel into danger without understanding that danger."
"I intend to let her guide me for a few days, then I'll send her back," he told the man. "I'm not the kind that goes looking for danger. I agreed to let her guide me so I could avoid dangerous areas."
"She says you intend to move in the night. That is seeking danger."
"These Sandmen don't concern me, shih," he said, using the Selani term for honored stranger. "I don't fear ghosts."
"You don't understand the danger."
"I understand the danger. They are ghosts made of sand. Th
ere are ways to stop sand."
"My daughter said you are shaman. Is this true?"
"It is," he replied honestly. "I also have an companion who is shaman."
The man looked him up and down. "My daughter is an adult, so I can't stop her. But if something should happen to her, there will be blood between us, stranger."
That was a Selani term for a feud. "Whatever happens to your daughter is by her choice, not yours," he replied, looking down at the man. "First she is old enough to make her own choices, now you seek to dishonor the choices she makes."
"That is a father's right," he said evenly. "Why do you seek to travel at night?"
"To get away from you," he replied bluntly. There was no reason to lie to Selani. "I don't like strangers. I can't find peace with them close to me. So I will move away from you before I rest."
"My daughter is a stranger."
"Your daughter is one stranger. One, I can tolerate. A group is another matter."
"A strange reasoning."
"I'm not human, shih. Don't try to judge me by any standard you're used to."
"I've taken it," he said, using a Selani slang phrase for understood. The Selani language had a kind of thing for the word take. It appeared in many phrases and expressions, even when it made little sense for it to be there. "If I may be so bold, what exactly are you?"
"There's no word for me in your language," he replied. "You can call me a man-cat. That's the closest I can get."
"It seems fitting," he agreed. Denai appeared on the edge of the camp, with a pack on her back and trotting towards them easily. She came up behind her father, who turned to look at her, and then she put her hand to his face in ritual farewell as he did the same with her. "Go with caution, daughter," he warned. "Don't let need for honor cloud your judgement. A wise woman knows when a debt is repaid, and when the greed for honor has taken over."
"I'll be alright, father," she replied easily. "If that one can kill a pack of inu, I don't see much need to worry."
"Be careful all the same," he warned. "We'll sing for you each night until you come home."
"I appreciate that, father," she said with that charming smile. "I'll be home as soon as the debt is repaid."
Tarrin settled his sword a bit on his back, then turned away from them and started off towards the northwest. He'd give them a moment in private, and besides, seeing them like that made him miss his sisters, and his parents, and Triana. It wasn't something he wanted to dwell upon.
Behind him, the Selani camp arose in song. The sound of it was haunting, as a multitude of gentle, soft voices joined together in what sounded to him was a benediction, and a plea for the safe return of their daughter. The sound of it was haunting, complicated, as the many voices joined together to form a choral whole that was stronger than the sum of its parts. It reminded him in a strange way of the Goddess, and the curious choral effect of her voice when she spoke to him, as if no one voice could contain all the power within it. This wasn't the powerful choral quality ofthe Goddess, but the voices carried a strange power of their own. It incited several memories of Allia and her lovely voice, how she would sing for him whenever he was feeling unwell or out of sorts. Her voice was nothing like what he heard behind him, but the sound of it only made his longing for Allia's company that much worse. He closed his ears to that sound, looking down at the ground as he left, picking up his pace to get out of earshot of their lovely song, a song that reminded him of the family he had left behind.
And he was missing them more and more with every passing day.
Denai was going to be a problem.
He realized that while sitting around a campfire with her and Sarraya about midnight. They had moved through half the night to get some distance from the other Selani, and had seen none of these mysterious Sandmen that the Selani warned him about. They found a nice place in a shallow hollow in the side of a rocks spire, a hollow that caught the fire's heat and warmed the area much more than if they were out in the open. Denai had brained a large lizard, nearly five spans long, with a slender throwing dagger, and that had been dinner.
Denai was...energetic. That was a kind term. In actuality, she was hyperactive, overflowing with youthful energy and exuberance. Her eyes were shining with that energy as they sat around the campfire, and she had trouble sitting still as she and Sarraya talked aimlessly about this or that. She was a far cry from the dignified Allia, who moved so much less so than this girl. Even Var, in the short time he'd observed him, didn't act quite like this young Selani girl. Var was more lively than Allia, but nowhere near this. That wasn't to say that Allia was unusual, but his sister had an aire of dignity and honor about her that made her seem different than those two, and she wasn't prone to fidgeting and waggling about as Denai was. Denai was a talker, and that too seemed strange for a Selani. She loved to talk, nearly as much as Phandebrass, but unlike him she would be silent and let those around her speak back. She had an intense interest about him and Sarraya, and went on and on and on and on with her questions. So many that she'd had to retreat to the far side of the fire when Tarrin fixed her with an ugly stare and laid his ears back at her. Sarraya knew him and knew Were-cats, so she knew that it was time to separate the exuberant girl from the brooding Were-cat which was the focus of her curiosity.
The follies of youth.
Tarrin didn't consider the fact that Denai was probably older than he was. He was only eighteen, but he'd seen so much in his short life that he felt much, much older than that. Denai had that same fire, that spirit that he had had when he left home with Dolanna and Faalken, which was what seemed a lifetime ago. She saw their trip as an adventure, something exciting and fun, something to look back upon and remember fondly. For him, it was yet another chore, yet another obstacle to overcome as he hurtled towards his own fate.
In a way, he envied Denai. She was young, and didn't know any better. Everything for her was new and exciting, and her outlook on life was along the lines of "take no prisoners." He could appreciate that. He'd felt that way once, a very long time ago. Too long ago.
Tarrin listened to her drone on and on, absently looking down at the ground, and that was when he noticed it. Gold. A large nugget of it, just laying on the desert floor like a pebble. He reached down and picked it up, and saw that it was indeed pure gold. It wasn't as shiny as jewelry was, twisted a little into an irregular shape that resembled a peanut, but a clawtip showed him that it was indeed real gold. Allia had said that the desert was littered with it, that it was holy to Fara'Nae. That was the main thrust of the current frictions between Arkis and the Selani, that Arkisian gold hunters were invading the desert to get the gold that was literally strewn across the landscape. There was a time when he would have wondered at finding such a thing, when gold meant something to him. Now, it was just another pretty metal. Gold, and the greed it incited, were primarily human wants. His Were-cat mentality didn't see much use for gold. He could provide for all his own needs, so money wasn't something that interested him. Gold had no value other than what others were willing to give in trade for it. And out here, where there was no one to trade with, it made it just as valuable as any other pebble laying on the desert floor.
Well, if it was holy to Fara'Nae, he figured that it probably wasn't a good idea to disturb it. He put it back where he found it, and turned his ears back to Sarraya and Denai.
"I don't see why you'd need to learn all those languages if nobody ever comes into the desert," Sarraya said to the Selani.
"Merchants come into the desert," Denai told her. "They speak the four common trade languages, so the obe must know all four."
"Four? I thought there were two."
"Four. The common tongue of the west, the common tongue of the east, the language of the beast-men, and the language of the south."
"Beastmen? You mean the Wikuni?" Sarraya asked curiously, and Denai nodded. "And which is the south?"
"Sharadi," Tarrin said calmly, interrupting them. "Dolanna told me that the common tra
de language of the southern continents is Sharadi."
"That's it," Denai agreed. "The obe serves as the translator for the chief, and also as an advisor. It's a hard job, because obe aren't permitted to fight unless the chief is in danger. We sacrifice much for the honor of the position."
"I didn't know a Selani would agree to not fight," Sarraya teased. "But to learn four languages at once, wow. That's hard."
"It's very hard. I'm still learning. We have to know the languages as well as those who learned it from infancy. Sometimes I get confused, and start speaking in another language when I'm trying to use one of them. I was taught all four at once. Sometimes they get jumbled together."
"Tarrin suffers from that too," Sarraya grinned. "He's like an encyclopedia of languages. I don't know anyone who can speak as many languages as he can. But you know two that he doesn't," she told the Selani.
"I do? Which?"
"Wikuni and Sharadi," she replied.
"Keritanima and Dolanna were teaching them to me, but things kept them from finishing," he told the Faerie, gnawing a bit more on one of the bones left over from the lizard.
"Then perhaps I can help settle my blood debt by finishing," Denai offered. "It will help me get better by teaching you. I can't teach you as well as those others could, but I'm sure you can learn something from me that you didn't know."
"Maybe," he said indifferently.
"How many kinds of jobs are there in the Selani camps, Denai?" Sarraya asked.
"Jobs? You mean positions of honor, like an obe?"
"Yeah. Tarrin knows all about it, but he won't tell me anything."
"Well, there are the obe. There are si'swan, the Scouts--"
"Allia is a Scout," Tarrin told Sarraya.
"Scouts are gifted with the Eyes of the Holy Mother. That gift makes them perfect watchers. There are the oribu'oni, the Weapons Makers. They are a society of high honor, and it is great honor to be accepted into them. We have shaman, the Voices of the Holy Mother, our healers and magicians. They are the greatest of honorable societies. Even a chief bows to the words of a shaman, because they speak with the voice of the Holy Mother. We are all dutiful children, and we obey her words. There are other societies--"
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