The morning marched on, and so did the performers. They didn't flag in the slightest in their exuberant displays of acrobatics or dancing. Deward's knives still moved with as much zeal as they did when he began the march, even after an hour of constant performance. They moved up from the warehouses and older buildings of the waterfront and into the heart of Dala Yar Arak, along wide avenues paved with ancient cobblestones. They stayed on that wide track, but Tarrin's eyes sought out the other streets, streets that were much narrower and unpaved, streets were less maintained buildings and houses resided. It was there that he saw the other side of Dala Yar Arak, the side not represented by the well dressed, groomed Arakites that lined the streets to watch them go by. He could see the poor, in their tattered clothing. He could see the slaves, with the metal collars locked around their necks or wrists, a sight that caused a powerful surge of anger to build up inside him, forcing him to close his eyes and struggle to retain control. The homeless, the beggars, and the children. There were so very many of them, children that looked debilitated by disease, bellies swollen in hunger, most of them naked and dirty.

Tarrin didn't care about adults, but children were another matter. Even his independent Cat side went out of its way to protect children. It was probably something of a reflex action, since there were so few Were-cats, a conditioned response to perpetuate the species by making even the uninvolved males protective of the young. Tarrin had started his life as a human, so that Were reflex had probably expanded within his dual mind to include the children of humans. That side of him sought to protect the young, any young, until such time that they could take care of themselves. Phandebrass said it would be bad, but that was almost unbearable. How could these Arakites turn a blind eye to the suffering of children? It was barbaric! But from what he knew of the Arakite society, barbarism was the standard. They were a people who paid money to watch men battle each other to the death in gladitorial combat. They were a people who had turned the enforced servitude and suffering of their fellows into a lucrative financial instution. They were a people totally subverted by greed and decadence, filled with a destructive need to reign over others, where only the advancement of self or family mattered, preferably at the detriment of his neighbors.

And people called him a monster.

In that moment of icy reflection, he decided that there would be no constraint. Not against these monsters. That he had already decided to do whatever it took to find the Book of Ages seemed totally justified to him now. He wouldn't so much as bat an eye over killing any of these people. They deserved it, as far as he was concerned.

"Calmly, my brother," Allia breathed to him. "You're drawing my blood."

Tarrin realized that he was flexing his claws, and they had driven into Allia's skin. He retracted them immediately and hunkered down in her hood, hiding his eyes from the sights beyond.

And on they went. The morning began to turn hot as the sun climbed higher and higher into the sky, but the indomitable performers continued with the same exuberance and energy they possessed when they first began. The city seemed to go on and on and on, a nearly endless procession of buildings made of a sand-colored stone, some of the larger and richer ones whitewashed or painted. People lined the streets, they looked out windows, and many of them stood on roofs and looked down at the spirited parade as Renoit led them deeper and deeper into the vast maze that was the streets of Dala Yar Arak. Tarrin looked up into the sky and realized that it was approaching noontime, and still the parade continued, moving towards some unseen goal that could be around the next corner, or ten longspans up a major avenue. Despite moving the majority of the morning, Renoit's performers proved their athletic endurance during the long, hot march, a march filled with strenuous activity. They were all sweating visibly now, but they showed no signs of slowing down. The dancers still sought to seduce the eyes of the men, and the acrobats and jugglers continued to awe and amaze the passing crowds with their displays of skill. Tarrin hunkered down in Allia's hood with Sarraya, the Faerie seeking relief from the heat and Tarrin hiding his eyes as they moved through what could only be a slum, a part where the buildings were decayed and the streets were littered with broken stone, waste, and rats that were brave enough to mill about on the open street in broad daylight. The people standing to watch were desperately poor, wearing dirty, ragged clothing and carrying the stark thinness of malnutrition. They stared on with their hopeless eyes, eyes that burned into Tarrin's mind and forced him to get away from them. He was already outraged enough, he needed no more goading.

It was confusing. Why should he care about these people? They were human, they were strangers. He had killed people he had never even known before over the slightest provocation and not felt a whit of guilt, but these poor people generated the strangest feeling of shame in him, shame that his life had been generally good while they were left to suffer in a prison without walls. They didn't deserve this. Nobody did. He saw defeated people, slaves even if they wore no collar or cuff, people who had been cast into a yoke and had no control over it. He could identify with that feeling of helplessness. He had no idea who they were, and to be honest with himself, he felt no need to help them, because he could fathom the futility of such crusading. There were just so many of them. He just felt angry that they had been reduced to this, driven down into the depths, had their hopes and dreams crushed by the brutal fist of reality.

Brooding over that for a while, he felt Allia stop. He rose up with Sarraya and peeked over her shoulder, and he found his breath catching in his throat. They were on a lush, beautiful field of grass, five times the size of Aldreth, and beyond it stood a compound of such opulent magnificence that it took his breath away. A gate that looked to be gilded with gold, protected by an army of men carrying pikes and wearing extravagant uniforms. To the sides of the gate was a wall painted cloud white, a wall some thirty spans high and with men standing at regular intervals atop it to keep out the unwanted. Beyond the gate was a huge open garden of every type of flower and tree imaginable, with several small buildings to the sides of them, and at the far end of it was a massive, towering castle with those bulbed towers rising like a forest over a facade made of brilliantly sparkling crystal. It shimmered and sparkled in the sunlight, dazzling and overpowering all onlookers with its tremendous beauty and majesty. The building itself rested upon more land than Aldreth did, and it rose story over story, a hundred spans into the sky before its walls began to give way to the towers that went on for another few hundred spans. It overshadowed everything around it, dominated the massive, sculpted compound in which it rested, towered over everything else in the entire city with its ostentatious grandeur. One tower rose above all others, a formidable tower seemingly made of pure gold, upon which rested one of those bulbous domes that definitely was either plated or gilded with gold. From the top of that tower, Tarrin thought that one could see all the way into the desert. It rose to a dizzying height, higher than the Tower of Sorcery, higher than anything he had ever seen in his life. To stand on a mountaintop and look down on the land had to be the same thing as standing at the top of that tower and look down upon the city. The building truly was a mountain, a manmade mountain of crystal and gold, standing proudly in the middle of a city of paradox and suffering.