"Not even me?"

"Not even you," he said bluntly. "I'll talk like this with you because I see you as a child, and my kind have a strong impulse to protect children. If I didn't see you as a child, I would have probably killed you the moment you said no to me."

Denai blanched. "Sarraya explained some of that, but I thought she was joking," she said in a slightly sick voice.

"Believe her," he said gratingly. "I'm not a gentle person, Denai. Some would call me evil, and they'd probably be right."

Denai snorted. "Nobody who cares so much about family can be evil," she stated, looking at him with steady eyes.

"That's your opinion," he told her calmly.

"Well, what do you think?" she challenged. "Do you think you're evil?"

Tarrin was silent a very long time. "Yes," he finally replied.

"Well, you haven't done anything evil to me, so I say you're not," she said with her charming smile. "Now then, I think our dinner is getting cold. Let's go eat."

"I'm not hungry," he told her.

"You haven't eaten all day," she protested. "Come on! You're going to eat!" She grabbed him by his tail and began to pull. She wasn't strong enough to hurt him, but from the force she was exerting, it was clear that she had no intention of letting go. "Let's go!"

"You're toying with death, woman," he warned in a grim voice.

"I live for the danger," she said with an impudent grin. "Now are you coming, or do I have to pull this from your backside?"

That sounded so familiar to him. He had said that to a woman some time ago, and she had replied with the exact same answer. But it had been so long ago, so much had happened, he couldn't remember who it was who said that to him. Was it Allia? Keritanima? Maybe it was Camara Tal, or maybe Sarraya? It irked him a little that he couldn't remember, but he'd had so much on his mind lately, it was amazing that he remembered his own name.

Well… he was a little hungry. Maybe a meal would help him remember. Denai squeaked in surprise when Tarrin flexed his tail, pulling Denai up and off her feet. She probably hadn't realized that Tarrin's tail was almost as long as she was tall, and he pulled it up to where she was yanked off her feet. Her feet dangled only a finger or so off the ground, but it was enough. He then moved her aside, and then dropped her back onto the ground. Denai laughed delightedly at that, then let go of his tail and bounded up beside him as they returned to the campsite.

To: Title EoF

Chapter 13

" This is your idea of a path?" Sarraya said in surprise.

It was late morning, and the four of them were on the edge of the vast chasm of the Great Canyon. Tarrin and Sarraya looked down at what Denai had called a safe pathway down to the valley floor… which amounted to little less than an angled irregularity in the rock that formed a very steep ridge that descended to the valley floor so very far below. The ridge was wind-eaten, and extended out from the chasm wall by no more than four fingers. It was a toehold, nothing more, a toehold at about a fifty degree angle that plunged into the shaded canyon.

"Compared to the rest of the canyon walls, Sarraya, this is as close to a pathway as you will get," Denai said defensively. "We've used it before."

"How can there be so many Selani when all of them are insane!" Sarraya said hotly, throwing up her hands and drifting out into the vast gulf. Drifting out of reach.

Tarrin didn't have his mind on that at the moment. He was still trying to figure out Denai. The Selani girl had slept close to him last night, and her presence had begun to wear on him in strange ways. She didn't seem to be willing to give over on the idea of trying to draw him out, almost feeling as if she were trying to tame a wild animal. He didn't want her attention or her company, but the Selani seemed totally oblivious to that fact. She had some kind of agenda in mind, and she was going to carry through with it. She wasn't afraid of him anymore, and she'd already begun to take some very shocking liberties with him. That morning, he'd been awakened when she reached down and picked him up while he was sleeping in cat form. That nearly startled him into shapeshifting, but he stopped himself at the last minute. She hadn't been trying to hurt him, she only picked him up, carried him a few paces, and then set him down by the rekindled fire. And he had the feeling that she did it on purpose. Not to put him by the fire, but to see what would happen if she picked him up. And since he hadn't reacted violently, it made her even more bold with him. Her actions irritated him, but for the life of him, he couldn't even bring himself to even pretend to warn her off. She wasn't afraid of him, and it felt foolish trying to intimidate someone who had no fear of him. It would have been the same as if he'd tried to intimidate Allia or Keritanima; those two would have just laughed at him. Since Var was not granted the same tenuous liberty, he didn't want to appear to be weak or impotent while the male Selani was within view. So he simply endured the attention she showered on him, doing his best to ignore her.

"There are handholds all the way down," Denai continued. "It takes a while, but as long as you're careful, it's pretty safe."

"I take it there's a similar ridge like this on the other side?" Tarrin asked Sarraya.

"I'd assume so," she replied. "The magic that made this canyon split the earth. The other half of this formation has to be in the wall on the other side."

"That's how we climb out," Denai affirmed. "But that one's not as well formed as this one. We have to go up the wall a ways to reach it."

"In other words, we have to climb out," Tarrin grunted.

"Going up is much easier than going down," Var said. "Going down lends itself to greater mistakes, since you tend to lean out to see where you're putting your feet."

"Well, you absolutely are not going to climb down like this," Sarraya said hotly. "I'll conjure up a rope so you can tie yourselves together. Denai goes first, then Var, then Tarrin."

"Why tie together?" Denai asked.

"Because if either of you slip, Tarrin can keep you from becoming the next meal for the vultures," Sarraya said to her crossly.

"What happens if he slips?"

"Tarrin doesn't slip," Sarraya laughed in her face. "Why do you think he has those big, nasty claws? They do more than rip chunks out of things."

After Sarraya made the rope, they tied themselves together, and then began. Tarrin wasn't afraid of heights, not in the slightest, but it did take a little self-motivation to push his body over that edge. The thought of that much empty air underneath him was more than a little disconcerting, even for someone with no fear of heights. But once he got onto the ridge, felt his foot claws bite into the stone, he knew that he'd be just fine. There were indeed handholds, pits and ridges in the wind-worn stone that made the descent relatively easy for him. Var and Denai seemed to have no trouble either, moving along at a pace that didn't irritate the more agile Were-cat with its slowness.

Or it would have been easy in ideal conditions. The wind seemed to be trapped inside the canyon, so once they descended a few hundred spans, they encountered strange crosswinds that seemed to be generated by the canyon's topography. The wind suddenly made what had been an easy descent much more challenging. It bit and pulled on him, and all three of them began to choose their hand and footholds much more carefully, moving more slowly than before. Sarraya, who had been hovering near them as they made their way along the treacherous ridge, found the buffetting winds too much, and managed to make something of a wobbly landing on Tarrin's head. She anchored herself down in his hair and kept watch over them, prepared to use her magic in case something went terribly wrong.