"Shaervan's feathers!" Ariana gasped, staring in disbelief at the handful of gems in her hand. "This is a king's ransom!"

"It very well may be," Sarraya said seriously. "Those Ruling Council bullies may not go out without a fight. This way, someone has the money to fight them on even ground."

Ariana looked at both of them, tears starting to well up in her eyes. "I can never repay this," she said chokingly.

"It's nothing but a bunch of little rocks," Sarraya shrugged with a twinkle in her tiny eyes. "No bother."

Ariana looked at her, then laughed. "I really have to go, before I'm flying up there on the back of a dragon," she said with a mischievious grin.

"Hold on, let me seal that up so nothing spills," Sarraya said, touching the basket with a finger. "There. The top is lined with soft wax. Nothing's going to spill out, and all you have to do is give it a good tug to open it."

"I can't ever thank you enough for everything you've done for me," she said with a beautifully grateful look. Tarrin forgot how pretty Ariana was until that moment.

"You can thank us by getting home and putting everything right," Tarrin told her gruffly. "Now go."

"I'll see you again, I promise," she said, stepping boldly up to him. She reached up and put her hand on the back of his neck, and it startled him enough to where he didn't resist when she pulled him down. She kissed him on the cheek, then stepped back, gave them one more look, then turned and vaulted into the air.

Tarrin and Sarraya watched her go, Sarraya sitting on his shoulder, for a few moments. "What was with the amulet?"

"Orders, from someone that I'm not about to argue with," he replied. "Where did you get those gems? Someone's going to be very angry."

"I don't steal money from people, Tarrin," she chided. "I created those."

"I never thought of using it that way before."

"You're not greedy," Sarraya chuckled. "Maybe now you understand why there's such intensive training for Druids. It protects the global economy."

"I guess so."

"So," Sarraya said with a lilting little chuckle. "Where to now?"

"The same as before," he replied, turning and looking away from Ariana, towards the northwest. "That way."

"It's going to be boring without Var and Denai. You're not much of a conversationalist, and you can't say anything I haven't heard before."

"Live with it," he said bluntly, starting to walk just left of the waning sun.

"I've heard that before," she teased in an accusing tone.

"Try shut up or die."

"Heard that too. Really, Tarrin, you have to work harder if you're going to keep me entertained."

With his tail, he swatted the Faerie off his shoulder. He didn't hit her hard enough to hurt her, but it definitely startled her. So badly that she almost didn't get her wings going before hitting the ground. She began to splutter and stammer after him, obviously at a loss for words.

"Now you're entertained," he told her as he picked up into a loping run. Leaving the Cloud Spire and the city hidden atop it behind, letting them pass on into his memory. He had done and seen many things there, but now the path ahead beckoned, as did the promised reckoning with the treacherous Doomwalker, Jegojah. That was all that could find its way into his mind now.

The days blurred together after that, day after day of endless sameness. It was a quiet time of reflection, a time to practice with newly regained powers, a time to prepare for what he knew was coming.

They travelled northwest over desert terrain that grew steadily more hilly, and the vegetation that had occupied swaths of favorable ground became more common. In some places, the floor of the desert was as green as a manor's lawn, overrun with those tough, wiry bushes that were the fare of the plant-eating desert denizens. The going was relatively smooth, however, for Tarrin was tall enough to treat the bushes as little more than high grass, and his pads and fur were tough enough to resist the little thorns that armored those stringy plants. He moved in a virtual straight line over that terrain, rarely detouring from his northwest course, stopping only for a respite during the hottest part of the day, for the night and the hidden dangers it possessed, and to eat, rest, and practice.

That wasn't to say that there weren't a few problems. On six separate occasions, he had spats with some of the more adventurous wildlife common in the desert. Those spats were invariably fatal for the hapless inu and kajat that didn't have the sense to back off, that didn't comprehend that they were dealing with something even worse than they were. They had ruled the desert for such a long time that their superiority had been bred into them, as well as the sense that they had no reason to fear anything in their domain. They had never encountered anything like an implacable Were-cat before, and the few who survived marked Tarrin's passing and his scent as that of an enemy to fear. Tarrin had become utterly focused on his impending visitor, to such a point that he became short with animals that he usually would have allowed to get away.

Those encounters gave him something of a taste for inu and kajat. Enough to hunt them down for a meal when the situation presented itself.

Each day had become an established pattern. He would wake up and eat breakfast with Sarraya, usually eating whatever was left of the unfortunate victim from the previous night's hunting. Then they would travel until the hottest part of the day, when they would shelter again to give Sarraya relief from the blistering heat. While she rested, Tarrin practiced with his magic. After the hottest part of the day was over, they travelled again until about an hour before sunset. Then they would find a good campsite that would offer shelter from the Sandmen, Tarrin would track down whatever unlucky animal was nearby for dinner, and they would eat again. Then Tarrin would practice with his magic again until he felt ready to sleep. And the new day would start the cycle over again.

Time was something of of a fluid thing for Tarrin. In cat form, he was utterly unable to keep a sense of time outside of the time of day. If he held the form for more than a few days, he became incapable of remembering what day it was. It was a function of his Cat side, a side that didn't care about the past or the future, a side that only lived in the moment. In his humanoid form, he could keep track of time, but only if that time didn't fall into an established pattern. As soon as it did, it all blurred together in a kind of cloud of sameness, and he had trouble counting back the days to determine how much time had passed. Sarraya had become his timekeeper, telling him that the days were marching on, that the winter in the West was beginning to yield to spring.

Tarrin did have one sense of continuity during their travels. His practice of his magic had given him a gauge of sorts to determine how far they had come. At first, it required a supreme act of will and intense concentration to use his Weavespinner magic, but as he practiced more and more, that level of force and concentration became less and less. He went from having to focus his entire attention on his magic to being able to exercise his magical ability with only a modicum of effort. Much as it had been for him before he lost his power, he became intimately familiar with the process, and that familiarity and the practice he had done had elevated his powers to make them quite nearly as reliable as they had been before the accident. He could again summon up his magic whenever he needed it, and it generally did what he wanted it to do. The practice did what it was intended to do, and that was give him the ability to use Sorcery.

But now he could use it safely and efficiently, something he had not had before. It felt strange to him every time he gathered himself to use his power, that he had no reason to fear it now. But it also felt as if he had been healed of some long injury, and had become what he was meant to be from the beginning.