Chapter 20

The strange woods that Denai had talked about were no exaggeration. They were honest-to-goodness trees, and he was told that they surrounded a large, nearly lake-sized oasis.

But they were a kind of tree that Tarrin had never seen before, tall trees with no branches on the trunks. The only foliage on those brown-barked, ribbed trees was at the very top, and it consisted of a fluffy, down-like greenish fuzz growing from drooping spines that blossomed out from the tops of the trees like some kind of gigantic flower. Those bizarre leaves drifted and danced in the wind, and the trees looked as if one good sandstorm would uproot them and send them flying like the seeds of a dandelion.

Tarrin and Denai stood on a rocky promontory on a very low escarpment wall, staring at the forest some longspan or so to the northwest, directly in their path, with the midday sun beating down on them from above. The trees were strange-looking, but they were thick, making the wood deep and dark and a perfect place for things to hide. He could see wide tracts in the woods, where kajat had probably knocked over the trees to form pathways, and there was a very large herd of chisa grazing on a grassy undergrowth that grew on the ground under the trees. He could see, looking closer, that there were large lizards climbing on the tree trunks, trying to get to strange fruits or nuts that dangled from the foliage of the trees, out far enough to make reaching them a dicey proposition.

Tarrin had to agree. The place probably was infested with the reptillian carnivores of the desert, given that so many prey animals lived within the forest's boundaries. That meant that it was a place worth avoiding.

Avoiding it would be a simple matter of skirting it from the south. They were only two days from the Sandshield, by Denai's estimation, and it was almost due west from their position. They wouldn't have to enter the forest, only pass close to it. But passing close to it would probably be just as dangerous as entering it. Kajat tracks were on the ground not five spans from them, on the sandy ground at the base of the small, five-span high escarpment, showing that the big predators, and most likely their smaller cousins as well, did leave the forest and come out into the windswept plain from time to time.

"I've never seen trees like that," Sarraya noted from her hover between them.

"The clan that lives here trades the nuts from the trees," Denai said. "It's a dangerous pastime to collect them, but they're very good at it."

"The Selani tend to be good at anything they put their minds to," Tarrin noted absently, looking to the west, to the Sandshield invisble beyond the horizon. So close. They had been in the desert for three months now, and he was ready to leave. He looked more Selani than Were-cat now, with his sun-browned skin and sun-bleached hair, which was nearly white now. His time in the desert had been eventful and he had enjoyed much of it, but it paled in comparison to the driving need to get to Suld, and get there quickly.

He had checked in with Keritanima during their journey to the forest. The spring was coming late to the northern sections of the West, and much of Draconia and points north and west were still snowbound, even in the lower plains. It was still snowing in the mountains. That was a tremendous relief, but he knew that it wouldn't last forever. He figured it would take him about a month to get from Arkis to Suld, and he also knew that it would take a month for the ki'zadun's armies to reach Suld once they could march. That was cutting it very, very close. All he could do was thank the Goddess and her sisters, T'Kya and Leia, the goddesses of the weather and nature respectively, that the snow was still coming down in the north. They would need him in Suld, need his power, to fight off the Demonic horde that the ki'zadun had assembled to destroy the Tower. It was a race now, and from the looks of it, Tarrin had an edge.

But that could all change if a warm spell melted the mountain snows, and that warm spell was more and more likely as the spring matured into summer. It was already unusual that it was still snowing so far into spring, so counting on the snow to stay on the ground wasn't a realistic hope. All he really wanted-or realistically hoped for-was that the snow would stay on the ground long enough for him to get to Arkis. Once he got to Arkis, he could outrun the marching army and beat them to Suld. Armies didn't move very fast, and though Tarrin had to cover three times as much distance, he could do it ten times faster.

Keritanima had seemed almost bubbly when he talked to her. She was in Suld now, with her Wikuni army, and she had more coming. They had put cannons on the walls and had blockaded all Tykarthian ports to stop any possible supplies from getting into the hands of their enemies. The king of Tykarthia had been furious over the blockade, called it an act of war, but Keritanima literally told him to stuff it and get ready to fend off an invasion of nightmares. She had also managed to get information that the Ungardt had stopped the war with Tykarthia. This surprised Tarrin, since he hadn't yet talked to Jenna. He wanted at first to talk to her immediately, but then he remembered the severe weakness he had felt after his own ordeal. It took him two days to recover from that, and Jenna wasn't a Were-cat. It would tak her much longer. So he decided to allow her to have a full ten days of rest, a full ten days to recover and come to terms with what had happened, before talking to her. But it seemed that someone else had already told someone in Ungardt what was going on, and it wasn't necessary now for him to intervene. He had a sneaking suspicion that the Goddess had done that, had directly told Jenna what to do, what to say to their mother to get Grandfather to stop the war, and that is what seemed to have happened.

Things looked favorable, in that regard. Keritanima told him that the Ungardt were assembling into large groups, and that was an omen of what was coming. Even an army of Trolls would be wary to attack a mob of Ungardt berzerkers. Ungardt didn't form large, singular armies. Every clan was its own army, and it only followed orders from its clan chief. That was seventeen separate formations of Ungardt, and they weren't all going in the same direction. Some were moving into Tykarthia, obviously to attack and slow down the ki'zadun when they did march out of the Draconian mountains, and some were moving along the coast either on ships or on foot, Suld being their obvious destination. Tarrin didn't hold much hope for the survival of those armies intending to attack the ki'zadun in Tykarthia, but they would buy everyone else precious time. Ungardt weren't ones for guerilla tactics. They would fall on the enemy in a furious assault, and about all they could hope to do was engage the army and slow it down a few days, and thin out the numbers. Tarrin didn't like the idea of men and women throwing their lives away like that, but under the circumstances, he wasn't going to object too much. If the enemy was attacked three separate times it would slow them down by nine days, at the least-one day to set up, one day to fight, one day to recover-and those nine days would be critical. The Arakites were coming, already on ships and under full sail for Suld, and the Legions would make every difference in the world. Even a few of the famous Legions could turn the tide of battle, for there was no army of soldiers better trained, commanded, and experienced than the Legions of Arak. Their endless battles with Godan and Nyr made them some of the most fit soldiers in the world.

Keritanima had things well in hand. He had every confidence in her, mainly because she was doing it all without letting the katzh-dashi know what was going on. That spy was still in the Tower, and she could warn the ki'zadun that the Sulasians knew that the army's target was Suld. She had Miranda and that one fellow called Jervis, and they had quite effectively locked the katzh-dashi out of the loop of information. Only the Keeper was being kept informed of what was going on, and she deferred to Keritanima, since she had to use Keritanima's spies, messengers, and resources to do anything regarding the invasion. Keritanima was the real power in the Tower now, the Keeper in everything but name, and that suited him just fine.