"That's only a small reason," Keritanima said. " Sashka knows Wikuna, and he knows what I'm trying to do. His ability to govern is more important than his ability to intimidate."

"But it doesn't hurt," Miranda added.

"No, it does not," Keritanima agreed with a smile.

She took off her crown and set it on a cushion with the sceptre, sighing in relief. That was the last obstacle. With the nobles under control, she would soon be on her way back to Sennadar, back to her brother and sister. She had three months to prepare Wikuna for her departure. Three months.

It wouldn't be short enough for her.

Heat.

Burning sun, burning sand, burning rocks. Tarrin had never known such heat. It hammered into his body, it beat the energy out of him, it boiled him in his own fur. His Were body was well suited to dealing with heat, but it began to tire him after only half a day of exposure to the powerful sun and baking ambient heat of the Desert of Swirling Sands.

Tarrin huddled inside his leather cloak, using it to shield him from the merciless sun, which hung like a ball of molten bronze in the sky, a disc of pure fire that burned at him. Its light was so bright that it reflected painfully off the sand and gravel, bright even under the protection of the tinted visor Sarraya had made, and every step burned the sand's intense heat into the pads on his feet. He was sweating profusely within the cloak, but he knew that it would be ten times worse if the sun was directly striking him. Sweat made his still-short hair wet to the touch, bleeding out the black dye that Sarraya had used to darken his hair. His skin had lost its dark color, but his face was nearly as dark now from exposure to the sun, darkening in response to exposure to the blasting sunlight of the desert. If anything, now he understood why the Selani had brown skin. It had been burned into them to the point where it had become an inherited trait.

Crossing the desert in the heat of the day hadn't been his first choice, but he was too close to the edge of the desert to suit him. The sandstorm that sent him scrambling for cover the night before ended as quickly as it began, and just as mysteriously, making him wonder if the Selani goddess really did create the storm to drive Anayi out of the desert. It had howled deafeningly for about five hours, and then it stopped. Tarrin had spent the rest of the night sleeping, and when he awoke in the morning, he realized that he was entirely too close to the escarpment to make him feel comfortable. So he had set out in the morning sunrise to put distance between him and the ki'zadun. The morning had been cold, at first, but he expected that. He'd heard many of Allia's tales about the desert, so he knew what to expect. He moved quickly in the morning, and slowed more and more as the sun rose and started baking the land. It wasn't even noon yet, and already it was nearly unbearable. He knew that he had to stop soon, to find shade and rest during the hottest part of the day, and then start again in the afternoon. That wasn't the Selani way, but then again, the Selani were born and raised in the desert, and were acclimated to the heat.

He would adjust. If his Were body was good for anything, it was adaption to new environments. His system would get used to the heat, his body would adapt to the environment, and his regeneration would protect him from things like sunburn or heat stroke. Dehydration was his primary concern, so he made sure to drink water often. He'd get used to the heat and not sweat as much, but he had to keep water inside him until that happened.

"Now… now I understand why the Selani are so fierce," Sarraya panted under his hood, hiding from the heat. Her voice was listless. "Anything that can live in this must be all but indestructible."

"I thought you'd been to the desert before," Tarrin noted.

"It was winter then, it's not as hot in the winter," she replied. "And I visited the northern marches of the desert. This is the southern marches."

"It makes a difference?"

"Entirely," she panted.

The sense of relief he felt from getting here didn't quite overcome his sense of trepidation. Now he was safe from those seeking the Book, but he just traded them in for beasts that were after him as a meal. He'd already seen some tracks. Tracks at least as large as his own feet, three-toed, and with divots at the ends of the toes that told him the toes sported some wicked claws. The way it looked, it was a pack of them, and judging by the size of the feet, they had to be at least Tarrin's size, if not larger. And if they weren't bad enough, he'd seen two Selani markers. The Selani owned the desert, and they killed invaders. He wouldn't be able to hide from them forever, but he hoped to get well into the desert before meeting up with any of them. Add to that the challenges of surviving in such a hostile land, and it made for a relatively unpleasant experience.

But he couldn't deny the stark beauty of the land. That morning, after leaving the little cave in the side of a rock spire, he had to stop and marvel at how the light struck the many stone spires dotting the wasteland, at the different colors that banded them as they rose towards the heavens, reds and browns and yellows and even greens and blues. The sun illuminated the scene in brillant reds as it rose, like fire sweeping across the desert, causing the stone to change colors as the sun rose from the horizon. It was breathtaking. He never knew unworked stone could look so beautiful. There was an elegance to it, a simple beauty, as if the wind had taken up a paintbrush and left its mark upon the spires. A little climbing told him that it was the stone itself that was colored, which was even more amazing. Never before had Tarrin seen green sandstone, but yet here it was.

Blowing out his breath, Tarrin stopped. He had to stop often to drink, but stopping made him feel like he was standing on a campfire. He dug his feet into the sand, sinking them down past the heat to the cooler sand beneath, and let his fur insulate him from the hot sand pressing up against his ankles. He knelt down and spread the cloak out around him, shielding the sand from the sun so it would cool and take some bite off the inferno hitting him in the face while he rested. He pulled the waterskin off his belt and shook it, then uncapped it carefully with his claws and emptied it of its contents. The water was hot, but it soothed a parched throat, and sent a minor surge of energy through him.

But not much.

Crossing this land would be a trial. He already knew that, but it took coming here, feeling the fire under his feet and the weight of the sun's heat on his head to fully appreciate how difficult it was going to be. But why did he have to do it? The Goddess had told him to go this way, told him to go into the desert. She had to have a good reason. After all, if Keritanima controlled the Wikuni fleets, that literally meant that she controlled the seas. On board a Wikuni clipper, he would be completely safe. He could go to the coast right now and call to Kerri, and she would send her ships to pick him up. Why did he have to endure a trek across the desert?

Because she told him to do it.

Sometimes acting on faith was a chore. Tarrin rose back up, staring out into the blasted lands of the Selani. It was all sand and rock, and rock and sand. Not to mention the sand and the rock. Allia said there were plants in the desert, in some areas, and even then only if one knew where to look. There were oases in the desert as well, but they were well hidden and well guarded by the Selani, for they represented life. Most of them served as the Selani's home camps. The Selani were a semi-nomadic people, traveling from oasis to oasis so as not to completely drain the water in an area and to find what forage they could for their animals. They lived in tents mostly, but each clan had a permanent village where the clan-king lived. They would be interruptions of the sand and rock, at least.