"It seems awfully dicey, love," she frowned.

"We're dealing with a god here, Jesmind," he sighed. "It's the only way it's going to happen. We can't fight him and we can't trick him. The only thing we can do is make him beat himself. Val may be a god, but he was once mortal, and somehow I get the feeling that alot of his human personality is still in him, like impatience. We have to use that against him, or it won't work."

"Isn't what you're trying to do tricking him?"

"No. I'm trying to hold his attention, first off of you and Jasana, then off of the fact that the Elder Gods just Teleported in an army to attack his forces. There's a big difference."

"If you say so," she said uncertainly. "That's all you need me to do? Take Jasana out of the place where they're holding her?"

He nodded.

"Why me? Wouldn't Allia have been better? I've seen her run, my mate. She's faster than me." "Jasana will obey you without question," he told her. "That's going to be very important, Jesmind. If she resists or disobeys because I don't go with you, she may cause a fatal delay in getting her out. I can't risk that. When you tell her to shut up and go, she'll do it without argument." He looked at her. "Besides, she's our daughter, Jesmind. It's our duty to get her back, and it's only right that we're the first people she sees."

She gave him a warm yet fierce smile. "You're right. I wouldn't have felt right sending someone else to get back our daughter for me."

"I know. And I feel more comfortable with you being with me. At least you understand me, my mate. You can sense what I'm thinking, and that's going to help us when the time comes to get our daughter back. You'll pick up on things nobody else would notice, not even Val himself."

"I hope so," she nodded, then she yawned and stretched. "I'm getting sleepy," she admitted. "Let's make a tent or something and get some sleep. I get the feeling that we're going to be on the move quite a bit tonight."

"You'll have to put it aside for now, my mate," he told her. "You can take a short nap, but we'll be starting out again in just a while. It's dangerous to travel at night because of the cold, even for us. We have to use all the daylight we possibly can. The only reason we stopped now was because we spent most of the night running, and we both needed some rest."

"If we need to use the daylight, then let's go," she said, standing up. "The food refreshed me, and I won't get sleepy if we're running. I can save that for tonight."

Tarrin folded up the map and put it in the book, then sent the book into the elsewhere. "You're right," he agreed, rising to his feet gracefully. "We're wasting daylight."

"Then let's go."

"Yes. Let's go."

They travelled through the gentle rolling foothills of western and central Ungardt without incident, and without being spotted by the locals. Two experienced Were-cats were not about to be spotted by anyone that they didn't want to see them. Tarrin didn't doubt that they found their tracks and puzzled over them, since they were so unique, but not one Ungardt spotted Tarrin and Jesmind as they ran at a steady pace towards the mountains. They would run well into the night, until it got so cold that it forced them to stop, usually indicated by when sweat began freezing to their skin. The cold wouldn't hurt Jesmind for short periods of time, but if she exhausted her regenerative abilities, she would become vulnerable, so Tarrin always made sure they stopped well before that became a possibility.

Again Tarrin paused to wonder why he still sweated whenever he physically exerted himself, even though the heat could no longer affect him. Perhaps it was a ingrained biological function that would occur whether he truly needed to do it or not.

By day, they moved swiftly yet carefully, not letting the Ungardt see them. When they did stop for the night, they chose secluded places easily concealed, built small fires and relying on Tarrin's Sorcery for their warmth. They hunted caribou mostly, felling the beasts often as they crossed paths with migrating herds, eating at the site of the kill and moving on to leave the remains to the wolves, foxes, and other scavengers prowling the snow-choked hills.

Every night, Tarrin would go out to where he could see the stars and study them and the moons for hours on end, often at the cost of sleep, carefully studying their movements and checking them against the book that Phandebrass had given him. He spent whole nights watching the moons rise and fall, becoming intimately familiar with how fast each one moved, trying to learn how to gauge how much time would elapse between where a moon was and where he wanted it to be. He knew that his ability to gauge that time without using any kind of timing device was going to be critical to the timing of his plan, so he needed to become quite adept at it very quickly.

But as each day passed, there were changes in them. Jesmind began to get more and more impatient, wanting to go longer and longer each day and waking up earlier and earlier. She'd started out very accommodating to him, but as the time passed and the days restored a sense of familiarity between them she began to get more and more hostile. It wasn't because she was doubting him, it was because she was anxious and worried, and Tarrin was the only means available for her to vent her building frustration and impatience, feelings that only grew stronger as more days passed without her daughter with her, and the days leading up to getting her back dwindled steadily in number. Tarrin ignored or endured those spats of anger from her, concentrating almost inhumanly on his study of the skies, his attempt to master judging time by the distance the moons travelled.

Tarrin's focus on the skies only seemed to aggravate her more, but he also grew more and more distant from her. The time was getting closer and closer for him to get back his daughter, and his every thought began to center obsessively on that, on the moment when he saw his daughter and Jesmind spirited her out of the pyramid and to safety. But he didn't go over it in his mind, knowing that Val may pick up on what he was trying to do. Without the ability to think through it, it only left thoughts of getting it done, and thoughts of getting there.

He allowed them to move faster and faster, realizing that unless he took some serious precautions, they were never going to make it to the pyramid. Val would catch them on the open tundra, and they'd be killed there. So he let Jesmind push him faster and faster, trying to reach the edge of the mountains, where they could hide easily, so he could stop and attend to the problem of getting them there without Val sending his entire army after him to stop him from reaching the pyramid, to kill him and take his amulet.

Because they were pushing, they reached the eastern edge of the Frozen Mountains in five days. The mountains appeared on the horizon after a steady snow one brisk morning, jagged points of reddish rock capped with white snowy peaks thrusting out of the foothills ahead, high, steep, and very daunting. The mountains were extrememly rugged and incredibly high, some of the highest mountains on all of Sennadar, towering upwards of twenty thousand spans up into the sky.

Jesmind looked at them with trepidation when they stopped for a brief rest. "We have to cross those?" she demanded.

"There are passes," he said. "They're on the map."

"How can you be sure about that map?"

"It's a map Conjured by Druidic magic, woman," he told her. "That makes it absolutely correct. The land doesn't lie." He retrieved the book and took out the map, checking it. "That's this peak right here," he said, pointing to the highest of the peaks they could see, then pointing to it as she came over and looked at the map with him. "That means that the pass we need to find is about twelve longspans south. We'll have to take it at night."