"What?"

"I want to take a bath!" she called after him.

Take a bath? Then he realized what she meant. A hot bath always was relaxing but a bath where the water would never cool off was a rather attractive concept.

Tarrin looked around. The place was a bit warm and a little muggy, but it had its own light, plenty of water, and it was in the absolute center of the mountain. He couldn't get any safer than this. This would be a perfect place to stop so he could figure out how to keep the Demons off of them… and he had to admit, the idea of bathing in one of those hot springs was rather attractive.

By the time he'd made that choice, Jesmind had already shrugged out of her shirt, and was in the process of shedding her trousers. He was about to warn her not to do that, but she got them off, tossed them aside negligently, then stepped down into one of the pools of water. Tarrin rushed over to where she was in concern, afraid that she'd just stepped into a boiling cauldron that would boil the meat off her bones, and saw with some relief that she had chosen a wide pool of water that was so clear that it did not in any way hinder his view under its surface. It didn't bubble, meaning it wasn't boiling, and the water seeped up from several small cracks in the bottom of the pool. It was also rather shallow, and when Jesmind seated herself in it with a look of dreamy contentment on her face, her head just crested the salt-crusted rim of the pool. The steam that wafted up from the pool shifted when she blew out her breath, then she opened her eyes and gave him a warm, inviting smile.

"Now this is my idea of resting after getting down here," she said languidly, stretching in the water. " Please tell me that this is a good place for us to stop so you can do whatever it is you wanted to do to hide us from the Demons."

"It crossed my mind," he said, squatting down beside her, wrapping his tail around his ankles.

"I could spend half of forever in here," she sighed in utter contentment, then she reached up and grabbed the end of his tail. She tugged on it lightly, grinning at him. "You need a bath, my mate," she told him, tugging a little more firmly.

"Let me put up Wards at the entrances, and I'll be happy to join you, Jesmind," he told her. "Let's make sure we're safe before we drop our guard, alright?"

"Well, alright," she acceded thoughtfully. "Just don't take too long."

"I'll do my best," he said, standing up. "Jesmind."

"Sorry," she said, letting go of his tail.

Tarrin moved off to raise the Wards, silently thankful that Jesmind had found something with which to distract herself. She wasn't as hostile as she'd been before, but he was thankful for anything that distracted his mate from Jasana's abduction, even if it was for a little while. After all the heavy travelling they'd done, taking a few days off here to give him time to devise a means for them to return to the surface without the Demons finding them, time Jesmind would spend languishing around in a place that would keep her from getting restless, was a good thing. It was good for her, and he would enjoy spending the time with her, a last respite from harsh reality before they had to rejoin it, a chance to be together in peace and quiet for a day or two. Though both of them thought of nothing but Jasana and the fact that she was taken from them, they both could use a day or two to recover, to deal with those feelings as a mated pair instead of as individuals, a chance for them to talk, and prepare themselves for the harsh ordeal to come. He knew that when they came out of the cave and were again out in the mountains, there would be little time for rest, little chance to be as comfortable and content as they would be here. It would be a very hard journey, and this place would let them get ready to face the bitter cold and the snow and the treacherous trek across the mountains and over the tundra, until they finally stood before the black pyramid of Gora Umadar and got their daughter back.

It was their last chance to rest before the end of their journey.

To: Title EoF

Chapter 14

He had never faced such a puzzling problem before.

Sitting in the middle of the large chamber full of hot springs with his legs crossed, arms folded and head bowed in thought, stripped down to a pair of ragged trousers, Tarrin continued to mull over the problem. It was the same problem he'd been thinking about for four solid days. Any time he was not eating, sleeping, or spending time with Jesmind, he was considering this most bedevilling of obstacles.

How to get around the Demons.

The problem was a tricky one. The amulets he and Jesmind wore protected them from any attempt to locate them using magic, but they didn't hide Tarrin's effect on the Weave. That was an indirect indication of where he was, and he didn't doubt that the Demons or the Sorcerers that may be working with the ki'zadun weren't going to overlook that for long. They also didn't protect them from purely visual searching, such as what the vrock were doing from the air. The solution he needed had to hide his effect on the Weave, but it also couldn't require such an expenditure of Sorcery that it would be like a beacon to attract Val's attention. They also needed something that would hide them from the airborne searchers, who would only have to find the tracks they left in the snow and follow them back to them. That was where he was running into the problem. Every solution he came up with required too much power to be exercised outside of himself, and that power would be like a beacon to attract Val's attention. Personal magic, contained within, like the magic of his amulet, wouldn't be noticed because the amulet's power of non-detection hid things like that from others. So long as it wasn't too powerful, anyway. Having to both conceal his physical and magical presence would mean using too much magic to escape Val's notice, especially as they got closer and closer to the pyramid.

He knew Val was there. He'd felt… brushings. That was the best way to explain it. Sweeps of detection from a mind and power so vast that Tarrin's consciousness shied away from them when they passed over him. Val was searching for him, but for some reason, the imprisoned god had yet to find him. Tarrin had no explanation for that, aside from the possibility that him being so deeply in the mountain was somehow interfering with Val's ability to detect him.

Every time one of those brushings swept over him, it chilled his soul and scattered his thoughts. There was an utter, unmitigated hatred behind that power that terrified him. For some reason, Val hated him with a passion that was almost a religion unto itself, a hatred that was a paragon of example for any who hated another. Feeling that hatred worried him even more. Not for himself, but for the very real worry that Val would kill Jasana just to spite him. But that hadn't happened yet. For some reason, he was sure of it. Jasana was still alive, he knew it.

Those tentative brushings told him that things were getting very serious, and he had redoubled his efforts to find a solution. His distance from her had annoyed Jesmind, who had quickly grown restless and impatient in their restrictive wonderland. She could only take so many hot baths before the luxury of them got old, and the heat and humidity in the place had caused her to go around with progressively fewer and fewer clothes, until she finally decided to forego clothing altogether. Her nudity didn't bother either of them in the slightest, since Were-cats had no sense of modesty, but her nakedness had an effect on Tarrin that was quite human. She was his mate, and he was very attracted to her. Seeing her nude was like dangling a waterskin just over the head of a man dying from thirst, and sometimes he had trouble concentrating on what he was doing when she was close by.