"Always have," he affirmed with a slight nod, which made her laugh. "I don't really want to get up, but we do need to get moving. It's going to be very, very tense from now on."

"I know. We'll have to take turns guarding the camp when we rest."

"Yah. And we're bound to have company on the way."

"Good. I need something to come along and give me a little release. Val's minions will be nice and convenient for me to work out my peevishness."

"Better them than me."

They packed up and started out after that, and Tarrin was strangely lamentful for leaving the little cave behind. Not because of where it was or where they were going, but for what it represented.

They got down onto the tundra by about sunset, finding the pass surprisingly easy to navigate. They moved out from steep decline to flat plain so suddenly that it seemed like some deranged god had dropped the mountains on top of a vast table. There were no foothills, no rugged terrain leading up to the mountains as there was on the west side. The mountains simply stopped, and the plain of the tundra began. As he expected, there was little more than a span to a span and a half of snow on the tundra, and in some places its smoth surface was marred by the tracks of wolves, caribou, foxes, and any manner of small rodents that burrowed out of the snow. He could hear them under it, in tunnels dug out under the frozen crust of the snow, and pits in the snow showed him that the foxes and wolves also could hear the little rodents, punching through the snow to try to grab the little bite-sized morsels. They passed large herds of caribou, shuffling the snow aside with their noses to graze on frozen mosses and lichens and even some snow-bound grass that grew from the cold ground.

But there were other tracks. Boot tracks, some of them overly large, as patrols of Goblinoids marched in spiral patterns out from Gora Umadar. They saw none that first day, even after they stopped for the night when a storm brought little snow but howling winds down on the plain. Tarrin was forced to resort to magic to build a shelter made out of ice, a rounded one that could stand up to the wind, but was surprisingly warm inside when they got a fire going. He'd made sure to make small windows in all four directions so the one staying up could see, windows clogged up with wads of cotton to keep the light of the fire from spilling out of those holes and to also keep the cold from getting inside.

Before setting out well before sunrise the next day, Tarrin consulted the map, looked at the watch, and then checked the stars. "We need to slow down," he announced to Jesmind. "We'll walk for most of the morning, then pick up after we stop for lunch."

"Alright," Jesmind growled, activating the Illusion that concealed them on the featureless plain.

Tarrin's use of magic the night before had ramifications. Not an hour after setting out, they skirted wide of a large force of about a hundred Goblinoids, being led by an armored cambisi, and they were marching with great haste towards where Tarrin had erected the shelter for the night. The Illusions worked very well to hide them from a force of Waern, Dargu, and a pack of twenty Trolls, for they saw them coming well before they got close enough to be a danger, went very wide of them, then laid down on the snow and waited patiently for them to pass.

"Well, there's your diversion, my mate," Tarrin had whispered to her as they hurried by. "Still feel like venting?"

"I think that's a little too much exercise," she said primly. "I don't want to wear myself out now, do I?"

Tarrin watched them curiously, his eyes narrowing. "Why didn't it Teleport?" he wondered aloud.

"What?"

"The Demon isn't Teleporting," he noticed. "They could have sent a horde of them after us, but they didn't. That Demon is marching to where we stayed last night. Why?"

"I have no idea."

"Neither do I, but I think it's fairly important I found out," he said seriously.

They got their chance to beat up on some of Val's forces later that afternoon, as they picked up the pace after lunch. They caught up to a patrol of about fifteen Dargu, looking to be returning to Gora Umadar, and this time Tarrin had no say in the matter. Jesmind's distortion went flying by him as he slowed to take in the possible threat, and he was forced to rush after her to at least give her some support. Jesmind had meant it when she said she was looking forward to having someone at hand she could use to release her fury, and she had not been joking. She abandoned the Illusion when she caught up to them, letting them look death square in the face, and attacked the lot of Dargu with infuriated savagery. Were-kin hated Goblinoids with a passion, and that only helped spur Jesmind on as she assaulted the tail end of their column with the Cat's Claws. Tarrin barely had reached them by the time she'd cut six of them down, and the remaining nine looked torn between engaging the wild-eyed, cursing Were-cat, screaming hideous obsceneties at the top of her lungs as she tore through Dargu flesh with her metal claws, and turning and running away. But the Were-cat was faster than them and they knew it, so they banded together to mount a desperate defense against her. It turned out that they only lined up in a convenient array that let Jesmind attack them all without having to chase any of them down. She fell on them with mindless fury, ignoring their jabbing spears and their rusty swords, sending blood and little pieces of dog-faced Dargu flying with every whip-like rake of the Cat's Claws.

Tarrin slowed to a stop and leaned on his staff, seeing that Jesmind was in no danger from this lot. She needed the exercise, needed the distraction, and it would do her good. So he stood back and let her have her way with the Dargu, tearing into their lines with wild-eyed glee and killing five of them in the process. The four survivor turned with yipping calls of fright and tried to run away, but Jesmind simply chased them down, grabbed them by the backs of their heads, often by their ears, then slashed a metal blade of the Cat's Claws over their throats, not only cutting their throats, but taking the heads off their bodies. She did that with the first three, methodically killing them one by one, then she loped after the last, who was squealing with fright as he ran as fast as his lanky legs would carry him, a mangy tail up between his legs as he ran for his life. She loped along after him easily, then took the severed head of the last Dargu she'd killed and threw it at him. Jesmind's aim was true, and her inhuman strength made the decapitated head strike with the power of a musket ball. It struck the Dargu right in the back of the head, sending a pink cloud into the air as both skulls shattered from the impact, spilling it to the clean white snow. She caught up with it quickly and drove all ten metal blades of the Cat's Claws into its back in a simultaneous movement. The body did not jerk or flinch, meaning that it had been dead the instant it hit the snow.

"Feel better?" Tarrin asked conversationally.

"No," she huffed fiercely, kicking the Dargu corpse before her. "But it's a start."

Tarrin let her clean herself up, then they started out again.

The problem with the Demons gave him something to occupy his mind as they ran on into the darkness, as the four moons set one after another very early into the darkness, casting the snowy plain in the multicolored hues of the Skybands. Why hadn't they Teleported in to attack? He'd been so worried about that for so long that it really annoyed him that they hadn't. Did the Demons have some kind of limitation with how they could Teleport as well?

The void. Of course. That had to be at least part of it. Inside that void, only Druidic magic would function. That, and he realized that Val, whose power was within him, would also have his power function normally. Everyone else, his Wizards, Priests, and Sorcerers, were powerless. And since the magic the Demons used also travelled through the Weave, they were rendered powerless. That was definitely a part of the solution, but not all of it. Val could herd them out to the edge of the void and then have them Teleport to attack him, but it hadn't happened. Could they not Teleport to where he was? Did they too have to know where they were going in order to Teleport there? He wasn't sure. Shiika could Teleport to the Tower, but then again, he had the feeling that she'd been there before.