Fear could be a reason. Tarrin had decimated Val's Demons, and he showed that he was still more than capable of handling as many as Val could throw at him. His ability to strip them of their power was the great equalizer, that and his deadly sword. Only the Cambisi had any kind of chance against him, and most of them were not up to dealing with an opponent quite like him. The only Demon that Tarrin had never bested was the marilith, that six-armed Demoness. He'd had to resort to Priest magic to defeat her, a testament to her fighting prowess. He hated her with a passion that was nearly holy, but he was not fool enough not to respect her ability.
Tarrin realized that Val had not once tried to find him since the Goddess confronted him. That seemed to click in his mind with the Demon problem… perhaps, just perhaps, Val was letting him come. Now that he thought of it, he hadn't seen a single vrock since then either. Maybe Tarrin had ticked him off to the point that he was moving his forces out of the way to clear a path for the Were-cats to reach him. That was certainly possible, and if that were true, it would explain why Val hadn't sent the Demons after him. He may have sent that column of Goblinoids to find Tarrin and Jesmind, find them and shadow them, perhaps not to attack them. That or to make contact with all the other patrols and recall them. The fifteen Dargu had been travelling towards Gora Umadar, and they had to have crossed paths with the Cambisi's unit earlier in the day. They were travelling in the snowbreak that the Trolls had made when they came out, the same snowbreak that they had been loosely following.
Val did indeed seem to be letting them come. That made Tarrin smile maliciously to himself. He couldn't have asked Val to accommodate him more than he was if that was indeed what he was doing. The idea of getting to Gora Umadar more or less unmolested was going to make this a whole lot easier.
They stopped for the night, and since the wind was relatively calm, they took turns sleeping in cat form out on the flat tundra as the other stood watch. Tarrin spent all his time staring up into the sky with his book of charts in his lap and Jervis' watch in his paw, studying the stars and counting time. He would watch the second hand of that little clock with absolute interest, memorizing the span of time that its movements represented, and began practicing counting backwards to zero the minutes and seconds that passed. He would look at the watch and try to estimate exactly when the minute hand would cross a chosen line, checking the watch when he believed that that moment had just occurred. He was wrong more often than not, because his Were-cat mentality made it hard to keep track of time, but he kept at it. There was going to be a moment very soon that his ability to count time was going to be vital, and him constantly looking at the pocketwatch was going to be like screaming at the top of his lungs that he was waiting for something to happen.
When they moved out well before the late sunrise the next day, with only three days left, Tarrin slowed them to a walk. Jesmind growled and complained and glared at him whenever they weren't hiding behind their Illusions, but he did not step them up at all. They encountered no resistance that day, only tundra wildlife, as if his assumption was correct and Val had recalled his patrols. As if Val was clearing the path for him. He paused often to check his watch, to check his map and track the distance to Gora Umadar, and he saw that he would have to go even slower for a little while. So they stopped for an extended lunch, then set out at a lazy walk, almost strolling along, though Jesmind's cursing and complaining at the slow pace made it seem much less a stroll than an exercise in patience. She just would not get it into her thick head that they had to get there at a certain time on a certain day. Moving slowly didn't please him much either, but he understood that timing was the only thing that was going to get their daughter back.
They camped early, and Tarrin let Jesmind sleep as he stayed up the entire night, studying his watch with single-minded determination, then checked his book of charts and studied the stars. Phandebrass had been right. He'd been calculating the time of the conjunction in the margin of the book, and though his own results took fifty times longer than it had taken Phandebrass, his deciphering of the charts coincided with the Wizard's prediction. He had never doubted Phandebrass, but it had given Tarrin something to do, something to occupy his mind and keep him from dwelling on the plan, a plan that he could not think about. Though Val had stopped trying to find him and attack him, he had no doubt that the bound god was listening. Spyder said that he could hear every thought in Tarrin's head. By not thinking about what had to be done, only thinking about the plan he wanted Val to see, he protected his true intentions from being discovered. When the time came, the Cat would guide him in what must be done. That was an intelligence that did not require thought, and the plan had become nothing more than programmed instinct, nonexistent until the moment the need for it brought it out of him. And since it did not exist, there was nothing for Val to find.
They moved slowly and without opposition the next day, with only two days until the conjunction. Jesmind cursed and complained even more as they moved at an easy walk, but they were only fifteen leagues from the edge of the pyramid's warmth effect, which was itself twenty longspans from the pyramid. Fifteen leagues was nothing to a Were-cat. They could cover that in a single day, but they had to stretch it into two. They had to get to the edge of Val's army just after sunrise. That would give them two hours to travel that twenty longspans and reach the pyramid, and then he would need to play things by ear, depending on his ability to count back the time until the conjunction occurred.
They camped in the open once more, and again, Tarrin simply let Jesmind sleep as he studied his watch and watched the stars. The moons rose about three hours before dawn, all four of them almost at the same time, and it was then that he knew that the conjunction was nearly upon them. They would not rise simultaneously tomorrow, the critical day, with the moons rising in a manner that would cause them to intersect with each other in the sky an hour after noon. They were supposed to come close to conjunction today, with the event was occurring tomorrow, with Domammon and Vala crossing in the sky with the twin moons very close to them. The early rising of the twin moons would prevent the conjunction from happening.
Tarrin watched Jesmind sleep in her cat form, snuggled up on the fur coat laid on the snow, sighing to himself. Tomorrow. It would all be over tomorrow. For good or ill, tomorrow was going to be the day he got back his daughter. After two months without her, two months of agonized torture, he would finally get back Jasana.
And pay back those who took her from him.
They rose late that day, and though he'd not slept for two days, he didn't feel tired at all. They started well before dawn but again moved slowly, a leisurely walk across the tundra, but this time Jesmind did not complain. She knew that tomorrow as the day, and she finally seemed to understand that his pacing was necessary. They were only eight leagues from the edge of Val's void, and they would have to stop well before they got there to wait, to wait until tomorrow. Again they encountered no patrols, no opposition. There were no vrock in the sky, no scouts searching for them. Tarrin guessed that Val really did pull back his forces to allow Tarrin to reach him unchallenged. If only he knew how big a mistake that was. It was the utter proof that even though Val was a god, he was not as godly as he thought he was. If he was, he would have put absolutely everything he could between himself and Tarrin, to try to kill him and take his amulet long before any of the Were-cat's wild plans could be unleashed on him. But Val was confident in his superiority, thinking of Tarrin as nothing but a mere mortal, and too angry with the Were-cat to consider the consequences.