James Galloway - Honor and Blood

For the entire morning and most of the midday, Tarrin ran effortlessly through the savannah heat, keeping that same pace that had caused those chasing him to fall further and further behind. It wasn't the pace he'd kept before, a pace that allowed them to keep up. This was a murderous pace, a relentless expansion of the ground between him and his pursuers, a pace that killed quite a few of their horses as they attempted to maintain their distance from him. Those that understood that there was no way to catch up to him had broken off or fallen behind, saving their mounts to get them back to civilization. But Tarrin didn't really notice it. His eyes were forward, his mind wandering as it tended to do while he was running, allowing his body to carry through the monotonous motions of running great distances and freeing his mind to pursue other matters. But there were few matters that caught his fancy, causing him to run in a nearly dazed state of unawareness, a sense not of past or future, a condition with which he was familiar. It was the eternal now in which animals lived, where only now mattered. It caused him to blink as the sun began to shine into his eyes, a sun that was now lowering into the western sky.

Tarrin pulled up slightly, then slowly brought himself to a halt. He had run the entire day. Sarraya was still on his head, but the feel of it was that she was laying down, tied down by his hair, and was probably asleep. His belly was a little empty, but it was a sudden sense of thirst that got his immediate attention. He was rather acclimated to heat, but he had run in the brutal savannah heat the entire day without stopping, even for water.

A grunt from between his ears heralded a shifting in his hair. "Wow, you actually stopped!" Sarraya said acidly. "I'm tired, hungry, thirsty, and I'm about to wet your hair, Tarrin! Put me down!"

"You should have asked," Tarrin said bluntly, reaching up and letting her climb into his paw, then setting her down on the grassy ground, grass nearly as tall as she.

"I figured we needed the distance," she grunted as she wandered into the grass and disappeared from his sight. "Are you hungry?"

"Thirsty," he said, turning around to look towards the east. They were all long behind him now. They'd catch up with him, there was no doubt about that, but by the time they did he'd be well away from where they sensed him last, in cat form. They'd never find him out in the savannahs. If they even knew what to look for.

A thousand longspans. That was about how far it was to the border of the desert, and he'd have to cross almost all of it in cat form. A journey of months. It was a daunting proposition for a little cat, but he had little choice. They could find him unless he was in cat form, and only within the protection of the desert could he move about freely in his humanoid form. Only the truly rabid zealots would dare enter the desert after him, and they wouldn't get far. Tarrin himself would face resistance from the Selani, but at least he had an edge in that regard. Allia's teachings about the desert and his ability to speak Selani would help him get across the desert in one piece. And if it came down to it, he could defeat Selani in combat, where no human would stand a chance against the agile, speedy desert dwellers. But he had to get there first, and that wasn't going to be easy.

Movement to the south got his attention. Tarrin turned and looked in that direction, where strange dark shapes had appeared near the horizon. Strangely enough, they were above the land, which was why he noticed them. Large birds? Rocs, immense hawk-like birds with a wingspan around seventy spans, were an uncommon sight around Aldreth, but they did see them from time to time. Perhaps Yar Arak also had Rocs, but he didn't see where they would roost. The Rocs back home nested in the jagged peaks of the Clouddancer Mountains to the north, where this land was a flat table of dry soil.

Whatever they were, they were a very long distance away. The wind had begun to stir, as the heat of the sun began to wane, and the air started to cool and shift, and that was creating a shimmering haze that made it hard to see the birds, so far away they were from him.

"Want some berries?" Sarraya called as she moved back towards him. She had a large blackberry in her tiny blue hands, already gnawing a goodly sized divot out of it.

"No, I'm more interested in water," he said, dropping down onto all fours and closing his eyes as he breathed the air into his nose. His nose was more than just a decoration. Tarrin's sense of smell was just as acute as a cat's, giving him the ability to track by scent, to identify people and objects by their scents, and to detect distant things by their scent as well. The faint smell of water was reaching him, very faint, coming from upwind. His tail slashing behind him a few times, he deduced that the water was a good longspan distant, but that it was a sizable pool. "I can smell some nearby," he told the Faerie, rising back up to his considerable, intimidating height. The Faerie barely crested the top of his furred ankle.

"Sounds like a plan to me," she said, looking at his leg. "Tarrin, you're fetting."

"I'm what?"

She pointed to his ankle, where long hair had appeared around the backs of his ankles. "Fetlocks," she replied. "Strange."

"What are fetlocks?" Tarrin asked, looking down. He'd never noticed that before. And Tarrin was usually keenly aware of his own body.

"Fetlocks. Shaggy tufts of fur around the ankles. Some horses have them," Sarraya told him. "Were-cats fet too, but the fetlocks are small, only the males fet, and only the very old ones. It's a Were-cat male's form of growing a beard, it's a sign of age. That's why it's so strange to see them. You shouldn't be fetting for another five hundred years."

"I'm a changeling, Sarraya. Maybe that affects it."

"You have a point there," she agreed. "The only male changelings I've ever seen didn't live long enough to find out." She looked up at him critically. "I need my wings."

"Why?"

"Tarrin," she said carefully. "Do I look, smaller, to you?"

Tarrin was taken a bit aback by her question. What a silly thing to say! But then again, looking down at her, he almost had to say yes to her question. She did seem to be a little smaller. "I think you do," he said after a moment of reflection.

"Bizarre," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on his ankle. He felt her do something with her Druidic magic. "Tarrin, you're growing!"

"What?"

"You're growing!" she replied. "You've been growing at an accelerated rate for a while now, but I didn't notice it! Has something unusual happened to you lately?"

"Like what?"

"Anything unique," she pressed. "Something had to trigger this. It's not natural."

"Unique? Do you want a day by day dissertation, or would a blanket summary of the last two months of my life satisfy you?"

Sarraya screwed her face at him, then she laughed. "Point taken," she chuckled. "But something had to trigger this in you. You're growing, but the fact that you're fetting means that you're aging too, years for every day. Let's try it this way. Did anything extraordinary happen in Dala Yar Arak?"

He looked right into her small eyes. "I used Druidic magic," he told her directly.

She gaped at him. "You did what? Why didn't you tell me!"

"I was waiting until you weren't in such a bad mood," he replied calmly.

She glared at him, then she gave him a rueful grin. "Well, I'm certainly surprised that it took that long."

"What?"

"Tarrin, dear, my being here to control your Sorcery was only half the reason Triana sent me. She could feel it in you, and so could I. Any Druid can. You have talent. She sent me along to prevent you from realizing your ability, because it's way too dangerous to try to teach Druidic magic in anything but complete peace and isolation. I guess I didn't do a good enough job," she grunted. "Triana's gonna have words with me."