 said bluntly.  "If they did appear out of thin air, I wouldn't be very surprised."
	Sarraya threw her hands up in frustration.  "You're being paranoid!" she snapped.
	"One of us has to be."
	Sarraya growled in her throat, then landed on the log.  He felt her use her Druidic magic, and a small pile of apples appeared on the ground in front of him.  "There you go," she said grandly, motioning to the apples.  "Eat up, then we'll move on.  I'm going to go lay down.  Wake me up when you're ready."
	He did just that.  He sat down in front of the apples and wolfed them down like a starving man, considering what was to come.  Since he wasn't hiding anymore, they'd know where to look for him.  The Zakkites probably wouldn't be a problem, since they were so far inland now.  But the ki'zadun, that was another story.  They used Wyverns to fly around, Jula had told him so.  He had little doubt that a flight of Wyverns were right now being readied to come after him.  That was his greatest threat.  There were local mages and such as well, but they weren't as powerful or well prepared as those coming by air.  They knew of him, they knew what he was and how to attack him, where the local yokel did not.
	Even if they did find him whether they would attack him was also an issue.  Tarrin had demonstrated in the past that he had power enough to crush just about any challenger.  And his power was only getting stronger.  He wasn't sure the ki'zadun were crazy enough to throw away more lives to try to take the book.  They may try to steal it, but he wasn't sure they'd attack him unless they felt they had a serious counter to his advantage.  No, they'd tried that before, they'd learned their lessons.  The locals didn't know that, so they'd just come after him.  And they'd be no real threat to him.  It was the ki'zadun that was the main threat, and in their knowledge of him came his uncertainty.  What dirty trick would they try next to try to beat him?  They'd tried deception, kidnapping, assassins, they tried driving him crazy, they even sent Jula to ruin his reputation and slow him down.  They had to be running out of items in their bag of tricks.  They had to be getting desperate, and that made them dangerous.  Tarrin respected the resilience and staying power of his oldest enemies.  He hated them and wanted to destroy them, but even he had to respect their power.  He'd be a fool not to do so.  He'd been trained never to underestimate his opposition.
	The emptiness.  He still felt its fringes, and part of him dreaded going back to cat form.  The Cat lived in the moment, and that was the problem.  A feeling like homesickness, longing for family, it was a feeling that the Cat could understand, but could not completely comprehend.  That was the core of the issue.  The Cat could not forget, even as it lived within its eternal moment.  They were not with him right now, and right now was the only thing that mattered to it.  He'd have to avoid cat form for a couple of days, or use it only to sleep and hide.  In sleep, the Cat could forget the pain.
	It was time to go.  He'd stood in one place too long as it was, he was just making it easy for anyone chasing him to home in on his location.  In a way, he almost wanted them to find him.  He wouldn't mind a little bit of therapudic venting at the moment.  Take out his frustrations on whoever was unfortunate enough to be his playmate.  But with his luck, he'd end up facing an army of Demons, or a Dragon, or some irritated god.
	Better safe than sorry.
	He stood up.  It was time to go.
	"Sarraya," he called, shifting the precious pack on his back, with its priceless cargo.  "It's time to go."
	"Alright," she said in a yawning voice.  "You go on, I'll catch up in a minute."
	He nodded, looking up into the cloudless morning sky.  The Skybands showed him east and west, so it was very easy to move west.  West was the desert, and the only safety he would find in this hostile land.  The only place where nobody would dare follow him.  He set out slowly, feeling the poor eating in his muscles as they were forced to work more than normal, feeling the changes.  His legs were longer now, allowing him to cover more ground with each stride.  It felt strange to him, to feel himself with a higher center of gravity, to feel as if he was less stable than before.  He knew that that was just a combination of a taller body and lack of food for a while, but it didn't change the feeling all that much.  He ran for a few minutes at a slow pace, then gradually managed to increase it as he felt more and more comfortable with the new way things felt.  He finally settled into a ground-eating pace that few horses could hold for long, a pace that made him feel as if he was flying across the surface of the savannah, allowing his long legs to eat up the distance.  A pace that he felt he could hold forever, it felt so comfortable.  It was a pace that focused him on his running, that allowed his mind to drift just enough to allow the time to flow by easily.  It wasn't the eternal moment of the Cat, but it was still good enough to make him blink in surprise when he realized that the sun was directly overhead, and the dry plains of Saranam were decidedly hot.  Sarraya was flitting along just beside him easily, leaving him to his thoughts.
	He spotted them just as he began to slow.  Three specks to the northwest, close to one another.  They didn't have the shape to be birds, not with such unusually formed wings.  Tarrin slowed to a stop and pointed in that direction to Sarraya.  "What do you think, Sarraya?" he asked without any warning.  "Bird or not?"
	"Definitely not," she replied, shading her eyes from the light as she peered towards them.  "Whatever they are, they're big.  I can't tell which way they're going."
	Tarrin looked around.  On the horizon, there was a ridge that looked to be a city's wall.  That was possible, because they were standing on a slight rise which had another behind that wall.   A shallow valley, and that meant that there either was or had been a river flowing through it.  He couldn't tell, because the wind was coming up from his back, bringing nothing but the smell of dust, dry grass, and hiding animals to him.  There was supposed to be a good-sized river in Saranam, the lifeblood of the kingdom, where the majority of the Saranam peoples were located.
	"Is this a river valley?" Tarrin asked.  "And is that a city over there?"
	"I think so, on both," she replied, rising about thirty spans into the air and peering ahead of them.  "It certainly looks like a city, and this is about where the Sar river would be.  Think we can make it over to that city before whatever those things are up there reach us?"
	Tarrin reached behind him and unhooked his water skin, then took a long swallow.  "I think we can make it," he replied.  "It doesn't look all that far."  He wasn't really tired, but he was starting to feel a bit sleepy.  That would go away as soon as he started moving again.
	"How are you feeling?"
	"A bit sleepy, but not really tired," he replied.  "Those apples you gave me did the trick."
	"Well, we'll get a real meal in that city," she told him.  "I want you to eat until you can't eat anymore.  And you need meat.  Lots of meat.  That should rebuild what's wasted away."
	"Stopping may not be a good idea."
	"This isn't about a good idea, this is about what your body desperately needs," she told him bluntly.  "We don't have any choice, Tarrin.  If we don't stop and let you get back what you've lost, you're going to get sick."
	"We can't afford that."
	"Exactly.  You should listen to me, Tarrin.  After all, I'm much smarter than you," she said with a mischievious grin.
	"I'm so glad you think so," he said dryly, securing his waterskin, then starting out for the city.  "Use your towering intellect to keep an eye on those birds, or whatever they are."
	"Child's play."
	"Then it should be a challenge for you."
	"You," she huffed as she flitted up to a matching pace with him.
	There was something of an aire of urgency now.  Sarraya kept her eyes on the three aerial forms, who seemed to only get a little closer as the walls of the unnamed city grew more and more in front of them.  And spread out further and further.  Tarrin was a bit surprised to find that this city was quite large, built on both sides of a very wide, slow-moving river that was a very unhealthy brown color.  The stone of the wall was a curious whitish color, just barely tinged with the color of sand.  Tarrin wondered where they found that much stone; the plains of Saranam were dusty sand and loose soil, to find anything harder than wood on the windswept plains was an accomplishment.  They had to have brought it in from somewhere else, probably the mountains far to the northwest, or from the desert.  Either way, the city's walls became more and more distinctive to his eyes as they approached them, and as the flying forms seemed to continue to keep their distance.  Were they truly afraid of him now?  Were they just tracking him, waiting for reinforcements?  That would be the wisest course.  Only three would have virtually no chance of taking the book from him.
	He looked over the walls of the city, and saw something that he did not like.  It was a darkness, a swirling darkness, like some great cloud.
	A sandstorm!
	No wonder the fliers wouldn't approach.  A sandstorm from the desert had managed to come into Saranam, and it was threatening the area.
	"Sarraya, do you see that?" he called as he ran towards the city.
	"A sandstorm," she replied. "It's moving this way."
	"I didn't think we were that close to the desert."
	"We're not.  Sandstorms sometimes come halfway to Dala Yar Arak this time of year.  It's the beginning of the stormy season.  This must be the first one."
	"That must be why those fliers won't approach.  I don't think I'd want to get caught in a sandstorm while flying."
	"I think you're right there," she agreed.  "Well, Tarrin, now you know why they call it the Desert of Swirling Sands.  That storm would be three times as big in the desert.  They lose their power as they come into Saranam."
	"When did you learn about all this?"
	"I'm a Druid, silly," Sarraya said, coming up to his head level and looking at him as he ran and she flew.  "Part of it is magic, but part is study.  We study nature.  Weather is part of nature."
	"I'm surprised that you study weather in places you've never been."
	"Who says I've never been to Saranam?" she challenged.
	"Me."
	She laughed. "Alright, not Saranam, but I have been to the desert before.  There are Druids out there, and I've been to see a couple of them.  They taught me about desert weather."
	"Is that what we're going to be dealing with in the desert?" he asked.
	"Afraid so," she replied.  "This time of year, if you have a day where you can see the sky, it's a good one.  We'd better buy you some good storm clothes.  I'll make you a good visor to protect your eyes from the blowing sand, too."
	"Why is it like that?"
	"Climate," she replied.  "The Sandshield mountains generate wind gusts that expand when they get out over the open desert, fueled by the heat of the sand and rock.  It kind of snowballs from there into those big storms.  This is the rainy season in Arkis, so that means it's the storm season in the desert.  The rain winds get funnelled through the mountains and turn into sandstorms on this side."
	"That Druid taught you that?"
	"Some of it," she replied.  "I pieced the rest together based on my knowledge of the weather in Arkis.  I live just inside the Frontier on the Arkis side."
	"If you're experienced, then tell me we're going to get there before the storm does."
	"Tarrin, that storm is a long way off.  It's just so big, it looks close.  When it gets here, it'll be like looking at a wall of dark dust, five thousand spans high."
	"You're serious!"
	"Very," she replied.  "Seeing a sandstorm roll in is a unique experience."
	"How long do they last?"
	"This far from the desert, probably not long," she replied.  "Now you know why these plains are so dusty.  The storms blow it in.  Sometimes it takes a month for it to settle out of the air, if was a particularly nasty storm."
	The fields around the city appeared when they crested a slight rise, patches of green around the sand colored walls, but they were dwarfed by the huge number of fences for livestock that dominated the center of the wall, as if they were built there to use the wall to protect against blowing sand.  Wrangling seemed to be more important to the city than farming, and given the climate, he understood.  It was easier to raise sheep, goats, and cattle than it was to grow food in a land subject to scouring sandstorms.  The dusty plains had enough scrubby grass growing in the sandy soil to support herding.  He could also see the river better, and saw several ships on both sides of the city.  The sandy walls began to seem more and more like the bastion of human habitation as he neared them, and the ground just ahead showed signs that a herd of animals had recently gnawed down the wiry grass that grew in the arid plain.
	Tarrin pulled up and stopped, looking down at the city in the shallow valley.  "What is it?" Sarraya asked.
	"I think I need something to disguise me."
	"Why don't you just go human?"
	"Because I'm very tired, and I don't feel like dealing with the pain right now," he told her bluntly.  "Think you can make me something to cover me?"
	"Child's play," she winked, waving her hands grandly.  A large, voluminous cloak simply appeared in midair, made of soft, thin leather, almost like cloth.  It had a deep hood, and it was undyed.  The tan garment would blend in well with the arid plain, making it a sensible garment.  Tarrin caught it before it fell to the ground.  Sarraya grinned and flitted up to his face, then pointed her finger at his face--
	--and everything suddenly turned purplish.  Not only that, there was a sudden weight on his face.
	Recoiling, Tarrin reached up and found something sitting on his nose, wrapping around to hug his skull to keep it from falling off.  He grabbed it and pulled it off his face, and found himself looking at a strange formation of what looked like purple glass.  It was shaped to fit over the eyes, resting on the nose, and for a human they would rest atop the ears as well.  Since he didn't have ears there, they rested on the bone ridges above where his ears used to be.
	"What is this?"
	"It's called a visor.  The Selani make them," she replied.  "They shield your eyes from the sand, and their tint protects your eyes from the brightness of the sun.  In your case, they're also going to hide those cat's eyes of yours.  The humans won't look funny at you if you wear it.  Any serious traveller around here has one."
	"Strange.  Allia didn't have one, and she never mentioned it."
	"It's something so common, she probably wouldn't have thought to say anything.  If you didn't notice, Allia tends to leave out anything she considers common knowledge."
	"I noticed."
	"The problem is that her common knowledge is pretty uncommon," Sarraya grinned.  "How much has she told you about the desert?"
	"She told me about what it's like.  She also described some of the animals that live there.  I still can't believe there are lizards as big as a barn."
	"Believe it," Sarraya laughed.  "I've seen them.  They call them krajats.  There are others that aren't that big, but are no less nasty.  The desert is a very dangerous place."
	"What do they eat?" he demanded.  "There's not much out there."
	"Each other, most likely," Sarraya shrugged, then she looked him over from top to bottom.  "Well, that cloak manages to hide about everything.  Since those furry feet kind of look like boots if you don't look very hard, you shouldn't cause a panic."
	"Thank you so very much," Tarrin grunted, sliding the visor back over his eyes.  Before he put on the cloak, he realized that the hilt of the black-bladed sword under his pack was going to cause a problem.  Sarraya solved that by slitting it, so the hilt could come up through it, then using her Druidic magic to seal up the excess so that the cloak hugged the scabbard, to keep blowing sand from seeping under the cloak.  She even thoughtfully created a leather hood for the scabbard that tied on, to protect the delicate wire-wrapped hilt from the damage of blowing sand, should they get caught in the storm.  That done, Tarrin started off towards the city at a fast walk, which was nearly a running pace for a human.  His long, long legs consumed ground with every light step, carrying him towards the lone city in the vast empty wilderness.
	As he neared, he got a sense of the randomness of this city.  Fences and pens seemed to be erected wherever was convenient outside the walls, turning the trek to the visible gate something of a zigzagging course.  Animal manure made every breath of air a riot of unpleasant smell, not to mention making him pick his steps with exceeding care.  There were herd animals everywhere, in flocks and groups, staked to the ground alone, wandering aimlessly on ground long since stomped free of grass, kicking up a ceaseless cloud of dust that hung in a pall just over the ground.  There were sheep, cattle, horses, goats, and even stranger animals that he'd never seen before.  Long-legged animals with huge humps on their backs, which were even taller than he was.  Stocky cattle-like animals that had rounded horns rather than straight ones, like a ram, yet were grayish instead of brown.  There were even strange long-necked animals with wooly fur, like a sheep, yet stood as tall as a horse.  Tending the animals were dark-skinned people that looked like Arakites, but these people were rather skinny, wearing simple homespun tunics or robes, all the men of which wearing a simple white turban on his head, and all of the women wearing a shawl.  Many people had similar covers over their eyes as his own, looking to be made of glass or mica.  Tarrin wondered idly just how they were made, since the ones on his face did not distort his vision in the slightest.  They only dimmed the bright sunlight and cast everything with a slightly violet color.  Most glass was wavy or cloudy when one looked through it.  That these visors were perfectly polished so that they didn't distort things was remarkable.
	Moving through the patchwork of pens and wandering herds, Tarrin made his way towards the city.  Most of the people around him didn't pay him all that much mind, although some of them did stare when he came close to their animals.  The herd animals, smelling his predator's scent, bleated or cried out in sudden fear, shying away from him, and that reaction made their tenders wonder what had spooked them.  Tarrin didn't pay the animals that much attention, keeping one eye on the city, one on the storm, and turning from time to time to see where the airborne trailers were.  He judged that he would make the city well before the storm arrived, for he got an idea of its size as moment after moment passed, and the storm didn't seem to get any closer.  It truly had to be huge, and still some distance off.
	Moving near to the humans gave him a serious lesson in how different things were for him now.  They were so small.  Before, the tallest humans--aside from certain exceptions--topped out at the base of his chin.  Now, he hadn't passed a single human whose turban or shawl reached his collarbones.  He felt like he was an adult moving through a group of children.  Looking at the people around him without staring, he realized that he truly was Triana's size now.  Probably eye to eye with the massive Azakar.  He was used to being tall, but he felt distinctly unusual to tower over everyone else.  They were children now, little children who would break in his paws if he was too rough with them.  Was that how Triana felt when she dealt with humans?  Did Azakar feel the same way?
	Still musing over it, Tarrin finally reached the city's gates.  They were open, and they were busy.  The gates were very wide, and through them filed both people and herd animals, being shepharded either in or out.  Beyond the gates was a large open area, probably where herds were gathered before moving or just before sale, and inside the simple wooden gates stood two disinterested men wearing a leather cross harness and a plain white kilt-like skirt, and each holding a pike.  There was a crest in bronze at the crossing of the leather straps crisscrossing the men's chests, that of a sun cresting a flat horizon.  The cross harnesses left most of the men bare from the waist up as the kilts left their legs bare from the knee down to their tied sandals, and their skin was deeply burnished by the sun and the wind.  Each wore a small conical helmet, to which was attached a long tail of hair that wavered in the growing breeze heralding the approaching storm.  Judging from the rather nonsensical outfits, these guards were purely ceremonial.
	"Sarraya, are you still around?" Tarrin asked under his breath.
	"Of course I am," she replied from nearby, though she was hidden from sight.  "What?"
	"Just checking."
	As he passed by one of the guards, he noted idly that he was nearly as tall as the man's pike.  The guard stared at him for a long moment, but looked away instantly as Tarrin lowered his visored gaze on the man and did not look away.
	"Tarrin, pull in your tail," Sarraya hissed in a low whisper.  He couldn't hear her wings either, but from the sound of her voice, she had to be right near his ear, which was flattened a bit under the hood.  "You're bulging."
	He attended to that quickly, pulling his tail off the back of the cloak, pressing it up against his leg and wrapping the excess around his shin and ankle to keep it out of mischief.  If anyone noticed, they didn't tell him anything as he passed through the gate and beyond the large pen, moving into the city beyond.
	And he was not impressed.  This nameless city smelled ten times worse than any city he'd ever visited.  It was so bad that he had to put his paw over his nose, giving away the fact that he wasn't just a really tall human.  The place was a cesspool of every bad smell he could remember, peppered with brand new horrible smells he couldn't identify.  The city streets were unpaved dirt, dirt coated and salted with sand as people's feet and animals' hooves ground the sand into the packed soil of the street.  It was a good thing Saranam saw little rain, else the entire city would sink into the quagmire of mud that would surely result.  The lack of deep ruts in the streets said that there was little rain here to make paving the streets necessary.  But there was water, usually ditches running close to buildings made of brown mud bricks, liquid waste and urine tossed out from the low-built structures' upper story windows.  Dead rats and other unpleasant things floated in those open cesspits, which flowed slowly but inexorably downslope, towards the river.  The streets were populated with people dressed in plain, rugged robes and mantles of sturdy wool or that cotton-fiber, or plaxat fiber, the super-strong plant fiber clothing the Selani made.  He could easily see all of them, for there was nothing to obstruct his view of the streets except for buildings.  Not even the herd animals they kept in the city stood at his height, though there were some outside that were taller than him, and that allowed him to see as far down the street as he wished.  There was a noticable lack of horses, or of litters or carriages that marked the wealthy.  Everyone in this city seemed to work for a living, that, or the wealthy didn't come into the part of the city in which he currently moved.
	His first encounter with a Saranite was abrupt.  A child, no more than eight, bumped into his leg, then staggered back and fell down on his behind.  The child's eyes were at the same level as his knee when he was standing, but now they were just over his ankle.  He stopped and looked down at the young Saranite lad, who looked like an Arakite except for being a bit thinner.  The boy got a good look at Tarrin's foot, then he stared up at him in slack-jawed awe.  He sat there for a very long moment, then in a sudden burst of activity, he scrambled to his feet and rushed away.
	The smell of roasting meat seeped in over the horrible miasma in the city, stirring his stomach to respond.  That honestly surprised him, given that the place smelled so bad that, if he would have thought of food before that moment, it would have made him throw up.  It had been a very long time since he'd had anything filling, and the growing he did while in cat form had burned much of the food he'd managed to eat during that time.  Even with the place smelling as awful as it did, he found the need for a good meal irresistable.
	Mutton.  It was mutton.  Most humans didn't like mutton, but to Tarrin it had a texture and flavor that was quite good.  The smell was coming from a wide-doored building just down the street, a place that had the look of an inn or tavern.  It had no conventional door, just wide shutters that were tied open.  There was a window flanking each shutter at the door, which themselves had small shutters opened to each side of them.  A piece of faded red cloth, with fringe that had been tattered long ago, was stretched over the door, attached over the shutters and held up by a pair of poles staked into the sandy ground to provide patrons with a bit of shade before entering or leaving.
	Now that he noticed them, he saw alot of those shutters.  They flanked windows, they were outside doorways even when there were doors.  There was not a single door or window he could see that did not have shutters attached, and he understood why.  If sandstorms were a fact of life in the region, then the people would obviously have prepared their homes and shops for them.  The shutters would keep blowing sand out of their buildings.  The slightly scarred and pitted look of the mud brick of the inn showed that sandstorms did come in, and that also explained why he hadn't seen any painted or whitewashed buildings.  Everything was of that same mud brick, and it had to be.  The blowing sand would scour away whitewash or paint, would strip off polished exteriors of stones and maybe even gouge out the mortar holding them together, leaving them worn and weakened.  As damaging as the blowing sand was, it was only sensible to make buildings out of something that was cheap to replace and easy to repair.
	The doorway was too small.  He almost bumped his head on the entrance as he entered, as he turned to look towards the street warily as a shout arose, turning  back around and realizing his peril at the last moment.  He very nearly smacked his nose on the wall over the door before ducking under the mud brick wall and the doorframe which was attached to it.  He was used to ducking under doors, but that was the first time he'd ever had the top of the door staring him in the face, taking up his entire field of vision when he bothered to look in that direction.
	This height was going to take a lot of getting used to.
	The interior of the inn was a bit hazy with smoke from a firepit against the right wall, over which roasted an entire lamb.  There was boisterous carousing from the twenty or so men who were inside, drinking, eating, and talking among the tables set out in the floor and the booths built against the wall on the opposite side of the firepit.  There were two lanky men behind a bar across from the door, and four serving women in very low cut dresses moved quickly and effortlessly among the tables with wooden trays bearing food and drink.  It was much like many other taverns he'd seen in his time, but judging by the rather beaten look of the furniture in this place, it wasn't known for its well-mannered patrons.  This place was more of a seedy dive than a respectful eating establishment.
	Considering who he was, a seedy dive was probably a better place to be than some posh luxury inn.  So long as they were willing to give up that roasted lamb, things would be just fine.  There was bit of a lull in the conversations as a few of the patrons took notice of him, an unnaturally tall figure covered in a deep cloak.  If he were them, he'd take notice too.  It was only natural.  Tarrin was very much out of place here, and he felt that way keenly.  He didn't fear these strangers, not in the same ways that he felt in Dala Yar Arak, but the first twinges of anxiety at being among strangers was beginning to rear up.  Probably the two months of being with nobody but Sarraya had dulled him a bit to his feral rejection of people he didn't know and trust.  He didn't accept these people, but he didn't feel the same fear that he used to feel to come into their presence and possibly expose himself to whatever danger they posed.  Then again, he was so hungry that he didn't really care if he feared them or not.  The screaming coming from his belly, awakened by the smell of the roasting lamb, was enough to make him fight a Roc over it.
	Money.  He didn't have any money.  He'd need it to get the lamb.  "Sarraya, are you here?" he asked in the unspoken manner of the Cat.
	"I'm right here," she said in a whisper.  That was when he realized that she was sitting on his shoulder.  The cloak's weight caused him to miss her negligible weight.
	"I'm going to need some money."
	"I'll whip up something for you when you sit down.  I'll make a belt pouch and put it on your lap, just so you know where to reach."
	"Thanks," he replied sincerely as he stepped deeper into the tavern.  Most of the men were quiet now, watching him stride in on his long legs, moving directly to intercept one of the serving women.  She was forced to stop in front of him, barely reaching his chest, staring up at him with wide eyes and an open mouth.  She was a pretty little girl, with pattern Arakite dark skin, black hair, and brown eyes.  She was barely more than sixteen, with a chest not exactly equipped to being hugged by an open neckline, but she had a pleasing silhouette that made up for her lack of bust.
	"C-Can I serve you, good master?" she asked hesitantly in Arakite.
	"I want the lamb," he replied in fluent Arakite.
	"It's not fully cooked yet, good master," she replied.  "If you're willing to wait--"
	"I'll take it as it is."
	"If you really want it, good master.  I'll have someone cut you--"
	"You misunderstood me," he said in a calm voice.  "I want the lamb.  The entire lamb.  I'll pay a fair