 Sarraya.  I'll kick myself for ten years if we pass it by, and then have to turn around and come back here to get it."
	"Why don't you let me go look?" she offered.  "I can fly, and the Aeradalla won't see me."
	"Fine.  Just tell me how you intend to find it, and you're free to do it yourself."
	She looked at him, then laughed ruefully.  "I get the point," she acceded.  "I wouldn't be able to find it, would I?  At least not like you could."
	Tarrin nodded.  "If it's up there, I could point to it.  I'm hoping that we don't have to do that.  There's a chance it may be some relic the Selani are holding.  Or it may be hidden in the Cloud Spire itself, without me having to climb to the top.  I know it's somewhere around the spire, but not exactly."
	"Well, we can hope," she agreed.
	"Where are Var and Denai?"
	"I heard Denai giggling as I flew up here.  It's no stretch to imagine what they're doing."
	"Then we'll leave as soon as we eat," Tarrin said.  "Leave them behind."
	"They'll catch up with us," she warned.
	"I know, but it'll give them the sense that I'm not going to wait for them.  And when we leave them at Gathering, they'll look back on this and realize that I warned them."
	"Fine.  What's your pleasure today?"
	"I'm feeling evil.  I want pancakes.  And syrup."
	Sarraya laughed.  "One confused cook, coming up," she said grandly.
	Tarrin did just as he warned, left Var and Denai behind.  They loped north at a smooth pace, Tarrin continuing Sarraya's education in Sha'Kar.  But that wouldn't be for much longer.  Sarraya had been cheating with her magic to make sure the lessons held in her mind, and she was nearly fluent now.  He was only teaching her some of the more archaic words, and some of the more obscure rules of grammar.  Sarraya was competent in Sha'Kar, but Tarrin was a perfectionist.  It was silly to learn a language without being able to think in that language.
	Var and Denai caught up with them about lunchtime, as Tarrin and Sarraya stopped on a curious boulder that had a flat top.  They were sitting atop it, as Sarraya amused herself by frying conjured eggs on its surface.  Tarrin didn't even notice heat anymore, heat or cold.  It took something like watching an egg fry on the surface where he was sitting to realize that it was just that hot.  The flat boulder certainly was like a natural skillet, sitting out where the sun heated it like a fire.
	"Tarrin, why did you leave us behind?" Denai demanded from the ground.  She knew better than to try to get up there with it being so hot.
	"Because I didn't feel like waiting for you two to finish playing," he said pointedly.
	Denai blushed.
	"How far are we from the Cloud Spire?" he asked.
	"If we move fast and don't stop as often to rest, we can get to the outside edges of Gathering by sunset," Denai told him.  "We could reach the spire itself just a few hours after that."
	"The Gathering is that big?" Sarraya asked.
	"When all the clans assemble, it takes up some space, Sarraya," Var said mildly.
	Tarrin looked towards the north.  The cloud was hidden in the wavering haze of the midday heat, but his sense of that object told him exactly how far they were from it.  And the distance was about as Denai said it was.
	"Then you two had better sit down.  I'm leaving in just a little while."
	And he did.  Var and Denai had to scramble to their feet and rush after him as he loped away from them, towards the north.  And the pace he set could be called murderous.  Var and Denai could run with him, but he'd pushed them over the last few days, and their endurance was playing out.  They were breathing heavily after about two hours, and they began to lag behind after three.  He ran them for about another half hour, and then pulled up for a short break.  Not for them; he wanted water, and it was hard to drink while running.  Var and Denai caught up with him a few moments later, and both knelt down and tried to catch their breath.  "What's your problem, Tarrin?" Denai panted.
	He said nothing, just looking down at her with his tail swishing back and forth at a stately pace.
	Then he was off again.  After another half hour, they spotted a Selani tribe on the move some distance east of them, and Tarrin slowed down to study it.  Selani were nomads, and they carried everything with them on their backs or on tamed chisa.  Chisa were the only thing close to pack animals that could keep up with the fleet-footed Selani.  They ran along in a disorganized column, with the herd animals bringing up the rear and a contingent of Scouts ranging ahead.  Tarrin saw that even the children ran, though the youngest were either carried or were riding sukk.  The ability to keep up with the tribe while on the move was considered to be the first step to adulthood.
	"My clan," Var said, shading his eyes and peering in that direction as they ran.  "Not my tribe."
	"Our clan," Denai said archly.  "Who leads them?"
	"A tall one with his head bare.  He has a scar on his cheek."
	"That's the tribe of my sister's husband," Denai remarked.  "Should we join them?"
	"If you want, go," Tarrin said bluntly.  "I'm going this way."
	"Then that's the way I'm going," Var said calmly.
	"Oh well," Denai sighed, and they picked up the pace again.
	The cloud he'd seen in the horizon only got bigger and bigger as they approached it, and for a little while he wondered if it took up the entire sky at the spire.  Sarraya took a look at it and estimated that it had to be absolutely humongous, longspans and longspans across, probably even further across than the Great Canyon was wide.  His sense of the location of the object became more and more precise as he approached it, allowing him to get more accurate with his estimation of where it resided.  But he was still too far away to discern if it was on the ground on on the spire.
	They spotted more and more Scouts as they penetrated the area reserved for Gathering.  There seemed to be a Selani watcher on every rise, on every spire, and hiding behind every scrubby bush or large rock.  They didn't bother them, but their presence unnerved Tarrin just a little bit.  The idea of strangers with weapons hiding in every nook and cranny didn't sit well with his suspicious nature, but he kept reminding himself over and over that they were Selani, and they wouldn't attack him so long as he was in the company of other Selani.  He had no doubt that they could see his brands, so that only lent credence to the illusion that he was supposed to be there.
	And still the cloud grew in the distance, and still his sense of that object sharpened more and more.
	They reached the edge of the cloud about a half hour before sunset.  It was circular, a flat, featureless cloud much akin to fog, and there was no raggedness to its borders.  It simply began, and it looked just as thick at the edges as it did towards its center.  It was apparent that the cloud was indeed a huge thing, swallowing up the entire northern sky.  And his senses told him that the magic was indeed a product of some kind of magic.  He could sense it, even from that distance.  It felt a little strange stepping under it, almost as if he had entered someone's house.
	About five longspans inside the boundary of the cloud, they reached an area where buzzards, vultures, and jackals congregated in very large numbers.  It was very odd, because there didn't seem to be anything that he could see that could support them.  But being who they were, they wouldn't hang around the area unless there was something there to eat.  Tarrin knelt as they entered the area when something caught his eyes, and he found a grotesquely misshapen steel head of a crossbow quarrel, affixed to a shattered bolt.  The sight of the thing sent a shiver of pain through his chest, as the memory of the crossbow quarrel that nearly killed him tingled through his awareness.  Selani didn't use crossbows...could this be from the Aeradalla?  Maybe one of them had dropped the bolt while flying, and the fall destroyed it.
	There was a strange sound some distance to the right of them.  Tarrin looked to see several vultures and jackals converge on the area, then immediately begin fighting among themselves for whatever it was.
	"Weird," Sarraya mused.
	"Very," Tarrin agreed.  "Why are they here?"
	"We think that the Cloudracers hunt in the clouds above us," Var said.  "Things fall from the cloud from time to time, and the scavengers have learned that some of it is edible."
	"That, or they dump their garbage here," Sarraya added, pointing to a fragment of pottery laying on the sandy ground.
	"Either way, it's no concern of ours," Tarrin surmised.  "Let's move on."
	Near sunset, they crested a small rise, and found themselves looking into a very shallow yet absolutely vast valley.  Tarrin pulled up at that crest and stared down in astonishment.  The Cloud Spire hovered in the distance, the base of it and its pillar visible now, and from where he was he could see that it was nothing like any other spire.  It was a monster, the king of all pillars, and it had to be an entire longspan wide at its base.  And it didn't particularly narrow as it reached into the sky, reached into the vast cloud that hovered almost over their heads now.  It was the tallest, highest thing he had ever seen in his life.
	And that was only half of the astonishment.  Swarming around the land inside that shallow valley, protected by the sun from the shade of the immense cloud that hung overhead, were hundreds of thousands of Selani.  They gathered together in small enclaves separated by huge flocks of the herd animals upon which the Selani depended.  Their campfires were like stars spread out on the ground before them, and they extended to the Cloud Spire, and even beyond it, like an immense army besieging the solitary pinnacle of rock.
	"Gathering," Denai said in a kind of dreamy, excited manner.
	"There are so many," Tarrin said in disbelief.
	"What did you expect?" Sarraya asked him as she landed on his shoulder.  "A cozy little group like your old village?"
	"It looks like only about half of the clans are in," Var said critically.  "Odd for it being so late."
	"Maybe there are bad storms out there," Denai suggested.  "We've been very lucky not to have any storms slow us down for a while now."
	"You getting a closer sense on that thing, Tarrin?" Sarraya asked.  That made him pay attention to the other half of his senses, the ones that could sense magic.  It was like a beacon to him, and the sense of its location was now exacting.  Tarrin followed the feel of it with his eyes out over the shallow valley.  They locked on the Cloud Spire...then they went up.
	Tarrin looked up into the cloud, and he felt not a little bit of trepidation and disappointment.  The object was a good distance past that cloud.  Obviously, it was in the possession of the Aeradalla.  If he wanted to see what it was, he was going to have to climb that imposing monstrosity.  The thought of it nearly made him afraid.
	"I take it that it's up there?" Sarraya asked.
	Tarrin nodded only once.  "Right there," he said, pointing into the cloud.
	"What's up there?" Denai asked curiously.
	"Something that doesn't concern you," he said pointedly.  "They've already seen me, so there's no use trying to hide," he reasoned.  "But I'm not going down there and have them swarm all over me."  He looked at Var and Denai, then moved off the ridge.  He couldn't hide from the Scouts, but at least he'd have some time to hide himself by the time they got back to the Gathering with the information they were about to pick up.
	What he was about to do didn't sit well with him, but he didn't see much choice.  He'd attract too much attention to himself as he was, and it would look very odd for two Selani to be moving at a pace so a cat could keep up with them.  The idea riled up his feral nature, and he had to force himself even to think about it.  He couldn't even say it.  "Denai, you're the lucky one."
	"For what?"
	Before he could answer, his form blurred and compressed, and the giant Were-cat was replaced by a rather large black cat.  He sat on his haunches patiently and looked up at her, his eyes steady and his cat expression sober, as the suddenly displaced Sarraya managed to recover herself, giving Tarrin a furious look.  That expression and calm nature hid a violent whirlwind of conflicting emotions in him, as his fear of strangers--even Denai--battled with both his reasoning that there was no other way, and the fact that he liked the Selani girl.  He knew she wouldn't hurt him, but that was little consolation as the Cat in him conjured up any number of reasons or images of the ways she could hurt him or betray him.  It was by an extreme act of will that he sat there, that he allowed her to do what he knew she knew to do.
	"Oh.  I can handle it," she said with a bright smile, reaching down and picking him up.
	It felt decidedly strange being held by someone that was not part of his little family, and it caused an irrational surge of fear in him.  But Denai's hands were gentle and her hold on him reassuring, enveloping, surrounding him with a sense of peace.  He settled down after a moment, and with that calming came a peculiar feeling of safety that could only be found while being held in the arms of a protector.  Tarrin actually found himself able to relax in her comforting hold, and he settled in against her arm and closed his eyes as Denai carried him down the ridge, down towards the massive throng of the Selani Gathering.
	It was a small victory, but he'd take them any way he could.  He had managed to allow a stranger to pick him up.  Like Mist, he had allowed himself to come into a position where he did not have full control, and the idea of that was not as terrifying now as it seemed but a moment ago.  There was fear--there was still fear--but he found that he could tolerate it.
	It was more than he would have allowed a month ago.

	The Selani were much different to him now.
	Var and Denai had reached the outside edge of the massive Gathering about a half hour after sunset, and the lights of the fires illumated the barren, sandy landscape.  The Selani here were boisterous, but not reckless.  There was loud music, drinking, dancing, talking, laughing, but no carousing or improper behavior that one would see in a group of drunk humans.  Even in drinking, the Selani dignity and sense of honor overwhelmed the loosening effect of their drink, making the sounds coming from campfires one of celebration and togetherness rather than a drunken row.  The Selani were family, even in such a huge gathering of them, and they acted like such.
	That didn't mean that there wasn't activity.  Around some campfires, some watched as others battled one another in the Dance, or even with weapons.  But after watching a moment, he saw that it was more of a friendly challenge, a competition, not a fight.  The Holy Mother forbade the Selani from fighting each other, and that prohibition was strong enough even here to hold true.  Around others, there was dancing.  He never thought of the Selani as dancers--their word for dance was the name of their fighting art form--but they were well suited for it.  Both males and females danced, either alone or with one another, and their steps were light and well measured.  These were ritual forms, dances taught, not the random undulations that passed for dance in some societies.  It was graceful and delicate, where even the motion of a finger seemed to carry meaning and importance.  He didn't have time to watch a full dance, since Denai was carrying him, but he saw enough to be impressed by both the Selani aptitude and the gentle beauty of the dances they performed.
	"Ask Denai where we're going," Tarrin told the nearby Sarraya in the manner of the Cat.
	"Tarrin wants to know where we're going," Sarraya relayed from her invisible position.
	"I'm following Var," she shrugged.
	"I'm looking for my mother's tribe," he announced.  "They're very good friends with my tribe, and my grandmother will offer us hospitality until one of our tribes get here."
	Tarrin kept watching the Selani as he was carried along, and after several moments, he realized a fundamental difference between them and humans.  Humans who didn't know one another didn't care.  They were unfeeling, indifferent.  It wasn't so with the Selani.  They cared for one another, even complete strangers, greeting one another in a benevolent fashion, where complete strangers could sit down at the fire of a tribe and find welcome.  Allia told him that there was occasional friction between tribes or clans, but from what he saw watching them, those frictions had to be nothing like frictions between human societies.  The Holy Mother's forbiddance to fight with one another had settled into her people in a very good way, making them cordial and compassionate to one another.  Even bitter enemies could sit side by side at one of those fires and find acceptance.  And while the rival may not like the Selani, he would respect his honor and afford him proper treatment.  They treated their children with love and gentleness, he saw, a child finding complete safety no matter where he or she went, since every Selani around the child would keep an eye out for the child's safety and well being, would give the child the attention he or she needed.  Allia had told him that all Selani took a hand in raising the children, and watching them, he understood her meaning.  A Selani child had a mother and father, but the child's tribe were aunts and uncles and cousins.  To be raised in an environment of such love!  Tarrin was lucky to have been raised in a similar environment, since the farm had been out and away from the village.  He could identify with them.
	It was so much different than humans.  A human sitting at a stranger's fire would be treated with hostility at best, outright violence at worst.  But these Selani were kind, something he wasn't used to seeing out of strangers.  It explained a little Var's strange need to travel with them...he felt it only right and proper to help Tarrin.  Not because he got something out of it, but because it was the right thing to do.  It relieved him that he finally understood that, since Var's insistence of travelling with him had confused and annoyed him more than a little bit.
	He saw a fundamental truth.  Out in this barren wasteland, the Selani only had each other, so they made the absolute best of it.  It explained their hostility to outsiders, whom they saw as interlopers, threatening the peace and security of their lands.  The Selani had made the correct assumption of the dark nature of the human being, and treated them like the natural enemies that they surely were.  Most humans saw Selani as savage barbarians, because of their habit of killing all members of any invasion into their lands.  If they only knew how terribly wrong that conclusion was.
	His view of the Selani changed significantly in that walk through Gathering, but it did little to calm his irrational fear of them.  No matter how impressed he was with them, no matter how kindly he looked upon them, he still could not see them as anything other than strangers.  That disappointed him, it made the eyeless face lurking within him to stir and threaten his peace, but he just couldn't get away from it.  Though the Selani would accept him without reservation, he simply could not accept them.
	Var veered away from the Cloud Spire, and that immediately did not sit well with Tarrin.  The spire was his destination, and he wasn't about to delay by letting Denai carry him all over the Gathering.  He was well inside the Selani now, and he doubted that any of them knew his true nature.  His cat form hid his true nature from them, and he doubted he'd have much trouble navigating his way to the spire on his own.  They didn't own domesticated dogs, so there were no threats of animals threatening him; all the herd animals were being kept in a huge ring around the Selani gathered around the spire, protected from predators by Scouts and guards.
	He didn't intend to take them from the Gathering anyway.  He decided that it was best to just leave them here and now.
	He was surprised at how that made him feel.  He felt unwilling to do it.  Because he liked Denai, he felt he was starting to understand Var.  Why would he feel that way?  After all, no matter how much he got to know them, they were still strangers in his mind.  They weren't his friends...and yet....
	They were.
	Not as good a friend as Sarraya or Dar, but he had to admit to himself that he liked Denai, that he understood Var.  He had enjoyed their company, at least after he'd built up a tolerance to them.  Looking within himself, he realized that he had been protecting them, and it was because he favored them.  Just as he watched over and protected his sisters, his family, his friends, just as he absolutely would not allow them to be harmed, he had started treating the two Selani the exact same way.  Without ever realizing it.  He acted hard towards them, but it was because he would not admit to himself what he was feeling.  And despite his harsh treatment, they remained with him.  Because they saw in him someone that needed their help, and their Selani nature would not allow them to turn their backs on him.  Without even realizing what they were doing.
	The idea of leaving them didn't sit very well with him now, but he still had little choice.  He couldn't take them away from their tribes, from their lives, to traipse across the desert and be open to whatever danger came looking for him.  They couldn't be there when Jegojah arrived.  The Doomwalker would try to use them to get to him, he was sure of it.  For their own safety and his own, he had to leave them behind.
	Tarrin suddenly began to writhe, and it surprised Denai enough to make her loosen her grip on him.  He wriggled out of her grip and dropped to the ground, then bounded a few jumps away from them and stopped.  He turned around to face them, see that they had stopped where they were, both of them a bit wary of approaching him.  They both knew that he was unpredictable, and were afraid of him.  That stung a little bit, but it was nothing more than what he had instilled in them to begin with.  "Tarrin?" Denai called hesitantly.
	"Sarraya, tell them, thank you for what they've done.  Tell them that I appreciated it, and I, enjoyed our time together.  Tell them that I'm grateful to have met them, but now I have my path to follow."  He looked away from them. "Tell them it's a path that they can't follow, and no matter how much I may like them, if they follow me, I'll kill them."
	He didn't want to say that, but he knew those two.  They'd be tracking him ten seconds after he left their sight.  "Tell them to be well."
	And then he bounded off into the darkness, quickly lost behind a throng of Selani legs and feet as he scampered into the milling crowd.

	Sarraya dutifully repeated his words to the startled pair, even going so far as to become visible again to address them.  The surprise on their faces was considerable, but it was more because of the hidden feelings Tarrin carried for them rather than his threat to kill them if they would follow.
	"I never knew," Denai said in wonder.  "I never knew he liked me that much."
	"Where Tarrin is concerned, if you're still alive, he likes you," Sarraya said in an offhanded manner, but she was deadly serious.  "But I'm warning both of you now to take his threat seriously.  He doesn't want you following him, because he's worried you'll get killed."
	"Nothing in the desert can threaten us, Sarraya," Var said calmly.
	"True, but what's coming is not of this desert," Sarraya said grimly.  "It's something that's been dogging Tarrin's trail for a long time, and it's every bit as dangerous and deadly as he is.  He has to face it again, and he can't do that with any distractions.  And you two would definitely be a distraction.  Jegojah has used his friends and family to try to get to him before, and there's little doubt that it'll do it again.  So, for everyone's sake, please don't follow us."
	"Alright, I promise that we won't follow," Denai said after a moment, but the Faerie knew insincerity when she heard it.  It came out of her own mouth too much for her to miss it coming from another.
	"Var," Sarraya said archly.
	"I'll make sure she won't follow him," he promised.
	"Good enough.  Be well, you two.  I hope we meet again."
	"The Holy Mother works in strange ways, Sarraya.  I feel that we will indeed meet again," Var told her piously.
	Sarraya gave him a strange look, then turned and flitted away, even as her form dissolved from sight.

	"Are we going to do that?" Denai asked after the Faerie was gone.
	"I promised that I wouldn't let you follow him.  So you can follow me instead," he said casually.
	Denai looked at him.
	"I never promised that I wouldn't follow, did I?" he asked with an innocent look.
	Denai looked wildly at him for a moment, then she laughed.  "We'll get in trouble."
	"My honor won't allow me to let them go off into danger alone," he said bluntly.  "We are Selani.  His brands makes him one of us, and I won't abandon him."
	"Mine either," she agreed.  "And if this thing is that dangerous, maybe we should go talk to the chiefs of our tribes, or the priests of the Holy Mother.  They may have something to say about this invader to our lands."
	"Now I know why I was so taken with you, Var," Denai said with a winsome smile.  "You're so clever."

	Navigating the Gathering had become harder than he first thought.
	It wasn't that he was harassed or attacked by children or animals.  That was no problem.  It wasn't that he couldn't see where he was going.  The Cloud Spire was easy to see, at least for Sarraya, who was guiding him in the right direction.
	The problem was the Selani.
	Every time he passed a campfire, he was invariably picked up by some Selani stranger and carted off to the fire.  He had miscalculated when he thought that he could slip through them unnoticed, because it seemed that cats like him were unknown in the desert.  Because he was unique, it made the Selani stop what they were doing and pick him up, then take a good look at him.  They actually tried to spoil him, offering him cuts of roasted meat at every fire and petting him at almost all times.  They were trying to lure him into staying at their fire, he realized after about the fifth time, luring him with offers of food and attention.  That caught him off guard, and what was worse, it slowed him down significantly on his journey towards the spire.  But he couldn't bring himself to be nasty to the Selani, who, after all, were only trying to be nice.  The Cat in him liked the attention, and it very much liked the food.  It wasn't above a bit of mewling to get what it wanted.  It began to get distracted from the mission, and the human in him had to remind it that they were on a schedule.
	It was a simple schedule.  He had to climb the spire, but he had no idea how high it was.  So it was best in his eyes to start in the darkness before sunrise and be a good distance up before the light of day gave him away to the Selani.  He also didn't want to be caught on the spire after dark once he got up into the cloud, because the cloud would make it dark enough for even his eyes to struggle to see.  He had no idea how long it would take to get through the cloud, so he could take no chances.
	The problem was convincing the Selani to leave him alone.
	"This is starting to get annoying," Tarrin fumed to Sarraya as he was rather firmly held on an adolescent girl's lap, held down gently and petted while a child tried to feed him what was roasting over their fire.  "Why all this interest?"
	"I think they've never seen anything like you before," Sarraya told him, but he already knew that.  She didn't realize that he was asking a rhetorical question.  "I've seen some pretty big cats out in the desert, but nothing as small and cute-looking as you."
	"Well, I'm getting tired of it," he grunted.  "I mean, all the attention is a bit flattering, but this is too much of a good thing.  And if I eat one more bite, I'm going to explode."
	"They don't realize you came from another fire," Sarraya said in reply, stifling making any audible noise.
	Tarrin was about to reply, but the Selani girl managed to find his submission spot, scratching him just behind the ears.  That was his favorite place to be scratched, and he became very compliant very quickly, closing his eyes and pushing his head up against her fingers.
	"Looks like she has your number," Sarraya teased.
	"Shut up."
	He lingered there a little longer than he should have, but eventually managed to get free of the girl with the pleasing fingers and get back on the path.
	After that, he was much more careful.  Sarraya led him around the fringes of each Selani fire where they had staked their tents, letting him move at a zigzagging route that kept him outside the grasp of most of the Selani.  Many tried to pick him up, but in the generally unpopulated areas between the fires,  he had too much room to maneuver, too many tents to hide behind, and he could see them coming.  But fortunately for him, the night was moving on, and more and more of the Selani were taking to their tents.  With fewer Selani to avoid, he was able to move more and more straightly.
	The Cloud Spire had seemed rather close when he had first seen it from the ridge, but that was scaled to his humanoid form.  For his cat form, it was like trying to travel twenty longspans.  More than within his ability, but a distance that would take time to traverse.  He moved on through the night with the sounds of the hauntingly beautiful Selani singing and the crackling of fires to keep him company as he made his way to his objective.
	He stopped to rest near a rather large tent, made of a curious material that smelled like plants, laying down on his belly by the edge of it and keeping his senses open as he took a break.
	"What troubles you, my heart?" a voice from inside the tent asked.  A male voice.
	"He is close," a female voice replied.  "I can sense it."
	"That dream again?"
	"It hasn't gone away, my husband.  The Holy Mother sings to me in my dreams.  Have you told our people to show him kindness?"
	"Of course I have, my heart," he replied.  "If he appears, he will be shown kindness."  There was a pause.  "Before we took to our tent, a runner from another clan told me that a tailed stra