d shifted and rose, supplying more water to the deep roots of the plants above.  They rested a bit as Allia got her bearings, then she called happily and pointed to the wavering horizon.  "Dust!" she called.  "The tribe is moving north, and we'll intercept them in a few hours!"  She scanned the terrain.  "There's a Scout over there, and I think he sees us.  Yes, he does, he's signalling."  She lifted both arms and waved them back and forth, then dropped one and held the other over her head, then brought it parallel with the ground.  Some kind of pre-arranged signal of sorts.  She put her hands over her visor and shielded her eyes from the sun to watch the other Scout.  "It's Feri.  He says the way is clear up to where he is."
	"How far is he?" Allyn asked.
	"About six longspans."
	Tarrin looked in that direction, but all he saw was hazy desert, the heat radiating from the ground distorting the distance to his eyes.  How Allia could see through that and see the other Scout when he was six longspans away boggled his mind.
	"Papa, what's that smell?" Eron asked.  Tarrin turned to see his son on all fours, sniffing at the ground. "It smells like living rock.  I've never smelled it before."
	Tarrin joined his cub, and was joined by Jasana, as the three of them tried to find the scent that Eron was talking about.  Allyn chuckled and mentioned something about how silly they all looked on all fours snuffling at the ground, but the Were-cats ignored him as the not understanding underprivileged fellow he was.  Tarrin eventually found the scent, an extremely faint and old scent, that did indeed smell like stone in a way, but it was actually an animal.  Tarrin knew that scent, and looked at his son in wonder and pride.  "That's a kajat, cub," he said.  "That nose of yours, I should have figured you'd pick up that scent long before any of us."
	"A kajat?" Allia asked.  "Where?"
	"It's old, Aunt Allia," Eron told her.  "Real old.  I don't think it's around here anymore.  It smells like a youngster."
	"I don't smell anything," Jasana complained.
	"I've smelled it before, cub, I know what to look for," Tarrin told her.  "Let me bring the scent up for you."  He put his will against the Weave and wove a quick spell that isolated the kajat and made it stronger.  Jasana closed her eyes and took in the scent.
	"Oh, I smell it now.  It does smell like rock, doesn't it?"
	"I think it's sand that gets wedged into their scales that gives them that smell," Tarrin surmised.  "They roll around in dirt and sand to camaflauge themselves, and probably to hide their smells."
	"Why do that?" Eron asked.
	"Kajat are primarily ambush hunters, cubling," Allia told him.  "They like hiding and pouncing on prey from surprise."
	"How can something so big hide?" Jasana asked.
	"Practice," Tarrin told her.
	"Cub, I saw a kajat hiding out in the middle of the open desert," Allyn told her.  "Allia pointed it out to me.  The thing looked like a big rock.  If she hadn't have pointed it out, I'd have never imagined that it was a living thing."
	"I once jumped on one because I thought it was a rock," Tarrin admitted.  "Trust me, cub, you'd never tell until you're right on top of it.  They're very good at it."
	"They curl up in such a way that they look like boulders, cubling," Allia told her.  "Since their prey can't see them for what they are and can't smell them, they wander right up to them."
	"They sound like really smart animals," Eron mused.
	"Kajat have learned very well," Allia nodded with a smile.  "We respect them a great deal, and try to avoid them whenever we can."
	"If they're so dangerous, why not kill them?" Jasana asked.
	"Because in the desert, everything has a place and a use," Allia told her seriously.  "Kajat are dangerous, but they keep the populations of the sukk and chisa in check, so they don't become so numerous they strip the desert bare of vegetation.  They also prey on inu, so they also keep the inu in managable numbers.  Without the kajat, there wouldn't be any other desert animals, and we need them.  We depend on them, even if they are a danger to us."
	"Oh.  That makes sense."
	"Eron!  Get your paw out of that hole!" Tarrin snapped without even looking.
	"It's alright, Papa, I saw what went in it," the child responded.  "It was one of those purple scorpions!"
	"Didn't I tell you not to go sticking your paws in holes?"
	"You said don't do it because I wouldn't know what's inside," he said quickly, his arm inside the hole up to his shoulder as he fished for the scorpion.  "I know what's in this one!"
	Baring one fang in a bit of half snarl, Tarrin whirled and grabbed his cub by the back of his pants and hauled him off the ground.  He had the scorpion in the paw that came out of the hole, holding it by the tail.  "Drop it!" he commanded, and Eron did so immediately.  The startled arachnid hit the ground with a dusty fwump and immediately scuttled back towards its hole.  "Don't mince words with me, cub," Tarrin warned, holding his cub up to his eye level by his trousers.  "Don't stick your paw down holes means don't stick your paw down holes.  Do I make myself clear?"
	"Yes, Papa," he said meekly.
	"You're starting to be as bad as Jasana," he huffed as he abruptly lowered Eron and then dropped him, letting him fall about a span to the ground.  "Is that Scout saying anything else, deshaida?" Tarrin asked.
	Allia, who had kept her eyes on the other Selani Scout the whole time, nodded.  "He says the tribe hasn't stopped yet.  If we really move, we just might catch up to them while they're resting out the day's heat."
	"You said that the tribe is moving towards grazing?" Tarrin asked.
	"Yes."
	"Don't you think there's grazing galore right here?"
	Allia glanced at him, then looked around.  Then she laughed.  "I do believe that there is," she agreed, then she started making those wide-armed signals to the other Scout.  They waited in silence, though Eron eyed the hole into which the scorpion had fled with undisguised longing.  "Feri is relaying it back to the tribe," she announced after a few moments.  "My father will have to decide whether to come here or not."
	"Relay?" Eron asked.
	"The Scouts are staggered in their distance from the main tribe, cubling," she told him.  "Feri is the Scout that's farthest out.  He's going to signal the Scout behind him, and that one will signal the Scout behind him, and so on and so on until the message gets back to the tribe.  Then the Scout with the tribe will send my father's reply back."
	"It sounds pretty complicated."
	"I think it's clever," Jasana said.
	"It works, cubs," she told them.  "That's all that matters.  It'll take Feri some time to get the Scout's attention, so it may take a while before we have an answer.  Either way, just waiting here is the best thing."
	"What about the Scouts that range out, sister?" Tarrin asked.
	"They're not part of what Feri is doing, deshida," she answered.  "They're hunters.  Feri and the Scouts not searching for grazing are searching for threats to the tribe while it's on the move."
	"But they weren't moving this way," Eron noted.
	"No, but threats have a way of being drawn to the tribe on the move," she answered him.  "Feri is looking for inu and kajat.  Sometimes they try to set themselves in the path of the tribe while it's moving and ambush us, trying to take some of our sukk and run away before we can catch them.  He's making sure none sneak in from the flanks."
	"Oh, I get it," Eron nodded.  "How do the sukk keep up?" he asked impulsively.  "I've seen you run, Aunt Allia.  I don't think they could keep up with you."
	"Sukk run very fast, cubling," she laughed.  "They have no trouble keeping up."
	"Enough questions, Eron," Tarrin told him.  "To keep you out of trouble, let's go see if we can't catch one of those wild sukk over there, alright?"
	"Oooh, can I come?" Jasana asked excitedly.
	"The more we have, the better chance we'll catch something," he told her.  "Come on, Kedaira, let's hunt."
	The inu hissed slightly and lifted its head, then gave a throaty growl and quickly moved to join the three Were-cats as they started towards the distant birds.
	"I'll stay here with Allia," Allyn called after them.  "So she can watch for a reply without worrying."
	Hunting sukk was something that Eron and Jasana had never done before, so Tarrin made sure to teach them basics as they sidled in that general direction.  The air was still, which meant that their scents wouldn't give them away for a while, and the fifteen birds were happily grazing on the tough springy scrub bushes that were so common in the desert.  "They're very fast, cubs," he explained as they moved towards them.  "They move fast, they run fast, and they have fast reflexes.  They don't see very well, but they have sharp ears, so you have to be quiet when you hunt them.  When we do chase them down, you have to be careful, because sometimes they'll turn and attack.  Their beaks are very sharp, but it's the feet you have to watch.  They have really big talons and their legs are very, very strong.  A kick from a sukk could take your head right off."
	"I saw the claws on that one Allia killed," Eron said, nodding in comprehension.
	"Then I hope you appreciate that they're not easy kills," Tarrin told his son.  "If they turn on you and attack, run away.  Let me or Kedaira deal with them if they chase you."
	"I've never hunted something bigger than me before," Jasana said in excitement.
	"Because of that, I hope you understand when I tell you that I want you to let me or Kedaira make the kill," he told her.  "You're half the size of a sukk, cub.  It won't be very afraid of you."
	"What do you want us to do?"
	"Sukk startle easily," Tarrin told her.  "I want you and Eron to wait while me and Kedaira circle around behind them.  When we get in position, I want you two to jump up and rush them, yelling and screaming.  That'll drive them right to me and Kedaira, since we're going to be waiting for them."
	"Smart idea," Eron nodded.
	"It's how the inu do it, and I've noticed that they seem to know the best technique for hunting anything in the desert," Tarrin told him.
	"Inu really are smart, aren't they, Papa?" Jasana noted.
	"They're very smart, cub," Tarrin said absently, watching the distant figures.  "Alright, we're going to separate here.  Now, you two sneak up on them slowly and give me and Kedaira time to circle them.  I'll Whisper to you when I'm ready, Jasana.  Don't rush them until I signal you, and when you do rush them, don't chase them after they start running.  I just want you to startle them into bolting, and they'll do that if you make enough noise and bluster enough.  If you chase them, they'll realize you're half their size, and they'll probably turn around and attack you.  Do you understand?"
	"I understand, Papa," they said in unison, Eron flexing his claws in anticipation.  Tarrin had hunted with them, but never anything dangerous.  For them, this was a new, exciting idea, and their very first hunt with the adults when they hunted something that could fight back.  Tarrin had little fear for them, because as impulsive and uncontrollable as they could be most of the time, the instinct to hunt was in both of them, and they'd do very well.  They'd obey him because they knew that was what it was going to take to have a successful hunt.  And they wouldn't be in much danger so long as they obeyed his instructions.
	"Good.  Now remember, slow, steady, and low.  When you're about fifty spans from them, stop and wait."
	"We got it, Papa," Jasana said as she hunkered down, partially behind a scrub bush, then crept up to another, staying low.  Eron copied her, and Tarrin nodded in satisfaction.  He glanced at Kedaira and started loping off parallel to the sukk, a move Kedaira instantly understood.  They would be circling the prey, using a hunting tactic that she knew very, very well.
	It took Tarrin and Kedaira about ten minutes to get into position, circling very wide of the sukk, beyond their ability to see, moving quietly and smoothly.  When they were on the opposite side, they stalked up on the flock, Tarrin literally moving on all fours to keep most of his body below the level of the scrub, as Kedaira did more or less the same thing, her belly almost scraping the rocky ground as she hunkered down and waddled towards the sukk.  They moved with practiced ease, sliding up into a position about fifty spans from the flock, which had not registered either them or the cubs, still grazing contentedly on the scrub.  Tarrin's predatory instincts were ruling him, and he watched the huge birds with intensity, his ears fully forward to catch any sound they made, his eyes unblinking as he studied his prey.  He remembered the cubs and absently raised up his consciousness partially into the Weave, and Whispered out to his daughter.  "Alright, cub, we're in position.  Are you ready?"
	There was a brief pause.  "We're ready, Papa."
	"Anytime you want, then."
	A few seconds later, he heard both of his cubs suddenly start screaming at the top of their lungs.  Tarrin raised his eyes over the scrub enough to look past the birds, and he saw them charging the sukk, flailing their arms and raising a big racket.  Doing exactly what he wanted them to do.  The sukk all flinched from that sudden eruption of sound, then they turned and bolted away from it in a harmonious motion.  Tarrin and Kedaira stayed hunkered down as the fifteen nine-span tall birds scrambled towards them, until the lead was so close that Tarrin could almost reach out and grab it.  Both he and the inu leaped from their concealment right in the face of the running flock, so quickly that the lead bird didn't even see Tarrin until his huge clawed paw caught it right on the side of its head, a vicious sideswipe that ripped out its eye and broke its neck, sending it tumbling into the scrub in a cloud of dust and dislodged feathers.  Kedaira jumped into the air at the next closest with a high-pitched roar, the oversized claws on her hind legs extended forward and ready.  She impacted the sukk as it tried to turn away, her forepaws latching onto its flank as she brought her formidable weapons to bear.  Those huge claws sank into the bird's side, penetrating so deeply that the bird gave out a single squeal of pain and immediately dropped lifeless to the ground.  The inu grabbed the bird's neck in her powerful jaws and thrashed it back and forth to make sure of her kill.  The remaining flock scattered while still moving in the same general direction in which they had originally fled, going around the Were-cat and the inu and fleeing for safety.
	Eron and Jasana ran up to them with broad smiles on their faces.  "You got one, Papa!" Eron said happily.
	"See, cub?  When you do it right, hunting can be easy," Tarrin told him, reaching down and grabbing the leg of the sukk he killed.  Kedaira had already started tearing into the bird she killed, enjoying the spoils of her labor.  "Let's leave Kedaira here so she can eat and we'll take this back to Allia and have some lunch."
	"I can't wait til I'm big enough to be on the other side!" Eron said breathlessly, looking at the sukk from every angle while Tarrin dragged it behind him as he moved back towards Allia.
	"It would have been easier to use Sorcery," Jasana noted, but then she smiled at her father.  "But not as much fun."
	"That's the spirit, cub," Tarrin smiled in reply.
	By the time they returned with their meal, Allia had a response.  "Father's going to come here," she told him with bright eyes.  "Feri just got the message back to me.  He wants us to scout out the best place for the camp and start preparing for them."
	"I thought we were going to eat!" Eron protested.  "I'm hungry!"
	"It won't take long, cubling," Allia smiled.  "In fact, I know exactly where to start."
	"What do we have to do to prepare?" Jasana asked.
	"Whatever we can to make it fast and easy for the tribe to set up camp," Allia answered.  "The first thing we have to do is make sure there aren't any inu or kajat lurking nearby.  After we're sure of that, we could dig firepits, or clear rocks out of openings between scrub bushes for tents, or gather up rollbrush for firewood, or look for zubu burrows and other holes and mark them so nobody steps in one by accident."
	"Why do we have to do all the work?" Jasana complained.
	"Because we are here," Allia answered.  "We're making sure the tribe can set up camp and rest as quickly as possible, cubling.  We're doing what we can for them.  Wouldn't you do what you can for your family?"
	"Well, I guess," she admitted with a slightly annoyed look at the Selani.
	"We won't be along long, Jasana," Allia told her.  "Feri and the other Scouts are moving towards us.  As they arrive, they'll start helping us too."
	"Oh, that's alright, then," she proclaimed.  "Where do we start?"
	They started with the well.  It was the first thing that Selani did when setting a camp outside of searching for predators.    Tarrin and Allia started digging after Allia surveyed the scrub plain, finding the place where the water would be closest to the surface.  It took her about ten minutes before she had decided on a spot, and then they started digging with tools Tarrin Conjured.  The hole was excavated quickly with Tarrin's immense strength, and he was surprised at what he found.  They only had to dig down about four spans before water started seeping through the sandy soil, and another span down was where they struck ground water.  It took a very long time for the deep hole to fill with water, little more than a trickle, but it showed him how clever the Selani were.  They got their water from wells, which was how they could travel such distances between known oases.  Now that he thought of it, he understood why he found so many old half-filled holes in the desert floor, and why he often saw sukk digging into the ground with their powerful feet and legs.  They weren't digging for roots, as he first thought, they were digging for water.
	Amusing, he thought.  A vast desert, one of the dryest places in the world, and one only had to go about five spans in order to find water.  Five spans down.
	At least here, he realized.  The Selani--and the desert animals--had to move where the seasonal forces brought the water closest to the surface, places marked by sudden growth of the scrubby brush and vegetation of the desert.  He was certain that in other parts of the desert right now, the water was so far down that digging for it would be fruitless.  It explained how such big animals could survive in such a hostile environment, for as big as kajat were, he knew that they had to drink vast amounts of water in order to survive.  They just dug for it and patiently lapped up all the water they needed as it slowly filled the hole.
	And the sandstorms filled up those holes with dirt, sand, and dust as they passed, concealing the evidence of how the desert dwellers found their water.  Clever.
	Then again, there was the gold.  Tarrin had to toss a few impressive nuggets aside while digging.  Gold was like rocks out in the desert, as common as stone and literally littering the ground in some places.  Almost anywhere in the Desert of Swirling Sands, one could find a few tiny nuggets of gold with a little patient sifting of the soil.  He wondered what caused gold to be so abundant there--
	--and he suddenly understood Mala Myrr.  The only Dwarven city above ground, in a place where a Dwarf would not like to be.  But Dwarves were avaricious, most books agreed, always seeking out precious metals and gems, and this place had to be some kind of heaven for them.  An area so stuffed with gold that one could find it laying on the ground.  They had built their city out in the low foothills, in those intersecting valleys, so they could mine the gold just under the hillsides.  The gold perfectly explained the presence of the Dwarves, who preferred rugged mountains, places like Daltochan, the mountains around Petal Lakes, or the Sandshield, rather than the low foothills near the Sandshield.
	While Tarrin and Allia dug for water, Allyn showed the children what to do.  They went out into the plain to locate any possible dangers to the sukk that would pasture there, starting with predators, but then searching for things like holes or umuni, the lethally venemous lizards of the desert.  Tarrin didn't pay much attention to them until Eron came back carrying a juvenile umuni by the neck, being careful not to hurt it.  Tarrin wondered absently just what it was about venemous animals that so attracted his son's attention.  He just couldn't leave them alone.  A bit annoyed, Tarrin told the umuni that they'd do it no harm and not to get upset, and had his son let it go on the edge of the area Allia said the Selani would occupy while they were there.  Allia wanted to eat it, but he wouldn't allow it.  Once Tarrin spoke to an animal, it was the same as him acknowledging the animal, and he would not hurt it.  Druids didn't do that.  He had a responsibility to the reputation of the Druids as well as the trust the animal put in him after he made contact with it.  He wouldn't abuse either.
	Besides, they had a fresh sukk carcass waiting for them, already attracting attention from vultures.
	After the sweep was done, Allyn had the children clearing open spaces of rocks and debris for tents while he started digging a firepit with a short-handled shovel he'd been carrying in his pack.  Tarrin mused at the Sha'Kar while he worked, marvelling that a Sha'Kar could act so much like a Selani.  He wondered how Allyn was handling the task of learning the Dance, of having to do physical violence, which was against everything for which the Sha'Kar stood.  But then again, he really wasn't a Sha'Kar anymore, he was a Selani in training, and that meant embracing a radically different culture.  Tarrin saw the strength in Allyn then, not just his physical endurance but his fierce will, and knew that he would make it.
	Not long after the well was finished, as Tarrin and Allia covered it with a blanket Allia kept rolled up in her pack to keep the desert sun from evaporating the water, the first of the Selani Scouts arrived, the male Feri.  Feri was rather short for a Selani, which meant that he was still rather tall for a human, a few fingers taller than Allyn.  He was thin as a reed, so obvious that it was easy to tell even through his baggy clothes, but Tarrin could see just by how he moved that he was a sleek, fast adversary, and would be quite a handful in a fight.  He had a tail of blond hair peeking out from under his loose head covering, flowing down his back.  Feri didn't make any kind of greeting or show of his arrival, he simply dropped his pack and grabbed a corner of the blanket, holding it while Allia tied off her end to a short stick she'd picked up off the ground.  "Feri," Allia greeted absently.
	"Allia," he returned in a slightly gravelly voice.  "I see you weren't kidding.  He is tall."
	"Would I lie to you, old friend?" she asked with a winsome smile.  "Who's behind you?"
	"Zumar," he answered.  "Targi and Melila are just behind him."
	"The clan?"
	"About an hour," he answered.  "More than enough time."
	"Feri, may I present Tarrin, my deshida.  Tarrin, this is Feri, a fellow Scout and a friend."
	"May the Holy Mother shade your steps and give you sweet water," Feri said formally.
	"I'm not that stuffy, Feri," Tarrin told him without looking as he put his corner under a heavy nugget of gold he'd excavated from the ground earlier.  "A simple hello will suffice."
	Feri laughed.  "Sorry, but someone as big as you gets a formal greeting from me every time."
	Tarrin glanced at him and almost smiled.  "At least he's not stupid, sister," Tarrin noted.
	"No, Feri is a shrewd one," Allia said with a sly look at her friend.
	"You took good brands.  Surprising in an outlander."
	"I'm full of surprises, Feri," Tarrin told him.  "Eron!"
	"I didn't do anything!" Eron protested, hiding the oversized, highly venemous wasp in his paw behind his back.
	Tarrin affixed his son with an ugly stare, who immediately let the insect go.  It wobbled a bit in the air before buzzing off to safety.
	Tarrin didn't have much of a chance to talk to or observe Feri before the next Scout arrived, a much taller, more stocky Selani named Zumar.  Zumar had white hair, not far from Allia's silver-white, and actually had red eyes, the color of a rose.  Tarrin had never seen a Selani with rose-colored irises before.  Zumar was a very tight-lipped fellow, not even speaking when greeted by the other two Scouts, immediately kneeling and starting to pull out materials to build a fire, whose smoke would guide the moving tribe to them.  The other two Feri mentioned, Targi and Melila, arrived but moments later.  They were both female, shorter than Allia, but they moved much like her.  One had sand-colored hair, the other was a redhead, something of a rarity among Selani.  Unlike Zumar, they introduced themselves with open smiles, and both of them seemed quite talkative.  They started on Tarrin almost as soon as they were introduced, asking about him and the wetlands and his children.  Allyn was still herding the cubs, trying to keep them together and near the center of the activity, but that didn't last long.  Eron was running around, talking very fast to the four newcomer Selani, sometimes so quickly that he forgot what he was talking about and raced off to talk to another.  Jasana abandoned Allyn and took refuge with her father, reverting to the curiously quiet and shy girl she often became when in the presence of strangers, watching the Selani with uncertain eyes.  She even grabbed the end of his tail and held onto it, much as she had done when she was younger.  Both Selani females looked at her and tried to talk to her, but she simply hid behind her father's legs.  It reminded Tarrin how wide-ranging his daughter's personality was, bluffing maturity in one moment and showing how much of a child she was the next.
	Jasana followed her father around as they tried to set things up for the approaching clan, clearing space for the tents as the two female Selani dug firepits in strategic areas, defense against the Sandmen that infested the desert during the cold night, a ring of protection around the projected border of the encampment.  Zumar seemed content with staying to himself, but Feri tried to engage Tarrin in conversation.  It wasn't the chattiness the females had exhibited, it was a more enlightened series of questions about Tarrin's home, family, and home region that he guessed was meant to give the Selani an idea of what kind of person Tarrin was.
	For his part, Tarrin was just a little wary and anxious about all this.  He'd heard quite a bit about Allia's family and her clan--tribe, as the case may be, since the Selani word for both was the same, its meaning made clear by a context that was often deliberately left vague--and what Allyn had had to say didn't bolster him very much.  He had no doubt that he could pass muster with Allia's very demanding father, but he was more worried about the overall effect he may have on Allia's reputation given that she was already in hot water over Allyn.  She had come home with an outlander for a fiance and another outlander branded by Selani custom without the approval of the clan king.  That was two major infractions of rule and custom, and violating the rules was dishonorable.  He knew for a fact that Allia's honor had been damaged by her behavior, at least in the eyes of the Selani, and she was on very unstable ground.  If Allyn failed to prove himself, she would be in even more trouble, maybe enough to bring her position as princess under examination.  She had to have much greater honor than the average Selani, because she was next in line for her father's position.  She could be an honorable Selani, but not have the honor necessary to garner the clan's respect.  That would disqualify her for the position, and that would be a serious stain on her honor, almost to the point where she would choose to exile herself from the clan rather than continue to live among those who felt that she wasn't fit enough to command them.
	At least Allyn understood Allia's precarious position, and was working with all of his energy and will towards proving himself.  If he took good brands, then all of this would die away.  The fact that Tarrin had brands was a powerful weight on his side of the balance, since he'd already been accepted by the Holy Mother, had proved his worth.  If the Holy Mother made it clear through the tribe's Priest that he was in her favor, they would not say a word to him, and would in fact welcome him into the clan.  Why Fara'Nae had to go through a Priest was beyond him, since she had a habit of directly answering the prayers of her children.  Why couldn't she tell them how she felt without using a Priest?  But then again, to every god his or her own, he guessed.  It wasn't his place to tell Fara'Nae how to run her own organization.
	Tarrin was so caught up in his worry and concerns for his sister that he honestly didn't realize that so much time had passed.  He looked up and saw the Selani, Allyn, and Eron all looking towards the west, and he realized that the clan had arrived.  In their lead had to be Kallan, Allia's father, a very tall, imposing figure loping along at the head of a disorganized column of Selani all wearing those sand-colored desert outfits, heads covered by the loosely wrapped cloths and with visors and veils protecting their faces from the harshness of the desert wind, and the majority of them carrying spears or bows.  He could see the sukk flocks in the middle of the Selani host, running with their handlers with very little effort involved, though they were moving faster and becoming a little hard to keep grouped now that they could see the green of the desert scrub plain laid out before them.  Tarrin saw several chisa in the host, loaded with the heavy gear that the Selani couldn't easily carry and run, such as tents and large bales and bundles of wood, and a few of them had Selani riding on them.  They were mainly the very, very young, but there was one Selani that was not young riding on the back of one of those large reptillian quadrapeds.  That had to be Kaila, Allia's mother, who had a bad leg as a result from injuries suffered from an attack from a pack of inu.  Since she was injured, it was not dishonorable for her to ride a beast of b