"She gets cranky because she has no release. Denai does."

"Var," Sarraya giggled.

"Denai likes him, but if she's coming in season, it's going to make her militant." He scratched his nose. "She was toying with trying to catch his eye before, but now it seems that she's taking steps. And it's more than just a quick roll in the blankets. If that's all Denai wanted, it would be as easy as inviting him into a tent."

"Oh."

"Selani are pretty casual about things like that. They don't attach sex to relationships the way humans do. But Denai is young, so I'm not sure what she's after yet. Maybe she's fishing for Var, or maybe she just wants to play with him before satisfying the demands of being in season. I'm not sure. She's pretty erratic for a Selani."

"They'd be a good couple."

"If Denai doesn't get them both killed," Tarrin said sourly. "And us too, while she's at it."

"Give her a break, Tarrin. Weren't you ever like that when you were a kid?"

"Probably," he admitted. "I used to do all sorts of crazy things when I was a kid, but at least I didn't get others in trouble with me. I only had myself to blame if I messed up, and I was the only one who would pay for it."

"You, do crazy things? I can't believe that," she said with a totally insincere grin.

"Childhood is the time for insanity," he grunted. "The ones who are either lucky enough or smart enough survive to reach maturity."

Sarraya laughed. "I never looked at childhood as a process of natural selection before," she told him with a grin.

"Of course it is. Kids who do stupid things usually don't live long enough to reproduce, unless they're either very lucky or have very alert parents. Weakness and illness are the weeding out processes for animals. Blatant stupidity is the weeding out process for humans."

Sarraya laughed. "So, for humans, it's survival of the smartest?"

"Or the luckiest," he shrugged. "Maybe the richest."

"You look worn out, Tarrin. Why don't you get some sleep? I'll keep the fire going tonight. I feel kind of bad that you three worked so hard, when I did little more than ride along."

"I think that I'll do that," he said with a sudden yawn. "Goodnight, Sarraya." He twisted around a little and shapeshifted into his cat form, then curled up by the fire. He really was tired. More tired than he'd been in quite a while. He closed his eyes, and sleep claimed him almost immediately.

Denai had taken his threat seriously, because she was remarkably well behaved the next day. She kept giving Tarrin fearful looks as he instructed Sarraya in Sha'Kar as they travelled more or less due north. He had been serious. He liked Denai, but he wasn't about to let her wild nature put his life in jeopardy. Next thing he knew, she'd be bringing kajats to the campsite to try to impress Var, and fighting kajats on a daily basis was not on his list of fun things to do.

The campsite that night was one of quiet reservation. Denai was remarkably cowed, and went to sleep almost immediately after sunset. Var wasn't very comfortable being generally alone with Tarrin, so he went to sleep soon afterward, leaving Tarrin and Sarraya to enjoy the rest of the night in relative peace.

But like any youngster, Tarrin's ugly threats had only affected her for so long. As days stretched into rides, Denai slowly returned to her more fearless character, again teasing and challenging Var whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Their destination was the Cloud Spire. Not because Tarrin wanted to go to the Selani Gathering, but because both Var and Denai needed to contact their tribes, to let them know that they were alright. Tarrin could understand that, so he was willing to go on a small detour to get there. It was only about a day out of his way, and they'd saved more than that crossing the Great Canyon. Neither of their tribes would be at the Gathering when they arrived, but at least the two could wait there for them to arrive. Tarrin also wanted to go there because he had no intention of taking them along with him past Gathering. He liked Denai and he could tolerate Var, but to be honest about it, he had no reason to take them with him after that. Denai had guided him past the major obstacles in the region, and that was all she really needed to do. It was time to let them go back home. He'd feel a little better if he knew that those two were away from him, where his ability to draw in trouble didn't put them in jeopardy. Denai had had her adventure, and Var had got more than he had probably bargained for when he asked to come along. Both of them had their own lives, and it was time for them to go back to them.

The travel north had done more than allowed him to reach that conclusion. As they moved north, the power of the Conduit in that direction became more and more clear to him, and about a ride after leaving the canyon, he realized that what he was feeling wasn't a Conduit at all. It was something close to a Conduit, but it wasn't a part of the Weave. It was some kind of artifact or magical object, and judging from the power it emanated, it was incredibly powerful. Its power had something to do with drawing in the magical energy of the Weave and directing it, that was why it gave off a sensation much akin to a Conduit. Conduits were, after all, little more than major strands, where the magic of many strands joined and was directed back into the heart of the Weave. This object performed a similar function, but it didn't seem to do anything with the magic it channeled. It simply directed it. That confused him, really confused him, because he couldn't sense any kind of companion object that did anything with that power.

About two days after he made that realization, he finally figured out why he didn't feel anything. He had been wrong twice. The object was something of a focus, and it did sit on a major Conduit. What made it so curious was that the object was what was creating the Conduit. It was like a magnifying glass set before the sun, creating a beam of light hot enough to burn paper. The object sat on a minor Conduit and focused that power, and turned it into a major Conduit. It was both a Conduit and a magical device, and the blurring of their two magicks had given him conflicting sensations.

That piqued his curiosity. An object of that magical power was something not seen since the Breaking, and from the feel of it, no modern magician would have been capable of creating it. Its magic was too strong, and the sense of it was that it was exceedingly old, like his amulet. It, like his amulet, had somehow managed to survive the Breaking. He wondered what it was, and where it was.

The next morning, the morning before they sat out for their day's journey, he decided that whatever it was, it was worth checking out. It had a magical power that put it on a level with what he expected the Firestaff to be. There was an outside chance that it could actually be the Firestaff, hidden out here in what became the Desert of Swirling sands after it was last used, some five thousand years ago. That was a possibility that he absolutely could not risk ignoring. Whatever this object was, he had to see it, to discount it so he could move on. The Goddess had said that he had to go back to Suld to find the Firestaff, but maybe she had just said that to give him an excuse to go through the desert, to put him in a position where he could find the Firestaff on his own, without her help. Maybe the vision of the strange town with the exotic buildings was wrong. Maybe it had just been a common dream placed in the middle of the succession of foretelling images the Goddess had put in his head.

Even if that weren't the case, he found that he couldn't just pass by whatever this object was, not without looking at it and figuring out why it was out here.

They pulled in around noon for a meal and to cool off, finding a small den of sorts in the side of a rock spire. The region was pretty much well denuded of plant life, showing that a Selani tribe had passed through with their flocks in the last few days. The day was particularly hot, and even his Selani companions were starting to drag a little bit under the merciless sun. He had sat down and counted back through the months the night before, and he was shocked to realize that it was almost the dead of winter back home. It hadn't felt like so much time had passed. Yet out here, it was just one hot day after another, with very little to give him a sense that the seasons were passing aside from the rotation of the stars and the phases of the moons. Midwinter. Jenna was fourteen now, and if they were still in Ungardt, then she had to be freezing her shift off. If there was indeed a war in Sulasia, it had to have bogged down in the heavy snows common there this time of year. Allia and his friends were still safely in the Tower, waiting for him, and Keritanima was probably on the way there by now.