And he was missing them more and more with every passing day.

Denai was going to be a problem.

He realized that while sitting around a campfire with her and Sarraya about midnight. They had moved through half the night to get some distance from the other Selani, and had seen none of these mysterious Sandmen that the Selani warned him about. They found a nice place in a shallow hollow in the side of a rocks spire, a hollow that caught the fire's heat and warmed the area much more than if they were out in the open. Denai had brained a large lizard, nearly five spans long, with a slender throwing dagger, and that had been dinner.

Denai was… energetic. That was a kind term. In actuality, she was hyperactive, overflowing with youthful energy and exuberance. Her eyes were shining with that energy as they sat around the campfire, and she had trouble sitting still as she and Sarraya talked aimlessly about this or that. She was a far cry from the dignified Allia, who moved so much less so than this girl. Even Var, in the short time he'd observed him, didn't act quite like this young Selani girl. Var was more lively than Allia, but nowhere near this. That wasn't to say that Allia was unusual, but his sister had an aire of dignity and honor about her that made her seem different than those two, and she wasn't prone to fidgeting and waggling about as Denai was. Denai was a talker, and that too seemed strange for a Selani. She loved to talk, nearly as much as Phandebrass, but unlike him she would be silent and let those around her speak back. She had an intense interest about him and Sarraya, and went on and on and on and on with her questions. So many that she'd had to retreat to the far side of the fire when Tarrin fixed her with an ugly stare and laid his ears back at her. Sarraya knew him and knew Were-cats, so she knew that it was time to separate the exuberant girl from the brooding Were-cat which was the focus of her curiosity.

The follies of youth.

Tarrin didn't consider the fact that Denai was probably older than he was. He was only eighteen, but he'd seen so much in his short life that he felt much, much older than that. Denai had that same fire, that spirit that he had had when he left home with Dolanna and Faalken, which was what seemed a lifetime ago. She saw their trip as an adventure, something exciting and fun, something to look back upon and remember fondly. For him, it was yet another chore, yet another obstacle to overcome as he hurtled towards his own fate.

In a way, he envied Denai. She was young, and didn't know any better. Everything for her was new and exciting, and her outlook on life was along the lines of "take no prisoners." He could appreciate that. He'd felt that way once, a very long time ago. Too long ago.

Tarrin listened to her drone on and on, absently looking down at the ground, and that was when he noticed it. Gold. A large nugget of it, just laying on the desert floor like a pebble. He reached down and picked it up, and saw that it was indeed pure gold. It wasn't as shiny as jewelry was, twisted a little into an irregular shape that resembled a peanut, but a clawtip showed him that it was indeed real gold. Allia had said that the desert was littered with it, that it was holy to Fara'Nae. That was the main thrust of the current frictions between Arkis and the Selani, that Arkisian gold hunters were invading the desert to get the gold that was literally strewn across the landscape. There was a time when he would have wondered at finding such a thing, when gold meant something to him. Now, it was just another pretty metal. Gold, and the greed it incited, were primarily human wants. His Were-cat mentality didn't see much use for gold. He could provide for all his own needs, so money wasn't something that interested him. Gold had no value other than what others were willing to give in trade for it. And out here, where there was no one to trade with, it made it just as valuable as any other pebble laying on the desert floor.

Well, if it was holy to Fara'Nae, he figured that it probably wasn't a good idea to disturb it. He put it back where he found it, and turned his ears back to Sarraya and Denai.

"I don't see why you'd need to learn all those languages if nobody ever comes into the desert," Sarraya said to the Selani.

"Merchants come into the desert," Denai told her. "They speak the four common trade languages, so the obe must know all four."

"Four? I thought there were two."

"Four. The common tongue of the west, the common tongue of the east, the language of the beast-men, and the language of the south."

"Beastmen? You mean the Wikuni?" Sarraya asked curiously, and Denai nodded. "And which is the south?"

"Sharadi," Tarrin said calmly, interrupting them. "Dolanna told me that the common trade language of the southern continents is Sharadi."

"That's it," Denai agreed. "The obe serves as the translator for the chief, and also as an advisor. It's a hard job, because obe aren't permitted to fight unless the chief is in danger. We sacrifice much for the honor of the position."

"I didn't know a Selani would agree to not fight," Sarraya teased. "But to learn four languages at once, wow. That's hard."

"It's very hard. I'm still learning. We have to know the languages as well as those who learned it from infancy. Sometimes I get confused, and start speaking in another language when I'm trying to use one of them. I was taught all four at once. Sometimes they get jumbled together."

"Tarrin suffers from that too," Sarraya grinned. "He's like an encyclopedia of languages. I don't know anyone who can speak as many languages as he can. But you know two that he doesn't," she told the Selani.

"I do? Which?"

"Wikuni and Sharadi," she replied.

"Keritanima and Dolanna were teaching them to me, but things kept them from finishing," he told the Faerie, gnawing a bit more on one of the bones left over from the lizard.

"Then perhaps I can help settle my blood debt by finishing," Denai offered. "It will help me get better by teaching you. I can't teach you as well as those others could, but I'm sure you can learn something from me that you didn't know."

"Maybe," he said indifferently.

"How many kinds of jobs are there in the Selani camps, Denai?" Sarraya asked.

"Jobs? You mean positions of honor, like an obe?"

"Yeah. Tarrin knows all about it, but he won't tell me anything."

"Well, there are the obe. There are si'swan, the Scouts-"

"Allia is a Scout," Tarrin told Sarraya.

"Scouts are gifted with the Eyes of the Holy Mother. That gift makes them perfect watchers. There are the oribu'oni, the Weapons Makers. They are a society of high honor, and it is great honor to be accepted into them. We have shaman, the Voices of the Holy Mother, our healers and magicians. They are the greatest of honorable societies. Even a chief bows to the words of a shaman, because they speak with the voice of the Holy Mother. We are all dutiful children, and we obey her words. There are other societies-"

"Societies?" Sarraya asked.

"Think of them as guilds, or groups," Tarrin interjected. "Members of a society can belong to different tribes or clans, but the bond of society makes them a group to themselves. There is a society for every job or skill, from potters to warriors. A Selani can belong to more than one society, if he has more than one skill. Just to keep Denai from spending hours describing them."

"You know much of our people, Tarrin," Denai said, her voice telling him that she was impressed. "The shaman serve as the arbiters between clans or tribes when they have blood issues. The Holy Mother does not permit us to fight among ourselves, so our societies allow us to reach across clan lines when the need is there."

"I've been to the desert before, but we never really talked to the Selani," Sarraya told Denai. "I was visiting another Druid-"