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.