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 stranger was seen south of Gathering at sunset. Could he be related to him?"
"Has anyone else seen this stranger?"
"Not that I was told."
Tarrin was a bit startled. Were they talking about him? How did they know about him?
The Holy Mother. Of course. She knew he was in the desert. It seemed that she was taking steps on his behalf. From the sound of it, the woman was shaman, one of Fara'Nae's priests. It seemed a bit weird that she would be telling her children to be nice to him, but it made sense. She probably didn't want any friction between him and them. The best way to go about that was to make themselves as inoffensive as possible.
Tarrin moved on before anything else came to light. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear any more.
It took him half the night to reach the Cloud Spire. He found that the area immediately around it was devoid of Selani occupation, almost as if they were giving the rock pinnacle a wide berth. But this close to it, it seemed less a rock spire and more a solid wall that stretched into the heavens. It was rough-hewn by the wind, with many ridges and irregularities, but unlike the rock of the desert, this rock was black, like obsidian. He shifted into his humanoid form and sniffed at the rock, and he realized that it was basalt, where most of the desert was soft sandstone. This was volcanic rock, a rarity out here in the desert.
That meant that the climb wasn't going to be easy. His claws could dig into sandstone. Basalt would only grind them down.
"Oh well," he grunted. He shifted back into cat form and skulked around the base, until he found a large rock pushed up against the pillar, forming a small hollow. He entered it and killed the rock snake that had been taking up residence, which was sleeping through the cold night, then settled down for a little nap. It was too early yet to try the climb, and he wanted to be fully rested before making the attempt.
Fueled by a breakfast of rock snake, Tarrin was on his way.
The idea of what he was doing still seemed just a little bit insane, but he couldn't see any other way to go about it. He absolutely had to find that object, to identify it as either the Firestaff or not, and since it was very high above him, he had to climb. He wasn't afraid of heights, and he was confident in his abilities as a climber. Cats were natural climbers, and those instincts would serve him well as he scaled the dizzying expanse of the rock spire, trying to get to the top before the next sunset.
Tarrin saw the sunrise well before the Selani, because he was at least half a longspan up the rock face by the time the sun reached him. He had started about three hours before dawn, and the going had been relatively easy. He had begun his ascent on the east face of the spire, so the sun would shine on his back and never have the chance to get in his eyes until after it ascended past the cloud. The rock was riddled with creases, holes, pits, lines, and vertical gulleys, and that gave him an abundance of handholds. That meant that he moved very quickly up the rock face, nearly as fast as a human could walk on flat ground, but his progress was slowed significantly because he stopped every so often to check his claws for damage, survey the rock above, and look down to gauge his progress to that point. He spent as much time moving laterally as he did verically, lining himself up to take advantage of features in the rock that would make his ascent easier. Speed wasn't his concern, his main concern was making this as easy as possible. He had no fear of heights, but he fully understood that he was so high up that a mistake could kill him. So he made very sure that his planned path was generally seeded with suitable paw and footholds. Fortunately, he realized, the spire was made of basalt, for soft sandstone had a frightening tendancy to break off when too much weight was placed on a spur or hold. The rugged basalt was much stronger, and a tiny spur of rock could support his entire weight if necessary. Sarraya rode on his head, burrowed into his hair so his moving head didn't dislodge her, and she remained quiet while he climbed. She didn't want to distract him in any way, because of the great danger in which they were now placed.
Tarrin stopped for a moment to rest inside one of those vertical gullies, so wide that he was climbing up the inside of it. It opened and shallowed about a hundred spans above him, and from there he would decide which path to take after he could get a good look at the rock. He turned and looked at the sunrise absently, and felt the sudden warmth of it against his back. "I wonder if the Selani have noticed by now," Tarrin mused as he looked down. The ground wasn't nearly so far away as it had been when he looked down into the Great Canyon, but it was still such a formidable height that it gave even him just a bit of pause.
"Maybe. Want me to scout up ahead and see if there's an easy way up?" Sarraya offered.
Tarrin pulled his waterskin from the cord tied around his waist, then took a deep drink. "I'll settle for you refilling this," he told her.
"No problem. How are your claws holding up?"
"So far, so good," he replied. "My pads are starting to wear down a little, though. It's a good thing I regenerate, or my paws would be a bloody mess about now. This stone is coarse, and some of its edges are like knife blades."
"At least it gives traction," Sarraya said.
Tarrin held out the skin, and Sarraya filled it with water using her Druidic magic. He stoppered it and lowered it, then let it go so it could hang from his waist. "Thank the Goddess for that," Tarrin grunted. "If we can find a good ledge somewhere around here, I think we'll stop for some lunch."
"It's a date," Sarraya chuckled, and he reached up for the next handhold.
That ledge was an elusive prey, but he finally managed to find one about an hour before noon, well after the sun had risen above the massive cloud that hung over their heads. The heat from the sun hadn't diminished, but he had noticed a definite cooling of the air as he climbed, as if the cloud above were absorbing the heat. The rock too at first was noticably hot-black stone with that sun shining on it would doubtless be hot-but it too cooled as he climbed higher and higher, either protected by the cloud or having its heat drained off by the cooler air, one or the other. That cloud had been getting closer and closer, and when Tarrin pulled himself up onto the narrow ledge of rock, about three spans wide, he guessed that he'd reach the lower edge of it in about an hour. He looked down, and the astounding height separating him from the ground reached out and grabbed him by the throat. He was now even higher up than they'd been when they stood at the edge of the Great Canyon. The air at that altitude was cool, curiously cool, and the first damp smells of the cloud were beginning to reach his nose. That wasn't all, the air seemed… thinner. That was the only way he could describe it. It didn't have its usual sense of weight about him, and his ears had popped more than once as he climbed upwards. He found himself breathing faster than normal, even though he wasn't winded.