"Why not just tell me?"
"Speaking through the amulets isn't secure," he told her. "But talking here is."
"Oh. Alright."
"I have to go," Tarrin said. "Sarraya's about to pull my ear off. I'll see you soon, Jenna."
"Goodbye, Tarrin. Good luck," she called as Tarrin withdrew from her, and then sent his consciousness back to his body.
Tarrin opened his eyes and winced as Sarraya wrenched his ears. "What?" he demanded in irritation.
"It's your watch!" she growled at him. "I'd like to sleep sometime tonight, you know!"
"It's that late?"
"You've been off chasing dragons for nearly four hours!" she said hotly. "Now I'm going to go to sleep. Try not to go back to zombie land, will you?"
"Well, go on," he told her, standing up. "I'll keep watch."
Sarraya frowned at him, then buzzed over to the tent and slid inside. Tarrin sat down on a rock, looking out into the darkness, and he smiled. It was good to be with his sister again, to really be with her. The Heart was just as real as reality, but it wasn't her body he'd spent time with, it was her soul. That made it that much better. It made it seem nearly holy, to hover there in the Heart and catch up with his sister, dealing with her soul to soul.
It put Tarrin in a very good mood. He felt much better now that he knew Jenna was recovering nicely, and would probably regain her powers soon. He felt much better knowing that Keritanima had taken everything in hand, and was smoothly preparing to defend Suld from the coming army. He felt very much better knowing that his parents were taking Jenna back to Suld, but not back to the Tower. They'd be safe and well cared for in the loving home of Tomas the merchant and Janine the wife, with Tarrin's Little Mother there to keep his sister occupied.
He felt much better.
He looked out into the desert, towards the mountains, knowing that tomorrow would be the last day he'd spend in the Desert of Swirling Sands. They'd reach those mountains by afternoon. They'd reach them, and his time in the desert would be over. The lessons he had learned in the desert, however, would stay with him, be a part of him for the rest of his life. They were important lessons, needed lessons, and he now fully understood why the Goddess had sent him here.
The harshness of the desert had taught him that he was his own master. The demons within would always be there. They would always be part of him, and he would always struggle against them, but now he knew he had the strength to conquer them.
He wasn't afraid anymore.
The morning dawned warm and calm. The wind, what there was, was barely more than a whisper as the three of them set out from the campsite they had erected, and had carefully taken down and wiped out any trace that they had been there. The mountains were high and rugged, many of them with snow on their tops, and they loomed enticingly to the west, within the day's reach. The sight of them spurred Tarrin on, made him run faster and faster, until Denai had to call out and remind him of the reality of their situation. There were Trolls about, and he couldn't be just running wild as he was. They had to pay attention to the surroundings, else they may run headlong into a Troll party without being ready for it.
But it was hard to keep a pace. The end of the desert was right before him, and though he had come to love the rugged desert, his anxiety over what was happening in Suld spurred him on. He had to get there quickly, he had to be there to help when the ki'zadun attacked. His Weavespinner powers could make a difference, and they couldn't do that unless he was there when the enemy army marched in.
But that wasn't the only thing on his mind. Denai was a problem, because he would be leaving her out here alone, in territory infested by Trolls. He thought about that for a while, until he came up with a decent solution. Sarraya wouldn't be too happy about it, but that was the way things were.
They encountered no Trolls during the morning, and Tarrin paced restlessly while they stopped for lunch and a little rest during the hottest part of the day. The mountains were even visible now in the midday, close enough for the heat-haze to not distort them out of visibility. The ground was starting to become more rugged; they were moving into the foothills at the base of the mountains. Tarrin waited anxiously for as long as he could, then he moved them out when he simply could not wait any longer.
And then they were moving again. They again encountered no Trolls as they ran westward, up and down steeper and steeper hills. Denai and Sarraya had been right; this close to the mountains, the Trolls were indeed centralized on the passes. There were signs that Trolls had patrolled where they were, but the signs were very old. They obviously felt that Tarrin would indeed come for the pass, and they'd focused their attention on catching him out in the desert or at the pass itself. That, or the Selani that had been attacking the Trolls had drawn most of the patrols out into the desert, out to engage the elusive guerillas and kill them. Either way, it had cleared the border desert of most of the enemy, and that allowed him much more freedom of movement. Now that he was on the border with the mountains, he had slipped in under their patrol zone, and that knowledge spurred him to run faster.
Their effortless travel stopped abruptly when they came up over the top of a particularly steep hill, and found themselves looking down on a small camp of about fifteen Trolls. Seeing them surprised him somewhat, but the sight of them incited an instantaneous response of hatred inside of him.
"Trolls," Denai said. "Feel like a little exercise?"
"I don't have time for them now," Tarrin said to her bluntly. "But I'm not going to leave them out here to threaten your people either."
"Then what are we going to do about them?"
Attuning himself to the Weave, Tarrin came to a greater connection with it, then he opened himself to its power. The energy of the Weave flowed into him unabated, and his paws began to glow in the limning, soft radiance of Magelight, a visible sign that Tarrin was preparing to use High Sorcery. He knew what he wanted to do, so he knew when he'd drawn in enough energy to make it happen. He wove the spell quickly, able to cast it over a distance because it was a relatively simple spell to create. It was a rather simple two-flow weave, Air and Fire, and when it was released, it caused an intense wall of fire to rise up in a circle around the camp, fire so hot that it melted the sand upon which it rested. The Trolls within the ring jumped up in surprise and fear, and that fear turned to terror when the ring of fire began to enclose around them. They backed away from the flames until they formed a knot in the center of it, then the stupid beings realized that they had nowhere else to go. One of them put his head down and tried to run through the flames, but his cohorts didn't see if he made it because of the intense ferocity of the fire killed the Troll before it could clear it. Its charred corpse flopped to the ground on the other side of the ring of fire, but the color and thickness of the flames hid this fact from those still inside.
One by one, the Trolls tried to run through the flames, and one by one, they died for their efforts. They kept on until they got to the last three, too frightened of the fire to try to get through it. Those three died where they stood as the ring closed on them, forming a blazing pyre in the center of the blasted, charred campsite, and when the fire died away, there was nothing but a charred, blistered scar of blackened rock and melted sand where the Trolls had once stood.
"That must be handy," Denai laughed.
"It has its uses," Tarrin answered mildly. "Let's move on."
"How'd you get the fire so hot?" Sarraya asked curiously.
"Air," he answered. "Mix in Air in with your Fire, and it makes the fire hotter."
"Clever."
"I didn't think of it," he shrugged. "It's part of what I was taught."
They ran on until about midafternoon, when they found themselves looking up at a steep slope, leading up the side of the first of the mountains of the Sandshield. They had made it.