He was starting to get like Jesmind, only wanting to learn things that seemed to have practical use.
Tarrin said his goodbyes to Tiella, and as she hurried over to the long table where the prepared food was kept warm for those drifting through the kitchens, it reminded him about Dar. Dar had shown some interest in Tiella, and he knew that Tiella had a crush on Dar. He wondered if they'd managed to get anywhere yet. He hoped so. Dar was rather cosmipolitan, being an Arkisian, but Tiella was probably still a moralistic, straight-laced village girl. She probably still wouldn't bathe when it was crowded. He'd have to work that out of her. Sometimes human morality was, if not inconvenient, highly illogical.
Snorting, lashing his tail a few times, Tarrin started off with his plate towards one of the dining rooms.
The mood on the Tower grounds began to get tense as the days passed. The ki'zadun was coming, and now even the Tower was openly preparing for it. The Vendari and the Knights had erected a vast breastwork and palisade that encircled the entire Tower grounds, running about the inside perimiter of the fence, and they interrogated with extreme prejudice anyone entering or leaving the grounds. More and more Aeradalla had begun to appear in the sky over Suld, ferrying scouting reports and messages from ground-based scouting patrols to and from the command structure, which had set up shop in the Tower. Shiika's Arakite Legions had joined with the Sulasians and the Wikuni on the walls of Suld, serving as the first line of defense. The Wikuni with their gunpowder and muskets, and the cannons they'd mounted on the walls to shoot down on attackers, would prove to be devastating. The Legions were some of the finest warriors in the world, just as extensively trained to defend a walled city as they were in attacking one. The elements of the Sulasian army and militia that were there probably felt a little overwhelmed by the caliber of soldiers they found sharing the walls with them, but it was not doubted that they welcomed them with open arms. Rumor and fact had filtered into every tavern and inn in the city, so everyone knew the size of the force marching on the city. It was going to be a very large battle, they thought.
Of course, there was also good news. The Ungardt had realized that they were just getting people killed, and had broken off any more attempts to slow down the advancing army. The Aeradalla scouts had reported that the Ungardt were about a day ahead of the ki'zadun, on a forced march to Suld. That meant that there would be even more Ungardt there to defend the city, joining their brothers and sisters who were getting drunk in the city's pubs every night and causing almost as much chaos as the impending army might if they were within the walls themselves. Another bit of good news was that the Selani had finally made their presence known, absolutely annihilating the Dal army that had been pinning down the Sulasian forces just outside of Ultern. True to form, they attacked in the middle of the night, while the Dals were camped, killing their sentries and striking while most of their enemies were asleep. The Selani had great honor, but they saw nothing wrong with attacking an enemy by surprise; indeed, it was even more honor to them for taking their enemies so totally off guard. The reports Keritanima had shown him from the Aeradalla said that it had gone beyond being a victory, or even a rout. It had been an absolute slaughter. The Selani did not take prisoners. That was a well known fact. And they proved that to be a true statement. Selani did not surrender, and they would not accept surrender from an enemy. In battle against Selani, one either defeated them, or managed to flee the field. They had wiped out the entire Dal army, right down to the last man. It may have seemed brutal to some, but they didn't understand the Selani or the environment in which they lived. War was not something the Selani took lightly. The Selani were fully of the mind that an enemy that attacked once would attack again, so it was best to kill them the first time. That was why the Arkisian Emperor was so adamant about preventing gold hunters from invading Selani lands, because he knew that the Selani would come across the Sandshield like a black wave of death and raze the entire kingdom to the ground.
Tarrin had taken a moment after reading that, as he and Keritanima and Allia sat comfortably around a table in his room, and realized that the Selani and the Sulasian army they would join would be in Suld within a few days. Counting off the days, he realized that the Fae-da'Nar were only one or two days away themselves, and that the ki'zadun were only five or six days away. Things were getting closer and closer, and though he knew it was coming, Keritanima's confidence and the dismissal of it by the Goddess had put him in an optomistic mood about it.
Tarrin himself had been busy during those days. He and Jenna had been practicing every day, for a good portion of it, until the techniques that the Urzani taught them went beyond being second nature and became absolutely automatic. They had also labored more with Bridging, and had become quite proficient in that as well. They both were just waiting for Spyder to call them again, and they were both very much looking forward to it. Days were spent with Jenna. Afternoons and evenings were spent with any number of his friends, from quiet meals with his bond-daughter Jula-with Kimmie tagging along-to walks in the gardens with Dolanna, to walks around the Tower grounds with Dar as they told stories and remembered their time together in the Novitiate, to evenings spent in quiet domesticity with his parents and Jenna in their apartment, to shouting matches with Camara Tal, to a rather heated exchange with Phandebrass when the fuddled Wizard tried to cut off the end of his tail for magical research. Few men could walk up behind Tarrin with a drawn knife and survive to see the next sunrise. It had never occured to the Wizard to ask. Probably because he would already know the answer.
What amazed him was that Kimmie had gladly sacrificed a good chunk of her tail to Phandebrass. That was most likely because she was still desperately trying to get him to tutor her in the magical arts.
Late evenings and nights were spent in his apartments, with his mate and daughter. He did his best to teach his little girl about magic safely during those balmy early summer nights, often with rain pattering against the windows, but it wasn't easy. Jasana's raw power made it hard for him to show her how to use magic without allowing her to touch it, and she couldn't touch it because he wasn't sure if she could control it or he could contain it. But when it came down to it, he realized that he had little choice in the matter, and then strarted the process of teaching his daughter how to actively touch the Weave. She had yet to do it successfully, probably because Tarrin was trying to see if she could touch regular Sorcery before High Sorcery, but he knew it was just a matter of time. Probably just as soon as she stopped listening to him and did things her way.
In all the hustle and bustle, Tarrin had realized that there were two people he had yet to see, and both of them were rather important. The first of them was Sevren. He had yet to see the spectacled Sorcerer since coming back, and he hadn't thought to ask anyone where he'd gone, if he had gone anywhere at all. Sevren was one of the few Sorcerers in the Tower that Tarrin trusted, and Tarrin considered him something almost like a friend. The second person he had yet to see was Janette, and that made him feel a little guilty. Here he was, in Suld, with an army coming at them, and he hadn't even bothered to go look in on his little mother and make sure that she and her parents were doing alright. When the war started, he absolute was not about to leave them out in the city. Janette, Tomas, and Janine, and their house staff, were going to be in the Tower, right where Tarrin would know that they were going to be safe. They were good friends with Tarrin's parents, so it wouldn't be like they'd feel that they were being imprisoned.
It was sunset. Tarrin was sitting on one of the couches surrounding the fireplace, turned around on it so he was leaning against its back and looking out the windows of the balcony door. It was raining again, a kind of heavy, oppressive rain that tried to drown everything, the kind of rain that rarely lasted more than an hour or two. But this rain had been going on for almost three hours now, and he'd heard from Jula when she came up to visit that some of the sewers in Suld were starting to clog up and flood some of the lower streets. Jasana was sitting on the floor near the crackling fire, playing with a small doll that Dolanna had bought in the city and given to her the day before. It seemed odd to see a Were-cat child playing with a human doll, but Jasana did have human instincts. Then again, one of her favorite games with the doll was to make up ever more graphic and horrific ways for it to meet its end. That was the other side of her that most people didn't see, since they were so taken with how adorable she was. Jasana looked like a cute little girl, but they couldn't forget that she was a cute little Were-cat girl. She already had that killer instinct, and her gory games with the unfortunate toy were merely an extension of the instinct to perfect hunting skills that would be needed in adulthood. Jasana's duplicitous nature would have offended his sensibilities two years ago, but now that he had fully embraced what he was, they seemed perfectly natural to him now.