"Then you will get it," Allia said quickly and sincerely, clicking her tongue a few times. Talon disengaged from the Were-cat child and stalked over to her, lowering her head.
"You're going to help me a different way, Allia," he said. "The only one I'll need to help me recover her directly is Jesmind."
She looked up at him with shimmering eyes. "What can I do to help?"
"Go with me," he told her. "When the time comes to get Jasana and get away, I'm going to need you. Nobody else can do it but you."
"I'll do anything to get my daughter back," she told him sincerely.
Tarrin was silently glad to hear that. When the time came, her declaration was going to be sorely put to the test.
He put his arms around her and then explained what he'd seen, and revealed some certain exhchanges he'd made with Spyder. "Val is summoning up an army of Demons," he concluded. "We're going to have to put a stop to that. The Goddess has already started assembling an army to face them, and she'll need help from the rest of us, and she'll need all of us when the time comes to start fighting."
"What will I do with Eron?" Mist asked in worry.
"I don't expect you to fight, Mist," he told her. "Your cub is still too young, and I want you to stay with Kimmie. She's going to push herself too far with her magic if someone doesn't stay with her and reign her in, and that may harm the baby. So you have two children again."
"I don't find that idea to be totally repugnant," she said with a slight smile. "I know Kimmie, and she won't disobey me. I'll keep her on a short leash for you."
"Is Triana here yet? How long was I out?"
"Nearly an hour," Allia answered.
Tarrin brooded about that. It certainly didn't seem like an hour. Then again, time seemed to work a little differently within the Weave. It was not as absolute there it was in reality, moving at the same pace everywhere. In some places it moved swiftly, in some places ponderously. He guessed he must have crossed a boundary into an area where time marched quickly, making a substantial chunk of time in reality seem like only a moment to him there.
"If I've been out that long, then Kerri and the others have to be back by now," he said. "And Spyder and Shiika may be here too."
"Shiika? Why would that Demon be coming here?" Jesmind asked.
"Because we're going to need her," Tarrin replied.
"Is it wise to ally with a Demon against its own kind?" Mist asked.
"Shiika is a dependable ally," Allia told her calmly.
"If there's one thing you can absolutely depend on about Shiika," Tarrin elaboratted, "it's that she'll do whatever it takes to keep her position of power and luxury, and do anything it takes from being banished from Sennadar and sent back to the Abyss. Val's army threatens her luxurious lifestyle, and his Demons are a direct threat to her status. She'll fight on our side because we represent a better lifestyle for her if we win." Tarrin snorted. "Shiika probably hates the other Demons even more than we do," he added absently. "Because she's so different from them."
"How so?"
"Shiika doesn't have the same mentality as other Demons," he answered. "If there was ever such a thing as a nice Demon, Shiika is the closest thing you'll ever find to it. She's rather nasty, and she is a Demon, but she lacks that fundamental sense of evil that infects the rest of her kind. She's not a good or kind woman, but she's not like the others either, actually unlike just about any other Demon. If they ever noticed it, they'd probably destroy her."
"So between the two extremes, she falls somewhere in the middle," Mist surmised.
"That's a pretty good way to look at it," he agreed. "She's a dangeous woman and I don't entirely trust her, but I do trust her when her interests happen to coincide with mine. As long as we're working towards the same goal, she can be a loyal and very powerful ally. It's when those goals start drifting apart that you have to start watching her, because she'll step on your head to advance her own cause."
"Tarrin, you know some of the most unusual people," Mist laughed. "A Demon, a dragon, and everything in between."
"Normal people are boring," he replied with no humor.
"I think I'd like to meet this Demon," Mist said.
"You'll get your chance," he answered, pushing Jesmind out from him a little. "I'll warn you now, though, they smell worse than anything you could ever imagine. I've built up something or a resistance to it." He looked to his mate. "I want you to stay here," he told her. "And when Jula gets here and as soon as I track down Kimmie, I'm sending them up here too. I want all of you together, so you can protect each other in case they try this again."
"I'll do it for now," she said. "But don't make me stay here too long."
"We won't be here very long, Jesmind," he told her. "As soon as I tell Jenna what I'm going to need from them, we'll be on our way."
"Where are we going?"
"North," he said. "And we'll be travelling a long time. We have to go quite a distance."
"Why not just fly us there, like you did when we came to Suld?"
He shook his head. "This time, I want to go slow," he told her. "I have to arrive at our destination on a very specific day. If I'm too early or too late, the plan will fail. It's important, Jesmind. So if I slow us down or speed us up on the road, I don't want you to argue. Alright?"
"If we have to be there on this specific day, why not wait here and just magic ourselves there?"
"I don't want to be where people can find me," he told her. "I need to be travelling, on the road. I need to be looking like I'm on the way, not lounging around here looking like I'm planning something sneaky. Do you understand?"
"I, no, but I'll trust you," she said uncertainly, then she gave him a wan smile.
"I trust you, but I would like to know why it's so important," Mist said.
He looked at her. "Val wants the Firestaff, that much you should know," he told her. "But the Firestaff can only be used at a particular time on a particular day every five thousand years. We absolutely have to be there on that day, not a day sooner or a day later, because the immediacy of the situation will make Val desperate enough to give me the chance to get Jasana and get her out of there alive. You know that he'll have no intention of letting any of us leave him alive. I have to have a powerful bargaining chip when I do come for her, or else he won't do what we need him to do to get Jasana back alive. That chip is going to be the fact that if he doesn't do as I demand, he'll have to wait another five thousand years before he'll be freed. He knows that not even he can take the Firestaff away from me, Mist. It's locked in the elsewhere in my amulet, and any attempt to take it by force will cause it to be sealed up there forever, out of reach of everyone and everything. I have to give it to him, and that will give us the opportunity we need to get Jasana back."
Mist turned it over in her mind, and then nodded. "That's clever," she complemented.
"It's just luck that circumstances fell as they did," he snorted. "If Mother had never given me this amulet, and the amulet's magic wouldn't actively defend itself from attempts to defeat it or get the amulet away from me, I'd have no way to get Jasana back."
"Perhaps what you call luck someone else calls a plan," Mist told him, which made him start. She had a point, but to hear Mist talking like that was very odd. He'd never thought that she had much of a mind. Then again, he made the same mistake about her that so many others made about him. They saw nothing but his outwardly violent personality, thinking that someone who acted so brutish could not possibly also be rather intelligent.
"Maybe," he admitted.
"Did I ever tell you about when your Goddess visited us?" she asked, reaching under her shirt and pulling out a black shaeram. "She gave me and Eron these amulets."