"Let's get moving," he announced. "Let's get as close to the tundra as we can, then find a cave to hole up and rest a while."
"I could use some," she grunted. "But it won't be as nice as the hot spring was."
"Welcome to reality," he told her as he reactivated the Illusion, and turned to start back down the valley.
They managed to get quite a distance before they found a cave to rest in for the night, and while Jesmind collapsed in it, Tarrin went up onto a small rock and stared up at the sky. All four moons had set long ago, leaving nothing but the brilliant stars and the Skybands. They had six days now, now that midnight had passed. In six days, he would have his daughter back. His family and Val's forces would be at war, a war in which even the gods were going to participate. They would be there to defend the army against Val's power, as much as they could without forcing a direct confrontation. Tarrin still felt a little angry about their cowardice, but on the other hand, he understood how chaotic things could get if one of the Elder Gods lost an icon. The natural force that god controlled would go wild, and would remain so until the god managed to create a new icon. The only god who could conceivably lose an icon and not have it cause major damage to the world was his own Goddess', Niami. She controlled only magic, but the destruction of her icon would kill any Sorcerer with even a modicum of power or training. That would literally strip the entire world of its magic, killing every creature that depended on magic, like dragons, Faeries, and Were-cats. Niami's banishment would make the whole world mundane, and he doubted that any magic would survive until she recreated her icon. She would return to a world that had been totally stripped of it magic, and that would make her a goddess with nothing to control. Or a goddess supplying a power to the world that nobody there would remember how to use, and as such it would be wasted.
He hated the idea of his sisters and friends fighting in that war. It would be so big, so charged with magic, that their lives were in very real jeopardy. But no matter what happened with Tarrin, that army had to be destroyed. They couldn't let it out of the tundra, where it could wreak havoc in Ungardt, Draconia, and Daltochan, then spread out to threaten all of the West. It was too big for any one kingdom to face alone. At least the gods would be there. If Val could attack the army of his allies, then the Elder Gods could turn around and attack Val's army. That was the deadlock, he saw. If the gods had to defend their own armies, their power cancelled one another out, and it would be up to the armies themselves to decide things. Neither god could strike at the other's army without letting down the defense of his own. They either let the armies decide it or both armies were annihilated, leaving a very tense standoff where Val may very well decide to throw caution to the wind and attack the Elder Gods directly.
That was the very thing that the Goddess intended for him to stop when she sent him after the Firestaff. Tarrin couldn't really do anything about Val, because he had used the Firestaff before Tarrin had even been alive, but he still had to keep it out of enemy hands. If Val used it, his power would increase that much more, and he would quite possibly have the power to banish all the Elder Gods and take control of the world himself, capable of carrying out the duties that the Elder Gods had been tending. A world remade in Val's image, where he ruled all with absolute power. That was a world that couldn't be allowed to be. There would be no room in it for everyone he held dear.
Timing. Timing was everything. The battle with the dragon to gain the Firestaff showed him that. An hour earlier, and he would have been killed by the dragon in battle. An hour later, and he would have claimed the Firestaff without a fight. There was an issue of timing in this as well, getting to Val at that perfect moment where the nearness of the conjunction gave Tarrin a powerful bargaining position, a position he would use to get his daughter back. The other issue of timing would be how well the gods timed the appearance of the army with the beginning of the conjunction. They were supposed to transport the army to the tundra and begin the battle the second the conjunction began. That, the conjunction itself, and Tarrin would all be distractions to Val, and Tarrin was going to need for him to be distracted at that moment. That was his one and only chance to make sure Jesmind and Jasana got safely away from the pyramid. After that, it all came down to luck. He freely admitted that, but many of his plans depended on luck for success. Luck seemed to be his ally more often than not, so why not plan for its eventualities?
That was what Jesmind was getting suspicious about. He could tell. His plan to get there and to get Jasana were quite detailed, but his plan to get out seemed to her to be uneasily vague. That was probably the stickiest part of the plan, the one in which luck would play the greatest role. His continued existence after Jesmind and Jasana got safely away depended a great deal on how lucky he was going to be at that particular moment in his life. He'd planned all he could for it, but the fickle finger of luck was going to be the deciding factor.
And that seemed strangely fitting to him. Tarrin was more than willing to gamble absolutely everything on his luck. He prayed Val wasn't quite as reckless as he.
Sometimes crazy works.
Distantly, he became aware of Jesmind. She seated herself beside him on the rock, and spent long moments in silence, staring up into the sky with him. The Skybands were particularly brilliant that crisp, clear night, dominating the entire southern sky, their full color and beauty shining freely without the lights of the moons to shade, stain, or interfere with them. To the north, the lights of Maiden's Ghost flickered in the sky, curtains of bluish light that wavered and shimmered in the night sky. Ungardt legend said that they were caused by an ancient maiden who was lighting the way home for her lover, who sailed away in a ship and never returned. Shining in the northern sky, a beacon to him to bring him home. Between them were the stars, a sea of little flickering lights glittering down like tiny diamonds within heaven's treasure chest, opened to those below so they could stare up and wonder at the riches above them.
Jesmind slid her paw into his, and he clenched it tightly. They didn't have much more time. He was worried for her, and for Jasana. Their escape from the clutches of Val would be very dangerous. He could only hope that his crafty mate could get their daughter out of there alive. But then again, there was nobody else he would or could trust with something as precious as his daughter other than his daughter's mother, the only other living soul that could possibly understand what that little girl meant to him. Because she meant just as much to her. He would destroy the world to save her, he would willingly die to protect her. He would do whatever it took to get her back. Jesmind would do the same.
They didn't speak. They only stared up into the night sky, dreading what was coming, but knowing that the end of the ordeal would return their daughter to them.
Because they had made such good time, Tarrin slowed them to a walk the next day, as they easily began the descent towards the tundra. The easier pace left them with more energy, but that only gave them more time to stew. They were both already wound very tightly, and the delay only seemed to aggravate Jesmind, who wanted to run down there, who wanted to get there and retrieve their daughter now. For Jesmind, everything was now. That lack of foresight cost them dearly way back when they had first met, when her need to take him to her den now rather than after he'd learned what he needed to learn had been what caused the feud between them. The result was that Jesmind became very hostile on the walk down the connecting valleys that would eventually lead to a pass that would bring them out of the mountains. She fought with him constantly over his slow pace, and it was only his repeated reminders that they had to be there at a certain time that kept her from racing off on her own.