I don't know. Val fears me, but he doesn't fear the other gods as much as he does me. He knows I'll take him on, and I won't have much fear in doing it. The other gods will be just as terrified of the idea as Val, but Val would be the one initiating it, so he'd probably feel more confident about it. After all, he'd have gotten himself ready to do it. This is why I've always been the one to deal with him, kitten. My power is the only one that can oppose him significantly enough to reign him in. I've kept him in check for five thousand years, but with the time of the Firestaff's activation so close, he's started gambling. Just as we have.
He understood that, understood it more deeply than she probably realized. Val's fear of destruction had kept him working behind the scenes for five thousand years, preparing everything for the day he got his hands on the Firestaff and could use it to become more powerful than even the Goddess could withstand. He had committed five thousand years of work, planning, sweat and toil to this, to the item Tarrin carried with him, and he had set plans in motion to move forward with his dreams of conquest. And being surprisingly forward-thinking, he had set things up so he could make his attempt to conquer and rule whether he got the Firestaff or not. Val had grown tired of working behind the scenes. He was willing to gamble on how involved the Elder Gods would get and try to conquer, maybe gain a foothold for himself and establish a kingdom in the West from which to operate as he consolidated his forces and waited another five thousand years for the chance to free himself of his prison.
And if he failed, it wouldn't matter. In a few thousand years, after everything had returned to normal, he could begin again.
It was a win-win situation for Val. Win the world, or lose his army and simply pull back and wait to try again. And again, and again, and again, continuing to try, continuing to test, until he did finally win. Because the gods were afraid to put an end to him, he could thumb his nose at them and simply wait for another opportunity to overthrow their power in the world.
Releasing the power of Sorcery, Tarrin felt an icy resolve grip him. If that was the way it was, then so be it.
"I take it something big just happened?" Jesmind asked.
"Val tried to kill me," he said in a grim voice. "Mother stopped him. He can't kill me because I'm under Mother's protection. Now he's waiting for us, Jesmind. He's waiting for us at Gora Umadar."
"Then let's not disappoint him," she said shortly.
"We won't, but we still have to get there on Gods' Day," he told her. "That hasn't changed. But now we can move and only worry about the Demons and the patrols. Val knows he can't kill us directly, so we only have to worry about the servants he tries to put in our path."
"These belts seem to take care of hiding us from them rather well."
"From a distance. We may have to fight our way across the tundra if the patrols are heavy enough."
"I don't see anything wrong with that at all," she said in a dreadfully eager tone.
"Me either," he agreed with a single nod.
Moving at a slow walk, they continued down the mountain valleys. They camped early that night in a small cave, then set out again well after sunrise. Peeks of the tundra appeared between mountains and hills as they continued a zig-zagging descent down the valleys. About noon that day, they reached the pass that split the mountains in two, and the tundra opened beneath them as they stood at the pinnacle of the pass and looked down. A featureless white plain, unbroken snow, as far as the eye could see. Almost unconsciously, Tarin looked northeast, to where the pyramid of Gora Umadar stood beyond the horizon, their ultimate destination.
They moved about halfway down the pass, and then Tarrin stopped them when he saw a rather large cave mouth yawning just along the edge of the pass wall, a perfect place to stop and rest and prepare for the trek across the featureless tundra.
"You know, the snow's thinning out," Jesmind noticed as she pointed to a snowbank by the cave entrance. "It can't be more than a span or so deep."
"The mountains block the weather," he said distantly. "All the snow is forced to fall on the other side and in the mountains. That means the snowstorms that make it over here don't have much left. I doubt there's more than a span of snow on the tundra."
"How long will we camp here?"
"A day," he answered. "We have five days to get there, and I'm giving us four to cross the tundra. We can come down onto the tundra tomorrow and run to make up the time to get down, and then from there we'll just have to see how fast we go."
"I hate this," she growled as they stepped into the cave. "I hate having to go slow."
"I do too, but it's necessary," he said. "Let's set things up and get some dinner started. I'm hungy."
It was a tense layover for both of them. Jesmind was nearly in a fever pitch, but Tarrin was too distracted to notice. Things were nearly over and done with. In just a few days, it would all be over. Jasana would be safe in just a few days. She just had to hang on for five more days. He still had no sense of her inside the void, but he still just knew that she was alive and well. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. Val had not harmed her, at least not yet, because he knew of the terrible retribution the Were-cat would exact against him if he did so. He wouldn't be free to harm Jasana until after he got the Firestaff. Tarrin held in his paws a means to forever deny Val the chance to free himself of his prison, and they both knew it. That gave Tarrin a power over Val that not even the bound god could deny. Val was indeed marching to Tarrin's drum, and the Were-cat knew he had to keep playing as long as he possibly could.
Jesmind stormed around, muttering, cursing, throwing rocks at the walls, and venting on him for her own impatience. Tarrin simply sat there and endured it with a look of disengaged concentration on his face, as he struggled to master his own impatience, tried not to act the same way as his mate. She got worse and worse as the sun set and the moonless night took hold over the land, as the light of their small fire cast warm yellow and red hues across the red-tinged walls of the cave.
"Jesmind," he finally said, opening his eyes after something whizzed by his face so closely that he felt the air it displaced flutter against him. "Sit."
"Don't you dare order me around!" she raged at him. "Doesn't it bother you in the slightest? How can you just sit there!?"
"I sit here to keep from acting like you," he told her, looking up at her with hooded eyes. "If you want a distraction, I'll be happy to give you one."
She looked at him, then her eyebrows rose in surprise when she caught the change in his scent. "How can you think about that at a time like this?" she demanded.
"Because this will be the last chance we have," he answered calmly. "I want one more night with you before we both march off into the face of insanity. And if anything, it will calm you down. I'll get you in bed just to make you stop pacing."
Jesmind snorted loudly, but the invitation was there, and he knew his mate. Even if she knew she was being manipulated, she couldn't pass it up.
"That's low, my mate," she growled, but she had already grabbed the tail of her thick fur-lined shirt.
"I'm sure you'll enjoy the indignity," he said dryly as she shrugged out of her shirt, then sidled onto his lap and started kissing him.
It had been their last night spent together before all was said and done.
Tarrin lay with her in his arms as the light of the morning spilled into the opening of the cave, the fire long died away and the cave cold and unpleasant, but the thick fur under which they lay kept them both comfortably warm. Jesmind was sleeping, and it was times like that, when sleep softened her features, that she was at her loveliest. He could stare down at her for hours, never growing tired of the sight of her. He couldn't see her face now, but he knew exactly how it would look, with her cheek resting against his shoulder, her arms tucked in around him, embracing him even in her slumber, that heart-stealing expression of peaceful contentment that made her so incredibly beautiful. He knew he wouldn't see that expression again until after it was all over, if he ever saw it again, but the memory of it was enough to make him content.