Letting go of the Weave easily with Sarraya helping him, Tarrin removed his paw from the woman's chest and looked down at the pair of them calmly. The girl had seen the light around his paw, and she had been mesmerized by it, it seemed, for the fear that had been in her eyes had been replaced by wonderment. Tarrin blinked and realized that he was within arm's reach of the woman, and quickly stood up and got a safe distance away. His quick action startled the little girl in the act of reaching out to touch his paw, making her look up at him in confusion before leaning down and hugging her mother.
Sarraya's laughing stopped, but she still snickered and giggled from time to time. "How is she?"
"She's going to be fine," Tarrin told her. "She'll be alright, little cub," he told the girl in Arakite. He took his first good look at the girl. She was rather cute, in an Arakite sense, with pattern Arakite skin, hair and eyes. Her features were a bit sharper than the standard Arakite, and he realized that she was very skinny under her pretty cream-colored dress, a dress now brown from dirt, dust, and sand. Her cheeks were sunken, and her lips were swollen. She was dehydrated. It was amazing that she had the energy to scream as loudly as she did. "You need some water, and some food. I think I have some in my pack somewhere. You just sit here and wait for your mother to wake up, and I'll get you something."
Tarrin stepped away from the two of them, and Sarraya followed. "I think a goodly amount of water is called for here, Sarraya," he told her quietly. "Both of them are dehydrated. They're going to need alot of water. And we'll need some decent food. They have a ways to go, so they'll need enough to get them back to that city too."
"I can conjure up some bread and honey for them, but you know I won't conjure meat." That limitation was a conscious one for Sarraya rather than a limit on her ability. Sarraya refused to conjure any animal for food, since it would appear alive, and she objected to summoning animals from the wild with the implicit reason to kill them. She didn't mind hunting, it was a natural process, but her reasoning was that a conjured animal had no chance to get away. So she refused to allow that to happen. If Tarrin wanted meat, he had to find it himself the old-fashioned way.
"I think that will be enough," he assured her. He looked back at them, and realized that he had to leave them quickly. Stay long enough to make sure they were alright, then leave them. They'd be in much more danger with him near than they'd be alone. Besides, being close to them made him feel uneasy, uncomfortable, and those were very bad feelings for him. It was only a two day walk back to that nameless city for a human, so it wasn't like he was abandoning them out in the middle of nowhere. All they had to do was follow the road. It gnawed at him a bit that he was leaving them alone, but the feral disposition in him squashed that feeling quickly and reminded him that whether or not they lived was none of his concern.
Sarraya conjured up a large leather cloth, and then set to work conjuring a meal large enough for two starving refugees. She had the foresight to conjure up several waterskins as well as a stone urn, and she filled all of them with water. By the time she was done, the woman began to make low grumbling sounds. She was waking up. Sarraya winked out of sight as Tarrin picked up several of the skins and moved towards the humans.
The woman opened her eyes just as Tarrin was approaching with the waterskins. She looked up at her daughter, who was beginning to cry and hug the woman fiercely, then she turned and looked at him. Her eyes widened in surprise, but there wasn't the irrational outburst that had come from the girl. There was definitely fear in her eyes, but it was tempered by the fact that she was alive and whole, and that her daughter was unharmed. The woman sat up and cradled the girl in one arm as her other hand touched the massive clot on the side of her head tentatively. There was confusion in her eyes now, and she looked up at Tarrin with fear, bewilderment, and a little awe at his intimidating size.
"It's healed," he told her in Arakite. "You're safe for the moment."
"Wh-Who are you?" she asked in a trembling voice. "It's alright, Sami, it's alright. Calm down now."
"Who I am doesn't matter," he replied calmly. "I'm going to leave you with enough food and water to recover, and enough to get back to a city. There's a city two day's walk that way," he said, pointing the way he'd come. "But I think you already knew that."
"Sargon," she filled in. "What happened to the others?"
"I found you alone," he told her. "They must have left you behind."
"As bad as that storm was, I'd be surprised if they knew it by the time they got to Sargon," she grunted, looking at him. "They probably looked around and realized that my wagon wasn't there."
"Will they look for you?"
"They'd better," she said ominously.
"Then waiting here for a while may not be a bad idea," he said, throwing his cloak back over his shoulders. "If they don't come back, then you shouldn't have too much trouble getting back to that city."
"You're leaving?" the woman asked urgently. "But I didn't get to thank you, or find out your name or anything!"
"I am no one worth your time," he said simply. "I was never here."
"But what if something attacks us?"
"There's nothing out here to attack you," he replied.
"What about the Trolls? They haven't come this far?"
That made his ears pick up. Were-cats-all of Fae-da'Nar for that matter-hated Trolls. Goblinoids existed outside the natural order, destroying the balance of nature more aggressively than humans did, and that made them the mortal enemies of the Forest Folk. Any Were-kin worth his fur would go ten longspans out of his way to kill a Goblinoid.
But what were Trolls doing out in this arid plain? This wasn't the range of a Troll. They preferred forested foothills and mountains, a climate much cooler than the hot plains of the mid-continent.
"I haven't seen any Trolls," Tarrin told her warily. "I haven't seen anything, because of the storm. What are Trolls doing in Saranam? This isn't their range."
"They started showing up about two months ago," the woman replied. "At first, it was just one or two, but then we saw more and more of them north of the trading post. About a month ago, we realized that there was all but an army to the north, and the Trolls were only a part of it. They swept down about two tendays ago and took over the border with the desert. We barely managed to get away."
Trolls raiding in Saranam? And they were spreading out along the border of the desert? He'd seen Trolls working for his enemies before. These Trolls would have no reason to block off the desert, but to keep him from getting into it. Whoever had sent that Wyvern and the Trolls was up to his or her old tricks again, setting up a picket, a gauntlet through which he had to pass to reach the safety of the Desert of Swirling Sands.
They knew where he was going. He had never really made that much of a secret, and those that knew him knew that he was friends with a Selani, so it was no stretch to conclude that he was going to go to the desert. Now he understood why they weren't actively hunting him down. Why waste resources trying to find him on the vast plains of Saranam when they knew where he was going to be? He had to cross that border to get into the desert. So long as they covered a majority of it, they had a good chance to encounter him when he arrived. And Trolls were one of the few enemies which Tarrin feared. Not any single Troll, he was much too skilled and powerful to be bested by one, but Trolls fought in packs. A single Troll was no problem, but thirty of them was another matter. If he had to wade through a pack of Trolls to get to the desert, it put his success very much in doubt. He would have to resort to Sorcery, and he had the feeling that his adversaries knew that he would have to resort to Sorcery… so they may have some sort of plan. They wouldn't put their Trolls in jeopardy otherwise, it was a foolish waste of very powerful assets. There wasn't an army in the world that would relish the task of having to face a horde of Trolls.