The Circle of Seven craned their necks. The tiger-man's rounded ears brushed the ceiling beams. Except for a painted green loincloth supported by a thin shoulder strap, he went naked, his body a riot of orange, black, and white stripes, with an astonishing expanse of white chest. Scarred, burned, and wounded, he was still a magnificent creature.
"But you're not Jaeger." Adira thought aloud. "Jaeger was older, steadier. Quick into combat but a thinker. Even a brooder. You're just a cub, albeit a mighty big one. You think with your fists. Claws."
"Tell me of my father," said the tiger. "Please. We know nothing from the time he left Efrava."
"Efrava?" asked Adira.
"Our homeland. An oasis in the eastern desert. The heat and sand wurms prevent our people from journeying west, but my father braved it to gain knowledge. Tell me first, please."
"Very well." Adira tapped another cask to wet her throat. "Though it was Hazezon who found him almost dead north of Bryce…"
Listening, but licking his fangs with a raspy pink tongue, the tiger-man strode to a bench and plunked down, making sturdy pine creak in protest. Without asking, he hooked a roast hen with one hand and bit off half, bones and all. He devoured three more hens, half a ham, a wheel of cheese, a slab of smoked bacon, four loaves of flat bread-everything on the table, including licking clean a pot of honey.
The while, Adira talked about Jaeger, the first cat warrior ever seen in the central desert of Jamuraa, the first tiger-man ever heard of. She spoke of their comradeship and Jaeger's valiant skills, both at fighting and diplomacy, and recounted without emotion the months-long battles and uncounted skirmishes to stop Johan's invasion of the southlands.
The story ran long in the telling, for Simone chimed in with other accounts of Jaeger's valor. "He saved Heath's life once by ripping a fire drake out of the sky. Badger's too, and mine a few times. Everyone loved him. Even those crotchety merfolk liked Jaeger."
Virgil returned with word that Hazezon Tamar was on the way. Coming too was a witch who knew herbs. After those announcements, a long pause hung in the air. All the Circle of Seven watched their leader.
Suddenly weary, Adira Strongheart rushed the story's end. "When we dug out after the sandstorm, Johan's army was dead and buried, though most of Palmyra was too. Yet first thing, Jaeger announced he must quest south. He sensed Johan had survived-how I can't say. His duty and destiny to kill Johan, he said, was cast by prophecy."
"The prophecy of None, One, and Two?" asked Jedit, amber-green eyes glowing.
"Aye." Adira scratched her head vigorously. "It made my brain ache to hear Haz and Jaeger blither about it. They'd spend hours arguing about which was None and which One, and so on, round and round, but Jaeger believed the prophecy implicitly, and…"
"And it killed him?" asked Jedit.
"Perhaps," sighed Adira. "No one knows. Your father never returned. Once we'd gained our sea legs, I sent out scouts and nomads. They scoured the desert for leagues east, but all that new-blown sand made avenues for wurms. They could burrow this far west for the first time, you see. We lost near a score of people to the crawling scourges. That may've been your father's fate, deep-sixed in an ocean of sand. Or Johan may've killed him, though it seems impossible that any mortal could put out that flame. Jaeger Ojanen was a-a living legend." Surprised at her own depth of feeling, Adira fell silent.
After a meal, a tiger would normally sleep, but Jedit picked up a chunk of fallen plaster and filed his claws razor-sharp with a harsh grating noise. In morning sun slanting through the door, his eyes sparkled like cold emeralds. Filing, concentrating, Jedit told his own story, as Hazezon Tamar arrived with clerks and palace guards in tow, of how Johan arrived on an exhausted drake and crashed in the desert only to be rescued by Jaeger's son. How Johan toured Efrava and assessed every feature as if to buy the oasis, or conquer it. Winding up, Jedit asked a score of questions that showed his keen mind had absorbed every detail of Adira's story. The humans' estimation of the tiger's mental prowess rose considerably. Finally, Jedit spoke.
"I believe Johan killed my father. Elsewise Jaeger would have returned to you, his friends. That egg-sucking sorcerer wears my father's medallion like a trophy of the kill. Now Johan's wreaked havoc on Palmyra again. Likely he's a slave to prophecy also. Those few words seem to gang we tigerfolk to Johan like a yoke of oxen. Now to fulfill prophecy and finish my father's work falls to me. No doubt Johan plans new grief for these southlands, as you call them. Surely only death will quell his misdeeds.
"Efrava… Johan must have designs on Efrava too, if only because it's part of Jamuraa, as you call our motherland."
"An oasis in the eastern desert?" Hazezon Tamar spoke for the first time, white beard wagging. "So far? How could such a site aid Johan in conquering the southlands, if that's his goal this time? His army couldn't deviate even ten miles from the River Toloron without perishing. Never could they cross the eastern sands of Sukurvia. No one can, not even nomads."
"One thing bubbles from this muddle." Adira Strongheart shook her head of tousled curls. "Johan's off the leash, and someone must bring him to heel."
"True." Jedit surveyed the room and the Circle of Seven as if ready to take command. "Terrent Amese makes our path shine clear as moonlight. The sooner we hunt down Johan and kill him, the better for all our peoples. Are we avowed? You know what such an endeavor entails."
"Suffering and death," said Adira without self-pity. She rubbed her game leg. "We've done it before. Yet what must be, must be. We mount an expedition westward into the wastes. For justice, and finally, we hope, for a lasting peace."
Chapter 8
"Unbelievable!"
"It's not a cliff?" asked Sister Wilemina.
"Nay," said Hazezon, "it's a wall. Built by hand and magic, but I can't imagine how."
Adira Strongheart and her Circle of Seven-Virgil, Whistledove, Murdoch, Simone the Siren, Heath and Wilemina the archers, and the woods witch Jasmine Boreal-sat on horseback and stared. Traveling with them were Hazezon Tamar, an entourage of servants, and four palace guards. Sixteen people and a talking tiger, gaping awestruck at the legendary cliffs that boxed off the Western Wastes. Except the looming monstrosity was not a natural-hewn cliff but a hand-laid wall hundreds of feet high.
"I'd never have believed it had my own eyes not beheld it," murmured Hazezon.
Kneeing his horse onto a small rise, Hazezon scanned from south to north. The Western Wastes were just that, a dreary expanse of pebbly hills and crooked draws with little vegetation and no water. A single charmed jug of ever-flowing water was all that allowed the adventurers to enter these barrens. Hazezon had paid dearly for that jug, and with every sip every member held his breath and hoped its magic didn't fizzle and die, or they surely would. Three weeks it had taken to cross the wastelands on horseback, though Jedit walked every step because no horse would have him and no lumbering monoxes had been available. Often, too, he must drop to all fours to snuffle the sands, for he tracked his enemy.
From Palmyra, Johan's barefoot trail had wended due west into the desert, then, abruptly, diverted north. Twelve days later he'd rendezvoused with twenty people descending from Tirras. Tyrant and entourage had marched west, straight toward the towering wall barring their way. Why Johan had entered the wastelands, why he changed course, how he'd summoned servants across empty miles, how he'd surmounted the wall-these were mysteries.
Always curious, Hazezon Tamar had accompanied Adira's crew simply because he'd never journeyed here before. Now, after three mind-dulling weeks, he wished to never see them again. Yet he was unexpectedly rewarded by this engineering phenomenon of titanic proportions. Shading his eyes, the mage saw the wall ran for miles, far out of sight to the south and north, though not compass-true. Perhaps it curved inward. So immense it was, Hazezon couldn't be sure. The construction reared more than two hundred feet, not quite sheer, with each layer of stone set back a small interval. Even godlike engineers, the wizard supposed, hesitated to push their luck and fudged the slope back a hair.