That command bound Cáitlin to a hundred double paces in any direction through the woods, a soft-edged circle with the skeleton as its focus. Fiona had commanded her to haunt the place of Sean's dying. When Cáitlin neared the limit, each further step became a battle until she gasped with the effort of another inch. That was as far as Fiona thought her ghost should roam without direct command.
Cáitlin roamed to her limit, then, the safer limit farthest from Maureen's aura, and her winds carried what she saw to Fiona's cottage and to Llewes, the Welshman she'd spoken of, wherever the Pendragon's master wove his webs. The dark wet stones of Dougal's keep loomed through the trees, and she wondered why Maureen would stray so far away from home and comfort and safety. That witch had a lot of faith in her powers.
No wonder Fiona hated her.
And a deep shielded part of Cáitlin's mind followed a wisp of thought. Let my enemy think I hide in fear. She wants a spy. If I hide from danger, I hide from the very sights she wants to see. If she wants a puppet, then that is all she'll get. The precise wording of the vow, just as she would give. ". . . whenever she requires them." She's looking elsewhere now.
What I don't know, I can't report.
Cáitlin reached out with her thoughts, gently caressing the flow of power through the forest. The trees and rocks around here brimmed with magic -- the wildwood rejoicing in its new freedom and the stewardship of a mistress who loved trees. If Cáitlin used the merest drop of that exuberance, her touch would fall no heavier than a leaf fluttering to the forest floor. The red witch walked far away and found distraction. She shouldn't notice.
Cáitlin fetched scones and cheese and a skin of wine, local food she could pull from the table and shelves of her own small hut. That would least disturb the currents of the land, least attract attention.
Her feet stirred without her will. The puppet's mistress had returned, sending her captive eyes deeper into the tangled woods. The feet retraced their steps, past the skeleton and its rags of rain-matted moldering cloth, under the oak's spread and the long shadow whose yellow-slitted lazy eyes almost let you forget jaws that could rip your throat out at a whim, across a moss-slick stream chattering from the thunderstorm. Day slid into dusk under the clouds, and the rain turned gentle.
Cáitlin felt Maureen's presence strengthening in the breeze that brushed her cheek, the leaves that rustled damply under her feet. Fiona loosened the anchor chain, and her puppet crept beyond that ghostly limit. As quiet as an evening breeze, Cáitlin sought her enemy's enemy.
Faint wood-smoke twisted through the forest and orange light twinkled between tree-trunks, a campfire immune to rain. The savor of roasting meat drifted downwind. Cáitlin smelled a tinge of puzzlement wafting back from Fiona.
What kind of trick was this, leaving hearth and home for a woods camp in the storm?
* * *
Fergus touched the stone wall again, feeling its grain alive under his fingertips, old stonework even as the Summer Country reckoned time. The new work? He sneered at that. But the old . . . It was good work, work by hands that knew stone and mortar and gravity, firm foundations and the strength of compression. This wall knew its roots.
He cared little for the swings of power in the Summer Country, the balance between one witch and another, the question of Maureen's strength or Fiona's. Stone, now, and the minerals and flows of the earth's blood found there -- those warmed his heart and soul. Not just gold, as some fools had typified his kind. A geode of clear purple amethyst spoke as much truth and beauty as a diamond.
So he'd made a mistake, entering Fiona's maze? No need to weep over it like that fool Cáitlin. That mistake had brought him here, where he had never been.
His hand tingled with the residue of a lightning stroke. That was design and love of good stone again -- the bolt had burned into the highest point of the tallest tower, far from where Fergus sheltered. All that power had spread throughout the stonework until each carved block had carried part, well within its strength. Walls, towers, lintels and arches and buttresses all worked together like the cells of plant or animal.
Fergus liked this keep. It spoke to him.
And it was empty. That puzzled him, and Fiona through him. Power laired here, deep beneath the ground, and human slaves cowered in their stinking hovels, but the Old Blood had left.
When Fiona had learned that, she had turned her eyes elsewhere. Stone held no interest to her. She thought it was lifeless, without soul and without a will she could command. That was a blindness in her.
And this stone was more alive than most. He let his fingers slide into it, molecules between molecules, and felt the heartbeat of it. It welcomed him. Given time and no guard watching, he could walk straight through the thickest masonry of these walls, sink down into the foundations. But it was easier to use doors.
He turned and looked across the rain-streaked courtyard at one. A human stood in the doorway there, frozen, eyes wide. She paled as his glance fell on her, and she crossed herself with trembling fingers before she slammed the door. He heard the thump as a bar dropped across
