A holly loomed beside the path, dark and glossy and pungent, watching. A stone wall crossed the way, dividing forest from grass, and Khe'sha felt another boundary there. This had been as far as the Master's tether let his beasts roam, the limit beyond which Khe'sha and Sha'khe could not step.
He crossed the stone and entered a new song. They walked green meadows that reeked of magic and of lies, of binding and of pain. If Khe'sha had set foot on this land even once before, he never would have listened to the black one. The land looked so perfect because each blade of grass, each stone, each rolling hillock or path-side bush, bore her touch. Nothing lived its own life or followed its natural demands. He felt the tendrils of Power that bound everything to the hedge in front of him and to the cottage that lurked behind it.
That flavor, contrasted with the taste of the forest living its own life free of the keep and its new Steward, told him much about the red witch and the black. Much that he'd learned too late. But he'd been bound by the Master first, and then by his grief, and then by the nest, and never had a chance to smell the truth.
The hedge grew tall before them, dense and unbroken. It, too, reeked of magic and control. Khe'sha and the human followed it, around and around and around, and saw the same face everywhere.
David finally stopped and scratched his head. "Maureen said there were gates. Little white wooden gates, just like an English garden. And a maze inside."
{We come to attack, so there are no gates.}
Khe'sha sniffed at the hedge, testing, amused at the thorns it presented and the way the section he approached was always denser and higher than the portions to each side. As if he needed to worry about thorns. Even his eyelids bore scales as hard as glass. But the smells . . .
{Shen is inside. I think that I shall bite that witch, just a little nip, and let her live. Let the poison work on her, that she should die slowly over weeks. Slowly, and in pain.}
The human backed away from him. "Your bite is poison?"
{It is how our small ones hunt. They can attack prey larger than themselves, dangerous prey, bite once, and escape without risking injury. Then they wait. We are a very patient race, and can go long between meals.} The human had turned pale and smelled of fear-sweat once again.
{No dragon would bite a Singer.}
"Um. Thanks. I guess. I'd better keep some poems handy, just in case."
{I smell poison in these thorns, as well. It is a sort that causes great pain to your kind. Beware what you touch.}
The dark witch did not think of everything. Khe'sha closed his eyes and thrust his muzzle into the hedge, biting, shearing, twisting, as if he had prey bleeding life between his teeth. Thorns scratched across his scales and prickled inside his nose and across his tongue, but he ripped out a whole mouthful of bush and heaved it over his shoulder.
Khe'sha opened his eyes and studied the hedge again, not surprised that it had filled the gap. David had retreated and stood staring at the clump of brush scattering dirt across the grass, at the dragon, at the hedge. If anything, he was paler than before.
{We will find out how much Power the black witch buried around the roots of her hedge.}
Then Khe'sha ripped out another mouthful, and another, and another, roaring his hatred, sprinkling the soil with droplets of dragon blood where the thorns scratched his nose and tongue and palate. The pale burn of the cuts and the poison just added fuel to his rage, and he gloried in the chance to match his strength against something, anything, after keeping his anger bottled for so long.
When he looked again, the hedge stood lower and he could see the witch's cottage over the gap. Rustles to either side told him that more thornbush and briars moved to fill the gap, but each patch of dirt sprinkled with his blood stayed bare and free of the witch's power.
He attacked once more, biting, biting, biting, clawing at the soil with both forepaws and driving forward with his strong hind legs, digging a furrow clean of roots and stumps and mixing the soil with his blood. The hedge screamed with pain, high and thin, at the edge of even a dragon's hearing, and he felt it weakening.
And then it snapped. The hedge drew back, and bare soil met his nose. He opened his eyes again. A path waited, broad as a dragon's belly, straight through the hedge and into the grass surrounding a thatched cottage. He sniffed at the brush to either side and found no taint of the black witch. He'd broken her hold.
He hoped that it had caused her pain.
He smelled pain in the hedge, as well, but something other that was strange. He'd tasted something like it in one of the moose that he'd eaten, almost gratitude at finding an end to suffering. That moose hadn't tried to flee his death. He'd stood waiting on three legs, the fourth torn and bloody and smelling of human machines.
Khe'sha flowed through the hedge and circled the cottage, sniffing. Yes, Shen was inside. Khe'sha smelled other things as well, magic and strange herbs and machines. He smelled traps and deceptions. The doors and windows were far too small for his bulk. He could tear off the roof, flatten the walls, but that might kill Shen. Going farther required more
