He turned back, finding the Singer just outside the gap in the hedge. {Come, my friend who was recently my enemy. This is why the forest wanted both of us.}
Chapter Twenty-One
The tree shook under Cáitlin, as if a sudden gust ruffled its leaves. There was no wind. She would have known, none better. Her branch shook again, and she grabbed the trunk to keep from falling. The winds still held their silence.
Whatever shook her perch must be coming from below. She looked down, to meet the bored gaze of the black leopard looking up. It hadn't moved. Its branch hadn't moved, either. The cat yawned at her, glanced to the ground, and followed his glance in one flowing leap to land . . . catlike . . . on the leaves. He really was too large to move that smoothly.
Her branch shook a third time, more violently, the leaves thrashing. It was the only part of the tree that moved. To make the message clearer still, the cat padded insolently to one side and settled into a lazy crouch, tail-tip flicking to one side and the other. Just the tip, about a hand-span's width, with the rest of the tail perfectly still. She'd always wondered how cats could do that.
Something wanted her to climb down. It wasn't Fiona, because it was giving her a choice. Fiona would have just taken over her arms and legs and let the captive brain worry about clumsiness and falls.
Well, the winds had said that Maureen worshipped trees. Apparently that regard was mutual. Cáitlin grimaced and stretched her aching body. She could take a hint.
Her hips still hurt, deep in the bone where Fiona had molded them into the semblance of a man's. Cáitlin moved slowly, awkward, her balance strange and muscles uncertain, swinging down one branch, then another, then a third and a drop to the ground that sent daggers stabbing up her legs and through her pelvis to her spine and the base of her skull. She staggered, grabbed the tree trunk, shook her head to clear her eyes, and checked the leopard.
He yawned again and licked his lips, showing fangs as long as daggers and gleaming nearly as bright. Not an encouraging landscape. He stretched fore and aft, kneading the dirt with huge paws. He strolled across the forest clearing, sniffed a bush here and a rock there, and then glanced back over his shoulder.
{One could nip at you like a rude dog herding sheep. Or one could be polite and let you follow. Choose.}
A cat with manners?
Cáitlin sniffed the winds, finding nothing that linked back to Maureen. The cat and the tree acted on their own agenda. They wanted her to move. Strange . . .
{One does not wish to wait all day.}
Since when did cats have schedules? Cáitlin shrugged. Dougal had bred and bound strange animals. Add this new witch's seasoning to the stew, and the result was going to be . . . different. She wondered if she ought to pass a message on to the Pendragon's commander, ask her winds to tell Llewes of the change brought to the Summer Country. No. He'd abandoned her to her fate, the same Old One attitude towards a broken tool that you'd expect from Fiona. Let him find out on his own, the hard way.
Cáitlin felt a kind of duality around her, as if two separate minds, two separate sets of eyes watched and balanced and guarded this forest. One smelled of the Old Blood and one . . . was something else, and older still. The Other linked tree and leopard.
And the Old Blood seemed much more civilized.
That was a hint. She followed the cat, staggering and limping at first but balance improving and muscles warming until she could almost walk like a normal person, listening to her winds. They brought her the earthy smells of the forest, leaf and flower and rotting humus, they brought her whiffs of the sharp maleness of the cat. They brought her the musk of a fox, a vixen but with something of the Other added to the mix.
The winds also spoke of Fiona coming in rancid hate, they spoke of the surviving dragon and blood rage, they spoke of the red-haired witch hiding alone in the shadows of a stone tower. They spoke of ravens circling high in the thermals overhead and watching, impartial. Battle promised, and they remembered the dead dragon. Whatever the outcome, they knew they would feed well.
The black cat led her toward Maureen's keep. That seemed to match Fiona's wish, because Cáitlin passed her former limit and stepped into the wide meadow and saw gray stone against blue sky. The air lay still, heavy with wet grass and old burning and soaked ash, with a buzz of Power as a grace-note that tickled her nose.
{One wishes you to proceed.}
Cáitlin glanced back to where the leopard waited, a shadow under the shadows of the forest. A chill ran down her spine and back up again. She wondered if the cat was real, or a manifestation of the forest. Whichever it was, she was glad to put it behind her. That place frightened her, and few things could.
Cáitlin turned and walked slowly toward the keep, open-handed and forcing her mind to stay calm. She wanted to make sure that the Power living there saw her and did not see a threat. A raven croaked from the direction of Fiona's cottage, and three others answered in sequence from the other corners of the sky. The call to dinner?
Soft blackness smashed her from behind, and she fell into it.
* * *
Three cats herded Fergus through hallways and up stairs. He'd tried slipping through the spaces in the stones, invoking Dougal's ghost to frighten them, and found them waiting for him on the other side of the wall. Either they knew his tricks better than he did or they knew the ways of this castle very
