Fergus leaned against a wall, asking it to remain solid and support him. He wiped sweat from his forehead and took a deep breath, trying to summon some of the keep's Power from the stone to cool the burning in his arm. His hand throbbed. The hallway fuzzed around him, sliding in and out of focus, and he knew that he was dying. Even Fiona knew. She'd quit ordering him around, knowing that he was a waste of time.
The cats waited for him to catch his breath. Cats, or whatever they were.
They seemed to be common housecats, an orange tom and two queens -- one tiger-striped in gray and the other a blotchy scattering of gray and white. And they hadn't threatened him, just made it clear that he should walk in one direction and not another. Step wrong, and the fur would bristle and the eyes narrow. A second step, and the ears went back and he could hear a low growl in the tom's throat.
He knew enough about Power that he didn't try a third step wrong. He remembered these particular cats from Fiona's maze, and they had always been rather more than cats. Apparently they had changed allegiance.
Or they'd been freed. The thought gave him pause.
Many things held power in the Summer Country. Most of them were bound by greater powers. Fiona's maze was one, of course. Dougal's creatures, the dragons and the falcons and the hunting cat, even his forest. These three housecats, these things that appeared to be housecats. He couldn't sense a binding on them. If they were free . . .
If they were free, and still acted for Maureen, the rules had changed. Even the Stone deep in the cellars of the tower felt as if it was free to follow its own ends. Hope mixed with its ancient pain and hatred, yet it urged him upwards rather than back to its dark roots. Fergus went where the keep wanted him to go.
He shivered.
{Move.}
The tom's tail bushed out again, and he edged closer to Fergus. The two queens flanked him to right and left, leaving one direction open. No domestic cats would hunt that way, like a pride of lions cooperating to set a trap for wildebeest. Fergus shivered again. But did it matter? He was dying anyway.
The tom took another step, and his ears flattened.
"You don't need to shout."
Fergus pushed himself upright, fighting through the fog and the roar in his ears. They wanted him to climb. Stone stairs spiraled up, uneven, random height and width and without a rail. He staggered, thrown off stride as the stair's makers had intended, one of many traps they'd set for trespassing assassins in the night.
He caught himself on the rough wall and pushed off again and gained another three risers before he stopped to pant and force the stairs to stop moving under him. His heartbeat throbbed from fingertip to armpit and across his skin where the red tendrils of blood-poisoning spread.
The cats waited. Fergus started to slide down the wall to sit and gain his breath. The tom hissed, his ears flat against his head and fangs gleaming between snarling lips. Fergus pushed against stone and staggered upright again.
Three more steps. Pause, breathe, bring the stone walls back to stillness around his head. Ignore the sweat soaking his hair and back, trickling down his chest. Three more steps. Steps unnumbered, leading upward without end.
A landing.
A door stood in front of him. It was locked or barred. He turned. The cats crouched behind him, tails lashing. He heard the orange tom growl, even over the roaring in his ears. They wouldn't let him pass.
Locked doors didn't matter. Not to a master of stone. He slid into the crystal structure that bound sand into stone, letting the coolness wash over him and ease his burning arm. A room opened around him, dark except for a thin shaft of light between leaves of a shuttered window, bare except for a shadow in one corner.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness. The shadow formed into a woman, the redheaded witch. The witch waited for him, waited for the cats to fetch her enemy. She sat against one wall, held a glass of wine in one hand, studied him with mild curiosity. Curiosity, nothing more. The way he'd study an ant crawling across a piece of granite in his workshop.
The scene pulsed around him, her face rushing toward him and then receding. He sighed with relief; she didn't draw and throw that knife this time, quick as lightning. She didn't seem to even carry it at her belt. She didn't expect danger. And she was right. He wasn't dangerous. Never would be dangerous again. He dropped to his knees, letting the wall become solid behind him.
She shook her head and slid away from him to the far end of a tunnel. Words came echoing down the tunnel, slurred by his fading consciousness.
"Who the hell are you?"
* * *
So both Cáitlin and Fergus were as good as dead. Fiona felt mild regret -- she would have preferred to get a little more service from her puppets. Now they both hung limp at the end of their strings, useless.
She stood on the woods path, letting her Power seek out the Power around her, measuring its weakness and her strength. She would have preferred to let Cáit and Fergus walk through the minefields first. Circumstances hadn't allowed that. Fiona prided herself on being practical. She would be content with what she had.
They'd told her much, her little puppets. Maureen had returned to the keep. That was wise. She had also returned to drinking, which was less wise. And she had burdened herself with a rabble of sick and wounded humans, helpless mouths to feed and a drain on the
