She reached out to run a finger along Cáitlin's cheek. "So make your choice, love -- your will to mine, your heart to mine, your flesh and blood and bone to mine, sworn on that self-same blood. Or die. It's your own free choice I'm offering to you, but you don't want me to get bored with waiting for your word. I might start thinking of other games to play."
Cáitlin squinched her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and nodded. Beside her, Fergus growled "choice" in a fashion that made it sound like cursing. Then he also nodded, with a bitter twist to his mouth as if he was chewing wormwood.
Fiona nodded back at her captives, smiling like a cat with a broken-winged bird trapped between her paws. "So. Say the words. You know the ritual as well as any."
She reached out a finger and gathered a drop of blood from Cáitlin's scratched cheek. The salty sweetness burned on her tongue as the power of the binding flowed through it. A second touch brought the blood of Fergus with its faint tinge of earth and stone. Fiona cocked an eyebrow at her new slaves, willing them to speak the ritual even though the fetters were already woven.
In unison, hoarse-voiced, they whispered, "In return for the gift of my life, I pledge my thoughts, my deeds, my will, my flesh and blood and bone to Fiona of the Maze, whenever she requires them. I give my blood as token of my body, in bondage until she frees me or until death."
Then Fiona reached out again, both hands, taking Cáitlin's face between her palms and kneading flesh and bone as if they were clay and she the sculptor. The woman screamed and screamed and screamed again, her body and face molding into Sean's remembered image, a slim and androgynous twin mirror of Fiona's dark beauty. Pain-sweat sheened the new-formed mask when she was done, and tears tracked lines down Cáitlin's face.
Fiona smiled, and turned to Fergus. Her fingers traced scars into his body, white shiny welts and purple furrows of claw or fang trailing her fingers to show the beast-master's history and trade. His body flowed in subtle ways until Dougal hung before her, trembling and weeping with terror at what she'd done. His shrieks of pain still echoed back from the hills. Perhaps Maureen would hear them from her tower and wonder at the meaning.
The dark witch stepped back and admired her handiwork. The warmth of creation washed over her, and she relaxed into it. Flesh could be clay, in the hands of a skilled witch. Doomed clay, but molding it could hold the same fascination as the more lasting sculpture that was her garden realm.
"I'll add one more touch," she said, "and that's the easy part. When people look at you, they'll see what they expect to see. It's easy, because that's what people mostly do.
"Fergus, love, they'll not just see our late lamented Dougal. Maureen will see the Dougal she left behind her, brought back to life as her memories would make him rise from his funeral pyre. And Cáitlin, dear Cáitlin, they'll see what my dear Sean looked like after the forest got through with him."
She waved dismissal. "Go now, Fergus, and haunt the halls and towers where you died. Serve as my eyes and ears, serve as my hands and feet, bring news to me and send messages of fear to my enemies."
The brambles unwound from his body and Fiona's new-minted slave moved, uncertain in his changed form. He turned and the hedge opened before him, recognizing his blood now and allowing it to pass.
Fiona turned her back on him and studied Cáitlin where she still hung on the hedge's thorns. She stepped closer, close enough to smell the fear-sweat and the bitter sap from broken hawthorn. "So, love, what's it really now? I never swear help to another, twisting words or no. What would you be hiding from our little Fergus? What brings you into my hedge, looking for your death?"
"I've come asking a favor for a favor. There's a question someone wanted asked of you, someone both you and I might find useful to have in our debt. Your plants let me past before."
"Ah, but I've had to make a change or two. Surely your winds have told you that. I've learned I was too trusting."
Cáitlin's nose wrinkled, as if that last sentence tainted the air around them. "You and I aren't rivals, love. We each stick to our own realms. Now will you let me down and break the binding?"
Fiona tilted her head to one side and studied her captive. "I think not, cousin. You shouldn't have come sneaking like a thief. Now what's this question, and who might it be that's asking?"
"The question? Why are you looking to destroy a certain castle beyond the one that's closest by? The humans mean nothing to you. As far as 'who,' there's a Welshman who takes an interest in the Christians."
Fiona studied that statement from all sides. "Naming no names, love, for the trees to hear -- I wonder if this Welshman might bear a gold banner with a red dragon blazoned on it?"
"He might."
Fiona shook her head. "Your Welshman should see Dougal behind that war, not me. Free humans offended him. They turned into an obsession. He had more than one obsession, some of them unwise. Some even fatal."
Cáitlin studied one of the briars that bound her wrist, and then spoke as if to it. "Some of the Welshman's friends seem to think you've taken up the cause. They seem to feel they have reason to watch and listen around your new neighbors."
"'Tis no business of theirs, love. The Pendragons simply guard the border between the lands. If they start meddling inside the Summer Country, the rules will change. And not to their advantage."
Fiona smiled, baring her teeth. "But if I were to carry on Dougal's war, there'd be a simple reason. Strategy, love,
