That must be his cat he thought.
He got a distinct impression of resentfulness implanted in his feelings and corrected the error swiftly.
Sorry. You are his cat companion.
The purring seemed a little softer and the cat licked its paw, then used the back of it to wash its face. It looked wonderfully unconcerned while it was giving him the once-over.
An image came into his mind of four small dark kittens accompanying a larger tom cat. Black like them, the tom had white socks and a bib and a characteristic mane of hair and long white whiskers.
Skita! Suki’s cat, he thought. The tiny elven talismonger was among his few friends in London. This cat seemed to be saying it knew her cat. The image of one of the kittens grew and turned into the cat before him. The cat advanced and stood beside him, tail arched.
That’s Skita’s gesture, he thought with an inner smile. Spirits, are you Skita’s offspring?
The cat purred more loudly. Serrin felt himself freed as if from some constraint, and on impulse took a small brown paper bag from his pocket. He had come prepared for this and fortunately the delivery had reached Geraint’s apartment just before they’d left.
He reached inside the paper bag and extracted the cloth mouse with its faint smell of catnip. He rubbed it vigorously to make the scent stronger, and laid it at the cat’s feet.
The cat took one look at the mouse, which seemed to return the look, as if wondering whether this was safe. Then the cat seized the mouse in its jaws, ripped at it with its front claws, and finally rolled over on its back, savaging the mouse with all four paws. After a few seconds of mayhem it flung the mouse aside and rolled back over, giving Serrin a sharp look that did its best to mask embarrassment at its indignity.
Serrin dutifully turned and walked off, leaving the cat to its intoxicatory pleasure unhindered by human voyeurism.
I have a friend here, I hope, he thought. The thought cheered him as he walked back to the town to find a wife who did not yet know she needed the protection he so fervently hoped Hessler would give.
12
She was apprehensive, and the trim, simple, picture-book quality of a springtime English garden did not reassure her. As Serrin led Kristen up to the cottage, the enigmatic cat was nowhere to be seen, having doubtless taken its prize away to a hiding place safe from prying human-or elven-eye’s.
“But why would he want to talk to me?” Kristen asked again.
“I told you, maybe he won’t want to talk, just to see you,” Serrin said carefully. “He may want to offer us some protection, that’s all.”
“But why didn’t he want to see Michael as well?” By now she’d had time to think about this. The point hadn’t occurred to her initially, gently mellowed as she’d been by English ale and surprised by the invitation.
“I don’t know,” Serrin said a little testily, “Perhaps he will. Later.” To his relief, they’d reached the front entrance, without any need to knock for admittance since Merlin already stood just inside the door, which opened at their approach.
“He will see you now. Just go up the stairs,” Merlin said pleasantly. “As to us”-he turned to Kristen-“I think he’ll call if he needs us. Can I offer you some tea?”
“Oh, um, yes, thank you,” she said, a little taken aback and giving her husband a nervous glance. Serrin had not been able to hide from her that this was a spirit taking human form. Streak had joked about it back at the pub, and Serrin had tried to explain exactly what Merlin was. Kristen had seen only one spirit in her life, a city spirit conjured by an angry Xhosa shaman, and it hadn’t looked much like Merlin. This one looked deceptively mundane-mundane in the sense of flesh and blood-but his slightly crooked smile was open and friendly and she liked him.
“Tell me about the Rain Queen,” Serrin heard Merlin say as he guided the young woman into the small kitchen, from whence issued the scent of toasting muffins and tea. He grinned, ducking his head as he climbed the tiny wooden stairs up to the landing.
The old elf stood waiting, framed in a doorway by afternoon light streaming through the windows. His appearance was in no way imposing; he was neither exceptionally tall for an elf, nor short of stature, and while lean, he wasn’t thin. His silvery hair was long, but not unkempt. and his eyes were gentle, not piercing or sharp. He gripped a hazel stick in a way that said he needed its support, and not just as an affectation, and his clothes were plain and dark blue without any ornate decoration. Had he been seen in a photograph, the most perceptive of viewers would not likely have considered him anything out of the ordinary.
Standing a meter away from him and meeting his gaze was different.
Serrin remembered an old man, a human, he’d known as a child. The man had studied what had been known as psychic phenomena in the years before the Awakening, and he’d been the first to see that the young elf was no mundane. It was due to him that Serrin had been selected for hermetic studies at a young age. Serrin remembered this man telling him of his own youth, over a century before the current age, when he’d sat on his grandfather’s knee and been told of his travels in the British merchant navy to lands unimagined: India, Africa, China.
“Hard to imagine, lad, but there wasn’t any trid then. There wasn’t even television-well, not in the homes of ordinary working people. So, I’d never seen a lion, or a tiger, or an elephant. And my grandpa told me such stories about them, and the places and sounds and sights, and the way the women bore baskets and water urns on their heads across the deserts, and the way the people dressed and how the stars were different in the southern skies. And I used to sit there speechless, not wanting him to ever stop telling me. I loved the old man in a different way to anyone else I ever knew, or ever could have known. These days, I see wonders around me that make me feel like I did when I was a child on his knee. And they’re going to be your wonders in this new world.”
Serrin remembered that old man, his grandfather’s close friend, and how he had been enthralled by the man’s firm sense of awe and wonder even in his late eighties. When he looked at the old elf, it all came back to him.
It was not the first time Serrin had been in the presence of someone imbued with unusual, or exceptional, power before. It wasn’t usually a comfortable experience. In his limited experience, such individuals were usually aloof and arrogant, or simply withdrawn, not people to make others feel at ease in their presence. The old elf, who was peering at him intently, was none of these things. Shaking. Serrin realized with a sense of profound shock that what he felt in the other elf’s presence was deep and intense love, a yearning realization of the goodness of this person that he’d never even seen until now. He felt faint, and when the old elf turned and took a shuffling step into his study, it was all Serrin could do to take a couple of faltering steps after him.
The room was too large, of course; that was obvious as soon as Serrin entered it. Every last centimeter of wall space was covered in hardwood shelving, crammed with grimoires and books of all kinds. There had to be thousands of them. From outside, it was obvious the room couldn’t possibly hold so many.
Hessler smiled at his wondering look. “Oh, that. It’s nothing. I just like this little old place and I had to get them all in here somehow. Takes Merlin an age to find things from storage and sometimes he’s busy. Won’t you sit down?”
It was a relief not to have to remain standing any longer. Serrin almost fell into the hard-backed chair across the desk from the gently smiling elf.
“There is a powerful mark on her,” Hessler said in his drowsy, gentle, delicately accented voice. It was obvious who he was talking about.
“Yes,” was all Serrin could think of to say.
“She could be killed at any time,” Hessler continued, even-voiced still.