Tonight, the Magewoman could not have managed without Gristheena’s assistance. Meiriel glanced across at the two great cats who were pacing her—one a guard, the other with a dangling cloth-wrapped bundle held delicately in its massive jaws. Meiriel smiled grimly at the sight. Thank all the gods that she had not been forced to bear that burden across the broken ridge! Without the use of her hands as well as her feet, she would most certainly have fallen.
Calling to the cat to stop, the Magewoman approached it and poked the bundle with a bloodstained finger. A thin, protesting whine came muffled from within. Meiriel nodded to herself in satisfaction and started tramping again, down the rough trail toward the broken core of Steelclaw. She must return to Gristheena as soon as possible, and then—well, she would see.
“Curse this blasted rain—I can’t see a thing!” Anvar muttered.
“Neither can we,” one of his winged bearers retorted bitterly, “and we are the ones who must do the flying and risk life, wing, and limb among these treacherous peaks.”
“Oh, stop whining!” Anvar muttered, made ungracious by worry—but quicker and louder, Chiamh said: “Most courageous are the warriors of the Skyfolk who volunteered for this perilous mission. You have earned unending gratitude from us, the allies of your Queen.”
Anvar felt the Windeye’s elbow dig him sharply in the ribs, and he hastily added his thanks to Chiamh’s own. It had been a nice touch, he thought gratefully, for Chiamh to obliquely remind the Winged Folk that the Mages had rescued their monarch. He only wished the Windeye could have done something about this wretched storm. “Have you any idea where we are?” he whispered.
There was a glimmer of silver from Chiamh’s eyes as the Windeye turned to scan the darkened landscape with his Othersight. “We are perched on one of the shattered peaks overlooking the heart of Steelclaw,” he replied in mind-speech. “The core is guarded, but not this high, for our winged friends have placed us where the great cats cannot climb. The noise of the storm will shield us from scent and sound, but keep silence, in any case, as much as possible. And have a care for your footing in the dark. This will be a good vantage point—our foe, when last I looked, was headed this way. She must certainly come here if the cats are her allies. Once she arrives, the Skyfolk will take us down quickly—and our trap is sprung”
“Then Gristheena is mine.” Even in mindspeech, Shia’s voice was a savage growl.
“And mine!” Khanu echoed.
Anvar caught the odd little thought symbol that was Shia’s equivalent to upcast eyes, and smiled to himself in the darkness.
“I would not smile if I were you,” Shia told him gruffly. “Aurian is going to murder the pair of you when she wakes and discovers that Chiamh slipped that sleeping draft into her wine.”
“I don’t care,” the Windeye protested. “She would insist on coming with us, and she was in no condition to do it. Besides,” he added, “if we bring Wolf back safely, she will be too glad to slaughter us.”
“You’re right,” Anvar told him. “Probably, she’ll just damage us severely.” Though he was scarcely in the mood to jest, he welcomed the good-natured chaffing. It helped ease his nerves, which were strung tighter than a crossbow.
“Hush!” Khanu interrupted. “I hear something!”
If Anvar could see nothing in the thick brew of storm and darkness, Chiamh, with his Othersight, saw it all. The dark, shelved, broken crater at Steelclaw’s heart; the great projecting ridge of obsidian that glimmered here and there with clusters of firefly light as the life-forces of the cats gathered and shifted, moving here and there. And across from the blackly glittering tongue of the ridge, he saw the dark, featureless mouth of a tunnel. From its maw a faint ghostlight emerged, red and roiling, half-veiled and shot through with spars of lurid darkness. The Mad One! Chiamh held his breath, watching as the sickly gleam of her unlight emerged from the tunnel and began to cross to the ridge, coming right out into the open. Then:
“Now!” he whispered. The nets, on which the companions were still standing, were whipped up around them and pulled tight. The Skyfolk took wing and swept down into the crater.
Hreeza, shivering in the pouring rain, was beginning to wish that she had never come. This was no fit task for one old cat! She must have been thinking out loud, however, for a voice spoke scoldingly from nearby: “For one old cat, perhaps—but we are many. You wanted this, Hreeza. This was your great vision, and you have given us life and purpose again. Have courage in the miracle that you have wrought!”
Hreeza chuckled dryly. “Some miracle—a bunch of skinny-ribbed, patch-coated old vagabonds!” she snorted. But warm courage flooded back into her veins, and her old heart soared with pride. “Sentimental fool!” she told herself—but it felt good, nonetheless. Now, if only they could put their plans into action.
Back in Aerillia, Hreeza had thought the most difficult part of her mission would be persuading that little snippet of a Queen to provide winged bearers, and to let her go in secret. Once that part of the plan had been accomplished, however, and Hreeza had found herself dangling above the clouds in a swinging net, she had abruptly changed her mind. Surviving this, the old cat was convinced, would be the really tricky part. She had been wrong, though. After several days spent sneaking about in the rain and cold—always hungry and living in constant terror of being caught—Hreeza would gladly have climbed right back into that net—so long as there was the promise of a warm fire and a lavish meal at the end of the journey. Her convalescence in the Skyfolk citadel, the old cat thought disgustedly, had made her soft.
Nevertheless, Hreeza had persevered. She had crossed and recrossed the areas on the outskirts of her people’s lands, hunting the elusive chuevah: the lonely outcasts who had been ejected from the clan because of age, or sickness, or unfitness to hunt. Since the brutal Gristheena had begun her rule, there were more than there had ever been. One by one she had found them: timid, hunted, broken-down creatures, some barely holding on to the thread of life. She had cajoled them, persuaded them, tempted, badgered, nagged, and browbeaten them. She had hunted for them, found them shelter, and at the last had gathered them together into the most unlikely army that had ever been. And now she had brought them back to the heart of Steelclaw—to challenge Gristheena’s might, or die in the attempt.
At the time of gathering and persuading her draggled forces to assert themselves, the old cat had thought that this must definitely be the hardest part of her task. Now, as she looked down into Steelclaw’s crater and saw the assembled masses of those who had once been her own people, she realized, with a chill of horror, just how wrong she had been.
“You old fool!” Hreeza muttered to herself. Whatever had possessed her? In the certain knowledge that she would not be able to hold her little band of chuevah together for long—either they would be discovered, so many of them together, or they would lose their courage one by one and slink ashamedly away—Hreeza had decided that she must strike as soon as possible. When she had heard from her spies that there would be a great meeting of cats in the crater, she had blessed her good fortune. But looking at her opponents now—all felines in their prime, well muscled and well fed—Hreeza’s heart misgave her, and she began to think that the trip through the air in that net must have addled her wits. If she did this thing, she would be leading her wretched band of followers, who had come to depend on her, to certain death.