When they first came to the stony ground, his hoofbeats struck a hard warning sound; they seemed to thunder of doom and loss and failure, and Talat shied away from his own feet. “Nonsense,” said Aerin, and dismounted, taking Gonturan with her; and she swung her up over her head and down, and thrust her into the trail before her, which was not rock at all, but earth; and as she drew the blade out again, there were some small crushed grass stems growing from the hole that she had made. Aerin knelt, and picked up a handful of dirt and pebbles from the tiny bit of broken earth before her; and threw her handful down the rocky way before them, as far as her arm could hurl; and as the handful disintegrated, the bits twinkled. She threw another handful after the first; and when she threw this into the air it smelted of the crushed leaves of the surka, and as she looked ahead she saw, as if her eyes had merely overlooked it the first time, a slender grey sapling bearing green leaves; and in its topmost branches there appeared a bird, and the bird sang; and around the tree’s foot there grew a budding surka plant, which explained the heavy pungent smell in the air.
“What a pleasant place this is,” said Aerin dryly, but it seemed that her words were sucked away from her, and echoed in some narrow place that was not the place where she stood. Her hand tightened a little on Gonturan’s hilt, but she raised her chin, as if someone might be watching, and remounted Talat. Now his hoofs rang out merrily, like hoofbeats on the stony ways of the City; and there was grass growing in tufts among the stones, and a few wildflowers clinging to crevices over their heads.
The feeling of being watched increased as they went on, though she saw no one, except, perhaps, at night, when there seemed to be more rustlings than there had been when they were still below on the plain, and more quick glints that might have been eyes. The fifth night since she had plunged Gonturan into the earth, and the twelfth since she had left Luthe, she stood up from her fireside and said into the darkness, “Come, then, and tell me what you want.” Her own voice frightened her, for it sounded as if it knew what it was doing, and she was quite sure she did not; and so she staggered and almost fell when after a few moments something did come, and pressed up against her, against the backs of her thighs. She did not move; and before her she saw the glints of many pairs of eyes, moving nearer, at about the right level for creatures the size of the thing that leaned against her legs. She had her arms crossed over her breast; now with infinite reluctance she unbent her right elbow and let the hand dangle down behind her leg, and she felt the creature’s breath. She closed her eyes, and then opened them again with an involuntary yelp as a very rough tongue dragged over the back of her hand. The weight against her legs shifted a little, and then a round skull pressed into her palm.
She looked down over her shoulder with dread, and the great cat thing, one of the wild folstza of the mountains, which could carry off a whole sheep or bring down a horse, began to purr. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Aerin said shakily. “I think.”
Her eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness, and in the shadows now she could see more of the folstza, ten, a dozen, sixteen, twenty; they roved restlessly through the undergrowth as they approached, for, like cats of any size, they did not wish to admit that they approached; all but the one who warmed Aerin’s right thigh and shivered her with its purring. At last the folstza sat before her in a semicircle, blinking with green or gold or brown eyes, or looking off into space as if they couldn’t imagine how they found themselves there. Some sat neatly, tails curled around four paws; some sprawled like kittens. One or two had their backs to her. They were all sizes, from younglings who hadn’t grown into the length of their legs and the size of their feet, to some that were grey-muzzled with age.
“Well,” said Aerin. “I’m sure I am—er—grateful for your companionship. If Agsded troubles you too, I’m sure you could be of use in our—er—meeting.”
As if this were a signal, the cats stood up and wandered toward the small campfire, where Talat laid his ears back flat to his skull and rolled his eyes till the whites showed. “No,” said Aerin bemusedly; “I rather think these are our friends?’’ and she looked down at the thing that now twined itself between her legs (it had to scrunch down slightly to accomplish this) and rubbed its head affectionately against her hip.
It was the biggest of the lot of them. The rest were arranging themselves around the fire, some of them in heaps, some of them in individual curls and whorls. The one that now sat and stared up at Aerin was black, with yellow eyes, and short sharp ears with a fringe of fine long black hairs around each; and down his neck and back were cloudy grey splotches that dripped over his shoulders and haunches. She saw the flicker in his eyes and braced herself just in time as he sprang up on his hind legs and put his forepaws on her shoulders. His breath was soft against her face, and the ends of his whiskers tickled her cheeks. He looked faintly disappointed as she stood her ground and stared back at him; and he dropped to all fours again and padded silently over to her bedding, lying unrolled and ready near the fire. He batted it with a forepaw till he’d disarranged it to his liking, and then lay down full length upon it, and smiled at her.
Aerin looked at him. She looked around; the other cats were watching intently through slitted eyes, for all their languor; none of them had their backs to her now. She looked at Talat, who had backed up till his rump and flattened tail were pressed against a tree, and whose ears were still flat to his skull. She looked longingly at Gonturan, hanging from a tree on the far side of the fire, where she had set her when first making camp. Gonturan glittered in the firelight, but Aerin thought she mocked her even as the big cat did, and knew there was no help there.
“Even allies must know their place,” Aerin said aloud, and was again startled at how decisive her voice sounded. She stalked over to her blanket and the cat on it, seized the hem of the blanket, and yanked. The cat rolled a complete circumference and came up again looking startled, but Aerin did not stop to watch. She wrapped her blanket around her shoulders, picked up the bundle she used as a pillow, and rearranged herself to sleep at the foot of the tree on the far side of the fire, with Gonturan’s hilt in easy reach. She lay down with her back to the fire, and stared wide-eyed at the writhe of tree root before her.
Nothing happened.
The silence was broken only by the small snaps of the fire, and even these, at last, subsided, and real darkness fell. I should keep the fire going. Aerin thought; who knows what else is out there waiting? Who knows ... But her nightmares claimed her, and she fell asleep; and again she was suspended in nowhere, but nowhere was lit with a smoky red light, and a voice was calling her name; or she thought it was her name it called, but perhaps the word was “uncle.”
She awoke at dawn with a cramp in her side, for a heavy black-furred head was resting in the hollow between her last rib and her pelvis. As she stirred he began to purr. She sat up anyway, and glared at him. “You are horrible,” she said, and he gave her the same sleepy smile as when he had attempted to usurp her bedding.
Talat was dozing uneasily, still leaning against his tree, and was inclined to be cross when she went to put his saddle on; but perhaps that was because of the four-footed grey-edged shadow she brought with her. She rode off without looking behind her; but she felt, if she could not hear, the fluid motion following, and the black cat trotted along beside them as he could, occasionally leaping into the rocks above them as the trail narrowed. Once he jumped over them, from a rock face on one hand to an evergreen tree on the other, showering them with small sharp needles and seedpods; and when he rejoined them Talat whirled and snapped at him, but he only glided out of the way. He was smiling again. “Don’t let him tease you,” Aerin murmured. Talat’s ears stayed back all that day, and he was a little short on the weak leg, for he could not relax.