Eluned opened the window next to it, to avoid knocking it from the sill, then stepped hastily back as the folie leapt onto the long countertop. It was less than half the size of a normal cat, the top of its head and back brown gradating through shades of orange to a white belly. Narrow black stripes were visible on its face and front legs. And there were tiny leaves and flowers growing out of its fur.
“Leaves lift up to hide it?” Eleri wondered.
“Maybe they retract? Unfurl?” Eluned could not work out how the scattering of leaves, mostly toward the lower back and tail, could possibly hide the whole cat. “What’s it doing?”
The folie had walked toward the window, and then back toward them, and back to the window again, where it looked impatiently over its shoulder.
“Follow it. Obvious.”
“To do what?” Eluned asked, then realised there was only one way to find that out. “Find the torch. I’ll write a note for Dama Seleny.”
As Eleri hunted quickly for the hand-wound torch, Eluned ran through all the thousands of things she should or shouldn’t say, and opted for the simple truth.
Following folie. Don’t wait up. E&E
“Need a better torch.”
“I don’t think it’s going to wait.”
In fact, Eluned had already lost sight of the folie, but it was a simple assumption to head directly for the gate, and rediscover a tiny, tail-switching nub of impatience. The leaves in its tail made a rattling noise as they moved.
“Hurlstone at night?” Eleri said, doubtfully, then added: “Automaton?”
“Maybe?” Eluned wasted no time as the folie, having apparently achieved its goal, leaped away, scaling the nearest tree in two effortless bounds. She reached for and grasped the key she had been granted, fit it into the gate, and turned.
Warm breeze swept through the grove, bringing heady floral scents, and a puff of wind-blown seeds. And one amasen.
“Lila?”
The pale horned snake slid around Eluned’s ankle, and then transferred to her arm when Eluned bent down to her. The violet tongue flickered. As much as a snake could look urgent and distressed, Lila managed it, but she was even less able to express herself than the folie.
“Check the automaton?” Eleri suggested, winding hard on the torch to build up a better glow.
Chasing that automaton—whether it was controlled by the ba of an Egyptian or something else—about in the dark did not strike Eluned as an easy proposition.
“Surely we can work out some way to communicate,” she muttered. “Nodding—if she understands us at all, we can manage that. Lila, can you bob your head once for yes and twice for no?”
The amasen’s gold-crowned head bobbed immediately.
“There. So is there something wrong with the automaton?”
One bob.
“Do you want us to go into Hurlstone to get it?”
Two bobs.
“Not in Hurlstone any more?” Eleri asked.
One bob.
“What? Did it go into the forest?”
Two bobs.
“Came through gate when vampire left?” Eleri guessed.
One bob, which sent them staring around the grove, until Lila’s increasing movement drew them back to questions.
“Is it still here, Lila?” Eluned asked.
Two bobs, and then the amasen partly uncoiled and stretched out her head, pointing back in through the gate into the Deep Forest.
“It’s not here, but you want us to go…do you want us to go through the Deep Forest?” Eluned asked slowly. “Like Dem Makepeace does?”
One bob.
“Stray gods,” Eleri commented.
“And at night.”
“Should look around here—can’t have gotten far.”
Lila’s repeated bobbing made it clear she thought this a bad idea. Eluned and Eleri glanced at each other. Eluned’s heart was racing at the very thought: Hurlstone itself was in theory a minor risk, but the Deep Forest was vast, and dangerous, and even escorted by one of the amasen, their safety could not possibly be guaranteed.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“Bringing a proper light, then.”
Eleri sprinted back inside, returning with one of the few fulgite lamps they had. A recent purchase by Aunt Arianne, it was a tall, slender bronze of Sulis herself, holding a glass sun above her head. Powered by a piece of vampire.
“I’m not sure of the symbolism there,” Eluned said.
“What?”
“Never mind. You’ll point the direction we have to go, Lila?”
The amasen nodded, then stretched toward the lamp, and when Eleri held it closer to her, transferred to twine about the bronze figure. Then Eluned pulled the gates shut behind them.
The scent of flowers was even stronger, a heady pungency that suggested a night-blooming species. There were birds calling. At least, that’s what Eluned thought they were, because the sound seemed to come from above. They seemed very high, so she tried to ignore them, and concentrate on closer problems as Eleri upended the lamp so that the sun was pointing to the ground, and Lila’s head was silhouetted above it, pointing toward the small stream that cut through the ruined town.
“Stars are enormous.”
They did seem closer, but perhaps they dazzled so because everything except the area directly around them was utterly black, with not a single amasen statue relieving the dark.
“Let’s hurry,” Eluned said. “Look at Lila and the ground, and go.”
“Can’t see anything else anyway,” Eleri muttered, but did as suggested, walking quickly with all her attention on her feet, and the occasional changes of direction of the slender wedge-shaped head, with its two glinting horns.
Eluned had toured the boundaries of Hurlstone more than once, and she was sure the path they found beside the stream hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t particularly wide, an animal track, but did make progress a little quicker through the thick grass, though it was only marginally helpful when they left the open space of Hurlstone, and gnarled roots crossed and criss-crossed the way, more than ready to trip the unwary.
Almost as soon as they stepped under the trees, the scent of flowers dropped away, and a sharp smell of sap took its place. Insects chirred, lead singers in a forest chorus that fascinated and threatened at the same time. Owl, leaves, unidentifiable rustle, fox.
Lila’s head pointed confidently forward, and Eluned breathed loam and pine, and tried to guess at what swooped so loudly above, and then swallowed a gasp when the tree ahead to the left shuddered, as whatever it was landed, in a massive cracking of twigs and clash of leaves.
They stopped, Eluned holding on to Eleri’s shoulder, wary about continuing forward, uncertain what the dipping of Lila’s head was meant to convey. And then the whatever it was hopped from the first tree to the one immediately above them, a branch crashing to the ground in the process.
Eluned pulled Eleri down, and barely in time, as a head dipped through the canopy, and jaws snapped in a sharp clack.
“Leave the lamp,” Eluned whispered. “Crawl!”
They wasted no time, Lila sliding free to lead the way, racing on bruising knees along the path. Crawling was one of the things that a mechanical arm complicated for Eluned, because she could not feel what was below her on the right, or adjust for the uneven surface. She tucked the arm against her chest instead, unable to stop herself from falling behind Eleri, concentrating simply on going as fast and quietly as she could manage.
A second heavy flier landed in the tree above, and twigs and leaves rained down, and she sped frantically, ignoring rocks bruising her left palm, and something scratching her hip. She strained her eyes to keep sight of Eleri, and almost rammed her, sitting with her back to a heavy iron gate.