'Ready for what?'
'Ready to give up your soul.'
MORNING CAME AND Mirkady and Dwarmo were gone, though a smiling face had been scratched into the earth by the fire. Michael listened for a while. The valley was full of thick mist that rolled like an ocean below him, the trees towering out of it, shaggy giants wading ashore. The wood was quiet and a pale sun was just flinging the first of its beams over the eastern horizon, cutting rainbows from the vapour in the air.
Cat lay on the other side of the dead fire, watching him. It had been cold without her warmth in his arms, but she had been distant since the Wyr-fire had been kissed into her. Was it Michael's imagination, or was there something different about her— something that had more to do with Mirkady's fold than with humanity? Could it be that her eyes were more narrow, her ears longer, more pointed?
But when she got up, throwing her furs aside, he castigated himself for being absurd. She was the same lithe, lovely girl he had always known, and he ached for her.
'Cat?'
'What?' she asked, not looking up from her packing.
He touched her arm and paused without meeting his eyes.
'No, Michael.'
'Why not? It's been an age.'
'I'll not love you while you're selling your soul for some other woman.'
She was crying, the tears coursing down one cheek, though her face was unmoved, set hard.
'She's kin to me. Damn it, Cat, I thought this had been settled. I thought you had stopped worrying about it. You're the one I love.'
'Then find me my soul, Michael.'
'What?'
'If I am a changeling, then my soul is also in the Horseman's castle. Would you go on a quest for it?'
He could not answer her. He felt winded, wholly at sea. She was as unpredictable as the rain. Damned if he knew what to say to placate her.
He turned away. 'I'll get breakfast,' he growled, bewildered with hurt. Nothing was as it appeared in this place. He began to wish he had taken up Ringbone's invitation and gone north.
If Ringbone was still alive. He and his people might well be a jumble of corpses by now.
Cat's hand was on his nape, and he turned at once to kiss her. They pressed into each other hungrily, and he made short work of tucking her tunic aside.
'I'm sorry,' he said as he slid inside of her, and she repeated it, so that they were apologizing to each other as they made sudden love, transforming it into a litany until it seemed they were sorry for all that was to come as well as all that had been. They were sorry that things were going to turn out the way they would.
SIXTEEN
IT WAS A quiet night. He was at his station, pulling pints behind the bar; or he would be pulling them if anyone wanted one. The pub was almost deserted, a few diehards staring into their glasses, a game of darts in the corner with old men taking their time to shuffle to and from the board.
Outside the long day was winding into a clear blue night, and the traffic had eased from the five o'clock mayhem that he hated. There was the roar of a red bus now and again, ploughing along the road outside.
He leant on the bar and lit a cigarette, though the landlady forbade it.
Clare. There was a thing.
Not a good idea to get involved with a girl ten years your junior, one who believed in true love and honour and suchlike.
Nice, though.
He liked her elegance, the city cut of her. There was not an ounce of hayseed in her make-up. The city was her everything.
A face appeared briefly at the window of the bar. It grinned hugely, the eyes becoming two slits filled with green light, the ears pointed as leaves.
Mirkady?
He hobbled from behind the bar and crashed open the door, glaring out into the calm night, the lamplit street.
Nothing.
His heart was labouring, fighting to expand out of his chest. He pressed a fist to his breastbone, panting, whilst the world leapt and jumped in his sight, the street lights spangling into stars.
He staggered back to the bar. Stares followed him.
There was an iron band around his chest, tightening unbearably, squeezing shut his lungs. He lurched to the row of optics and clinked a glass below the brandy, clicked it up. Then the stuff was searing his throat and heating up his gullet.
A pair of customers at the bar were asking if he needed help. He waved them away. Christ, he thought, I'm getting old. I'm dying here.
Had it been Mirkady out there, in the street? He was no longer sure. After so much time one fiendish face looked very much like another. And his lips stretched in a ghastly, mirthless grin. His chest loosened, lungs opening. The world steadied again and he was able to laugh at the concern of the old blokes, make a joke of it. The rest of the brandy finished his recovery, and one of the pensioners bought him another. No mean gesture. He raised it in salute.
What was happening to him? He was seeing monsters in every shadow. There was something about the city after dark that reminded him of the Wildwood. That watchfulness. It was not his imagination. Walking with Clare around nightfall he had been sure they were being followed, soft feet padding the pavement behind them. Nothing to see, of course.