His steady stare fell on Michael, who was sitting mute but tense, prepared to intercept any spring of Cat's. She was crouched like a cornered leopardess, her fingers gouging the dirt floor. Outside the rain had risen to an endless rush and roar. It was beating on the roof like a live thing, a minion of the forest striving to batter its way inside.
'You,' the Brother said to Michael. 'You are not of this world, though something of it is in you. I sense an old piety in you, my friend. Can you not tell your lady that I mean her no harm?'
'It's true, Cat. He's telling the truth, I'm sure of it.'
Cat glared at him, her pupils black vertical bars in the green blaze of her eyes.
'Please, lass.' He took the savage face in his hands, searching for the girl he loved. She struggled and one hand fastened on his wrist, trying to pull him away. Once she would have succeeded, but despite his recent weakness the forest had bred strength into him and she could not. He kissed her, pulled her head down on to his shoulder and felt her shudder.
'It's all right,' he murmured. 'We're all right here.'
He heard the rain slacken outside, and knew that somehow the moment had passed. Mirkady's gift was double-edged, he thought.
'Don't let him do anything to the food,' Cat muttered. 'I'm hungry.'
'Plain fare it is then, unblessed and untouched,' Brother Nennian said. 'Eat with me, and be welcome no matter who or what you are. There are not so many travellers in this part of the world that I can be choosy as to the company I keep.' His smile was back again, and the appetizing smell of the steaming food was wafting through the length of the hut.
THERE WERE TURNIPS and cabbage in the stew, bannock and buttermilk to follow, and they ate in silence whilst the sound of the rain dwindled. The afternoon was waning, the light that came in at the windows fading into blue. They heard a wolf howl off in the wood, the first since leaving the FoxPeople, and Michael started, fearing for the horses, but Brother Nennian shook his head.
'Nothing will enter the sanctuary that I do not wish to. Your animals, and mine, are protected.'
'How do you come to be here, alone so deep in the wood? This wood, especially.'
Brother Nennian chewed on a bannock. 'I came here a long time ago, and I was not alone. I had a young novice with me, but he has left. If he is alive, he should be in the Woods of Men again by now.'
Michael remembered the tortured corpse he and Cat had found by the Fox-People's camp, but said nothing. He could feel the brother's stare on him, though.
'Why the Wolfweald?'
'I am alone here, and I love the great trees: It is a good place to stay and think. Also, I have long wanted to find out the fate of an expedition sent here many years ago. I roam the woods looking for traces of it sometimes. And sometimes I have found old bones that have never been buried, but lie half sunk in the leaf mulch.'
Brother Nennian did not seem disposed to explain farther, but Michael was sure he had not told them everything. There was something else, something more which had led or driven the man here.
'You too are a long way into the Wolfweald,' the Brother said. 'A long way from home as well, if I do not miss my guess.' His eyes flicked to Michael's sword.
'Maybe.'
'Two things keep a man alive in this place. Faith, or the forest magic. I wonder often if the two do not blur together. Our Lord was hung on a tree, after all. And two things bring a man here. Either he is fleeing something, or pursuing it. Those two also have a way of blurring together in the Wolfweald; the hunter becoming the hunted. It is a strange place. The roots of these trees are deep. They go to the centre of the world. There is wisdom here, for those who are hardy enough to look for it, or lucky enough to find it. And power. There is so much power that most of the beasts cannot endure it.'
'Some endure it,' Cat said unexpectedly. 'Some are born out of it.'
'Indeed?'
'The Wyrim say that the forest is the Horseman's bride, and they are children of both him and the trees, part of the land itself.'
'And you, my child, what do you believe you are?' the Brother asked with great gentleness.
Cat glared hotly back at him. 'I told you, I am nothing. I am what the Wyrim call a halfling and the villagers call a changeling.'
'It cannot be easy, being caught between two worlds.'
Cat did not reply. She ducked her head toward her bowl of buttermilk with surprising docility. The Brother regarded Michael again, and again took in the long length of the Ulfberht.
'A soldier by the looks of you, and yet something about you tells me you are not. The tribes still have something of the soldier in them: a pride, a hardiness not seen even among the Knights of the Church ... You have encountered them, our Knights Militant?'
'I know of them,' Michael said curtly. He was beginning to distrust this holy man. 'Are our answers the payment for your hospitality?'