Ê- ADGERLOCK'S “OLD BLOOD TALES”
I awoke before dawn, with the terrible sensation of having forgotten something. I lay still for a time in the darkness, piecing together my uneasiness. Sleepily I tried to recall what had wakened me. Through the tattering veils of a headache, I forced my mind to function. Threads of a cÊbi.
tangling nightmare came back to me slowly. They were unnerving; I had been a cat. It was like the worst of the old Wittales, in which the Witted one was gradually dominated by his beast until one day he awoke as a shapechanger, doomed to take on the form of his beast and forever prey to his beast's worst impulses. In my dream, I had been the cat, but in a human body. Yet there had been a woman there also, sharing my awareness with the cat, mingled so thoroughly that I could not determine where one began and the other left off. Disturbing. The dream had caught at me, snagged me with its claws, and held me under. Yet some part of me had heard . . . what? Whispers? The soft jingle of harness, the grit of boots and hooves on sand? I sat up and glared around at the darkness. The fire was no more than a dark red smudge on the earth nearby. I could not see, but I was already certain that my prisoner was gone. Somehow he had wriggled loose, and now he had gone ahead to warn the others that we followed. I gave my head a shake to clear it. He had probably taken my damn horse, as well. Myblack was the only one of the horses dumb enough to allow herself to be stolen without a sound. I found my voice. “Lord Golden! Awake. Our prisoner has escaped.”
I heard him sit up in his blankets, no more than an arm's length away. I heard him scrabble in the darkness, then a handful of wood bits was thrown on the fire. They glowed, and then a small flame of true fire leapt up. It only flared briefly, but what it showed was enough to confound me. Not only our prisoner was missing, but Laurel and Whitecap were gone.
“She went after him,” I guessed stupidly.
“They went together.” The Fool pointed out the more likely scenario. Alone with me, he completely abandoned Lord Golden's voice and posture. In the fading flare of the fire, he sat up on his blanket, his knees tucked under his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs as he expostulated. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “When you fell asleep, she insisted she would take first watch. She promised to wake me when her duty was over. If I had not been so concerned over your behavior, I might have seen how peculiar that offer was.” His wounded look was almost an accusation. “She loosed him, and then they left deliberately and quietly. So quietly that not even Nighteyes heard them go.”