They watched again, two predators crouched at the door. At length that door opened, and out stepped first the woman, her head covered with her long scarf, then— Then! Then! Oh, then came him! That hated one! Nidawi and Lioness bared their teeth, and only with difficulty did they not leap forth and give themselves away.
Last of all came the golden Faerie man, and he shut and secured the door behind them. With the woman leading the way, the hated one limping from his wounds (Nidawi and Lioness smiled at this and tasted again his blood in their mouths), and the Faerie taking up the rear, they stepped onto their fey Path and vanished from the view of their stalkers.
Lioness was up in a second, her nose to the pursuit, and Nidawi raced along behind, suddenly a child, clapping her hands and urging terrible, eager things. They took a Faerie Path of their own, one that ran parallel to that of their prey, carrying them leagues with each stride. And the Wood parted and fell away on either side of them, watching their progress with grudging interest to which Nidawi paid no heed. Her attention was on the hunted.
Until she caught another scent.
“Lioness!” she gasped, reaching out and clutching her companion’s tail. “Lioness, do you smell that?”
Lioness’s great head came up, and her round, black-tipped ears pricked as she swung her heavy gaze a little to one side of their Path. The trees came into focus around them, tall and threatening, but this bothered neither the lion nor the Faerie. They sniffed and they stared and they listened.
“Cren Cru!” said Nidawi, her grip on the lion’s tail tightening. “Cren Cru! He comes after his own in another body! A small, weak one!”
Lioness’s lips curled back in a red snarl. Then she bounded forward, and Nidawi, still holding on to her tail, bounded after. Hers was not a mind for plotting or plans, but she had a certain spontaneous cunning about her that could be, and often was, deadly.
A gleam of light ahead; the glow of the Bronze. They pursued it, away from their previous prey, but only for the moment. Then they saw them—it—her! They saw their enemy, clad in that strange, frail body bleeding from claw wounds at the shoulder, skin flushed with fever.
A roar shattered the stillness of the Wood, echoing on into worlds and demesnes beyond. And Daylily, clutching the stone that dragged her forward against all her will or strength, looked up into the descending doom of the lion and screeching Faerie queen.
“What was that?”
Imraldera paused midstride and turned to the sound of that echoing rumble. The blur of trees sliding past hardened into the solid growth of the Wood around them as she and her companions stopped.
“The white lion,” Sun Eagle said. His voice was thin, for though he had recovered much from his wounds under Imraldera’s care and the influence of the Haven, he was still weak from blood loss. But his head came up and his eyes were bright as he stared off in the direction from which the roar had come. “She is near. But not so near as I thought.”
“No, indeed. I thought she was right on our tail a moment ago,” Eanrin agreed, craning his neck as though to somehow see through the trees themselves. “Sounds like she’s on the hunt, all right. But if we’re not her prey, than who is?”
“We should go after. We should find out,” said Imraldera, but there was a question in her voice. After all, Sun Eagle was not strong, and the idea of walking into the waiting jaws of the lioness and her wild companion was unappealing from any perspective.
“I think . . . not,” Eanrin said, though he hesitated. “We’d do best to put some distance between ourselves and those two mad girls, if you know what I mean.”
Imraldera agreed but Sun Eagle said nothing. He continued looking after the sound, which by now had died away into nothing. He sniffed the air and bowed his head. Then without a word, he continued on his way, passing up even Imraldera and storming on at a tremendous speed despite the pain that must even now be shooting through his leg. It was as though some force other than himself moved his body and his limbs.
Where he walked, a Path opened up. But it was not the Path they had been following a moment before.
Imraldera saw this and frowned. It seemed a safe enough way, however, and it led the direction they had been following all along. With a whispered curse, she took a step after.
Eanrin caught her arm.
“Oh, is that how we do things now?” he said. “Our Lord’s Path disappears, and we just pick up the next one that comes along?”
“Don’t lecture me, Eanrin,” she said without a great deal of vim. She was tired, and she hated to admit that she was beginning to think the cat-man might be right. It irritated her, and she tried to shrug his hand off but failed. “You know as well as I that there are many safe Paths in the Wood. It doesn’t have to be one we know to be good.”
“And you’re just going to assume that any Path this Sun Eagle of yours follows is good, is that right?”