I could see the rider now. There was only one within sight. He rode clad in mail, an ornate battle helm on his head. Mounted on that was what appeared to be a life-size eagle, its wings half upraised as if prepared for flight. The horse he bestrode was not akin to those of the Clan fold, but plainly of the same blood as the ones I had seen pastured by the Star Tower, the hide dappled, the legs longer than normal.
As the rider noted the snow cat, he did not reach for the sword sheathed at his hip. Rather, he raised his gauntleted hand in salute as a man gives greeting to another he knows. Then the cat moved forward, leaping to a rock that brought his fanged head near on a level with the rider’s.
Mount reined in, the rider, whose face was too much in the shadow of the helm for me to see clearly, sat easily in the saddle, facing the cat. Though I heard nothing, either with my ears, or my mind, I was certain that they spoke together by some method of their own.
I could see no belt about the body of the cat. If he were of the Werekin, then he needed no such key to change shape. Was he one of the Wereriders? Their territory was supposed to lie to the southeast of the Clan lands, but that would not prevent them from traveling elsewhere.
At length, the rider once more raised his hand to salute the cat. When he moved on, he changed directions, heading back the same way from which he had come. Had he brought some message?
The cat did not watch him go, but returned swiftly to where I lay. As he neared, his mind-speech was imperative.
“We must hurry. The Shadow is on the move!”
The part-buried man in me responded to the urge. I managed to waver to my feet. But my pard body was near spent. Somehow I staggered down to the water, felt that rise about my limbs, pasting my fur tight to skin. Again, his strength alone, pushing against me, brought me through the weak current, out onto the far bank.
There I sank down, utterly exhausted, though he nosed at me, trying to get me on my legs. Once more, I could hear a thud of hooves against the ground. The cat left my side, trotting purposefully toward the edge of the forest. Was the eagle-helmed rider returning, or was this indeed a hunter approaching, and my companion, having done his best for me, was prudently withdrawing?
At that moment neither guess mattered. I was far too spent to care. Apathetically I watched, unable to raise my head any to widen my field of vision. The cat had halted by the first tree, once more waiting.
From under the shade of branch and leaves moved a rider leading another horse by the reins. I knew her—the Moon Witch; though this time her white body was clothed in breeches, boots, shirt and jerkin of green and brown intermingled so that only when she had advanced fully into the open, could I see her clearly.
The cat reared up, setting his paws against her saddle blanket on either side of her leg, the mount showing no alarm at the beast’s move but standing quietly. She leaned over a little so that they stared eye to eye, then she nodded.
From the breast of her jerkin she pulled some small object, which hung there on a chain. With this in her hand, as if it might be a weapon, she came purposely toward me, the cat trailing behind.
Before she reached my side, the girl slid from her light saddle, her mount standing quietly with the reins dropping to the ground. She came to me, swinging in her hand from its chain a round globe of crystal. Within it was imprisoned a sprig of some sort of vegetation, green and glowing.
The Moon Witch swung the chain to encircle my head as I raised it at her coming. Then the ball with its sprig of green came to rest just below my throat. I—
I was a man!
My fur was gone, my skin was visible, though I had not regained my belt. I was—back!
The shock of the transition without warning was so great, my world swung dizzily to and fro. I was aware of her hands on me, that I was being lifted, carried. I was laid across a saddle and caught my breath at the pain of the jolting, which each step of the horse caused me.
Someone mounted up, raised me, though his touch on my back nearly tore a scream from my dry throat. For this was a man, not my Moon Maid who tended me, though from whence he had suddenly appeared, I had no knowledge.
I had a blurred impression of a dark head bent over me, a thin face, well browned by sun and weather, above which the hair peaked sharply. His was a secret face, one to keep thoughts and words locked well within. Like the Tower woman, one might have judged the stranger in the flowering of youth, but the eyes, yellow as any cat’s, were old—weary and old.
The eyes held mine. No mind-speech came to me, only a kind of force. It drove me steadily away from consciousness into a darkness where pain was gone and time no longer mattered.
Yet I was not entirely overborne by the stranger’s will. As if I sensed from a very far distance, I knew we rode on and the forest held us again. I was convinced, as well, that the stranger who held me meant me no harm, rather good. Also that I must not trouble myself with such matters now—but withdraw, to regain my strength and will. The wonder of my change held—the Moon Maid’s magic had wrought this. On my breast, I felt warmth spreading from the pendant she had put on me. That talisman I must hold to so I remain a man.
11
Of Those in the Tower and How I Chose Danger
I lay face down, my head turned to one side so that before my bemused eyes I saw only stone blocks of a wall. Across my back rested something cooling, soothing, drawing from my wounds the pain of the fire that had lain within the ragged furrows since I had won from the web trap. I heard voices behind me, not in my mind this time.
“The moly will lose its power soon. What then, my Lord?”
It was a woman who spoke so. A challenge hung in her tone.
“We must discover who he is, from whence he comes. I do not believe from the Gray Towers. Yet what other Werestrain walks this land? And he is not of the Shadow. If he rouses before the change, perhaps this we can learn—”
A man—he whom I remembered holding me before him as we rode from the river? But where did I lie? And who were they who had tended me? My passage from sleep to waking became complete as I felt that I must know answers to those questions.
I levered myself up a little on the bed and turned my head, to face those who stood beyond.
Yes, that was the man who had come to my rescue. The Moon Witch did not accompany him as I had hoped. Rather, there stood the woman of the herb garden who had driven me into exile. Why had she now given me both shelter and tending? I must be within the Star Tower, for I could see that the walls behind the two who were regarding me were oddly angled. The chamber must be shaped to fit into one of the points of the star.
“Who are you who have given me shelter?” I asked when neither of them spoke.
The woman came to my side. Her cool fingertips rested for a moment on my forehead. There was a faint perfume of spicy growing things coming from her hand, as if she had but lately been at labor in her garden.
“His fever is gone,” she said. Now she stripped the covering from my back, so I felt the small chill of air striking my shoulders and hips. Again, she touched here and there along what must have been the wounds the hawk had set upon me. “Healing well, the poison being stayed,” was her second verdict.
“You ask who we are.” She moved around into my full sight. “We are those who dwell apart, asking naught of any man save that we be left to follow our own ways.”
There was no welcome in her face, nor was there outright rejection either. She might be waiting for me to take some action, speak some word, on which she could base her judgment of whether I was friend or foe. Yet, for all her reserve of emotion, I knew I could never name her enemy. There was that about her which argued that she abhorred the Shadow in all its ways.
“And who are you?” It was the man who came a stride forward to stand beside her.