The Shadows of Night (7 page)

The desire for freedom clamored in her brain and body.
 
And yet she hesitated.
 
The prince was injured
.
 
But which prince?
 
And how badly?

She started down the staircase, her bare feet silent on the rough stone risers.
 
It was a very long descent.
 
At the bottom she found, as she had hoped, that the guard had abandoned his post, presumably because of the commotion caused by the prince’s injury.
 

It was a golden opportunity.
 
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to flee without finding out which prince had been injured.

The sound of worried voices drifted to her ears.
 
Gliding silently down the long, dimly lit hall, she peered around a corner.
 
A knot of people speaking in anxious tones stood ten feet away, and the scent of blood was strong enough that she could smell it even in her human form.
 
One of the
group
moved slightly, and she saw that the motionless body on the ground had long red hair.

Prong, then, not Hart.
 
Hart was all right.
 
The unfamiliar, clutching sensation in her chest eased a bit.

She turned and strode noiselessly for the door at the end of the hall.

*****

The door slid aside for her, and no magical wall impeded her progress as she slipped through it.
 
She walked across the wide swath of grass that surrounded the keep.
 
There were still a few
Antler
grazing on the meadow, their tails flicking contentedly, but she stayed far away from them, keeping to the twilight shadows cast by the large oak trees, and none of them saw her.
 
One of the silvery drones floated past her with a heavily laden basket of food, which it had presumably collected from the forest, but it did not seem to notice her presence either.

There were guards at the gate, so she stood in the darkening shadows of the great stone wall, considering how best to get past them.
 

She was hesitant to try to get through the gate, even if she managed to distract the guards.
 
There might be another magical wall, or some other impediment.
 
The best option, she thought, was to go over the wall.
 
But it was so high that she could not have leapt over it even in her animal form.
 
Which made sense, as it was designed to keep the enemy outside.

And she was the enemy.

Undaunted by its height, she gave serious thought to the problem.
 
Near the wall stood an enormous tree with a thick trunk and spreading branches.
 
In her animal form, she could have scaled it in an instant.
 
In her human form, it was more challenging.
 
But she was a fair climber even without her claws.
 
She shimmied up the trunk, digging the arches of her feet into the rough bark to aid her progress, and quickly got to the first branch.
 
She scrambled higher, aided by the branches, until she was higher than the great silver stones of the wall.

Concealed by the amber and crimson leaves, she slid carefully along the branch—her human form wasn’t as well balanced as her cat form, and she had no claws to help—until she was well past the wall.
 
Then she looked down at the ground.
 
Unfortunately, it slanted down from the wall in a rather steep hill, making it a very long drop.

Not a problem in her cat form, but extremely dangerous for a human.

But there was no help for it.
 
She contemplated the distance for a moment, then dangled from the branch and dropped lightly to the ground.
 
She let her legs crumple as she hit the turf, rolled, and came to her feet easily, uninjured.

She considered trying to sneak through the town by sticking to the shadows, but realized that there was nothing in her human form to mark her as a Claw except for her gold-streaked hair, which wasn’t obvious in the gathering darkness.
 
Her scent was that of the Claw, but as long as no one passed her too closely, they would not notice in their human form.
 
Though the Kindred had a keen sense of smell, human noses were not as acute as animal ones.

She walked through the town as if she was just another Antler, her long hair carefully draped to conceal the collar as much as possible.
 
She held her head high, as if she belonged in the town, but took care to keep a substantial distance away from anyone who passed.
 
No one looked twice at her.
 

Unfamiliar smells assaulted her nostrils, the smells of ale and unfamiliar foods.
 
Even the smell of vegetables and cooked grass was enough to make her stomach rumble.
 
She ignored her hunger and went on.
 
She wasn’t yet hungry enough to eat more grass.

Half an hour later, she left the outskirts of the town behind, crossed the vast emerald meadows that surrounded the town, and struck out into the forest.

*****

It felt good to be outside, in the night air.
 
It was a long distance back to Claw territory, particularly in her slower human form, but she settled into an easy lope that she could sustain for many miles.
 
The cool breeze brushed her cheeks as she jogged, and the familiar stars brightened above her as the sky darkened.

The smaller moon was three quarters full, but the greater moon had not yet risen, which was unfortunate, because her human eyes did not have the night vision she needed for the trip.
 
But if she were to avoid capture, she must travel at night.
 
The Claw Kindred were the only people who generally went abroad by night, so by traveling at night she hoped to avoid the Fangs.
 

Of course, the Fang Kindred had attacked her in the night once before.
 
But she put that thought out of her mind.
 
Prong, after all, had been attacked in the daytime.
 
She must travel sometime, and nighttime seemed like the better choice.

For the first time, she let herself wonder exactly what had happened to the younger lord.
 
She hadn’t gotten a good look at his injuries, but the strong smell of blood suggested he had been quite badly injured.
 
She had assumed he had been attacked by the Fang Kindred, just as she had.
 
But he might just as well have been attacked by
her own
people, who would certainly seek retribution for her capture if they had somehow discovered it.
 
Either way, he was lucky to have survived.

It mattered not to her, she assured herself.
 
The Antler meant nothing to her.
 
She hated them for their attempt to keep her, to use her as leverage.
 
She loathed them for putting a collar on her, as if she were a pet, and preventing her from using her shifting abilities.
 
People, after all, weren’t meant to stay in one form forever.
 
If the myths were true, perhaps humans had only had a single form, once upon a time, but that had been centuries ago.

She wanted to shift.
 
She
needed
to shift.
 
The wild animal seethed inside her, frustrated, hungry for release.

Despite her anger at the Antler, she found herself thinking about the lord.
 
Not Prong, but his brother.
 

How did he feel now that his own brother had been so badly injured?
 
What if the brother died?
 
Surely Hart would mourn.
 
Would he weep?

Somewhere in the depths of her soul, she found
a sympathy
for Hart that surprised her, and a curious longing to comfort him.
 
She reminded herself that she hated him, but the thought had lost much of its force.
 
He had treated her well, and if his mother were to be believed, he hadn’t wanted to keep her as a prisoner.
 
Certainly that was the impression she had garnered from his conversation with the monarch.
 
He had only been doing his duty—something she really couldn’t hold against him.

She had been jogging through the underbrush at a steady pace for an hour when she heard the faint sound of hoofbeats behind her.
 
Cursing, she broke into a full run, knowing all the while that it was fruitless.
 
She couldn’t outrun an Antler in human form.

Sure enough, the hoofbeats grew steadily nearer.
 
She was fairly certain by the sound that only one Antler was in pursuit.

She was surprised the Antler had managed to track her so readily—since they were not predators, they knew little of tracking, and their noses were not as sensitive as the Fang and Claw.
 
She’d done what she could to throw them off her trail, but obviously she’d failed.

More out of instinct than anything else, she shimmied up the nearest tree and crouched in a tree limb.

Moments later, a large and magnificent stag came into view, a barely visible shadow in the moonlit darkness.
 
Katara looked down at him, feeling a strange tightness constrict her throat.
 
It was Hart.
 
She was certain of it.
 

Before yesterday, she would have said that all
Antler
looked alike to her in their animal form, but she knew with every fiber of her being that this stag was Hart.
 
It was evident in the graceful stride, the powerful, sleek lines of his body, and the confident, almost arrogant way in which he held himself.

In a strange way, she was glad he had followed her.
 
The thought of never seeing him again had been niggling at her mind, an unpleasant cloud hanging over her freedom like a dark thundercloud on the summer horizon.

He paused directly beneath her tree and looked up at her.
 
In his animal form, he couldn’t speak, but the message was clear.
 
Come down.
 
Now.

She held still, barely breathing, just in case he wasn’t sure of her location.
 
He pawed a hoof in an angry gesture and made a bugling noise.

“Fine,” she said under her breath.
 
“I’m coming.”
 
She scrambled rapidly down the tree, jumped to the ground, and stared into the dark eyes that seemed to look straight through her, right into her soul.
  
She noticed he was holding a small metal object in his mouth, and wondered if that was another piece of magic, one that had allowed him to track her.

“I want to go home,” she growled.

He lowered his antlers in a threatening gesture.

Faced with the sharp prongs, she was tempted to back up against the tree trunk, but she held her ground.
 
“I am sorry about your brother,” she said in a more conciliatory tone.
 
“Really.
 
I wish him no harm.
 
But all I want is to return to my people.
 
I know your monarch told you to imprison me in the keep, but could you not just tell him you were unable to find me in the forest?”

The great stag tilted his head as he looked at her consideringly.
 
At last he swung his antlers side-to-side in a clearly negative gesture.

“Please,” she whispered.
 
“I just want to go home.”

The last words were uttered in a hoarse tone, and she realized her throat was clogged with tears.
 
She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life imprisoned in a tower, unable to shift, trapped amongst strangers.
 
For a brief time, as she ran alone through the forest, she’d imagined that she was going home to her Pride, and the disappointment was almost more than she could bear.
 

The stag regarded her, his head cocked to one side.
 
Abruptly his hide began to ripple and his features to melt.
 
His antlers seemed to withdraw into his head, his front legs left the ground, and his body grew upright.
 
The changes happened almost too quickly for the eye to follow.
 
A scant second later, Hart stood before her in his human form, naked and magnificent in the dappled moonlight.
 
He reached up and removed the small metal object from his mouth, gripping it in his hand.

“My brother was just attacked by the Fang Kindred,” he said, his deep voice soft but forceful.
 
His eyes were dark with anger, but she sensed it was not aimed at her, but at the Fang.
 
“The bites were unmistakable.
 
You were attacked by the Fang yesterday.
 
Both attacks occurred in neutral territory, and their attacks are obviously becoming more frequent.
 
Surely you do not seriously expect me to leave you out here in the forest all alone?
 
And in your human form, no less?”