Harp of Winds

14 Contest of Queens

As Shia picked her tortuous way from the Tower of Incondor, climbing up through the ever-rising chain of valleys that led into the heart of the mountains, the going became harder and harder as the snow grew deeper and the biting cold increased. It was a barren, menacing landscape, with its fanged and looming crags and bottomless, shadowed gorges through which the wind came shrieking like the death-wails of a thousand slaughtered cats.

At first, Shia sometimes found shelter in caves and crevices that afforded some protection from the merciless wind and its stinging burden of snow. She gladly stopped to rest in these havens, making the most of a welcome respite from her ceaseless battle with the mountains. Sometimes she found game—lean snow hares or ptarmigan, or a cragfast sheep or goat—to ease her relentless hunger. But as the cat went on, shelter became more scarce and the snow piled ever higher on the stony trails and ledges, slowing her to a snail’s pace, and making each step a greater torture. Shia’s neck and jaws ached from carrying the Staff of Earth. Its magic burned her, sending currents of prickling power swirling through her body to weaken her, and confuse her instinctive sense of direction. Her mouth, where her jaws clenched around the Staff, became a mass of blisters and sores, making it harder to hunt and to eat on the rare occasions when prey could be found. Food was scarce and hard to come by on this freezing roof of the world. Day by day, the great cat grew more gaunt and hollow-eyed, a shaggy black scarecrow all skin and bone. Lacking the energy even to think, she hauled herself upward step by step, dragging the Staff in locked and frozen jaws. At night she made snow nests to conserve her heat, but Shia never stopped shivering, wishing that Bohan and Anvar were curled up beside her, and that Aurian could hold her close to warm her body with her own.

As time went on, Shia’s suffering and wretchedness increased until she thought that she must be dying. Once, as she stumbled along in a kind of waking dream, she thought that Anvar walked by her side—and he was dying. Nonetheless, he still found time to ask her a bunch of senseless human questions that irritated her beyond all bearing. She told him in no uncertain terms to cease his foolishness and get back into his body—and seemingly, he had, or at least she hoped he had.

When Anvar vanished, Shia’s boneless legs collapsed beneath her, and she lay for some time, quivering with shock and wondering if it could be true. Their powers were fey, the Magefolk, and there was no telling what they might do—but one thing was certain. If Anvar had truly been on the brink of death, then she had only been able to see him because she was in a similar easel

Unclenching her jaws with an effort from around the Staff, Shia looked up at the leaden sky. Dying? But I cannot! I promised Aurian . . . Black specks were whirling in front of her eyes. Only when a harsh cry drifted down from above did her befuddled brain tell her they were real. Shia felt her heart kick into life within her. Eagles! And if the eagles were circling . . . The great cat picked up the Staff and tottered forward. Her mouth was watering.

Only their fear of the weirdly glowing Staff permitted her to scatter the gigantic birds so easily. Otherwise, she might have joined the broken, frozen corpse of the sheep as their prey. Shia, wincing at the pain of her blistered jaws, spat out a wisp of oily, draggled wool and worried free a mouthful of icy meat, feeling it melt to a stringy succulence in her mouth. After the first few difficult bites, she felt new energy exploding within her like a fountain of fire, and bent to her meal in earnest, blessing her luck and the stupidity of herbivores who would wander along a narrow ledge in search of a mouthful of greenery and get themselves stuck, unable to either go forward or turn around. Going backward was apparently beyond them, and they would either panic and fall, or starve in place until they toppled—for which Shia, at the moment, was profoundly thankful. When her shrunken belly had been filled, she found a niche in the broken rocks at the foot of the cliff and dragged the Staff and the remains of her prey inside, then settled down,-with enough food inside her to let her withstand the cold, for her first good sleep in days.

As she lost all sensation of where she was, her mind began to drift . . . Back to her kithood; to her first mating; back to the monumental battle that had made her First Female of the Colony , , , Back to the day the Khazalim had attacked with bows and spears, and she had sacrificed herself to save her kits and her people . , , Back to her capture, and the days of frustration, anger, and hatred; the torment of the Arena , . . Back to the fight with Aurian, and the utter relief of finding a mind that could communicate with her own, and the joys of friendship and freedom . . .

It was only the thought of her beleaguered friends that kept Shia going in the days that followed. It was vital that she find a way to rescue Anvar, for otherwise, Aurian would never escape. Her child would be slain by the Evil One, and she would remain in his power forever—or be destroyed by him, when she refused to fall in with his evil plans, as the great cat knew she would.

Shia was torn. She neither knew nor trusted any direct route to the northwest—in that direction, the mountains became higher, steeper, and less and less passable. In truth, that land could only be colonized by Skyfolk, and that was where their population was thickest. For many a long age they had been the bitter enemies of Shia’s people—she did not dare to risk going that way. So that only left the route she knew, the western pass from the ravaged Steelclaw peak; a more roundabout route, and one that led directly through the central territory of the great cats.

In all her travels with Aurian, Shia had dreamed of going home. Much as she loved her friend and Anvar, she missed her own kind—it was lonely being the only cat. Yet here she was, returning from exile at last, and she could not stay. Oh, she could have forgotten her friends, just dropped the Staff down the nearest chasm—there were plenty of them—and gone on her way, but she could never have lived with herself afterward.

The chief problem, the cat thought wryly, as she went on her way, would lie with her own people. Though the route to Aerillia lay through their lands, they guarded their territory jealously, even against the Chuevah—the solitary wanderers of their own species, who did not belong to the Colony.

These pitiful outcasts scraped a lone existence in the mountains—but usually not for long. They were the rejects of the Colony—the weak, the old, and in times of greatest hardship, even the very young. Those who had contested for leadership and been defeated were Chuevah; those who had transgressed against the Law of the Colony; those of the lowest degree who had been expelled when times were hard, and food was in short supply. There would be many of those now, Shia thought. This dire, uncanny winter must have brought hardship on the Colony, even as it had crippled the society of the Skyfolk. The casting out of its burdensome members had originally been intended for the common good—a pruning of the weak and useless so that the Colony remained vigorous and strong to survive its harsh surroundings. But perhaps, Shia reflected, the custom had progressed too far. Why, she thought, with a twinge of unpleasant surprise—I am Chuevah now! I too am one of those poor solitary scavengers—I, who once was First! The great cat knew that according to the custom of her folk, she would be forced to fight the current First Female in order to win her way through to Anvar—and woe betide her if she failed, for even if she should survive the battle, they would not permit her to pass through their lands. And look at me! Shia thought despairingly, Chuevah, indeed! Exhausted, half-starved creature that I am—what chance will I have against such a strong opponent, the most powerful female in the Colony?

Shia had been traveling for more than half a moon, skirting carefully around the eastern boundaries of the Skyfolk territory, when she finally reached the highest passes that led over the crown of the northern range. The wind up here was so strong that she could barely keep her footing, and it was snowing so thickly that she could barely see to the ends of her whiskers. The great cat hesitated. Surely no one could come through this and survive? Yet her instincts told her that the storm was steadily sweeping its way down the mountain. There would be no shelter back the way she had come—and she had passed broken ground laced with fissures and sudden drop-offs that would prove lethal to a cat that could not see her path.

“Get moving!” Shia startled herself with the words, “If you stay here you’ll freeze and die—then what will become of your human friends? Everything depends on you]”

Snow-blind and snow-drunk, the great cat staggered forward, thinking of nothing beyond putting one weary foot before the other. If she could only keep moving, she might stand a chance ...

Hours passed in an unchanging nightmare. Step by step, Shia staggered on into the teeth of the storm, not even sure, despite the uphill lie of the land, that she was heading in the right direction. Some buried instinct maintained her hold on the Staff; some lingering sense of self-preservation made her gauge each step carefully, lest she plunge blindly into a crevasse. Beyond that, Shia knew nothing. She was thinking, not of herself or her people, but of Aurian, of Anvar, and of her friend Bohan, who had always understood her without the need for words. For them, Shia kept going, walking a tightrope of life in the midst of conditions that would destroy her if she should falter.

The blizzard ended so abruptly that it took her unawares. Shia had no idea how long she had been ploughing grimly on, her eyes fixed blindly on her trudging feet, urging her weary, frozen body through breast-deep drifts. Suddenly she looked up, blinking rime-encrusted eyes, to discover that the snow had gone, and she could see at last. What’s more, she had reached the higher end of the pass! The truncated, shattered face of the Steelclaw peak and the lands of her people lay before her! When she saw the familiar shape of Steelclaw, Ship’s heart turned over in her breast. There were SO many memories here . . . She was home at last, but she was still as much of an exile as ever,

“Hold, Stranger!”

Shia froze, one paw uplifted in mid-stride. The sentinels came bounding out, one from a ledge high on the cliff above the defile, the other from behind a broken, boulder-strewn ridge. She dropped the Staff and sniffed the air, her whiskers angling forward to pick up messages of temperature and the movement of the wind. It would help to know the identity of her opponents.

The two black females, sleek and well muscled, stalked her, bristling, the fur on their backs hackled up to a threatening ridge. One was a stranger to Shia, a youngster, lithe, delicate, and wiry, who moved with the light-footed grace of a dancer. The other, much older, was of stockier build, with powerful shoulders and a thick ruff of hair around her neck, almost like a male. Shia, hiding the surge of joyful recognition that flooded through her, looked the older cat in the eye—a deliberately challenging move.

“Do you not know me, Hreeza? You, my mother’s den mate?”

The powerful old cat wrinkled her gray-flecked muzzle and bared her fangs in a snarl. “My den mate bred well and often. Do you expect me to remember every last stray kit? You could be anyone, Stranger.”

“What, you? Forget a kit that you helped to raise?” Shia’s ears flattened. “Don’t lie to me, Hreeza—not even to save your own face!”

“Will you let her talk to you like that?” The youngster’s eyes were blazing as she addressed Hreeza. “And what manner of evil thing is that?” She pawed carefully at the Staff of Earth, being careful not to touch its glowing length. Hreeza turned on her, one paw uplifted in threat, “Stay out of this!” she hissed. Hesitantly, she advanced toward Shia—and ducked her head to rub faces. “I never thought to see you again!” Her mental voice was gruff with emotion.

“Nor I, you.” Shia was purring with delight, but the older cat was ill at ease, and Shia guessed that the chief cause of Hreeza’s wariness was the Staff,

Sure enough, her mother’s former den mate raised worried eyes to Shia’s face, “What is that thing?” she asked, Shia did her best to look unconcerned. “A wretched piece of work, is it not?” she said brightly, “Human nonsense, of course. Soon it will be gone, Hreeza, I promise you. It need not concern our people. Who is First Female now?” she added softly.

“Gristheena!” The word was a hiss. “Shia, do you seek to contest the leadership! In your condition?”

Shia gave her the mental equivalent of a shrug. “Why else would I return?”

“Shia, you cannot!”

The great cat sighed—a bad habit that she had picked up from her human friends. “It may not be necessary. I hope it will not, for as you say, I am in no condition to fight But I have a promise to keep—a debt of honor, to a friend who saved my life. All I need is safe passage through your lands—if Gristheena will consent?”

Hreeza snarled. “You know she will not! You saved us all from the human hunters, Shia, with your courage and your sacrifice. To Gristheena, you will ever be a rival and a threat—and what better chance for her to finish you than now, while you are in this weak and weary state? Turn back, I beg you, before she finds out you are here!”

“Too late.” Shia’s eyes glanced significantly over Hreeza’s shoulder. The younger cat had vanished.

Though the vegetation on the lower slopes of Steel-claw had once been burned away in the cataclysm that destroyed the peak, a new and vigorous growth had eventually come to take its place. Before this winter, the feet and knees of the mountain had been swathed in lush green skirts of aspen, pine, and mountain ash. Dappled deer had sipped from limpid forest pools and salmon had flashed like slips of rainbow through the silver foam of the tumbling streams. The woods had been alive with birdsong, and squirrels had scampered with swift and fluid ease from branch to branch.

Now, Shia could barely recognize the place. Hreeza led her up the mountain between the shattered trunks of frost-cracked trees that leaned like dead black sticks, groaning beneath their burden of snow. The streams and pools were sealed and fettered in a prison of ice. No creatures moved within the stilted, brittle underbrush, or flickered through the straining boughs above. All was silent, still and dead; all color, all life, all hope, had been killed by winters white mailed fist. There was no need for stealthiness on these lower reaches. No cats hunted here now—what was the point? Shia and Hreeza might have been the only living creatures in the world. Had the great cat ever wavered in her determination to help Aurian and Anvar, all such thoughts had vanished now. Gripping the Staff of Earth more tightly between her jaws, she snarled low in her throat, and vowed vengeance on those who had done this to her land. The truncated peak of Steelclaw was shattered and pitted into a labyrinth of canyons and caverns. Crevices and channels honeycombed the rock where thick veins of ore had melted and run off in the intense heat of the mountain’s destruction. Not that the cats were aware of Steelclaw’s troubled history—they simply found the peak a safe and perfect place to make their dens and rear their young.

Hreeza still dwelt in the same old den—a cavern that looked down into the rock-strewn shadows of a narrow draw—where Shia had been born and raised. As she tottered across the rocky threshold, the memories came flooding back of her mother, Zhera, long dead at the hands of the hunting Skyfolk, and her two siblings, brother and sister, who had both perished in the Khazalim raid that had made Shia a captive. Firmly, the great cat shrugged the memories away. She had no time, now, for such self-indulgence!

Hreeza was digging in a pile of dirt and stones at the back of the den, and emerged within moments, dragging the entire carcass of a mountain goat. “Here,” she commanded. “Eat! You have little time!”

Shia looked at the dead goat in startlement, then, at Hreeza’s urging, fell upon it ravenously, “You are well supplied,” she said, “I feared that during this winter, there would be hardship for the Colony,”

Hreeza licked at one of Shia’s lacerated paws, “There has been great hardship,” she said harshly. “Gristheena has made many of our people Chuevah—mostly her own enemies.” She spat. “In addition, the Winged Folk have attacked us many times, hunting for furs, until only a handful of our folk remain!”

“then how come this? A whole goat? ” Shia indicated the diminishing carcass, in her mind, she felt Hreeza’s cat equivalent of a shrug. “We were fortunate,” the older cat told her. “Some days ago there was an avalanche down the side of the western ridge that brought down an entire herd of the stupid creatures—all we had to do was dig them out! For a brief time, there has been enough for all.”

For a time she was silent, grooming Shia while she ate, restoring warmth and circulation to the big cat’s muscles with a brisk and rasping tongue. “Shia, how did you come to return to us?” she asked at last. “How did you escape?” She nodded at the Staff of Earth, which pulsed like a slender green serpent in the corner. “And now did you come into possession of that dreadful thing?”

Shia, satiated now, was growing drowsy. “It’s a long and incredible tale,” she began dreamily, when—

“Come out, coward, and fight!” The cry of challenge—a long, blood-freezing yowl—echoed from outside the den. Shia snarled; her hackles rose along her spine. “I knew it would not take her long,” she said quietly. Stiffly, she got to her feet, “Usurper—I come!” she roared.

When Steelclaw had been blasted, the force of the destruction had hollowed out the center of the peak, leaving only the clawlike splinters of rock to snatch vainly at the sky. Beneath their shadow lay a bowl-shaped depression like the palm of that great grasping hand, its bottom humped and twisted in places by smooth runnels and strands of melted and recongealed black lava.

Unnoticed on his high perch, Khanu sat licking his wounds on a ledge above the canyon that for countless generations had served as the meeting place for the females of the Colony. He should not have been here, of course—this was no place for males, especially young, unimportant males—but Khanu’s furiously wounded pride had been eased by his small act of defiance. Today, he had tried, ambitiously, to mate with Gristheena, First of the females, whose usual mate had been slaughtered in the last attack of the Skyfolk. To his utter dismay, he had battled his way through a melee of older, more experienced suitors, only to be ignominiously, and painfully—Khanu winced as he tried to stretch his tongue out far enough to lick at the smarting claw-marks on his nose—rejected by the female herself.

Dusk was filling the snowy arena of the canyon with shadows, but Khanu, cold as he was, made no attempt to move away. He had something else to chew on besides his humiliation at the First Female’s hands. With his rejection, and Gristheena’s open mockery, had come the crushing realization that he was not as important to his Colony as he once had thought himself.

“But I don’t understand!” Khanu muttered sulkily to himself. “Males are bigger—males are stronger! We take our pick from the first fruits of the hunt, and the females stand aside until we have eaten!” While the young bachelors lived in a loose-knit group until they succeeded in winning mates of their own, each of the older, stronger males selected and served his own cluster of females—or so Khanu had thought until today. Now, it seemed, his world had turned upside down.

Males did not hunt, and provide for the Colony, Males did not sit in the meeting place, and make the laws for the well-being of all. Males took no useful part in the rearing and nurturing of the kits. Males, it turned out—and Khanu flinched from the memory—did not even select their mates. Oh, they battled fiercely for the privilege; but the final choice, as Gristheena had impressed upon him most forcefully, was always that of the female.

Following his rejection, Khanu had gone to talk with his own sire, Hzaral. A scarred, near-toothless oldster now, the veteran of many mating fights, Hzaral had long ago decided to withdraw from such fierce battles as attended the mating of a First Female. He was happy with his own two aging mates, one of whom was Khanu’s dam, and kept to himself.

“Is it true?” Khanu had demanded, bristling—and the whole bitter tale had poured out.

Hzaral shook his heavy, gold-shot ruff, and turned his massive head away to groom the dappled gold sunbursts on his flanks—the distinctive markings that his son had inherited. “What if it is?” he said indolently, turning to pierce the younger cat with his topaz gaze. “Think,” he told Khanu. “We are males. Why trouble with hunting, when females do it for us? Why waste time fussing with their ridiculous laws, or wearing ourselves out minding unruly, squalling kits? If females believe such nonsense makes them more important, who are we to want to change things? We do very well as we are!”

“But we don’t do anything!” Khanu had protested. “Especially in these times of hardship, we should be—”

In a blur of speed, Hzaral’s great paw lifted, and cuffed him, the force of the blow sending him rolling over and over.

“Learn wisdom, youngster!” Hzaral snarled. “The males are happy to have things as they are—and so, I suspect, are the females. Can you imagine Gristheena allowing you to meddle with her authority? Everyone has their place—how dare you try alter that! Do you wish to end up Chuevah?”

Khanu was mulling unhappily over these matters on his ledge when he heard the harsh, discordant yowl of Gristheena’s challenge. Within moments, the meeting place began to fill with females: emerging from the triangular tunnel-mouth in the southern cliffs of the bowl, leaping with dark, fluid grace down the rocky cliffs, and pacing with dignified haste along the top of the spur that jutted out into the crater. Like a breaking wavefront, the gigantic spur of black and glossy lava ran down from the northern rim of the natural arena, coming to an abrupt and jutting end almost within the very center of the bowl. Here, perched in every niche and cornice in the rippled stone, the females congregated, brought together by Gristheena’s strident call. Though he could make out few of their words, Khanu could hear the swelling background murmur of their excitement. One word, however, was repeated again and again.

“Shia!” they were saying. “Shia has returned!.”

Khanu had been about to creep quietly away, afraid of being discovered by the females in their own forbidden place. On hearing their talk, however, he abruptly changed his mind. “They have no right to keep me out!” he muttered rebelliously to himself. “This is as much my affair as it is theirs!” He shrank down instead on his shadowy ledge, to make himself inconspicuous, and trembled with excitement. This was one contest that he meant to witness!

The meeting place was entered from below by means of a dark twisting tunnel that snaked through the cliffs at the southern end of the crater. Shia paced in stately fashion through the darkness, not hurrying, conserving her scant energy, tilting her head at an awkward angle to maneuver the Staff through the narrow space between the crowding walls. Hreeza followed, muttering imprecations under her breath.

The last of the gray twilight was glaring to Shia’s eyes as she emerged into the meeting place. Though silence from the watchers was the rule on these occasions, she heard a murmur of amazement, and, if she was not mistaken, delight from the females on the spur, who were invisible in the shadows, except for a scattering of golden pinpoints where their eyes reflected the last light of day. Their joy changed swiftly to protest and consternation as they noticed the eldritch, pulsing glow of the Staff of Earth that she carried. I could have done without this—any of it! Shia thought wearily. Swiftly, she set her burden down at Hreeza’s feet. “Take care of this for me,” she said softly. Hreeza gave the Staff a skeptical look. “I’ll guard it for you, Shia—as long as I don’t have to touch the hideous thing!”

Then Gristheena was there. The First Female stalked into the center of the crater: fit and muscular, and as heavy and big-boned as a male. Shia remembered that even as a kit, the younger cat had been a swaggering bully with scant concern for others and an even shorter temper. According to Hreeza, little had changed.

As Contester and Chuevah, it should have been Shia’s place to speak first. Instead she remained obstinately silent, never taking her eyes from the hulking figure of the First Female, holding Gristheena’s glowering eyes with her own. Long minutes stretched by. The floor of the rocky bowl sank deeper into shadow. The two great females, hackles raised, stood eye to eye and glaring like raptors.

As Shia had expected, Gristheena was the first to weaken. “Chuevah!” She spat the word in contempt. “You do not belong here on Steelclaw, the territory and home of the Colony! Either fight or begone!”

Inwardly, Shia was laughing. By breaking the silence, Gristheena had lost face—and everyone had witnessed it. Ignoring the swaggering cat as though the First Female were beneath her notice, Shia lifted her head and addressed her invisible watchers on the spur. “I did not come here to fight,” she said, “and I am not Chuevah—for I was never expelled from the Colony! All of you except the youngest know me! I am Shia, First Female—returned from the dead!”

“Save your breath, Chuevah—to fight!” Gristheena sprang. Shia tried to dodge, but her weakened body betrayed her. The other struck her heavily, and they rolled over and over, locked together, clawing, biting, snarling, one on top and then the other. Fur flew up, floating like clumps of black thistledown, but neither cat could gain a solid purchase. They broke apart and circled one another, sidling, their eyes locked, fur erect, and lashing tails abristle. Shia’s flank was bleeding, scored and stinging, where the other cat had clawed her. Gristheena’s nose had been laid open; she sneezed, spraying blood, and in the instant that her eyes were closed, Shia cuffed her, left-right, across the head, ripping an ear. Snarling, her face contorted to a demon-mask, Gristheena lifted a threatening paw and yowled, a high-pitched, bubbling wail from deep within her throat.

Shia braced herself, expecting the heavier cat to rush her, but Gristheena was more wary now. Again, they circled.

“Listen, fool,” Shia told her. “There is no need for this! Had you but listened . . . Gristheena, I do not seek to be first. My path lies elsewhere—”

“Elsewhere, in truth!” Gristheena spat. “In oblivion, Chuevah, if I have my way!”

Again she sprang. There was no time to dodge—Shia met her headlong. Gristheena’s greater weight crashed into her and bowled her over. Shia, pinned and struggling, felt hot, wet breath on her neck as the other’s fangs sought her throat to crush and rend—but she had left an opening. Gasping, Shia embedded her hind claws in the soft flesh of Gristheena’s belly and ripped down—but she was gone.

Shia rolled over and scrambled after her. Gristheena whipped round to face her opponent—but just too late. Shia’s teeth met in her tail. Gristheena turned, hissing and screeching like a wounded eagle, but with her tail in Shia’s jaws, she could not reach her opponent’s body—nor Shia hers. Shia braced her legs and dug her claws into the crumbling stone of the crater’s floor, but because of her opponent’s greater weight and strength, she knew that she was likely to be overset at any minute. Regretfully, she chose her moment and let go of the tail.

Unbalanced, Gristheena went rolling over and over—right across the Staff of Earth as it lay on the ground. The great cat screamed as though she had been scalded and scrambled hastily backward, her whiskers bristling, her eyes flashing fire. The western route out of the crater—up and over the spur, turn back and down the canyon rim—was suddenly unguarded, for until the contest was settled, the other cats would not interfere. Shia seized the moment, snatched up the Staff, and ran.

Desperation gave such wings to her feet that she was on top of the spur in three great bounds, with cats scattering out from under her flying paws. But Shia had been mistaken in thinking her opponent had been cowed by the Staff. The breath shot out of her body as Gristheena hit her from behind with all the force of a snowslide. The impact knocked the great cat from her feet, and the Staff fell from her jaws and went clattering across the stones. Gristheena’s claws scored her flanks like firebrands, opening bloody gashes, and one great paw raked across her face, missing her eyes by a hairbreadth. Choking blood poured into Shia’s nose and throat. She felt Gristheena’s massive jaws, with their gleaming, ivory fangs, close around her windpipe . . .

Khanu had been watching the fight intently. He remembered little of the legendary Shia—he had only been a kit when she had been taken—but at the sight of her, his golden eyes stretched wide in admiration. The cat was lean and scraggy, but hard-muscled still—and oh, but she looked fierce! She was older than himself, but she was in her prime, at the height of both her fighting capacity—and her sexual potential. Khanu, leaning out from his ledge at a perilous angle to get a better view of the struggle, and forgetting, in his anxiety, that he had no right to be there at all, had willed her to win with all his heart.

Unfortunately, exhausted and half starved as she was, Shia could be no match for Gristheena. When the heavier cat brought her down on the spur, Khanu’s heart plummeted. It was all over now. No one was more surprised than he, when he found himself moving.

Aurian, I’m sorry. I failed you. Shia knew her death was very near now. Blue-steel claws pricked the tender skin of her belly, preparing to rip it open . . . And a massive shape, a blacker shadow in the gathering darkness, a whirlwind of teeth and claws, smashed into Gristheena from the side, sending her reeling, bleeding, toppling over the edge of the spur to the rocky floor of the crater below.

The furious protest of the watching females rose to a yowling crescendo.

“Run!” The voice came blasting into Shia’s mind. “They’ll be on us in an instant!”

“The Staff!” Shia cried, groping with flailing paws among the flaking slabs of stone on the ridgetop.

“This?” said another voice. “I have it safe! Now run!” It was Hreeza. Shia’s heart leapt with joy.

Wasting no more time, the three cats fled; Hreeza, Shia, and the strange cat who had saved her life. Leaping across chasms, streaking perilously between the boulders that littered the mountain’s ravaged western face, they ran as they had never run before, the horde of females surging and raging at their heels.

Hreeza staggered the last few agonizing steps up to the top of the bluff, and swept keen eyes across the broken slopes that they had just climbed with such difficulty. “I believe we’ve shaken them off our trail at last,” she panted. said nothing, but simply stopped amid the knot of wind-bent pines that crowned the bluff, and with a grateful sigh, allowed his aching limbs to collapse beneath him as he flopped to the snow-flecked ground. He looked hopefully at Shia, whose jaws were clenched in a deathlock around the glowing object that she had taken from Hreeza on the first day, and had carried ever since. Khanu knew that only sheer willpower had carried her this far.

Shia heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief at Hreeza’s words. “I truly hope so,” she muttered. “I can go no further!” She looked like death incarnate, and old Hreeza was little better. Khanu, a nonhunting male, who was unaccustomed to such exertions, admitted to himself that he too was in a woeful state.

For a day and a night, the furious cats from the Colony had clung to the trail of the three fugitives, pursuing them relentlessly down the shattered flanks of Steelclaw, and on through the canyons and passes that threaded between the two peaks to the west, where they had tried as best they could to keep below the snowline so as not to leave tracks for their hunters to follow. Since daylight, they had begun to climb again, and had penetrated into territories that were far beyond Khanu’s den. Above them loomed another mountain, a disquietingly different silhouette from the familiar shape that Khanu had been used to seeing all his life. Even as he watched, turgid snowclouds darkened the peak, rolling like massive gray boulders down the mountain toward him.

Khanu had interfered in the battle of the Queens through bitterness toward Gristheena, who had humiliated him, through awe and respect for the legendary Shia, and her brave, hopeless challenge—and through a desperate desire to prove himself. He had never stopped to consider that his impulse would cost him his future within the Colony. Now he too had become Chuevah. The thought made him tremble.

“I won’t think about it—not now,” Khanu muttered to himself. He shook his heavy bronze-black mane, as if to dispel such terrifying thoughts. “Are you sure we’ve lost them?” he asked Hreeza, who dismissed him with a withering glance.

“Would I be stopping, else?” she snapped. “Keep your foolish kitten questions to yourself, youngster!.” Her eyes flashed anger. “Why did you follow us?”

Khanu had enough sense to realize that hunger and weariness were making Hreeza snappish, but he was weary too, and the old cat’s dismissive attitude stung him. Lifting his head, he returned her stare. “I came with you because that was my wish. I came because of Shia—because I want to help her.”

“You want to help her!” Hreeza sneered. “You? A male? What possible use will you be? Shia has no wish to mate—she has more important matters to attend to! Why should we burden ourselves with you? You cannot even hunt!”

Khanu’s teeth clenched down on a snarl. “I can learn,” he bristled.

“Pah!” Hreeza spat her contempt.

“Be silent, both of you!” With an effort, Shia unclenched her blistered jaws from the Staff. Laying the artifact down, she looked from Khanu to Hreeza. “It’s no use you fighting,” she told them in the firmest of mental tones, “because neither of you are coming with me.”

“What!” Hreeza looked thunderstruck,

“You heard me.”

For an instant, Khanu caught a glimpse of the stern and forceful will that had made Shia a leader and a legend among her people.

Hreeza, however, was less easily overawed. “Indeed?” The old cat’s tail flicked scornfully. “I say that I will come with you. If you would stop me, be prepared to fight!”

Shia’s regal pose collapsed abruptly. To Khanu’s astonishment, she sighed and laid her head on her paws. “Hreeza, I couldn’t fight a snow hare at the moment, as well you know! But you should hear my plans, before you decide.” She took a deep breath. “I go to Aerillia, with the Staff of Earth, to save the life of a human—and to confront our ancient enemies, the Winged Folk.”

It was as if a thunderbolt had hammered into the them. In the concussive silence that followed, Khanu, his mind almost paralyzed by horror, could only think that Shia had gone utterly mad during her long exile. To climb the unscalable Aerillia peak? To venture alone into the stronghold of their bitterest and most deadly foes? And all to aid a human? He saw Hreeza rub a paw across her face as though Shia had struck her. For once the old cat was bereft of speech, and Khanu was shocked to see the shadow of doubt in her eyes; she who had always been Shia’s most loyal supporter. Somehow, the old cat’s reservations stiffened his resolve.

Khanu sucked in the breath that he had forgotten to take. “I will go with you, Shia. My siblings were killed by those wingborne monsters—I have some interest in this matter.” Khanu twitched his whiskers forward in a feline grin, “I always wanted to taste Skyfolk meat,”

“You will not go, foolish cub! And neither will Shia!” The words exploded crimson in a blast of rage from Hreeza’s mind, “Aerillia! Humans! Never have I heard such moonstruck folly! You won’t even get past the foothills of Aerillia peak! You will not go! I’ll kill you first!”

Shia flicked her tail, the cat equivalent of a shrug. “Then you must kill me, Hreeza,” she said calmly, “But why go to the trouble? As you said, the Winged Folk will likely perform that task—why have it on your conscience when you can let the Skyfolk bear the burden of my death?”

Hreeza recoiled, hurt and confounded. “I just wish I understood!” she snapped, “What is this Staff of Earth? Who is this human, that you should risk yourself for it? Your exile has changed you, Shia, beyond all knowing, What happened to you, while you were so long away?”

“I will explain, old friend, while we rest and eat—-for though we are weary, eat we must. So in the meantime, if you have sufficient energy to fight me, it would be better spent on finding us some food!” Her eyes twinkled wickedly.

“That is, if you’re still up to it, Old One!”

“Pah!” said Hreeza, unabashed. “I’ll find more food than you will—I who was foraging and hunting before you were born!” The old cat wrinkled her nose and curled back her lips, tasting the air. “We must hasten, snow is coming.” She turned to Khanu. “Youngster, you had best come with us—if you truly wish to learn to hunt.”

As the cats crept through the stand of trees, Hreeza, still bristling, took the lead. Khanu, making the most of the opportunity, approached Shia. “She will go with you, you know,” he told her softly. “Hreeza will go, and so will I. Whatever you say won’t make me change my mind.”

Shia looked at him. “I know,” she said wearily. “And fine fools you are, for not listening to me!” Then her harsh thoughts softened, and took on a warming glow. “Shamefully selfish it may be—but in truth, I would be glad of your company. I have been far too long in exile, without the companionship of my own kind. But know this, Khanu—this matter is so urgent that if I must sacrifice you both to the Winged Folk, I will do so without hesitation, should the need arise.”

The hair on Khanu’s spine lifted, as a shiver passed through his frame. “The Winged Folk will have to catch me first,” he said stubbornly.