pected of them. The day faded into a warm and pleasant night,
and they began to grow comfortable with their surroundings.
Steff sat with Teel before the gathering fire and smoked a long-
stemmed pipe. Par worked in the kitchen with Coil cleaning the
dishes, and Morgan took up watch on the front steps.
“Someone has put a lot of effort into keeping up this cot-
tage,” Par observed to his brother as they finished their task.
“It doesn’t seem reasonable that they would just go off and leave
it.”
“Especially after taking time to make us that stew,” Coil
added. His broad face furrowed. “Do you think it belongs to
Walker?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
“None of this really seems like him though, does it? Not like
the Walker I remember. Certainly not like the one Steff tells us
about.”
Par wiped the last few droplets of dishwater from a dinner
plate and carefully put it away. “Maybe that’s how he wants it
to appear,” he said softly.
It was several hours after midnight when he took the watch
from Teel, yawning and stretching as he came out onto the front
porch to look for her. The Dwarf was nowhere to be seen at
first, and it wasn’t until he had come thoroughly awake that she
appeared from behind a spruce some several dozen yards out.
She slipped noiselessly through the shadows to reach him and
disappeared into the cottage without a word. Par glanced after
her curiously, then sat down on the front steps, propped his chin
in his hands, and stared off into the dark.
He had been sitting there for almost an hour when he heard
the sound.
It was a strange sound, a sort of buzzing like a swarm of bees
might make, but deep and rough. It was there and then just as
quickly gone again. He thought at first he must have made it up,
that he had heard it only in his mind. But then it came again,
for just an instant, before disappearing once more.
He stood up, looked around tentatively, then walked out onto
the pathway. The night was brilliantly clear and the sky filled
with stars and bright. The woods about him were empty. He felt
reassured and walked slowly around the house and out back.
There was an old willow tree there, far back in the shadows,
and beneath it a pair of worn benches. Par walked over to them
and stopped, listening once again for the noise and hearing noth-
ing. He sat down on the nearest bench. The bench had been
carved to the shape of his body, and he felt cradled by it. He sat
there for a time, staring out through the veil of the willow’s
drooping branches, daydreaming in the darkness, listening to
the night’s silence. He wondered about his parents-if they were
well, if they worried for him. Shady Vale was a distant memory.
He closed his eyes momentarily to rest them against the wear-
iness he was feeling. When he opened them again, the moor cat
was standing there.
Par’s shock was so great that at first he couldn’t move. The
cat was right in front of him, its whiskered face level with his
own, its eyes a luminous gold in the night. It was the biggest
animal that Par had ever seen, bigger even than the Gnawl. It
was solid black from head to tail except for the eyes, which
stared at him unblinkingly.
Then the cat began to purr, and he recognized it as the sound
he had heard earlier. The cat turned and walked away a few
paces and looked back, waiting. When Par continued to stare at
it, it returned momentarily, started away again, stopped and
waited.
It wanted him to follow, Par realized.
He rose mechanically, unable to make his body respond in
the way he wanted it to, trying to decide if he should do as the
cat expected or attempt to break away. He discarded any thought
of the latter almost immediately. This was no time to be trying
anything foolish. Besides, if the cat wanted to harm him, it could
have done so earlier.