Pokos padded off toward the stream in the starlight. “I’ll fish.”
Watching as he disappeared, Bessie approached Catherine cautiously and said, “So that’s Spelopokos? He seems... very nice.”
“I don’t think nice is quite the right word to describe him. He killed two men today, Bessie. Snapped their necks as quick as you please. I thought he was going to take their heads off. That last man with the buckteeth who came to look for the other two, won’t wake up for a while. Pokos’s growl did something strange to him. Shook him up inside somehow.”
Bessie’s eyes grew large. She moved closer and whispered, “He won’t hurt me, will he, Catherine?”
“No, Bessie. Pokos is on our side... or we’re on his. I’m pretty sure we smell like good, anyway.” Catherine wondered as she said the words just exactly what good smelled like.
“We smell good? Is that a good thing?”
“Better than smelling like evil, take my word for it. He—” Catherine broke off when she noticed Pokos returning to camp with a fish in his mouth.
Twenty minutes later Pokos had caught five fish. Catherine cleaned them and Bessie cooked them. Pokos ate four, and Bessie and Catherine stuffed themselves on the fifth. All the while the three men lay sprawled and snoring.
“Seems a pity to have to leave this warm fire, Pokos, but shouldn’t we get away now?” Catherine asked.
“I am going to sleep for a while, then we will depart. Stay awake and watch the men.” With that Pokos closed his eyes. The rumbling purr he made could be felt through the ground.
Catherine and Bessie talked on into the night, happy to see each other. Bessie spoke of her life in the village and her dreams of one day becoming a fine cook, perhaps for the tavern, some place where many people would eat her food.
Catherine told Bessie all about her life. Things she had never discussed with anyone—the castle, her father and mother, Sir Gavin, Cook (and at Bessie’s urging, the exact dishes Cook prepared for the royal household), Wolfy, her horse Charger, and how she met Pokos. For the first time, Catherine had someone to talk to about the planned marriage to the Candlewax king. Bessie listened without comment, and Catherine felt the relief of sharing her burden. A burden she had not realized was quite so heavy.
The fire started to die down and still Pokos slept. Catherine watched sleepily as the log she added sent a billow of sparks into the night sky, up toward the stars. Pokos’s eyes opened to narrow slits at the sound of the crackling. The slits parted farther until he was wide awake, staring at Bessie intensely. He sniffed the air and rose to his paws.
“There is danger. Bessie is glowing,” he said.
“Oh Catherine, your necklace! I forgot!” Bessie’s hands flew to the pendant hidden inside her dress. She grabbed the chain and lifted it off of her head.
Catherine took the talisman and put it back on, careful to tuck it inside her clothes. “No need to worry,” she reassured Bessie.
“Silence!” Pokos snapped. The girls froze while he concentrated on the sounds of the night. “Get your things. We must leave.”
Catherine made sure her dagger was secure in its sheath and put the pack back on while Bessie slipped into her shoes. Pokos paced all the while, peering at the crest of the trail ahead.
“Follow me. I’ll carry you both across the stream, but then you will have to run alongside me.” Pokos crossed the stream with the girls on his back, Bessie in front, clutching his neck fur, terrified. On the far bank they got off and sprinted as best they could after Pokos in the dark. Only the stars illuminated the tree branches and rocks, but with the fairrier cat fur in their socks they had no trouble seeing where they were going.
Pokos set a brisk pace for a short distance and then stopped abruptly. They could still see the campfire.
“We watch from here.”
Bessie and Catherine lay down behind a fallen log and watched the fire. Nothing happened for a long time. The fire had died down to coals. All seemed peaceful. Catherine began to wonder if perhaps Pokos was mistaken.
Then the sound of horse hooves made the girls start. Over the rise, coming from the direction that Kallik’s men had been traveling, came a glow in the night air. Horses with men bearing torches thundered over the hill. They engulfed the camp in a mad rush, the bright flames of their torches casting eerie shadows of legs, weapons, and men outward to the edges of darkness. Catherine sucked in her breath, realizing that the horses might have trampled them if they hadn’t moved.
“Who goes there?” Jessup’s slurred bellow was belligerent. He was just able to lift his head from the ground, and he seemed not to notice that he had come close to being crushed.
“Stand to address the Candlewax king!” shouted one of the men. Jessup wobbled to his feet.
A rider in the midst of the soldiers nudged his horse forward until he was facing the inebriated Jessup. Catherine couldn’t see his features. Her palms grew instantly damp and her breath came in shallow gasps. The Candlewax king!
He was of medium build, perhaps just a bit taller in the saddle than her father, but not as tall as Sir Gavin. He wore no crown. He doesn’t need to, Catherine thought, annoyed. An obvious air of leadership easily distinguished him from his men. A crossbow was slung carelessly across his back. Catherine strained to see him better, but he was turned toward Jessup.
“Who are you? What is your business?” asked the king with brusque authority.
“I be Jessup of Tabrek, and Kallik be my lord. Have you got a drink? Let’s have a drink!” Jessup’s head bobbed to the side.
“Where are the rest of your men? We collected six horses on the trail. I see only three of you here.”
“Hunting. Still out. Missed a fine meal they did. My princess can cook, she can!” With that thought, Jessup began to look around for Bessie.
There was an angry rumble from the men, then silence. The king’s horse danced sideways in response to the tension, and his master’s quiet voice held an urgency that made Catherine tremble. “Princess? You have the princess?”
“A fine, pretty lass. Too bad she has to go to Kallik. I’d like to keep her for myself I would. Good cook. Good at catchin’ fish too!”
“Did you hurt her?” he demanded. The Candlewax king’s question made the drunken Jessup flinch.
“Naw. Well maybe just a little knock on the head when my men caught her. She’s a fast runner, my little princess.” Catherine heard, with satisfaction, the king’s men gasp and grumble their outrage.
“Where is she? I demand to see her at once!” The Candlewax king’s control was slipping.
Jessup looked around at the soldiers surrounding him and shook his head in dismay. “Last I saw her we were listenin’ to someone out there singin’. Yes, someone was singin’ ‘View from Mt. Krenaka.’” His eyes drifted closed, then slowly opened again. He smiled. “It’s where I’m from, Mt. Krenaka. Ever been there? It’s very nice. Beautiful.”
“Search the area!” ordered the king. He swung his horse away from Jessup, obviously frustrated; the light of the men’s torches flickered across his face.
Catherine strained for a glimpse of him. His hair was dark. Unlike her father, he was clean-shaven. He was scowling into the woods and for an instant Catherine was sure he was scowling directly at her. She shrunk down farther behind the fallen tree. She still couldn’t tell if he was made of wax or flesh, but his eyes were dark, brooding, as he looked out into the woods in their direction.
He’s young! Perhaps twenty! At most twenty-five!
Catherine was so surprised that she jolted backward and her knee snapped a dry tree branch with a loud Crack! Pokos glared at her, his eyes a glowing gold. Bessie clapped a hand over her mouth in panic.
The king’s horse pricked up its ears and its nostrils flared. The king patted his mount and whispered reassuringly. The horse was dark brown or black. Catherine couldn’t be sure. Something about the way he talked to the horse gave Catherine a bad feeling. It was just like she had talked to the sorr
el before she had charged down the path that fateful day she ran away.
“Pokos, he means to—” Her whisper of warning that the Candlewax king was going to charge was too late. He had already goaded his horse to a run, torch in one hand, sword in the other, reins in his teeth. Three of his soldiers immediately followed their king, weapons drawn, the rest not far behind.
Pokos leapt to his feet. The girls scrambled to get on his back, Bessie first and then Catherine with her pack.
“Hold on to his neck fur!” Catherine urged, just as Pokos shot into the dark.
The great cat ran hard, but it was soon obvious that the extra weight was slowing him down. The king did not seem to be without his own problems, though. He crossed the stream at a run and charged up a grassy slope, only to slacken his pace inside the woods as his horse picked its way through the terrain by torchlight. Pokos was confident as he dodged branches and jumped around rocks. One of the horses caught a good whiff of the cat and neighed in protest.
The king swore loudly and then signaled for his men to spread out as they pressed forward. He bellowed after them, “Foolish girl! Think you to run? I suppose you would rather be with Kallik than with me?”
The Candlewax king’s words stung Catherine, shaking her to the core. I certainly didn’t choose Kallik! He has no right to call me foolish! “No one is going to choose my future but me! I don’t choose you or Kallik!” she screamed back over her shoulder. Her words reverberated like a slap through the forest.
Pokos surged forward in a burst of speed. Catherine could just make out the light of the flickering torches through the tree branches as they moved ahead.
All night they pushed on into the darkness, and to their dismay the men of Candlewax pursued without respite. Catherine heard their voices clearly through the moist night air. Why won’t they give up? How can their horses travel so well at night?
Sometimes the girls ran beside Pokos. Sometimes he carried them for brief spells. Catherine’s shoulders ached from the pack but she didn’t complain. Gradually the sounds behind them grew fainter.
At dawn Pokos stopped to hunt. The girls ate sausages and cheese from Catherine’s pack and drank from a forest spring, trembling with exhaustion and fear. They dozed off and on while Pokos ripped his way through a deer carcass.
“We mustn’t let them catch us, Pokos,” said Catherine sleepily. “I won’t have him humiliating me with his taunts.” Catherine was now furious that the Candlewax king was still pursuing them. What can be his purpose? What revenge could he possibly take without suffering extreme retribution from my father? Surely he must know that if any harm comes to me at his hands it would mean war with Crystallia.
“A little humiliation is not harmful, Catherine,” said Pokos in between bites. “The Candlewax king might have other reasons for pursuing us.” Catherine tried not to look at him. She noticed, with some amusement, that Bessie was avidly watching every move as he shred the deer with his huge teeth.
Oblivious to both of them, Pokos continued speaking between bites. “By now he knows he has been tracking two people and a cat. He will be very curious about this arrangement. If he is clever he might even know that he has happened across a fairrier cat.”
“Of course, Pokos! He’s after your skin!” Bessie looked horrified. “He wants to rival Kallik, and your skin will make it possible for the king to defeat him. We must get away.”
“He won’t dare touch you,” Catherine said heatedly. “We will fight. You can get away while they’re busy with us!” She suddenly felt guilty for thinking only of herself. And I am supposed to be protecting him.
“Perhaps.” Pokos sounded doubtful. “Though if Cyril is anything like his father and grandfather, then I have nothing to fear from him. There have been stories. The prophecy. Never more than an echo on the wind... stories of a fairrier cat’s cries.”
“A fairrier cat in the Candlewax Kingdom?” Catherine couldn’t believe her ears. Her throat tightened, as if someone’s hands were around her neck, squeezing.
“Not in the kingdom itself. Beyond. In the high wilderness of the Cinna Range—beyond Lackanay. It is where we must go.”
“Why haven’t you ever gone there yourself to see if the rumor be true?” asked Bessie. Pokos stopped eating and stared at her. Bessie looked as if she wished she had not spoken.
“Only the wearer of the pendant can safely pass through the high gate that leads out of Lackanay and into the Cinna Range. Its enchantments have stopped those who have tried without the pendant.”
Pokos sighed deeply. Bessie and Catherine waited for him to continue.
“There was a fairrier cat who was once so weakened by the effort that he had to return to his birthplace in Tabrek to recover. A fairrier cat’s birthplace is a powerful source of renewal. His—ours—was a cave in the mountain they call Rokura, near Krenaka. Before he could get there, Kallik’s men found his tracks in the snow. He was too weary to conceal them. They pursued him night and day. They gave him no time to hunt. When they caught him he was so weak that he could not defend himself.”
“How horrible!” cried Catherine.
“It is his skin that Kallik now wears,” Pokos said, head bowed. “His name was Nepozadan. He was... my brother.”
Catherine caught her breath. Pokos had a brother? She reached out, stroking his neck fur. “We didn’t know—we’re so sorry. But if I am wearing the Ancient Onyxes doesn’t that mean that I can safely pass the high gate?”
“Yes. And all who cross with your touch. Your grandmother had wanted to cross through the Cinna Gate once she knew that Kallik was driven from Crystallia. She would have attempted it, too, but I stopped her. She had grown too old to safely make the journey. The mountain weather could have killed her. I refused to take her even though she insisted. That was the year that she surrendered the pendant to you. You were just five or six at the time.”
“Seven,” Catherine muttered. She thought back to that moment and tried to remember what her grandmother had said—“It is not what it’s made of that makes it special, Catherine, but the love...” Why did my grandmother never tell me the truth? Why has it been kept a secret from me all these years? Surely my grandmother wanted me to fulfill the quest and help Pokos.
“She should have told me about the true purpose of the pendant!”
“She always meant to, Catherine. You were young. She trusted your father to tell you when the time was right.” Pokos sounded apologetic.
“My father knows? All this time he knew?” It was inconceivable that she had been kept in the dark all this time when the future of Lackanay was at stake. What’s Father trying to do now? Stop me? Bring me back home so I can marry that arrogant, young king?
The Candlewax king! She had almost forgotten that he was riding on their heels. No sooner had she thought of him then the faint but unmistakable sound of a horse’s whinny reached them. Catherine sat down and put her head in her hands, groaning. This stupid king will never give up chasing us, and in daylight those horses are going to be even faster. How can Pokos and I possibly cross through the heart of Candlewax to the Cinna Gate without his leave? Catherine considered the scroll within her dagger. Would the young Candlewax king honor the seal of his father? Or, would he hold me prisoner, or worse? For Lackanay’s sake, I cannot chance his good will. She suddenly realized what they had to do.
“Pokos, we run no farther.” She raised her chin and leveled her gaze at him. “I am going to build a fire. It would be nice for Bessie and I to freshen up a bit before we meet the Candlewax king.” Pokos and Bessie stared at her in surprise.
Catherine gathered her long blond tresses in her hands, feeling their familiar thick silkiness. Then she pulled her dagger from its sheath.
“Bessie, I’m going to need your help.”
Cyril cursed as a branch swatted him across the chest. One more he had failed to see in the torchlight. The pace of the princess astounded him. Whoever is with her is running just as fast. What did Kallik’s man say? “M
y princess, she is a fast runner”? That was an understatement.
In the interest of a speedy pursuit, he had ordered his men to leave Kallik’s ruffians as they were. It was likely that they were just conscripts from Tabrek who felt no deep loyalty to their lord. No self-respecting Candlewax soldier would have let the princess escape, but Kallik’s men were notorious for their poor discipline. Only when Kallik himself was present did they show any real backbone for fighting.
It was old Menard who had spotted the cat tracks. He was the best tracker of all of the soldiers of the Candlewax Kingdom—not that you had to be such a good tracker to notice these. They were the largest cat tracks Cyril had ever seen.
“It’s very strange,” said Menard. Crouching low, he had seemed unaware of the torch so close to his face, caught up in the story the trail told him. “First there are two sets of footprints alongside the cat tracks and then there are only the cat tracks. Then, a mile later, the two sets of footprints are back. Most unusual.”
Menard straightened and raised his bushy eyebrows, giving Cyril a look that meant he wondered if the king knew what he was getting into. Cyril ignored it. The night had taken them into unexpected circumstances. They had gone from being a search party, to accosting Kallik’s men in an effort to find Princess Catherine, to chasing the fiery-tempered girl by torchlight. Cyril’s own emotions moved from embarrassment to consternation to fury. The princess didn’t even want to meet me! He ground his teeth. She is my betrothed! She has abandoned her duty to her family! To her kingdom! For what? Is the idea of marriage to me so loathsome?
Menard was up ahead looking at the tracks again.
“Back on the cat they are. See here—heel marks of two people, a bit of smudging around and poof! They’re gone. Just like they were getting on a horse, only this here is no horse. In fact, the horses can’t stand the scent. They’ve been skittish since crossing Courtney Creek.”
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