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wrinkling.
"What is it?"
    "An herb cats find enjoyable. I think
they'll follow you now."
    "Behold me delighted," murmured the
King and sighed.
    "Friend Kinzel. This I lay upon you.
Should I not return -- you will go to my lady and explain what has
transpired. You will tell her how you were able to call me here, so
she may guard herself from like attack." He sighed
again.
    "She will know, should I die. So ward
yourself well before you go to her. Her temper is not overgentle,
and her way with weapons nearly equals my own."
    Kinzel bowed and brought the staff
between them, so the other could see the Power glittering there.
"This thing I do swear, should you fall in the service of the
Right."
    "A mighty oath, friend Kinzel..." And
the King was gone, one shadow among many, fading toward the steel
and stone walls.
    The outer door was locked -- the work
of a moment. Val Con slid into the corridor beyond, making sure
that the door did not relock itself.
    Empty, the hallway; lit sporadically
by three smoky torches. The shadows were deep and
plentiful.
    The second door stood wide
open.
    Val Con paused in a pool of shadow,
glaring. He bent and located two stones on the floor.
Straightening, he tossed one through the door.
    Nothing.
    He faded closer, and threw the second
stone.
    A lance fell point-first from high up
and buried itself solidly in the granite floor just beyond the
doorway.
    "Ah," breathed Val Con. Then he was
through, hugging the wall and pretending himself invisibly
weightless.
    #
    The cage was not large.
    Cats had been piled within it like
lengths of furry firewood. The smell was very bad.
    Wrinkling his nose, Val Con had
recourse to the lockpick once more. The hinges groaned when he
pulled the door open and he froze in a half-crouch, eyes and ears
straining.
    Nothing.
    Your luck is either very good or very
bad
, he
told himself, frowning at the curiously still pile of bodies. It
occurred to him to wonder if the prisoners were dead.
    But the scrawny tortoise-shell he
plucked from the top opened its eyes sufficiently to glare, though
it did not offer battle. It closed its eyes and sighed.
    Val Con held it by the scruff of the
neck and shook.
    Eyes open and ears back, the cat
hissed, claws reaching. Val Con tossed the outraged feline into the
cageful of its kin.
    There was a flurry of activity, dying
quickly out. The man thrust his arms into the heap, shifting cats,
sweeping them out of the cage and onto the floor, stirring things
around as best he could.
    Suddenly, they were everywhere:
Twining about his legs; clinging to his hands; trying to climb his
leathers. One enterprising individual actually leapt to his
shoulders and began a barrage of purrs upon discovering the
herb-dosed hair.
    Cage empty, Val Con swung the door closed and locked it,
and started back the way he had come, one hundred and forty-seven
-- forty-
six
the acrobat was still draped about his shoulders -- cats
grouped close around.
    #
    Val Con stood in the center of the
protected clearing, though he would have liked to sit down. The
prospect of being immediately engulfed by cats checked the urge;
instead he reached up an absent hand to scratch his newly-acquired
fur piece under the chin.
    "All of them! And so quickly!" Kinzel
was saying, reaching down and capturing one fine orange-and-white
fellow. "You will be with your wife before dawn," he continued,
sitting on a rock and restraining the cat by main force. "We only
need -- oh."
    Val Con stirred. "What is
wrong?"
    "Nothing. It is only that I am
stupid." Kinzel looked up. "He took their curiosity
away."
    Val Con raised a brow. "Not too bad a
notion," he murmured. "They will live longer so. And be less
troublesome."
    "But they won't be
cats
!" cried the wizard. "It's the same as
taking away their instinct to hunt. Or their purr. Or
--"
    "Yes, of course," soothed the King,
drifting closer. "And I am certain that, since it is Right that
cats be curious, your staff will now put all in order and I