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accident.”
    She blinked at him. “No,” she said in a voice of reason, “I just told you. The leopard did not come to me till Boleso lay dying.”
    “Yes, but you could say otherwise. There is none to gainsay you.”
    Her stare grew offended.
    We must return to this argument, I think . Ingrey waved a weak hand. “Well. And then…?”
    “That night, in my cell, I had vivid dreams. Warm forests, cool glens. Tumbling in golden grasses with other young cats, spotted and soft, but with sharp bites. Strange men. Nets, cages, chains, collars. A ship journey, a cart journey. More men, cruel and kind. Loneliness. There were no words in these dreams. It was all feelings, and flashes of vision, and strong smells. A torrent of smells, a new continent of odors.
    “I first thought that I was going mad, but then I decided not. That closet was just like a cage, in a way; cruel and kind men brought food and cleaned it out. It was familiar. Calming.
    “On the second night, I dreamed the leopard’s dreams again. But this time…” Her voice faltered. Steadied. “This time, there came a Presence. There was nothing to see, in that black wood, but the smells were wonderful, beyond any perfume. Every good scent of the forest and field in the fall. Apples and wine, roast meat, crisp leaves and sharp blue air. I smelled the autumn stars, and cried out for their beauty. The leopard’s spirit leapt in ecstasy, like a dog greeting its master or a cat rubbing around the skirts of its mistress. It purred, and writhed, and made eager noises.
    “After that, the leopard’s ghost seemed pacified. No longer frightened or wild. It just…lies there contentedly, waiting. No, more than contentedly. Joyfully. I don’t know what it waits for.”
    “A presence,” echoed Ingrey. No—she said, a Presence . “Did a—do you think—was it a god? That came to you, there in the dark?”
    Did he doubt it? Luminous, Ingrey had called her, with a perception beyond sight, however denied. And even in those first confused moments, he had not mistaken it for mere physical beauty.
    Her face grew suddenly fierce; she said through her teeth, “It didn’t come to me, it came to the accursed cat . I wept for it to come to me. But it did not.” Her voice slowed. “Perhaps it could not. I am no saint, fit to have a god inhabit me.”
    Ingrey grubbed in the moss with nervous fingers. His split scalp had stopped dripping blood into his eyebrows, finally. “It was also said—though not by the Quintarian divines—that the Old Wealdings used animal spirits to commune with the gods.”
    Her lovely jaw clenched; her eyes turned a ferocious light upon him, so that he nearly recoiled. Only then, and only for that brief instant, did he see how much seething terror she concealed—had from the first been concealing—beneath her composed surface. “Ingrey, curse you, you have to tell me, you must talk, or I shall go mad in truth— how did you come by your wolf? ”
    Hers was not some idle curiosity, spurred by gossip. It was a most desperate need to know. And how much would he, in his first confusion so long ago, have given for some experienced mentor to tell him how to go on? Or even for a companion as confused as he, but sharing his experience, matching his confidences instead of denying them and naming him demented, defiled, and damned? And all the things he could never have explained even to a sympathetic ear, she had just experienced.
    It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands. He gritted his teeth; began.
    “I was but fourteen. It all came upon me without warning. I was brought to the ceremony uninstructed. My father had been for some days—or weeks—distraught about something that he would confide to no one. He suborned a Temple sorcerer to accomplish the rite. I do not know who caught the wolves, or how. The sorcerer disappeared immediately after—whether in fear of having botched the rite, or because he