“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.”
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