concrete passage, out of the smells and clamminess, into a cool, rustling wood. This was such a relief that I didn’t feel tired any more. I stretched and snuffed up the cool green smells – pine trees and a sharp, gummy scent from head high ferns, and bark and leaves and bushes that smelt almost like incense – and I kept on walking, deeper into the wood and uphill.
The incense bushes in front of me started rustling. Then the ferns swayed.
I stopped. I kept very still. I could feel my heart banging. Something was definitely coming. But I was still not prepared for it when it did.
The ferns parted and a smooth black head slid out and stared me in the face with huge yellow eyes. For just one instant I was nose to nose with an enormous black panther.
Then I was up a tree, the tallest tree I could find.
In between was a blur of absolute terror. If I think about it, carefully, I think the panther sort of said Oh, hallo in wordless panther talk, and I’m fairly sure I screamed. And I do, slightly, remember staring around with tremendous speed to choose the best tree, and then listening to my own breath coming in sort of shrieks while I shot up this tree, and I even remember yelling “Ouch!” when I peeled one of my nails back on the way up.
Then it all stops with me sitting shakily astride a branch watching the panther coming up after me.
“Bugger!” I said. “I forgot panthers could climb trees!”
Naturally we can, it said. It settled on the branch opposite mine with one great paw hanging and its tail swinging. What are we doing up here? it asked. Hunting?
There was no doubt it was talking to me. Well, I thought, this was a dream. So I gave in to it and answered, “No. I’m supposed to be keeping watch in case anything supernatural attacks the Prince.”
The panther yawned. It was as if its head split open into a bright pink maw fringed with long, white fangs. Boring, it said. I hoped you might want to go hunting.
“Let’s do that in a bit,” I said. I was feeling weak with terror still. “I agree,” I said, hoping to persuade it to go away, “keeping watch is really boring. I may have to be here for hours.”
Oh, well, the panther said. It let down its three other huge paws, put its black chin on the branch and went to sleep.
After a while when I couldn’t look away from it in case it went for my throat, and another while when I didn’t dare move in case it woke up and went for my throat, I sort of got used to the fact that I was sitting in a tree facing a big, black, sleeping panther, and I began to look about. Carefully and slowly. Arnold had said “pick up your totem beast” and I supposed that this panther might be my totem beast, but I didn’t believe this, not really. As far as I knew, totem beasts were a part of a shamanistic magician’s mind, which meant they were not really real, and I could see the panther was as real as I was. Anyway, I wasn’t going to take a chance on it. I sat and turned my head very slowly.
I was looking out over the tops of trees, but that was only the ordinary part of wherever I was. Tilted away sideways from the wood was – well, it was a bit like a diagram in lights. The nearest part of the diagram was a low-key misty map of a town and, beyond that, was a sparkling, electric hugeness that seemed to be sea. Nearer to me, at the edge of the lines and blobs that made the town, I could see a striking, turquoise oval. It was like a lighted jewel and it had a blob of whiter light at each end of it and two more blobs in the middle of each side.
“Oh!” I said, out loud without thinking. “Their magic did work! Those blobs must be them – Arnold and Dave and his mates!”
The panther twitched and made a noise in its throat. I didn’t know if it was a growl, or a snore, or its way of agreeing with me, but I shut up at once. I went on staring without speaking. It was fascinating, that lighted diagram. Little bright sparkles moved inside the turquoise oval of the stadium, and one brighter one stood still quite near the middle. I wondered if that was the Prince. But it could have been one of the umpires. After a bit, I noticed moving smudges of light out in the sea that were probably ships, and one or two quicker ones moving in straight lines that I thought were aircraft, because some of them made lines across the town. They were all in the most beautiful colours. None of them struck me as dangerous. But then I wouldn’t have known what a threat to the Prince looked like if it came up and hit me.
Anyway, I was stuck in this tree until the panther decided to leave. So I simply sat and stared, and listened to the rustlings and birdcalls in the wood, and felt as peaceful as anyone could be stuck up a tree a yard away from a lethal black panther.
The panther suddenly woke up.
I flinched, but it wasn’t attending to me. Someone coming, it remarked, head up and all four paws on the branch again. Then, like a big slide of black oil, it went noiselessly slithering away down the tree.
My forehead got wet with relief. I listened, but I couldn’t hear a thing. So, rather cautiously, I let myself down from branch to branch, until I could see the panther crouched along one of the very lowest boughs below me. Below that, I could see bare, pine-needled ground stretching away to bushes. Another animal was walking across the pine needles, another big cat, only this one was a spotted one, with long legs and a small head. This cat was so full of muscles that it seemed almost to walk on tiptoe. Its ugly, spotted tail was lashing. So was the panther’s, only more elegantly. The cat looked up, past the panther, and straight at me. Its eyes were wide and green and most uncomfortably knowing. When it got near the tree, it simply sat down and went on staring, jeeringly.
Then a man came out of the bushes after it.
He’s a hunter, I thought. This was because of the way he walked, sort of light and tense and leaning forward ready for trouble, and because of the deep tan on his narrow face. But I couldn’t help noticing that he was dressed in the same kind of suede that Arnold and his pals were wearing, except that his leathers were so old and greasy and baggy that you could hardly see they were suede. Hunters can dress in leather too, I thought. But I wondered.
He came up beside the ugly spotted cat and put his hand on its head, between its round, tufted ears. Then he looked slowly up through the tree until he saw me. “Nick Mallory?” he said quietly.
I wanted to deny it. I wanted to say my name was really Nichothodes Koryfoides, which is true. But Nick Mallory was what I had chosen to be when Dad and I adopted one another. “Yes,” I said. I meant it to sound cautious and adult, but it came out weak and defiant and resentful.
“Then come down here,” said the man.
As soon as he said it, I was down, standing on the pine needles under the tree, only a couple of feet away from him and his cat. That close, I could tell he was some kind of magic user, and one of the strongest I’d ever come across, too. Magics fair sizzled off him, and he felt full of strange skills and strong craft and deep, deep knowledge. He knew how to bring me down from the tree with just a word. And he’d brought the panther down with me, I realised. The poor beast was busy abasing itself, crawling on its belly among the pine needles, and pressing itself against my leg as if I could help it, absolutely terrified of that spotted cat. The cat was studying it contemptuously.
“I had quite a bit of trouble locating you,” the man said to me. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to watch the boundaries for anything that threatens the Prince,” I said. My throat had gone choky with fright. I had to cough before I could say, “You’re threatening him, aren’t you?”
He shrugged and looked around as if he was getting his bearings. To my surprise, although there were trees all round us, I could still see the lighted turquoise oval of the stadium and the sea shimmering beyond it. It seemed like something on a different wavelength from the wood. But the chief thing I noticed was that the man’s profile was like a zigzag of lightning. I’d never seen anything more dangerous – unless it was that spotted cat. I kept as still as I could.
“Oh, the Plantagenate Empire,” the man said. “I’ve