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and looked out from the cliff as if she did not notice the flash of Tsia's eyes.
Tsia struggled with her breathing. Her eyes seemed blinded by the movement of the woman's clothes in
the wind. She was focused like a hunter, she realized. She was taking in Ruka's will as if it was her own.
It was like the heat of a fire: all-consuming, all-surrounding. She shuddered visibly, and Nit-picker noted
it out of the corner of her eye. The pilot's darkeyes caught movement the same way that Tsia did through
her gate, and the shudder that Tsia fought to control was as ob-vious to Nitpicker as the wind that
rippled through Tsia's hair. The pilot had seen the guide like this before when fire had called Tsia as
strongly as her gate. When she had been drawn to the flames as strongly as she was sucked in by the
cats who crawled in her mind. How did she really think anymore? How far could Tsia be trusted?
Nitpicker shot a glance at Tsia's throat, and tightened her lips at the bruising. The blackness of her finger
marks was as dark as the whiteness of the claw marks on Tsia's face. The swollen flesh as thick as the
anger that seeped from Tsia's muscles. The pilot balanced like Tsia against the wind and tried to feel the
currents as if they were heat instead of chill air.
"I suppose this seems like fire, not rain, to you," she shouted.
Tsia nodded.
"Still crave it?"
She shook her head. She knew what Nitpicker asked, and the pilot seemed intent, but not intent on her.
"I'm ten years out of my gate," she answered, expanding her gate to search where Nitpicker focused.
"Only new guides have a physical need to dance in the flames."
"You don't need the fire at all?"
"Not need, no," she returned. "But desire, yes. The heat on my flesh& The smell of ash in my sweat& "
"Then it's the biogate, not the firepit, that calls you now?"
Slowly, Tsia nodded. "I can feel the cats as far away as that mountaintop." She gestured with her chin.
"Strong gate. Too strong, perhaps?"
Tsia turned her head and met Nitpicker's eyes, and her gaze had a wildness beneath the dark blue that
was not fury, but ea-gerness. "You and the others," she said softly, "you're right not to trust me. A tarn
can call me to it just as easily as I could call that same cat to me."
"Your mutation was not supposed to stay so wild, Feather. You were supposed to become controlled.
To be able to control your gate like you do your ghosts in the node."
"I did. I can."
"Yet you say they call you, too?"
Tsia closed her eyes. "As easily and strongly as the node calls you through your temple link." Cat feet
skittered across her skull, and she rubbed at her temples, then threw back her head and screamed the
cry of the cougar into the wind. Behind the two women, the other meres leaned against the wall of rock
and watched.
Nitpicker eyed her for a moment. "You've lost yourself, Feather. You've given yourself up to your gate."
When Tsia opened her eyes, they glinted. "My hands don't shake; my thoughts are clear. I'm not
controlled by this," she said flatly. "There's only myself inside me; and the gate it's a door, not a void."
"I look at you and see a cat clawing its way out of the hu-man skin which surrounds it."
Tsia's lip curled. "You're the one who doesn't see me clearly, if you see only the gate in my mind."
"I see more than your gate, Tsia. I see a guide so lost she knows only the trail she treads, not the life she
wishes for her-self. I see a Feather so buffeted by the wind that she has no path of her own. I see you
accepting your biogate as if it was your only view of the world."
"I'm a guide. I can't help but see through the gate."
"See through it or live through it?" Nitpicker studied Tsia for a long moment. "If you were threatened if
you were told the gate would be taken away, what would you do to save it? How far would you go to
protect yourself at the expense of those around you?"
Tsia's eyes narrowed. "You think I'd betray you to save my-self? That I'd trade your life for my gate?"
She nodded slowly. "That's what you think has gone on here, isn't it? You think I've been working against
you."
"Have you?"
Tsia's jaw tightened. "There's something you're still not saying, Van'ei."
"Look at you," Nitpicker returned harshly. "Your eyes are wild. Your fingers curl like claws. You look
like a stormwitch, not a guide. I can see you dancing in this as if it were fire, not wind that whipped your
hair. As if your blood burned the same way as your anger. I see death in your footsteps, Tsia-guide. I see
it when you're threatened when you're angry. And I see it when you connect with the cats." She eyed
Tsia with a cold look. "You never left the cub behind, did you? You drew him here with us, and all along
this trail, he's been clouding your mind so that you can't even remember that you're human."
Tsia could not answer, but the expression in her eyes was enough for Nitpicker to tighten her lips in fury.
"So. I'm right." She stared out into the valley blindly until she saw the points of light that marked the
freepick stake. "Zyas dammit," she swore finally. "No cats as scouts; no ob-ligations; no calling by the
humans: that's the Landing Pact that the cats themselves negotiated. But here you are, taking advantage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]