“It started raining. The rain around here can get torrential pretty fast. So it’s dark, raining, and I think I’ve lost the trail when I heard it.”
He tapped his ear.
“It was such a quiet sound I wasn’t sure whether I’d imagined it or not over the sound of the rain and the rush of water. I followed my nose, and found the cat,” he said. His gaze was unfocused, his mind obviously not on the here and now.
“She was a female white snow tiger, one of the most beautiful animals I had ever seen. She’d had one of the collars, so she must have been dropped here by the Legion. It lookedlike she had died of blood loss. Upon examining her, it became obvious that she had to have kits somewhere. Following her scent, I found she had made a den on the opposite edge of a gully. I guess it would have normally been a pretty safe place: hard to reach, far above the water. But with the storm, it had turned into a deathtrap.
“At first I thought the kits must have been killed, too, but then I heard one of them make a peeping noise.”
“I looked out across the wash and saw this tiny, bedraggled white kitten clinging to a dead branch that was spinning through the water.
“Good sense would have told me to leave them to their fate, but something in me…just wouldn’t let it go.”
“I jumped in the water and made my way over to the small creature. She saw me coming and started hissing at me, her fur soaked. Kind of like another Kat I met recently,” he said, winking at me.
“I grabbed her and stuck her inside my jacket. I was afraid at first, thinking she would claw me up, but she seemed to realize I was trying to save her, and she settled in quietly.
“I started back across the river when lightning struck a tree on the embankment. The tree fell and a large branch came down on me, knocking me off balance.
“I fell back into the water, which by that time, was like a flood. It was dark, I was disoriented, and starting to drown, when suddenly I felt something firm beneath my feet. The water had become solid and was moving under me. It quickly encased me, pulling me up out of the river. I could feel it wrapping around my chest, squeezing the kitten, and she began squirming more.
“I saw a man on the shore. I’d actually walked almost on top of him when I’d climbed down to get into the gully. He wasobviously a Water Mageia. He had used his powers to create a cozy, dry little area that the water seemed to avoid.
“He used his powers to move me over to the bank of the gully.
“Who are you?” he’d demanded of me. Coughing and wheezing I told him my name, where I was from and what I was. It was obvious he’d never heard of Somas.” He looked at me with a wry grin. “He’d asked me how I ended up there if I was Illyrian. After showing him the medallion and pointing out that it was probably the same people that were responsible for him being here, he demanded I give him one good reason why he shouldn’t kill me and take the trophy.”
“I tried to think of something that would sway him, but I drew a blank. Why shouldn’t he kill me? I didn’t really have a good reason. And I was so…tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of moving through each day alone. Just…done.
“I started to tell him I didn’t have a good reason, and just go ahead and kill me. Right then, the kitten had decided it had had enough, and she stuck her head up out of my jacket and hissed at him.”
“The look on his face was priceless. That kitten popping up had to be the last thing he had expected. He started laughing.”
Hel grinned at me. “The man made some comment about not depriving her highness of her escort, and that he would have to let me live.”
I grinned at Hel. That sounded like Davidus, through and through.
“When was the last time you saw him?” I broke into his retelling of their meeting.
“I sent him and Peepers back with the first group of Mageia we rescued.”
I looked at him curiously. “Peepers?” I asked. “You named a white snow tiger ‘Peepers’?”
He shrugged. “It was better than, Hey You!” he said.
“Since then, whenever there’s a Machi, I do my best to recruit as many of the Mageia as I can, and I smuggle them out to Illyria. We’ve rescued almost five hundred this way.”
I shook my head. Could the Elusians really be so stupid?
“What about the ones who don’t want to join?” I asked. “Do you offer them the same deal? Food and water, if they listen?”
He lowered his head and was quiet for a long time.
“No,” he said finally. “I mean, yes, I offer it, but for the safety of the rest, I can’t give it to them.”
“So you killed them?” I asked quietly, adding it all together.
He nodded; eyes focused on the fire.
