Ijada had fallen to her knees, mouth open, eyes wide. In the second reality, the leopardess appeared…

Its fur was a silken ripple over moving muscle, its claws carved ivory; its brilliant amber eyes flashed with golden lights. It fell upon the writhing veins for all the world like a kitten upon a mess of cords, paws patting, then clawing, then pulling the hissing things toward it to bite at them with its great teeth. The veins lashed like whips of acid, leaving black burns across the elegant, spotted coat, and the leopardess snarled, a rich sound that shook the air, that shook Ingrey to his heart. From somewhere deep inside him, an answering growl arose.

His jaw began to lengthen…

No. No! I deny you, wolf-within! He bit down, clenched his teeth. Fought wolf, fought tentacles, fought his body, fought his mind, rocked nearer to his sword. Fight. Kill… something… everything…

The tortured chain twisted, an iron link snapping like a stick. His wrists and ankles were still bound, but freed from each other. His body straightened, and then he could writhe and roll, arch and turn. His sword was very close. Panicked feet trampled about him.

His real hands were as slippery with real blood as his second body now was with the strange red spew that flowed out of himself, onto himself. To his utter horror, he began to feel the links slip from his bleeding wrists, over his yanking hands. If he freed his right hand, reached his sword… surely none would leave this room alive. Perhaps not even himself.

He would take the yammering manservant’s head first, with a single stroke. Then turn upon the screaming women. Ijada was already on her knees like an executioner’s victim, strands of loosened hair falling forward veiling her face. The whipping sword edge, the pregnant one… his mind shied, denied.

Then howled denial, so fiercely that it turned itself inside out and transmuted to assent. Help them, save her, uphold me, wolf-within! Take of me, take…

His jaw lengthened, his teeth grew into sharp white knives. He began to bite and rip at the veins, snarling and shaking his head as a wolf shakes a rabbit to break its back. The hot blood spurted in his mouth, and he felt the pain of his own bites. He gripped, ripped. Pulled the things out of his body by their gory roots. Then it was no longer inside him, but in front of him, wriggling like some malevolent sea creature brought to the lethal air. He kicked at it with naked, clawed feet. The leopardess pounced, batted, rolled the shrieking red thing across the floor. It was, briefly, alive. Dying.

Then it was gone.

The second vision vanished, or rejoined the first, melting one into another, the leopardess into Ijada, his wolf-jaw—where?

His body sagged. He was lying on his back near the door, ankles still bound, bloody hands free. Bernan was standing over him, his face pale as parchment, a short iron crowbar gripped in his shaking hands.

A little silence fell.

“Well, “ said Hallana’s bright, strained voice. “Let us not do that again… “

A rumble of footsteps sounded from the corridor outside the chamber. An urgent thumping on the door: Ingrey’s soldier called in alarm, “Hello? Is everyone all right in there? Lord Ingrey?”

The warden’s frightened voice: “Was that really him, screaming like that? Oh, hurry, break it down!”

A third man: “If you break my door, you’ll pay for it! Hey in there! Open up!”

Ingrey stretched his jaw, his normal human jaw, not a muzzle, and croaked, “I’m all right!”

Hallana was standing with feet braced, breathing rapidly, staring at him with very wide eyes. “Yes,” she called out. “Lord Ingrey… tripped and upset the table. It’s a bit of a mess in here just now. We’ll see to it. Don’t concern yourselves.”

“You don’t sound all right.”

Ingrey swallowed, cleared his raw throat, adjusted his voice. “I’ll come down to the taproom in a while. The divine’s servants will deal with the… with the… mess. Go away.”

“We will take care of his injuries,” added Hallana.

A baffled silence, a mumble of argument: then the footsteps retreated.

A sigh seemed to go through everyone in the room but Bernan, who still brandished his crowbar. Ingrey lay back limply on the floorboards, feeling as though his bones were turned to porridge. He was sick to his stomach. After a moment, he raised his hands. The chains dangled heavily from his left wrist; his right, lubricated with blood, was free. He stared at it, barely comprehending the torn skin and throbbing pain. By the unpleasant trickle in his hair, his furious thumping around had ripped apart some of his new stitches, as well.

At this rate, I’m going to be dead before I ever get to Easthome, whether Lady Ijada survives me or not.

Ijada… He twisted around in feverish concern. Bernan made a warning noise and raised his crowbar higher. Ijada was still on her knees a pace or two away, her face very pale, her eyes huge and dark.

“No, Bernan!” she said. “He’s all right now. It’s gone.”

“I have seen a man afflicted with the falling sickness,” said Hallana in a distant tone. “This most assuredly wasn’t that.” She ventured near Ingrey again and walked around him, peering down searchingly over her belly.

With an eye to the crowbar, Ingrey rolled very slowly and cautiously onto his side for a better look at Ijada. The movement made the room turn in slow jerks, and his grunt came out sounding more like a moan, or perhaps a whimper. Ijada wasn’t leaping to her feet, either. She sat limply, her hands on the floor propping her; she caught his gaze, took a breath, and pushed upright. “I’m all right,” she said, although no one had inquired. All eyes had been on Ingrey’s far more spectacular performance.

Hallana’s head came round. “What did you just experience?”

“I fell to my knees—I was still on my knees, in this room, but at the same time, I was suddenly in the leopard’s body. The leopard’s spirit body—I did not mistake it for flesh. But oh, it was strong! Glorious. My senses were terribly acute. I could see! But I was mute—no, beyond mute. Wordless. We were in some bigger space, or other space—it was as big as it needed to be, anyway. You”—her gaze swung to Ingrey—”were in the place before me. Your body was sprouting scarlet horrors. They seemed to be of you, yet attacking you. I pounced on them and tried to bite them off you. They burned my jaws. Then you started to turn into a wolf, or a man-wolf, some strange hybrid—it was as if your body couldn’t make up its mind. You grew a wolf’s head, at least, and started tearing at the red horrors, too.” She looked at him sideways, in a fresh fascination.

Ingrey wondered, but dared not ask, if she’d hallucinated a loincloth for him as well. The wild arousal of his frenzied state was only now passing off, damped by confusion and pain.

“When we had ripped the burning, clutching things all out of you, they could be seen to be not many, but all one thing. For a moment it looked like a ball of mating snakes, raked from under a ledge in the springtime. Then it went silent and vanished, and I was back here. In this body.” She held up one long-fingered hand before her eyes as if still expecting to see pads and claws. “If that was anything like what the Old Weald warriors experienced… I think I begin to see why they desired this. Except not the part about the bleeding things. Yet even that… we won.” The pulsing dilation of her eyes was not just fear, Ingrey thought, but also a vast, astonished exhilaration. She added to Hallana, “Did you see my leopard? The bleeding things, the wolf’s head?”

“No.” Hallana huffed in frustration. “Your spirits were very disturbed, but I hardly needed second sight to tell that. Do you think you could return to that place where you were? At will?”

Ingrey started to shake his head, discovered that his brain felt as though it had come loose, and mumbled, “No!”