haring off, the butcher took no chances. He locked the scullion in the tool shed with a half-filled bucket and a whetstone. The cats could find no way in, however hopefully they sniffed and circled. In time they were compelled to settle in disgruntled bundles on the door stoop.

    Inside, the shed was suffocatingly hot. Hedged by darkness inadequately beaten back by a bark spill soaked in resin, Trionn set to with the whetstone. He braced the bucket between his knees, and worked the marred edge of a sickle, his mind consumed by awareness of the cats' balked desires. He was powerless to ease their unhappiness.

    The butcher jammed a wedge under the sill outside. Until he chose to return, or someone else happened by to fetch a tool, Trionn's imprisonment was complete. The likelihood nobody would visit the shed before the spill burned out did not matter. Silverdown's servants had left for the meadow, the reason for their gathering a distress that already fretted the scullion raw. He dipped the stone and resumed honing, relentless in his determination. He would not think upon what must inevitably happen when the gypsy raised her powers to subdue the stud.

And yet the moment touched him, all the same.

    The tones of the gypsy witch's call clamored through him like the struck chime of a bell. The whetstone slipped from Trionn's fingers and splashed into the bucket. Droplets warm as blood trickled down his shins. He did not feel their wetness. Nor did he notice as the spill flickered out, leaving him kneeling in darkness. His eyes were vision-bound to a sunlit meadow, and the form of the slate dun stud shaking back his mane, his ears snapped forward to listen.

    The gypsy sorceress repeated her call, lower now, almost wheedling.

    Trionn felt the resonance of her tone play through the marrow of his bones. He remained oblivious to the ribbon of true blood that laced his wrist, from the knuckle laid open on the sickle.

    His eyesight remained locked as his mind: on the horse, who twitched glossy skin, as if to drive off flies. But it was no insect that stung him. From her perch half on, half over the fence, the gypsy crooned out a binding. The stud's ears flattened and he stamped, where once he would have thundered into a run with his teeth bared in fury.

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