The hot blood flamed in Causleen’s face, and pallor followed. If a knife had been ready to her hand, there would have been murder done, here where the wind roared and fluted over Trolls Hill.
“Go,” she said, “back to the styes that bred you!”
“I will go, little beggar on horseback. If you knew what errand I have been on—but, then, you do not know.”
Nita stood poised on slender feet, like a wild deer of the hills, but tarried.
“I’m skilled in divination,” she went on, her voice reminding Causleen, in some haphazard way, of Jonah, the brindled cat when he was playing with a mouse. “Shall the basket-weaver tell you what is coming?”
In spite of herself, Causleen felt weak and a child in the other’s hands. The magic that had kept Garsykes Men in thrall was drawing her into its webs. She followed Nita’s finger as it pointed to the road below, where the track from Logie split in two—one grey lane going flat to Garsykes, the other winding steep and rocky to a cavern gaping open-mouthed across the green face of the pastures.
“Do you see where the tracks divide?” purred Nita. “A man will come to the two-ways by and by, and take the upper road. And you will follow.”
Causleen remembered Hardcastle asleep at Logie; and he was the one man in the world she would ever follow willingly.
“It is not true,” she said, with chill disdain.
The basket-weaver made no answer. But still she did not go, and her silence began to mesh Causleen again with unseen nets. Yonder was Garsykes, foul and a menace centuries old. And close at hand was Nita. She felt utterly alone, as if friendless leagues divided her from Logie and her man.