The Gate of the Cat

8

Another coarse-skinned line struck about her hips and in a moment all her struggling could not move her, except as her bonds wished, and she was being drawn straight to the shadowed side of the pit where there was an opening. By the floundering noises which she heard, Yonan was faring little, if any, better.

On her breast the jewel glowed, and she caught a faint glimmer ahead which might mark the power inset on Yonan’s sword hilt. By the light she herself carried she could see now that what held her in bondage looked to be two thick roots. Yet they had the mobility of serpents and by these she was being pulled roughly along, bumped from wall to wall, down a passage intended for creatures smaller than herself. Dank earth smeared her all over and she was spitting to clear it from her mouth.

Also the scent which thickened the air was stomach churning and Kelsie had to battle the nausea which arose to choke her throat. She judged from sounds that Yonan was being forced along behind her as she heard exclamations of disgust and anger.

It seemed to her that that passage lasted at least an hour or more—though it could not have in truth. Then she was jerked like a cork out of a bottle into a place where there was a ghastly phosphorescent light, such as might come from something rotten, proceeding from the tops of crooked stakes set up in a square. Into this trap the ropes snapped her and a moment later she was bowled over by Yonan landing hard against her as her bonds withdrew and his followed.

There was a crunching sound. A rock taller and wider than her own body had fallen to close the gap in the cold fire of the palings around them. Yonan was already on his feet and facing that doorway.

The tops of the palings, where that weird light gleamed, were well above her head as she got to her feet. There the light gathered into an unwholesome mist which hid from sight what might lie directly over them. She crossed her arms, rubbing the bruises near her shoulders where the ropes had cut the hardest. There seemed to be scratches there which smarted under her touch as if the rough surface of the rope had rubbed the skin bare. Yonan, because of his mail, must have fared much better.

He had given but a short inspection to the stone which served as a door and was now prowling along the side of the square, sword out and ready as if he expected some instant move against them. At length he aimed at a crack between two of the palings and levered but the steel made no impression on the giant fence.

“Your jewel,” he said abruptly,’ “can it cut our way clear?”

The gem still blazed, but it seemed to Kelsie that the light was less, as if the waning beams from the paling smothered it. However, obediently she stepped closer to the nearest fetid smelling pillar and held up the stone so that a lesser beam of the blue light focused directly.

To her eyes the wood, root, or stone, whatever that fencing might be, did writhe under the prod of the light. However, when Yonan, with an exclamation, pushed beside her to add his sword tip to the spot of light there was nothing hut an adamant surface there.

“Where are we?” Kelsie tried to tamp down her rising fear by asking in the most normal voice she could produce.

He shrugged. “In Thas hands. Where? We can be anywhere, as far as the outer world is concerned.”

“Wittle—”

“I do not think she was caught.”

“These Thas—”

“Serve the Dark,” he interrupted. “They hunt in packs and so can better pull us down. And their root ropes are harsh holding.”

“What do they want?”

“Beyond just evil mischief? I would say that jewel of yours. Probably not for themselves, they are servants of more mighty masters and have probably gone to report to those now. Soon we shall see what manner of the Dark they serve.”

“My jewel—” She slipped the chain over her head, allowing it now to dangle from her fingers and began to swing it back and forth. In her mind she concentrated upon it, bedazzled by the pulsation of its light as if she had never seen it so before. That waxing and waning followed a beat which began slowly but arose to draw faster and faster flashes from the stone.

Her own heart was beating quickly, in time with the stone? Of that she could not be sure. Nor did it matter. What did was that she must hold the jewel in her sight, concentrate on it completely, forgetting all else.

It was difficult at first, that concentration. Then in the whirl of light which followed the path of the jewel she saw something begin to form. There was no mistaking those hard features. Wittle! Yet the witch was not there, only a small semblance of her. Still Kelsie focused her full attention on that face and it seemed to her that Wittle was staring back as if she, too, could see them.

“Out!” Kelsie spoke the one word which meant the most to her now.

She watched Wittle’s mouth open. If the witch spoke the girl did not hear her with her ears. However, into her mind flashed what might be an answer or even some mischief of the enemies. She stopped the whirl of the jewel with her other hand. The face of Wittle abruptly vanished.

But now she held the stone on her palm in spite of the heat it generated, which seemed enough to sear her flesh from her bones. Yet still she held and pointed a single shaft of light, governed by her tormented fingers, not at the stake before her where Yonan had made his attack but rather to its crown where the yellowish evil-smelling haze arose from some unsighted fire.

The point of that light thrust struck the haze, cut through it She saw a bowl on the top of the shaft. It was that the light was attacking. She watched a blue spot appear on that side, grow not only in size but in brilliance. Then something dropped at their feet and the bowl showed a wide section shorn from it. Into that opening Kelsie beamed her light. But it was not enough. Into her mind spun that knowledge. She had not the full power she should have been able to summon—as a witch she was flawed by knowing far too little.

She spoke without turning her head. “Give to me the Quan iron. Lay it upon my wrist.”

Kelsie might have asked him to supply a brand to burn her past all healing. She gnawed at her lower lip, determined not to cry out—to forget the pain of her body, to concentrate only on what she had done and would do.

For that strip of blue metal was like a second force, feeding into the hands she had cupped about the jewel. The raw pain of it she would have to bear but the pulsations of the light grew greater and closer together, firing up the jewel’s azure beam.

Then-There was a roar—had she heard that with her ears or sensed the final confrontation of force against force in her body? From the now shattered bowl at the top of the stake shot another flash of light momentarily as vivid as lightning across the sky so far above them now. The haze itself appeared to catch from that flame and billow out not yellow now, nor blue but forming a white glare which punished her eyes until she had to close them. Something struck her shoulder, another object grazed her hip. She heard Yonan cry out. A mailed arm closed about her waist in an ungentle grasp dragging her back against his body as he, too, retreated. Her arms wavered and fell though she did not drop the stone except to spin by the chain she still held.

Above their heads there wove back and forth ribbons of fire and these coiled about the stakes which made up the walls of their cage. They burned then, those stakes, crackling open as might flesh caught in a blast of flame. The heat ate in as the two now crouched in the midst of the circle. Above the crackling of that fire Kelsie was sure she heard voices shouting a guttural refrain, but she could see nothing now for she had shielded her eyes from that searing display with one forearm. She was not even aware whether the stone had finished its mad spinning or not.

The crackling and the stench became worse. She was gasping and felt the similar labor of Yonan’s chest against her as they fought for breath amid the conflagration.

As yet the burning debris had fallen outward, she guessed, for the heat which struck at them was airborne, not from the gutted remnants of the stakes. Slowly that heat declined. At last Kelsie felt able to uncover her eyes and look about her. There were stubs of the stakes still showing ribs of spark producing fire. But outside that destruction there writhed and flailed those captor roots which had dragged them here. Now and then when one of the butt stumps blazed up the girl was certain she caught sight of some scurrying creature which in this light looked like a wadded pack of rootlets. It was possible that the owners of this trap were spinning another now, a more substantial cage for their captives.

Yonan moved from beside her. slowly. as if worn-out after a long day of tramping. While she was too tired to move at all. He tottered toward the nearest hole in the wall where the paling had burnt clear down to its root in the stone and with his sword he cut and stabbed at the small core of flame-eaten wood still showing above the surface. Then he held out his hand to her.

“Come!”

“Can’t you see that is just what they want us to do—they are waiting there,” she answered. She greatly doubted at that moment she could do no more than crawl on her hands and knees, and so provide easy meat for those waiting beyond.

He came back to her in two quick strides, and, his hand under her armpit, pulled her up to her feet.

“They are confused,” he said as he half led, half supported her to the exit he had contrived. “Whatever lord they serve—neither he nor his higher servants can be here now.”

Kelsie could not see how he was so sure of that. But she was too tired to argue and she needed what strength and courage she had left not to waste in futile argument, but to be ready to face what lay beyond. That the breaking of the cage set them entirely free she doubted very much indeed.

They stepped over the narrow path fire that Yonan’s sword had opened for them. In the failing light from the almost destroyed paling she could see that indeed roots crawled across the floor, the nearer ones heading for them.

Yonan made a quick thrust to his left, not using the point of his sword but bringing down the hilt sharply against the raised end of the nearest root length. The thing squirmed and drew back. On its surface where the iron must have touched there was an oval of light which spread swiftly as if power continued to eat into it.

It was then that Kelsie heard clearly a dull thud, a thud which was drumlike in its regularity but muffled. Also, there were other sounds in the rhythm of a chant.

As the seeking root writhed away from them, bearing its growing glow, a second one threw itself out, or was so thrown from some perch in the dark, whipping across the floor as if meant to sweep them from their feet. Kelsie lashed out the chain of the stone which was now a sullen shadow of itself. That also landed fair enough to send the root rope out of their way.

She tried to concentrate on the gem as she had in the pen but she could not summon up the same sure power she had known then. There was only a die-away spurt or two. Yet that appeared to be enough to keep the roots at bay. She wondered if Yonan knew where they were going. As far as she could judge he was heading on, straight into the dark. Again it was as if he could read her fatigue-deadened mind.

“There is an opening ahead. Taste the air—” She could see in the faint light from jewel and sword his tongue tip showing then between his lips as if he did in truth test so the fetid atmosphere. And she copied his gesture.

There was something! It was almost as if she had been offered a cup of water in the midst of all the fumes and heat of this dark place. The girl could see that her companion kept his tongue so as he urged her forward. Some of her strength seemed to return as she went until she could pull away from him and walk forward on her own.

The steady thunk-thunk of the distant drums and a hissing noise filled this place and she could hear voices rise and fall until it seemed that she could sort out the direction from which those came—to her right. The root ropes kept pace with them and now one or another, or sometimes two together would try once more to entangle their former captives. Though it appeared that Yonan need only show them the Quan on his sword hilt for them to flinch back.

Kelsie became aware that the stone under their feet was sloping upward and once she was sure she caught sight of a pale streak of light before them. Then came a sudden silence. The drums and the voices ceased, even the hissing of the root ropes faded away. She tongue-tried the air again—

The freshness was still there but in her nostrils was an ever growing taint of filth and damp and other odors she could not put name to. There might be an entrance somewhere ahead as Yonan believed but there was also a menace in between.

She gathered the stone swinging on its chain into the tender flesh of her hand and held it against her forehead. There was no reason that she could have told for that gesture, it simply seemed the right thing to be done.

Though her eyes were fastened upon the darkness ahead, there appeared in her mind another picture—that of a packed mass of the misshapen creatures she had only half glimpsed in the fire-lit ruin of the cage. To the fore were three who pounded with misshapen fists on the flat surface of bowl-like instruments they held between their knees. While the tooth-filled jaws of all showed as they sang no—called! Called upon what or whom? Kelsie shrank from knowing but she did not break the touch between her forehead and the jewel.

There was a swirl of reddish-yellow just before them drawing in upon itself, curdling into something far more sturdy than the mist from which it was born. Kelsie had expected a face, even a full figure, but what she saw was a sign which was a mixture of dots and lines, a pattern which reached outward for her own mind—offering more danger than the burning cage. She let the jewel fall forward but not before she gained a firm belief that that which had set the pattern had also been aware of her, and that they were far from being free from the hands of the servants—Thas—or perhaps even other and more powerful aides.

Only Yonan continued to walk steadily ahead and she saw that his attention was all for the Quan iron as if that could act as a scout and give them warning. Was the stone equal—

It flamed and the heat of that flare made her let it slide from out her fingers to dangle again. There were no roots this time to come slithering out of the dark. Rather she saw the light of her jewel mirrored in a mass of pairs of red points on the floor—eyes—?

“Rasti,” Yonan broke the silence which had held between them.

Though there was a river of those eyes near the floor, it did not spread or try to engulf them as she had feared that it might. It would seem that these other dwellers in the dark were now as wary of them as the Thas had become. Yet, though they stopped their advance, they milled about, covering the rock between the two and what might be a door to the outer world. In experiment the girl swung out her jewel to the full length of its chain and noted that there was a wavering of the line in answer to that.

There sounded a shrill tittering call, rising sharply above the thumping of the bowl drums. The flood of the rasti parted, leaving a lane down which came something greater than the Thas, taller, stronger, and, Kelsie recognized by the instant repulsion in her, far more evil.

The yellowish light which had flowed from the stakes flared up once more spreading out from a rod that newcomer held. By its light the girl could see a figure as tall as Yonan, one which wore no armor, nor indeed any clothing at all, except patches of shaggy hair.

It pranced rather than strode, as if it were weaving a spell now by some unknown ritual. The crooked, hairy legs ended in hooves which were split for half their length. And those in turn kicked out at the rasti, striking home now and again against one of the animals to send it chittering and whirling off to thud against its fellows.

The rest of the figure was crooked of back as if it could not, because of its breadth and thickness of shoulder straighten to full height. Its belly protruded obscenely and altogether it was a daunting creature.

But above that crook-backed, flatulently-bellied body there was a head and that was as startling as if two separate creatures had been bound by some disgusting spell into a single form. For the head was perhaps neither male nor female, but it was that of great beauty with flawless features and masklike calm. While the hair which wreathed it was not the coarse stuff it grew elsewhere but a silken fall, brilliantly red in the light.

Strangest of all Kelsie discovered was the fact that it walked with closed eyes but not with the hesitation of something blinded, rather as if its body obeyed one set of rules which did not even reach behind the lowered eyelids.

She felt movement beside her. Then Yonan was facing the thing, with his shoulder before hers, as if to push her back and away from danger. The jewel was flaring up again and she could feel its drain on her own resources of spirit.

“Ah, Tolar that was—you have become over brave in these days. Or have you forgotten Varhum during your years of exile?” Those perfectly-formed lips moved extravagantly as the creature spoke and the lid-blinded eyes were clearly turned toward Kelsie’s companion.

“Tolar is dead—long since,” Yonan answered sullenly. “I do not remember.”

“You mortals,” the head shook a fraction and the voice was almost humorous. “Why do you so fear what is offered you? You were Tolar and perhaps the better for it, when last we met. That you must wait to be born again is the whim of the Great Power. But to refuse to remember, ah, Tolar, that is foolish. Varhum’s walls were breached by—”

“Plasper forces,” Yonan interrupted harshly. “And you are—”

“The eyes and mouth, and sometimes the weapon of one greater than you of the Light can even guess. Yet was I also once of your blood and kind.”

There was a moment of silence, even the chittering of the rasti had stopped. Kelsie was aware of a shudder through her companion’s body so close did they stand now.

“At Vock—?” It sounded like a question rather than the naming of a place.

Now the perfect lips curled in a small cruel smile. “Excellent! You see when you put yourself to it you can remember! Try no tricks to hide memory, Tolar. You know who I am in truth—Call my name if you dare after speaking of Plasper.”

Again Kelsie felt Yonan’s shudder. But what she could see of his face remained as unchangeably calm as did that other’s.

“Lord Rhain.”

“Yes. And there were other names they called me that day, were there not? Traitor, Betrayer, Dark One! In your sight I was all those, was I not? But you see I have grown in wisdom—though that was the beginning of such wisdom—when I realized that we were swords for the wrong side—when Kalrinkar had the strength of the future with him. And so—” those crooked shoulders shrugged and again the small smile was shaped by the lips alone, “I lived—

“In such a guise!” burst out Yonan.

“Do I properly afright you, once comrade? If I wish—from the mouth came a curl of smoke which grew longer and denser, curling around that misshapen figure to hide it from sight, though Kelsie was very certain that it was still there. There was a small puff of yellow-red and the smoke was gone. In place of the hairy, bloated body which had confronted them was a straight limbed, nearly majestic man whose frame now fined well his fine head and handsome features. Kelsie had the idea that this was certainly all illusion. Yet he was as real seeming now as he had been moments earlier in the half-bestial disguise.

“You see,” even his voice had a different lilt, one far more human, lacking the subtle contempt the other had held, “I am truly Rhain—”

However, Yonan shook his head slowly. “You were Rhain. Now what are you to the eyes of those who stand by the Light?”

On impulse Kelsie, though again she could not have said why she did it, swung out the Witch Jewel by its chain. The bluish beam which had continued to emit now touched the tall, perfect body of he who confronted them. There was a fluttering in the air, almost as if some delicate glass had shattered and what she saw was the grotesque body come back into place while Yonan said loudly:

“Even our eyes you cannot bespell now, in spite of what you once were—”

But Rhain’s attention had swung from the man he claimed as a former comrade to Kelsie and now there was as ugly a look on his face as to match his body.

“Witch!” he spat and a droplet of moisture hit the ground between them. “So you serve a female now, Tolar—you who were once your own man? Little do they repay those who march for them, being no true womenkind but only wills to rule. And you, witch, you shall find here that which you stake your life upon will have but little value. Long since Escore learned its secrets and powers which your kind may only have dreamed of dimly.”

Power—into her from the jewel there was a warm flow—the draining she had felt so before was reversed. She began to walk slowly forward, edging around Yonan, then conscious that he had fallen in step with her. She raised her hands heart high at the breast and between steadied the jewel awkwardly, then more skillfully, as she sensed that what she was doing was right and meant to be. She fastened her will on the gem and once more reversed the flow, giving back to it what it had given her.

She heard dimly and then shut firmly out of her mind the chittering of the rasti who had milled around their master’s feet, beyond that came the muffled sound of drumming where the Thas must have still lingered. But what held her mind and body was concentration on the jewel, rejoicing in the flaring up of its brilliance, in spite of the weakness it was leaving within her.

He who named himself Rhain, for all his brave words, fell back before her each step of hers being equaled by one of his retreat. His handsome face twisted more and more into a scowling pattern and now he hunched his crooked shoulders and shuffled his hooved feet as he fell back.

He gave a cry and she was aware of surge of the rasti but she dared not drown the beam of the jewel. It was Yonan who swept forward with his sword, keeping clear the space before her. And Rhain cried out again, this time louder, more demanding.

Out of the dark came the living roots of the Thas—out to shrivel into nothingness as the gem light beat upon them.

“This is the best you can do, my lord?” Yonan’s voice was both harsh and calm. “You who once commanded the Host? Your vermin are sadly less than that.”

Rhain flung back his head and from his throat there came a roar as might be given by some great tormented cat. In Kelsie’s hand the gem trembled and for the first time the steady beam of its radiance blinked.