The Gate of the Cat

11

Kelsie need only touch Yonan’s shoulder and he was instantly awake. His face turned toward hers and she realized that she would not tell of Wittle—since she had no intention of carrying out the witch’s suggestion. Settling in his place on the mass of grass they had pulled for a bed she willed herself to sleep. But she had not willed herself to dream and she never knew whether it was the doing of the witch from Estcarp or her own imagination which straightway plunged her into one of the most realistic nightmares which had ever aroused her sleeping fears.

Kelsie was back in the room of the star into which they had entered so unceremoniously. But the walls were intact now and the star itself blazed on the floor as if drawn in lines of living fire. What crouched in the center of that field of protection was wholly alien. The thin gray-skinned body was hardly removed from a skeleton with skin and not flesh to cover the bones. Two leathery wings were half folded about that same body as a man or woman might pull a cloak.

However, it was the head and face of the creature which drew her full attention. The face was narrow, the nose more beak than just a nasal passageway and the chin retreated sharply. It was the eyes which dominated that sliver of countenance—huge and faceted as might be those of an insect, all seeing and—all knowing.

This was no servant of some adept who had pulled into this realm through his or her use of power. No, this was the adept! And that thing was aware of Kelsie for it swung swiftly around, the unreadable eyes turned on her.

In hands, which were more like the talons of some bird of prey than palms with fingers, it held a slender rod topped with a point of Quan iron burning as blue as did the helm of Yonan’s sword. This it also swung until it was leveled straight at her.

The small mouth under that beak of nose twisted, open and shut, as if the thing were chattering some speech, question, or bit of ritual. Yet Kelsie did not hear with either mind or ear. Then she traced a shadow of expression on the avianlike face. The spear-wand arose and gestured through the air, leaving trails of blue smoke after it. And that smoke outlined what could only be a face.

A face and yet not a face. There was rigidity to it which more nearly suggested a mask, yet one far more human in appearance than the countenance of the creature which had summoned it. The mask slipped down, fitted itself over its creator. Now the creature arose and fanned its wings outward. Those were no longer dull grayish skin but rather formed a nebulous of light about a thoroughly human body and the creature was a woman.

Though the hands which held the rod might have changed, that weapon or trapping of power remained the same. Once more it traveled through the air and the curls of light which followed it straightened into a line moving out toward Kelsie.

Her wonder and beginning wariness was sharpening into fear. Though she was more than a little afraid of Wittle she could summon at least an outward stand against the witch. But this bird-woman was more than Wittle, Kelsie knew that instinctively. Whether she stood in the lines of the Dark or the Light there was no guessing for outward strangeness of body did not mean inward twisting of mind and belief.

Who—what—now claimed her?

There was warmth about her and Kelsie took heart from that for it seemed to her that with the evil always accompanied cold. Perhaps it was the jewel awakening to this other manifestation of the beyond-world.

“Far traveler—”

Into Kelsie’s mind beat the words. It seemed part of a question. She was not aware of her physical body so she did not nod, only accepted the designation as the truth.

“Waker of the sleeping—”

“Not by my choice!” Out of her mind arose the answer.

“Back and back,” continued that mind voice. “There was a choice and you were open to it—

For a fraction out of time she stood again on Ben Blair and struck up the gun which was aimed at the already wounded wildcat. Was that the choice which had led to this?

“There was a choice,” the winged one replied to her scrap of memory. “There have been others and will be more. You have dared one of the ancient ways, you will dare another—and yet another—”

“Do you wish me ill?” Kelsie sent that thought impulsively into the dream.

“For me there is no well nor ill. But you have evoked the power in a place where once it dwelt. Thus you have loosed yet more of the stuff of struggle. That long asleep stirs, be careful at how you welcome it, woman of another world. Be very careful.”

The wand dipped its point, the illumination which made the figure look human failed, she saw again the gray skeleton, its beelike eyes trained upon her. There was a remoteness which was raising a wall between them. If she had had any thought of appealing to this other one for aid to come that fast withered and was gone. Neither of the Light nor of the Dark, this was one removed by choice from the battle. But who else was now awakened to what passed in 1-score through Kelsie’s and Yonan’s intrusion?

“What will you do?” She dared to ask that now of the alien thing once more crouched within the blazing star.

She had an impression of cold amusement. “Ah, but that choice is mine. And I do not choose—”

The inner room of the ruin, the winged one, all of that vivid dream was gone in an instant. Instead there was darkness and a freezing cold. In that darkness something moved, leaned forward to observe her, something aroused from a lethargy which had lasted for ages. It would seem that here were balances. This thing she now fronted so blindly was the obverse of the winged thing. It did not try to communicate, it was merely fastening her in its mind, homing in upon her as a link with the world.

This was danger! Do not let it read her—stand against it! Her only weapon was the jewel. Still she hesitated to use it here. She stood within the boundaries of a place which was wholly inimical to all of her kind, and that which languidly ami lazily observed her was something which she could not see—only feel the slimy touch of its curiosity.

Think of the jewel—no! She believed that that was the last thing she must do here and now. Think of—Ben Blair standing tall on another world—the world of easy life which was her own. Grimly Kelsie clung to her mind picture of the mountain, strove to recall its scents, its very being.

Was the thing in the dark deceived? She had no way of telling but she was drawn away from that place quickly and awoke, to find Yonan on his knees beside her, his hand on her shoulder as if he had physically pulled her out of that place of foulness and threat.

“You dream—” there was a tone in his voice which was faintly accusatory.

“You broke it!” She was aware of warmth, perhaps not of the night around her—the true night—but rather that of companionship. Since Yonan had joined them on the trek she had many times realized that his skills were what might bring them to whatever goal the jewel had imposed upon her. But this waking was one of the things which was even more to her service.

“We have awakened something by our passage,” she told him with eager haste, wanting to share with another human, to free herself from that fear and that sense of being now linked to what she did not understand.

In the moonlight she saw him frowning. He flicked a finger at the jewel she wore, not quite touching it.

“Such a symbol may indeed call—

Her first warmth faded. After all was it not his sword which had provided the key that had opened this door?

“Yours the key,” she returned.

There was a flush on his face which she could see even by moonlight. At first she thought he was not going to answer, then he said:

“Each time we use power we may be troubling the scale. And the result may not include only us.” His hand was on the Quan iron in his sword hilt. “You dreamed—or did you answer some call of another?”

She told him then—of the winged creature and then of that which had stirred in the darkness. At her story of that his mouth straightened and she saw his sword hand tighten.

“We go—This,” he waved to the ruin, “is a focus through which they reached you. If we go—” But he had already turned to bind up their now scanty possessions. The slightly smoked meat he stowed in the coarse bag he had woven while he urged upon her the foot covers, awkward and hard to fasten.

There was a grayness along the horizon when they had made their simple preparations to be on the trail again. Yonan pointed to that distant northern peak which he had indicated before.

“If we take that as a mark—”

“A mark for what and to lead us where?” she countered, still dealing with the mass of reed which made such untidy bundles for her feet. “Back to the Valley?”

His face was set. “The Valley has its own protections but no place is invincible. We could lead that which watched you straight into the heart of that which must be protected above all. You say that your jewel leads us—very well—follow—”

“To draw danger after us!” No question but a protest.

“If that is so, it is so.”

She fired up at that. Who was this warrior who was willing to use her as bait to protect his own home? She had no need for loyalty to the Valley, her first thought should be her own peril. To wander through this cursed countryside was no choice of her own—but one she seemed to be forced into by ill luck, by being at the wrong place at a crucial time. All she wanted was to get back to Lormt. Lormt? To her mind she had never heard of that before. Yet she could close her eyes for a moment and see dim halls where ghostlike figures moved slowly as if bemused by their own surroundings.

Another dream or fragment of one—? Where was Lormt and why did she feel the need for reaching it again—Again? She had never been there!

No, but someone else had. Her lips shaped the name Roylane but she did not speak it’ aloud. By wearing the jewel did she also carry some frail remnant of the true owner with her now? Kelsie longed for someone she could trust enough to ask outright questions. Dahaun of the Valley might be such but they were far from the Valley and its co-ruler now.

“Where do you go?” she lengthened her stride to match step with Yonan. He answered her as curtly:

“It is more like where you go, Lady.”

Her hand loosed on the jewel and it was warm. She pulled free its chain and allowed it to swing pendulum-wise from her middle finger. There was a scrap of memory, gone so fleetingly that she could not pin it down. So she had stood once before—no, not she—but that other.

Through no urging of her own the jewel began to swing—not in a circle as it had before, but rather back and forth, pointing outward and then to her. And the way it took was east. As firm footed as if she had been given an order she could not gainsay, Kelsie turned in that direction and began to walk, knowing indeed that bound as she was, there was only the gem in real control of their path.

There were bright banners of dawn in the sky as they walked along what might have once been a road between the ancient fields. Berries clustered on thorny branches which hung over tumbling walls and she did as Yonan, swept up what she could garner, stuffing them into her mouth. They were tart and sweet at the same time and she found them refreshing, but too few to give her a feeling of having truly breakfasted.

The forgotten road transversed the open until they came again to where stands of wood broke up the fields and grew closer and closer together until they faced another wood. A small animal with a dusky red coat broke for cover, was gone before Yonan could free with throwing cord, if he wished to hunt. And there were birds—not in flight but sitting on branches to watch them pass, twittering and calling, to be answered by others ahead as if their coming was being heralded to some feathered overlord whose domain this was.

They still had a way which had narrowed to hardly more than a footpath being overhung with brush and giving rooting to stubborn grass. Once Yonan flung out a hand to ward her from touching against a bush with singular ragged looking leaves and flowers of a dull green color which gave forth a thick and cloying scent.

“Farkill,” he explained. “The odor is a sleep maker, to touch it raises ulcers on the skin, ones which even illbane finds hard to heal. And there,” he pointed to a grim gray skeleton of a tree which set a little away from their path, “is also danger. Quick!” His arm fell about her shoulders so suddenly and heavily that she was swept from her feet as she heard a whishing in the air.

“Creep—on your belly,” her companion ordered. “Do you want such as that in you?” he indicated a gray shaft which stuck, still quivering, in a bush at what might have been at the level of her shoulders had she still been on her feet.

It was in the shape of a thorn but as long as Kelsie’s forearm and she gathered that it could have impaled her had it struck. In some manner it had been so shot by the dead-looking tree.

Creep indeed they did and she wrinkled her nose at the sour smell of the muck of long dead leaves which floored their path. Twice more they passed arrow trees until at last they came into the open once again, a glade such as the one in which Yonan had used his sword key. When they were in the midst of that he allowed them to stop and they ate the meat and drank from the gourds, but sparingly for they had not seen any source of water that day.

Kelsie was growing sleepy and longed to simply stretch out on the ground here and sleep away her weariness. Only Yonan made no sign of remaining where they were and her pride and stubborn desire to match him would not let her suggest a longer resting time.

Though she consulted the jewel now and then and was assured that they were following wherever that would lead them, she wanted more and more to drop it to this ground, let it be hidden by the tall grass, and return—Where?

In the day here Ben Blair seemed very far away in her mind, her whole life up to her coming through what Simon Tregarth had called a gate was more of a dream than her nightmare just past. She began to consider Yonan. He certainly was under no compulsion to travel so. Yet it was his knowledge which had saved them over and over again. He was not of the Valley by birth. That she knew. And he was even unlike most of the human kind who had gathered there. His hair was lighter and the eyes in his weather-browned face a startling blue. Who was Yonan? For the first time her mind wandered more from their present plight to ask a question. Dahaun apparently held him in repute having sent him after them for a guardian—or a guide. She had seen one of the other Tregarths—Kyllan—but there was nothing which appeared to make Yonan one of their out-breed stock. He usually companied with the huge axe weaponed warrior Urik. And there was that strange exchange which she had heard to suggest that he believed in reincarnation and had once been Tolar who had played some desperate game in this same land centuries ago.

“How far into this land have you been?” she suddenly asked.

He had paused to adjust the cord of his improvised shoulder bag and he did not look up as he answered:

“This land is new to me. Nor is it marked on any of the charts in the Valley.”

“Yet you come with me—”

“I go with you,” he returned, “since that is the duty laid upon me. When the witches out of Estcarp made contact with the Valley they bargained for guides. Nor did they understand that the influence of the Light flickers in many places and that there are powers upon powers which they have never heard of even within the records of Lormt.”

Lormt! The place out of her half dream. Now she wanted straight answers. “What is Lormt?”

“A place in which ancient knowledge is stored. It was when Kemoc Tregarth went to Lormt that he learned of Escore—or at least that there was a country here to the east which had been forbidden to the Old Race who fled the adepts’ war.”

Now he arose and stood looking down at her. “What says your jewel? Which way?”

From her he had glanced at the wood about them. She had no desire to enter that darksome place of peril again but neither was there any sense in their remaining here in the open. So she dangled the gem hurriedly. It pointed again—more directly to the north Kelsie thought, though she was no forester or land dweller to guess aright at that signal.

The reed and illbane covering of their boots had shredded under travel and broken away so only bits of these remained. Also there were none of the herbs here and they could not renew that defense. Once more they entered the wood on the other side of the glade. There were no longer any faint traces of a trail and she noted that Yonan’s pace had slowed. Now again he halted entirely, his head up as he sniffed the breeze, even as some animal advancing cautiously into unknown territory might test for some faint presence which was perilous to his kind.

There were still the arrow trees and the farkill so their advance was not straight because of these but took on a zigzag pattern. It was on one of their crawls to escape the arrow thorns that Kelsie set hand on what she thought was a round stone. Only to have it turn under her weight and grin evilly up at her—a skull! And, though there were differences in the wide ridges of bone above the eyes and the broadness of the whole, it approached that of a human. She uttered a little cry of disgust which brought Yonan’s head around. But she had already noted two more of the grayish knobs a little before them and more—It was a pavement of skulls they had chanced upon!

Yonan shook his head when she asked what manner of creature had died here—here—and here—and there ahead—to form such a hideous track. But he kept to it even though she near refused to follow him. Then they came to the first of the monoliths.

The same grayish gleam of skull, of arrow tree, it stood out here in a half envelope of brush like a crooked giant finger pointing skyward—if there was indeed still an open sky above the ceiling of tangled tree branches.

The thing was taller than Yonan as he stood before it, and more bulky, but, though it was greened here and there with moss, it was easy to see that it had been purposely wrought into the form of a crouching image leaning forward a little—one massive arm raised and a great clawed hand or paw about to reach for some easily captured prey.

Kelsie sucked in her breath. She had seen many outre forms of life since she had so unwillingly begun this journey, but this was wholly malignant. The shoulders were bowed until it would appear that the creature it portrayed was humped. On those shoulders with a hardly visible neck perched a huge head, the bald cranium rising to a cone point. But it was the eyes which were the worst feature of that misshapen thing. They were as deep set as if they lay in pits. Yet they were not stone—or even inset gems—

She looked into them and gasped. Just like the hound that had appeared at the gate, these holes were filled with a yellowish flame. Stone and carven the monstrous thing might be. But—the eyes were alive! Was there some presence embedded in the stone—a prisoner without hope of freedom?

Without conscious thought she raised the Witch Jewel, not watching it as she did because she was entrapped by the fire in those stone-rimmed pits.

“No!” Yonan was upon her, his hand out to beat down the jewel. “No!”

She twisted in his hold, her fear grown a hundredfold. Only he had her arm so tightly pinned to her side that she could not break free to use what she had come to consider her only weapon.

“It is a watcher, let it not watch to any purpose,” he added. Then thrust her away from him, so that meeting eye to eye with the thing was broken and she was free of what she now judged was indeed one of the more subtle dangers of this place.

Still holding onto her arm as if he feared she had not taken his warning to heart, Yonan pulled her along with him, their boots with the remnants of the illbane fastenings upon them slipping and sliding on the trail of skulls.

“It watched—was alive!”

“Not it but what watched through it,” he countered. “If you had used the jewel you might have banished that watcher but you would have raised an alarm which—

He stopped nearly in mid-word. There was another creature beside this noxious trail. It bore resemblance to the first but it was not graven stone—no, this was carved of wood. Some giant of a tree had been so used that the remnant of bark, now overgrown with leprous fungi, formed a skin, watched. There were the same pits of eyes—the same—after one fleeting glance she prevented her own sight with difficulty from meeting the eyes in the wood. They were also alive.

She pulled herself free of Yonan’s grip and sped as well as she could down the skull road to avoid another meeting with that which so spied upon them. Now, as she went, she looked quickly from side to side to make sure there were no more of the watchers looming up before them.

No air stirred here under the trees, and there was a rising odor from the muck in which the skulls had been set which was putrid and sickening. There was a warmth here, too—not that protective one she knew when the jewel came to greater life, but rather a stifling sticky heat which eroded one’s spirit as well as dragged at one’s body.

However, the road led straight and she saw the ancient remains of trees which had been cut from their roots to clear a way for it. Here and there saplings had dared to reach up again, pushing aside the skulls which lay to grin at them. But they came across no more of the statues.

Not until they pushed through a last fence of brush and came to open country. The skull road had not stopped at their emergence into the open, though the bones here appeared to be more firmly planted.

“A road of the conquered,” Yonan spoke for the first time since he had warned her in the wood. “It is very old that belief. To plant the heads of your enemies so that you tread ever upon them makes complete your victory.” But Kelsie hardly heard him, she was looking ahead at the massive—thing—which had been erected there.

If she had believed the two she had seen in the wood were great and careful pieces of work, what could she call this?

For the road of skulls ran directly to a ponderous, outstretched belly of the thing squatting there—an artifact as large or nearly so as the ruin in which they had found themselves earlier. Both the hands were outspread and planted on the ground like giant pillars and those supported the huge form which was leaning forward as if to study whatever advanced toward it.