The Gate of the Cat

15

Kelsie was walking, though it was no more than a weak stumble upheld by the strength of another. When she strove to focus her eyes what she saw just ahead was the swing of a gray robe. Or was it that? Fur? The upheld banner of a cat’s tail as that animal, grown to panther size, stalked ahead of her. Cat—there was a cat—and a gate—and after that a wild range of action which one part of her had never accepted as reality. She raised her hand in a gesture which demanded a mighty effort. There was no chain embedded in the flesh about its wrist—but there were scars there which certainly she had never borne before.

“Lady—” from some distance came that call. Kelsie tried to refuse to hear it. Just as she tried to command her legs to halt, to let her rest.

“Lady!”

More strident, demanding. Somehow she made the very great effort to turn her head and look to a face half masked by a war helm. The gray robe tail before her twitched and swirled as its wearer halted and turned to look at her.

“Girl!” there was no concern in that, only demand. “Look to the jewel!”

From somewhere, a third of the way down her weakened body, there came a glow. She dropped her head a little and saw that there was a spot of twirling light on her breast. She moved her scarred hand up to clasp it. Fire! Immediately she dropped her hand—there had been blasting fire before, she wanted none of that again.

“We are followed,” those words were spoken over her and meant nothing.

“Can you aid then? What of the jewel, will it not sustain one who wears it?”

“One who wears it rightfully, who does not come to it by the left hand as this one does—perhaps—” Was it the cat who answered? Kelsie really did not care. If they would only leave her alone!

“Let—me—go—” she got out those words with great effort.

She swayed back and forth in the hands of the one who had been leading her, while the cat stood and watched and would have nothing to do with the matter.

“Come—Lady—wake! They sniff behind us and we cannot let them catch up with us.”

Her hand batting blindly before her, closed now upon the jewel on her own breast. Then—

She stood in a place where there were many pillars though few of them still supported any remains of roof. The black marks of ancient fires sooted paths up the outer ones. But she had not come here to see the remaining disaster—she had come because she must. There was that which drove on her weakened body. Again in the very far distance she heard voices which had no real meaning:

“Where does she go?”

“Loose her, fool. The drawing of the stone is on her where she goes—that is our road.”

There were the pillars and she passed them, but, still, though the outer ones stood behind her there were ranks upon ranks of others reaching to the far distance so she could see no end to the way between them. Once her path tightened to a double line of the stone trees and she saw behind them great chairs of state. Each of those was occupied by a weaving and wreathing of smoke as if what sat there was or could not be wholly fixed in this world. If those shadows of shadows meant her ill they did not move to stop her, nor turn her from the way. On she passed with the burning jewel in her hand and there was nothing left for her but to seek what had been lost and must be found again.

How many miles did that pillar path run? She might have been walking an hour, or a day, and still there was no end. Now there crouched strange and grotesque beasts between the upright columns of stone but none laid paw nor tooth upon her as she slipped on. For she did not seem to be walking any longer, instead she was—

Awake! That waking was sharp, she might have been brought out of sleep by a blow. She knew who she was—who wore that gray robe and now marched to her left, who matched step with her to the right and upheld her body. It was night and the moon, just beginning to wane, brought sharp light and shadow to the ground around her.

They were no longer in a wood but on an open plain where they must be clearly visible to any who followed them and she turned her head to ask of him who so guided her what they did here—

Only she already knew. She must follow where the jewel led. Although she no longer held it cradled in her hand, rather it was stretched forward on its chain, away from her body, she could even feel the fret of the chain against her neck as if it would be free of all anchorage, free to seize its own road and speed to reach what called it so.

There was another bright glow. The other gem, the one worn by Wittle, was also alive but it did not pull against its chain and Kelsie believed its glow was not as great as the one she wore.

“Where are we?” she managed that question and her voice came out more strongly than she had felt it would.

Wittle answered almost breathlessly:

“This is the path you have chosen, yours the answer. Where are we? We have walked through a day and when we rested it was necessary to curb you like a restless horse. We have walked through much of the night. And those who hunt, hunt—yet they bring not their hunt to take us—not yet. You were never wedded to the stone, so how comes it that that jewel takes life as I have never seen before? What do you with it, outlander?”

“I do nothing. It is the stone—”

“They have always told us,” Wittle continued as if Kelsie had not spoken at all, “that when a witch dies, so does the power of her stone. Yet Makeease is dead and you who have no right to it are governed by it. This is a thing beyond the bounds of what must be.”

Kelsie longed to raise her hand and drag the thing from about her throat, hurl it out into the ocean of tall grass through which they now strode.

“It is no choice of mine—” she said dully.

“This is a thing which—

“Why keep you on that rack of speech?” Yonan broke in. “You have said it far too many times. It should not be but it is. Therefore accept it.”

The witch turned her head and the look which flashed past Kelsie to the warrior was one of pure and blazing anger.

“Be quiet, man. What do your kind know of the mysteries?”

Kelsie had a flash of memory but it was vague as if she watched it happen to another. Of the Quan iron hilt being pressed to the wound in her wrist and then lips sucking—then the cold of a jewel following upon that.

“He won me life,” she said out of that memory. “Of what good your spells were then, Wittle? And I think,” she was frowning a little, “that we come upon something which is stronger than a jewel.” Her head was being bent forward and now the jewel she wore was tugging as if to free itself entirely from her body. Yet she understood in part that were it to vanish along the path it had found for itself she would lose all trace of it. Even the witch’s own jewel grew brighter, lifted a little from the gray robe.

The sea of grass tall enough to switch about their knees had been broken by what lay ahead—some shadows which might be heights, save there was no range of mountains—only a soft rolling as for hills. They were headed directly for that shadowed land.

Twice birds swooped and soared over them—black and red feathers showing up plainly even in the dull light. And, while they made no move toward attack, Kelsie was certain that these were of the Dark, perhaps scouts for the Sam Riders or those like them. Yet the three of them made no effort toward concealment but headed straight for the hills across the open plain.

Wittle was repeating some words, by the sound of them the same ones over and over. Yonan marched without any comment, but always at her side, close enough to reach out and touch her should some necessity for that arise.

The moon made sharp divisions between light and dark. Here and there a bush grew above the green of the plain and she eyed each of those with apprehension for it seemed to her that the shadows those bushes threw were not like in outline to the shrubs at all but had a curious shifting as if something invisible but still answering the power of the moonlight lurked therein.

A first pale streak of dawn was in the sky when their footing changed. They were not walking over a pavement of half-buried skulls but the grass became thin clumps edging up between blocks of white stone which had undoubtedly once formed a road. And as they fell into step on that rough surface where many of the blocks were uptilted Kelsie became aware of something else. She could not hear nor see, she could only feel it—that greater compulsion, the sense that what must be done must be accomplished quickly, filled her and she began to trot. Wittle and Yonan, after a moment matching her stride for stride.

The road led through a gap in the first line of hills and on either side as they entered that open space there were stone pillars, rough hewn, licked by time into uneven surfaces so that only fragments of what might be designs or patterns remained.

As she passed between these, a little ahead of her two companions, something very far within her stirred. This was certainly not of her own memory but she raised both hands in a salute to the east and to the west. Excitement flashed into life within her.

On ran the road, in better condition here where there was less growth of grass to impinge upon the surface. From the pillars there continued a line of hummocks or small rounded stones, perhaps never meant as walls but to mark more clearly the path. Twice they turned with the road, once right, once left. Then their way was blocked by the rise of a larger hillock straight across its surface. To this Kelsie went, the stone tugging at her as if she were on a leash. Then she found herself spread-eagled against the very side of the earth, the gem a small fire between her breast and the soil against which she involuntarily pressed her body, as if her strength alone could draw her into the earth to seek what the Witch Jewel sought.

She turned her head and looked to Wittle. Her jewel also was now standing away from her body, on a direct line with the hill.

“Within—or beyond,” the witch said.

Kelsie found herself digging with crooked fingers at the turf and soil, trying to burrow within as might an animal seeking a den. She saw Wittle’s fingers reach out to copy her. Then they were both pulled away and Yonan took their place, hacking with his sword at the covering of the tough-rooted grass. The Quan iron in his hilt was ablaze as Kelsie had not seen it before.

He pried and pulled and there came loose a large slab of soil mixed with roots. Under that, plain to see in the dawn light was stone, streaked and earth stained. He attacked again and again until there was a slab as big as a doorway facing them.

Kelsie gave an involuntary cry. She was pulled forward as her stone fitted itself against that doorway, being thrown to her knees so that the bursting fire of the jewel came where normally there might be a latch. Against that stone, though she tried to tug it away with her hands, or to protect her face from coming in contact with the rough rock, the jewel began to turn, slowly and steadily to the right, twisting its chain and shutting off her breath as if she were being garroted by the silver lengths. She got her hands between her throat and that twisted loop but she could not break its hold upon her, nor free the jewel again from the stone to which it clung.

She cried out in a choking croak for aid and Yonan was beside her, his dagger beating down against the chain. She was gasping for breath when his assault was successful and the chain broke suddenly as she fell gasping, rubbing her throat and drawing in deep lungfuls of air. Then she saw that Wittle had fallen on her knees to take her place. As Kelsie’s stone had circled right so did the witch’s now plant itself beside the other and turn left.

But, warned by Kelsie’s experience, the witch had withdrawn the chain from her throat and now she kept hold but was not prisoner of a choking line of links. Right from top to bottom passed one gem like a hand on a clock face, and on the left the other followed the same pattern. They glowed with a fierce fire so that Kelsie shaded her eyes unable to look upon them.

There was a sucking sound, and then a dull grating. Yonan’s hands on her shoulders pulled her back quickly so that, still on her knees, she came up against his legs and now she dared peer between her fingers. There was an opening. The stone slab stood ajar, not open all the way, and somehow in spite of the light in this valley there was utter dark beyond.

“They seek that which there is to be found!” Wittle also on her knees crowded closer. “We have come to what was lost and is now found!”

She held out her hand, passing it through the glow of the two stones and that which was hers loosed itself from its anchorage and fell into her grasp. Reluctantly Kelsie followed her action and once more held the gem, dangling from its broken chain.

If the slit was meant to be a door time had cemented it nearly closed and all three of them tugging together could not bring it open but a fraction more. Wittle at last scraped her way through between the edge of that slab and the frame on which it was set. Once more Kelsie’s stone had lifted outward and was in a straight line pointing to the same slit. Nor, she was sure, would it allow her now to step aside. Her body, her feet, moved by another will and, though she longed to hold to that door and allow the chain to go from her with its perilous burden, she again had no chance, her fingers would not unhook from the links.

In Wittle’s wake she edged through and, hearing the scrape of metal against stone, knew that Yonan was following. Ahead she saw the sparkling motes and with them the edge of the witch’s gray robe but whither they walked she could not tell. Save that there was more of the icy chill she had long ago come to associate with the Dark and the places it haunted.

She smelled earth and stone and there was something else—a feeling that the three of them were not alone—that there was a thing which watched them, not with menace, nor welcome, good will nor ill, but in a kind of dulled awakening.

Wittle’s figure suddenly arose and then Kelsie came to the first of a rough-hewn stairs and followed. Though both the jewels were alight, their outer expansion of radiance appeared confined by the dark showing nothing of the walls of this passage or what lay ahead. They came into another passage twin to the one on the level below but at its far end was the gleam of light which was not born of the gems but of the day itself.

They came out on a broad ledge to look down upon a stretch of country which had the appearance of utter desolation. At first Kelsie thought they were above a forest where the trees had been denuded of branches and leaves and only the upstanding trunks left like rows of shattered teeth. Then she realized that these were instead pillars of pitted stone, though there were no signs of what kind of a roof they had once supported—just the gray-white line of rounded columns.

From the ledge a long stairway of badly eroded steps formed an unprotected descent against the side of the cliff and Wittle was already on the first steps of that, headed confidently downward. Kelsie had no recourse but to follow, for the gem in her hand turned and pointed in the direction of the strange ruin below.

That filled completely a valley of some size and triangular shape. They were in the narrow end of the triangle. Kelsie could guess that what had once been erected here was of great importance in its day—temple, palace, fortress, whatever it had been.

They passed from the steps directly onto a pavement in which the columns were rooted. It was not the universal gray of the pillars but a blue which was nearly green—so at a distance one might even believe that it was a stretch of turf. This in turn was patterned in a brighter blue with signs or symbols which formed intricate arabesques under their feet, though here and there wind-driven patches of soil had blown in to cover the lines. There were no marks in such dust, no sign that any had been here before them through long quiet years.

Again Kelsie found no trace of that Dark which chilled body and spirit. Nor in fact anything but the vague impression that something very deeply asleep was waking at their coming, and, had she had the power of controlling her own body, she would have raced back up those stairs and out through the passage to a world more normal than this.

If she had suspicions, Wittle did not share them. Instead the witch marched forward with a rapt expression of expectation on her face. Thus they paraded down one of the aisles between columns, Wittle in advance, Kelsie on her heels, Yonan bringing up the rear. He kept his sword unsheathed and ready—either because he had come to depend upon the Quan iron in the hilt or because he actually feared that they would meet active opposition sooner or later.

Between the columns they could see the walls of the valley gradually opening out wider and wider, the pillars arranged so that one could be sure that this erection had covered the whole of the valley floor at one time. Unlike the building in which the monster dwelled there was no vibration, no sense of any life save their own. Not until they were well away from the place where they had entered the forest of stone trees.

One of the drifts of soil which had entered here and there to carpet over the blue stone lay across their path. Wittle showed no intention of halting but Yonan pushed beside Kelsie and actually caught at the wide sleeve of the witch’s robe, bringing her to a sudden stop. With his sword the warrior pointed to that stretch of earth.

Pressed deeply into its surface were tracks. Kelsie was sure that the most clear, which overlaid others mingled before, were those of a bare foot that looked human. Wittle tried to free herself from Yonan’s hold with a sharp pull. Her mask of expectancy cracked and it was with fiery anger she looked to him.

“What do you?” Her harsh voice scaled up and awoke echoes as if behind a myriad of those columns stood other Wittles to add their demands to hers.

“Look!” Again he indicated the tracks. “These are fresh—see where the soil yet crumbles into the impression. We are not alone here, Lady. Would you march to a meeting and take no heed of what may await us ahead?”

She gestured to the aisle before her. “Do you see aught to dispute us here, warrior? I say again—try not to deal with what no man may understand!”

“Perhaps we understand more than you would allow us, Witch,” he said with a spark of anger in his reply. “Did you not agree that we may have been allowed to escape so that we might be traced to that which you revere so mightily—a source of the true power? If some trap has been laid ahead we shall be the better for suspecting it.”

She had cupped her stone in her two hands and now held it up to breathe upon it. Her lips moved but they could not hear what she said—a ritual, Kelsie suspected. The gem flared higher and then its radiance, which had been growing as they marched forward, disappeared. It looked to the girl as if instead of a jewel Wittle held a palm full of water and was brooding over it.

There was change in her own stone also and she hastened to examine it. Though the beam it had given off so far had been white with a tinge of blue now it became fully blue—as clear and welcome as a fair day in midsummer, cloudless and promising a fine day. Then a shadow crossed it and she saw as plainly as if she stood before them the form of the wildcat, her two kittens, and the snow cubling she had adopted. They lay in the warm sun on a rock, the cat nursing all three of her family, her eyes half closed in her own contentment. But, even as Kelsie watched those eyes opened and were raised, as if the animal saw her in this place and time. Then the picture shivered and was gone.

Cat? What had the wildcat to do with her here and now. She remembered that the stone she held had not been a direct gift from the dying witch but had come through the cat. And—she looked down at that footprinted reach of soil on the floor. Yes! Now that she looked carefully she could see those other tracks—the sign of one of the feline family crossing beneath the barefooted prints. Cat—she had never seen any in this valley save the one who had brought this whole adventure on her. Familiars—the old stories from her own world of how cats had consorted with those deemed witches in the past. What had cats to do with this place here and now?

Wittle looked up from her own jewel. “There is no trace of the Dark here!” she exclaimed.

“And of the Light?” Yonan persisted.

The witch hesitated as if she weighed truth against falsehood in order to gain her own ends. Then she admitted reluctantly:

“Nor of that either.”

“But of power?” he persisted. She gave him a look of true hatred.

“There is power—power can exist without Dark or Light.” Kelsie thought Wittle spoke as if to reassure herself. “Many were the adepts who drew upon neither but strove for pure knowledge alone. Our records speak of such. We may now be approaching a place where such neutral power can be tapped. If we reach there,” her eyes glistened and there was a small bubble of saliva at one corner of her thin-lipped mouth, “then we can claim it for the Light. If the Dark reaches it first then—”

“Then you would say all is lost? But have you any thought as to what has already sought it according to this trail?” For the second time he pointed his sword to the tracks.

She leaned over that stretch of soil and deliberately allowed her jewel to swing low, nearly touching the disturbed earth. There was no change in its color now, and it halted on the outward swing, still pointing to whatever lay ahead of them.

She favored Yonan with a malicious smile. “Do you mark this, warrior? There is no harm.”

He did not sheath his sword but met her eye to eye. “I do not question any power, Witch—yours or those of the Dark WL have left behind. But mark this, you may be intruding upon something which even all the learning in Lormt does not now hold. It is best to go wary—”

“Do you go wary!” she snapped. “What man can know unless he is shown—as you will be shown when the time comes!”

And she deliberately stepped on the barefooted track as she started on.