The Gate of the Cat

2

The cat’s head was up, it was staring south to another roll of hills. Now the rider, so hood muffled that Kelsie had never seen his face, turned halfway in the saddle to face the same direction. The birds uttered sharp high cries and began a flight pattern which encircled the stones. With a sharp jerk the rider pulled at the reins and his mount plunged forward as if to bring it and its rider down upon Kelsie. But it did not complete that charge. Instead the mount reared and the rider seemed for a moment to be fighting—his will against his mount’s. The hound crouched closer to the ground, near creeping on its belly back the way it had come. Though Kelsie watched carefully there was nothing else in sight save the wheeling birds.

The rider no longer fought his horse (if such a creature could be termed a horse). He allowed it to swing around to the direction from which they had come. Then, though he did not seem to be urging it, the creature first broke into a trot and raised that to a gallop as it disappeared in a cut between two of the hills, the hound now running beside it.

Kelsie waited. The birds broke off their circling to fly east. She and the cat were alone in the circle of pillars which had indeed proved a sanctuary.

The girl slipped to the ground, sitting cross-legged near her coat where the kittens now nursed—the cat having relaxed enough to allow them to her.

For the first time since she had awakened, Kelsie had a chance to think clearly, to look more slowly about her, to weigh one strange thing against its neighbor. She had been struggling with Neil McAdams in the long summer twilight of the Scottish highlands. But it was plain that where she now was bore no relation to that. She raised her fingertips to smooth the damp shirt she had tied over her head wound. It was all so real—

Slowly she pulled herself once more to her feet and began to make a complete circuit of the circle, looking outward for a point of reference which would assure her that she was still in the world she knew or at least recognized a little. She was not even of highland blood—even if she bore the name and had the heritage from Great-Aunt Ellen she had never been here before. She belonged back in Evart, Indiana, ready to start for the animal clinic, to dream her own private dream of somehow raising the money to get a veterinarian’s degree. That was the world of people and things she understood. This was not. She swung the stone-weighted belt and tried to arrange her thoughts in a logical pattern. One minute she had been struggling with Neil to keep him from shooting the already injured wildcat and then she had awakened here—

She wanted to run, to scream out her denial, to awaken from this nightmare. It went on and on and it was indeed so real. She could not remember ever having eaten and drunk in any dream before but the stains of the berries still were on her hands and she could taste their sweetness when she ran her tongue over her teeth. She looked to the cat who lay nursing the two kittens. The animal was believable. But the hound, the rider, and all that had happened since she had been besieged here—those were out of some fantasy.

None of the distant, mist veiled mountains looked familiar. Also who had raised the fallen pillars to make this fortress to what it must once have been, a circle of protection?

The cat arose, shook off her two clinging offspring and came to stand before Kelsie, regarding her straightly as somehow she had never seen an animal eye her before. It was as if an intelligence which was equal, or at least close, to her own looked out of those eyes and that some desire for communication moved the animal.

Kelsie knelt and held out one hand to the cat.

“Where are we, old girl?” she asked and then wished she had not, for her words sounded queerly here as if they had been picked up by one stone and echoed to the next and the next, coming back to her, not clearly, but in a hoarse whisper.

The cat extended a tongue tip and touched it to the girl’s thumb. And she knew a glow of triumph. So a wildcat could not be tamed—so much for all they had told her when she had spoken up for the animal last night. Last night? She shook her head and then wished that she had not, for the pain which flashed outward. She was suddenly tired. Better to lie down here on the moss and just rest a little. If she slept so much the better, she might then awaken in her own place and time.

Only there was to be no rest. The wildcat suddenly yowled and Kelsie wondered, even as she clapped her hands over both of her ears, if the animal had sensed the same dislocation as she did now. This was a different kind of pain than that which had driven her since her awaking here. It was like a cry for help so intense and demanding that the girl was on her feet, stumbling back through that gate to answer it.

Back through the gate but not to her own place. The land about her remained the same. Her shuffle became a run as she was drawn on. She was aware of the furry shape which followed in her shadow, also pulled perhaps by that demanding cry which she knew now, but could not understand how, rang within her head not outside through her ears.

Together cat and girl rounded a heap of moss-grown stones which might have been the remains of some very ancient ruin not treated as well by time as the pillars behind. Kelsie skidded down the dale, the belt swinging in her hand ready to use. What they came upon were the signs of tragedy. Three forms lay there, a soaking of blood curling from between their shoulders where upstanding feathered shafts proclaimed arrows. Arrows!

The girl’s start lenient at that was gone in an instant when she saw the fourth member of the small party. A woman, both her gray clothing, and her flesh beneath rent, and soaking flowing blood, lay half rested against a stone. Before her crouched either the black hound which had not too long ago menaced them, or else its twin. There were blood flecks in the foam about its jaws yet it did not spring as it was crouched to do. The woman held in a shaking, near falling hand, something from which swung a chain and was glistening with light. Yet for all her struggle she could not continue to hold that steady.

For the moment, forgetting her own horror of that beast, Kelsie stormed in swinging the belt. The stone heavy buckle thudded neatly home on the hound’s bony side. It sprang, not at the woman but back, giving tongue in a fearsome cry. Kelsie swung again and this time the very edge of the rock contacted with the side of one forepaw. Again that cry and now the beast turned and fled though it did not go out of sight but ran back and forth as if awaiting reinforcements.

Kelsie backed away, toward the woman.

“Sister—”

The word rang in her head and she dared, for a moment, to look away from the hound to the bleeding survivor of that stricken party. The woman’s hand had fallen across her body, but her eyes were still open and fixed on Kelsie with such appeal that the girl dropped down on one knee. As she did that the wildcat moved in closer, ducked its head so that the woman’s limp hand lay but a fraction away. To Kelsie’s amazement the mouth in that white, pain stricken face drew into the shadow of a smile.

“Sister—in—fur—also—” The words were in her mind.

Kelsie shot a look at the snarling hound, but that had not advanced again.

“I—the—last—gate—” the words formed for her with pause between. Though she did not loose her belt weapon she tried to reach to the body before her. That steady streaming of blood—she must do something. As if she had in her turn spoken aloud she saw the woman’s head turn the slightest from side to side.

“The—last—gate—” came the mind word which Kelsie had to accept sprang from that limp body. “The jewel—” it was as if the woman had a last spurt of strength, “do—not—let them take it!” With infinite effort she again raised her hand.

It was the cat who darted head forward through the loop of the dangling chain. Straightway the woman loosed her grip on what she held so that a sparkling ovid fell free to dangle against the cat’s brindle fur.

“We must get help—” Kelsie for a moment looked wildly around as if she could produce by will alone medical assistance which did not exist.

The smile had not faded.

“Sister—I—am Roylane—” There seemed to be some great significance in that. Then the lean body shuddered and the smile faded. “The—gate—” She who was wounded looked beyond Kelsie at something which the girl, quick to turn, could not see. Then the woman sighed and her head dropped upon one shoulder. Though Kelsie had seldom seen death of her own kind before—just once and that was long ago—she knew that this stranger who spoke without the need for words was gone.

She held the belt between her teeth and straightened out the slight body, shrinking in spite of herself from the blood on her hands. Then she looked at the other bodies. Though the hound paced back and forth before two of them, the third lay closer and one outthrust arm pointed straight toward her still clasping a sword. With one eye ever for the hound Kelsie crossed quickly and freed that weapon from the flaccid fingers, finding it so heavy compared to the fencing foils she had known that she nearly dropped it. But clumsy as she might be with it she took courage from the very heft of that blade—a weapon much better than her belt—and-stone defense.

There was a croaking from beyond. The hound took heart from that, throwing back its head to voice another of the direful howls. At that sound the cat took off in great bounds and was gone back to the safety of the stones. Kelsie hesitated by the body of the woman. But there was nothing she could do for her now and apparently the reinforcements the hound expected were on the way. So she followed, but partially backing so that the evil thing could not jump her, swinging the belt warningly, lifting the sword in her other hand.

It made no move to lengthen its stride as it ran back and forth, nor to come at her. Only it howled and that noise tore at her. Finally she broke and ran.

“The gate—” the dead woman had said. Had she and those others with her been heading for the only gate Kelsie knew, that of the circle beyond? It might have been their gate of safety but somehow she knew that the “last” gate was not made of coarse stones and stood waiting here. No, beyond that lay what no living thing might guess.

She saw that gem the cat now carried so awkwardly about its throat give off glints which might be the sparks of a real fire. Already the animal had joined its family on the coat. Kelsie put on a second burst of speed to join it. Throwing herself down on the sod, the sword falling out of her hold, and gasping for breath, she looked back the way she had come. So far no lean black hound, no rider on a skeleton mount appeared.

Only that this was a land haunted with peril she was firmly convinced. She took up the heavy sword for a second time and examined it. The blade tapered from hilt to point, but not with the thin grace of a rapier. The hilt was plain, with a stiff wire wound around and around it to secure the grip. There was no ornamentation on it at all. She got slowly to her feet and tried a thrust and parry, but this was not a point weapon, she decided, rather one meant to be used with the edge of the blade for the blow and of that kind of fighting she knew nothing at all. Fighting? What did she know of that?

For the second time she turned slowly as if she stood on a pivot surveying all which lay beyond the circle. Had the murdered party beyond that down slope been trying to reach this place when they had been overwhelmed? But—where was here? What had happened to her? Somehow she could no longer hold onto the tattered story she had been telling herself that this was all hallucination. The “last gate”—did “last” signify that there were other gates which the dying woman had known of? She was facing a gate now—two unworked slabs of stone standing well above her height with a third laid across them. That was a gate—yes, and the one on Ben Blair’s flank back there—had that been a gate, too?

Kelsie shivered. There were tales enough told in the Scottish mountains—of people who had gone away and then returned—seemingly having been gone by their own measurement of time for but a night or so, but really for years!

Tales—

She got to her feet and walked toward that gate. There was nothing beyond but stretches of mossed rock, stands of the white bell flowers and the rise of stones which was a screen between them and the dead. If she tried could she go through?

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the tumble of stones she had seen for such a short time before she arrived here. They had been in the long summer twilight with the moon hardly giving any help. One had lain so—she remembered that, for the cat had leaped it even as she had struck up Neil’s shotgun. And there had been—she held to a badly faded mind picture and took two steps more. She opened her eyes.

Yes, she had ventured out of the shadow of the gate but she was still in the unknown. Behind her came a warning cry from the cat and she saw the snaky form of the lean hound among the rocks. Kelsie leaped backward into what she had come to consider the only safety in this place of many alarms and death.

The cat snarled. Somehow she had managed to get her neck out of the chain of the jewelry. Now she stood once more before her kits one paw planted flat upon that fiery stone. Kelsie waited alertly for the appearance of a rider, since the first hound had come so attended.

Instead there was a crawling man, striving on hands and knees to come toward her, wavering back and forth. Kelsie’s first thought was to run to his aid. But she expected the hound to turn and rend him as he passed and the beast made no such move. It was that which held her in her place.

“Ahhheeee—” surely that cry had come from the crawler. And it was followed by another. If he spoke words there were none that she knew. On impulse she went down on one knee by the cat and reached for the chain but now the cat snarled at her and struck out with its injured paw as if it would flay the skin from her fingers.

“Aaaaahaaaa—” there was no mistaking now that the wounded man crawling toward the circle had thrown back his head and was screaming.

The hound crossed over behind him and was apparently driving him toward the very shelter that he sought. Perhaps the creature had by this some way to force the barrier which had defeated its fellow accompanying the masked rider. If so Kelsie had no mind to see how it would work.

She strode toward the gate with some vague idea of defense in her mind. Thrusting the sword point into the center of a bed of moss so that it stood up close to her hand she stood dangling the once tried and to her more effective measure of the weighted belt.

Now the crawling man was mouthing sounds like frantic words—though they meant nothing to her. Once he crouched, leaning heavily on one arm as he held out his other hand beseechingly in her direction. And, she noted, the hound did nothing to harass him. The creature wanted him in and anything which would serve that one’s purpose was to be avoided.

Now he was lower to the ground, drawing himself painfully along by grasping the turf. Between his shoulders an arrow shaft nodded back and forth. Still the hound held off, even withdrew a pace or so.

There came a keening call, Kelsie ducked as a shadow swept over her, looking up at a large black bird, its wing sweep stretched near as far as she was tall. She ducked, thinking that it was seeking her. But it shot up as quickly as it had swooped. Not before she saw that its overlarge eyes were, like those of the rider’s mount, pits of swirling, greenish-yellow flame.

Once more it planed down at her. She swung the belt wildly and snatched for the waiting sword, but it stayed just beyond her reach. She heard above the whimpering noise which was now coming from the crawling man, the yowling of the cat, crouched above its helpless kittens.

Whether the purpose of the bird thing would ever have succeeded and driven her out of the circle Kelsie was never to know for there shot through the air a flash of blue light followed by the cracking sound of a whip.

Kelsie, her back now firmly against the rock which helped to support the gate on one side, looked toward that slope down which she had gone to hunt water.

There were two of them, riders. But not like the muffled black one who had tried to reach her before. Their mounts were not horses but shining coated red-cream beasts, each with a horn on its forehead. And the riders—Kelsie blinked and blinked again. Surely now her eyes were playing tricks on her.

When they had first burst into view certainly they had been dark of hair, almost dusky of skin, but now that they were in the full sunlight they showed hair as gilt as true gold and cream skin which their vividly green clothing made all the more fair. There were no reins in their hands, they might have been allowing their striking mounts to range freely.

But each bore what looked like a stock of a whip, and, even as she watched, Kelsie saw the woman draw back her arm and snap out what seemed a line of pure fire, not as visible as a real lash, at the flying thing above.

It squawked raucously and soared well above that flash while the hound gave forth another of its coughing howls. But the crawling man lay supine and unmoving now. Around the circle of the stones pounded the newcomers. The woman leaned over and looked at the body bearing the arrow but she did not dismount nor strive to give any aid.

Her companion wheeled on the hound and it was not as lucky as the flying creature in escape, for the flicking tip of the burning lash the rider wielded struck on its flank and there was a puff of oily smoke. To be followed an instant later by a bursting noise and then the hound was gone, leaving only an oily black deposit on the stones among which it had tried to hide.

The woman’s mount paused before the gate and she called aloud, her words unintelligible but clearly aimed at Kelsie, who made a helpless gesture with her free hand, still keeping grip upon her belt weapon.

“I do not understand you,” she called back. These riders did not bring with them the miasma of evil which had hung above the other creatures and the black rider. That they meant her no harm she was halfway satisfied. But they were clearly of this world which had changed so much and so—could they really be trusted?

The woman stared at her for a space and now she was joined by the other rider. As his mount came to a halt beside hers Kelsie witnessed again that weird change in the two of them. Their hair changed to a red and there was a golden glint of freckles now across the woman’s high-bridged nose. It was as if instead of two riders she faced a number, all contained in a single person. Now the woman no longer spoke, rather she stared straight into Kelsie’s eyes, a look of concentration making hers intent and searching.

“Who—” the word was faint and if anything more had been added to that mind touch Kelsie did not receive it. But it was plain that she had been questioned.

“I am Kelsie McBlair,” she spoke slowly, sure that the rider could not understand. Then, with a great effort, she tried something else—pictures out of her memory—of the fallen stones, her struggle with McAdams and her awaking here. She was aware of a yowl from behind her and knew that the wildcat was also answering in its own fashion.

“—gate!” Again Kelsie was sure that she had missed all but one word of something which might be of importance to her.

She nodded, taking the chance that the other meant somehow the archway in which she now stood. The woman rested the stock of her light whip across her mount and with both hands made a series of passes in the air. Where her fingers moved there were left traces of bluish light, not unlike that emitted by the whips, in a complicated design. Seeing that seemed to reassure the spinner of those symbols for she nodded and spoke to the man at her side.

His mount moved back and then he was riding along the trail of blood which had been left by the creeper who lay so flat and silent now. In a moment he had disappeared beyond the rocks toward that scene of death which Kelsie had found earlier.

However, the woman, whose hair had again darkened to near black as there swept a cloud across the sun, slipped from the saddleless back of her mount and approached the girl at the gate. Kelsie kept her tight hold on the belt. She found nothing terrifying about this newcomer but what did she know of anything in this strange and frightening place?

Fur brushed against her leg. The wildcat had come out of the nest she had been so ready to defend. In her mouth gleamed the jewel she had taken from the dying woman, its chain dragging along the ground behind, catching here and there on the flower leaves as she came.

She went forward, out of the stone circle, to drop what she carried at the feet of the woman, who went to one knee caressing the cat with fearless fingers before she caught at the chain and held up the jewel. She did not touch the stone, keeping instead her hold only on the chain. But there was wonderment and then a flicker of anxiety in her expression. Now she looked to Kelsie again.

“Who—” stronger this time, that mind question, yet still hut a single word.

“Roylane—” she answered aloud, guessing again at what the full question might have been. And this time she saw the woman’s eyes go wide, her mobile features picturing shock.

“Who—?” the mind word came again and now the hand holding that chain swung it so that the gem gleamed in the sun.

“Kelsie—” the girl repeated.

“Kel-Say,” this time the woman shaped the word with her lips not her thought—“Kel-Say.”