The Gate of the Cat

3

“———with———”

Again the woman gestured, this time summoningly. Her mount moved up beside her and stood waiting. The eyes it fastened on Kelsie were not burning circles of evilly colored fire as she had seen in the hounds’ heads and in that of the skeleton like steed of the black rider—rather a warm brown and—surely there was intelligence in them!

Kelsie guessed once more at what they wished of her—to accompany them. The circle meant safety from what she had seen threatening in this land—that she knew. Dared she obey that invitation—or was it an order? She could not stand against the flame whips of these two were they to drive her.

To gain time she pointed to the body on the ground.

“What about him?” she asked, spacing her words carefully, trying to think her question at the same time.

The answer came sharp and clear.

“Dead!”

She heard the cat mew and looked down. Already the mother’s jaws had closed upon the nape of one of the squirming kittens. Lifting her child high the cat advanced toward the gate, plainly ready to go with this stranger even if Kelsie delayed. That made up the girl’s mind for her. She went to gather up her coat, the other mewling infant in it, and returned, stooping, offering the bundle to the wildcat. The mother allowed her burden to drop in with its sibling, winding about Kelsie’s legs as she went through the gate at last.

Up the slope came the other rider. He carried before him the body of Roylane and passed them, taking his burden on into the circle. No opposition arose to keep him out, but, as he entered, the blue standing stones flared up like candles and a drifting haze spread from one to another of them. He dismounted and lifted down the body which in his hold seemed small and spare. Then he laid it on the ground, choosing, Kelsie was sure, not just by chance, a bed of the white flowers to receive it. From his belt he produced two brilliantly blue feathers, gleaming like those which formed the tails of those birds she had seen earlier. He pushed one into the ground at the head and the other at the feet of the dead woman, standing up and back at last to raise his two hands to his forehead in what appeared to be a salute, while from his companion there came a sing-songed flow of speech which might have been of farewell or invocation.

As he turned to leave, the trails of mist from the stones rolled out into the center of the circle, settling about that small broken body until only their one rippling substance could be seen.

“——Go——”

Again Kelsie was summoned, and since there was little other choice she went. She sat awkwardly on the back of the woman’s mount, her arms full of the coat in which squirmed the kittens. The woman caught up the cat in turn and slipped her into the folds Kelsie held. Then, to the girl’s surprise, she also put in the jewel. The cat pawed it beneath her own body as she settled with her family, looking up at Kelsie with a hint of a growl as if warning the girl to take care.

They skirted the gully where the stream flowed and the animal under her fell into a swift pace, joined immediately by its companion. They headed southwest, as well as Kelsie could tell from the sun.

As they went it became more and more certain to the girl that wherever she might be it was no country she had ever seen or heard of. Strange vegetation arose around them and there were things moving in the tall grass of open glades which had no relationship to any animal she knew.

She noted as they went that the man kept behind and sometimes his mount dropped to a slower pace—he might have been a rear guard. Yet they heard no more of the yowling howls from the hounds, nor any other sounds save the calls of the bright winged birds which swung about them as they rode.

Across open land they traveled. Now and then their mounts trotted by long overgrown fields guarded by the tumbled stones of what were once dividing walls. This had the look of a land long deserted.

At last they came to a way which was marked by a scarring of hoof and footprints and undoubtedly was a road, if one might call such a dusty trail a road. The land began to rise on either side and Kelsie could see that they were entering the throat of a valley between two rises which, a little beyond, assumed the height of real mountains.

On the rock walls they passed were carved a series of signs or what might even have been words of an unknown tongue. The woman with whom Kelsie shared this mount pointed with her flame whip as they passed each of these symbol-graven rocks.

There was a scuttling around a large rock where, settled in a squatting position on the crown, was a shape as bizarre as that of the hound and the monstrous beast the black rider had bestridden.

Shorter than a man, this sentinel, for so she would deem him with its spear held up in salute to the riders, was a giant lizard, green-gold of scaled skin. It had a domed head which was nearly human in shape, though the lipless mouth which stretched a third of the way back into the skull and the red tongue which quivered in the air (as if testing a breeze which was not at that moment blowing) were grotesque copies of human features. The woman responded to his salute with a raised hand.

Kelsie was sure that they must have passed other guards during their journey, but that was the only one she had seen. Then at last they reached the mouth of a gully road at the border of a land which made her draw a deep breath.

She had seen strangeness and horror since her first awaking here—wherever here might be. Now she looked upon true beauty. The land ahead was brilliantly green with lush growth starred here and there with flowers jewel-like in radiant color. She saw to one side a small herd of animals like the one she now bestrode grazing peacefully. There were also people before and beyond, though none of them appeared to show any interest in the emergence of their own small party.

Down they went—the road now vanished and the hillside covered with velvety grass. Then, for the first time, Kelsie saw houses—the brightness of their roofs betraying them to the eye, for their walls were masses of flowering vine. Had the feathers been plucked from countless flocks of the birds such as escorted them and woven into a thatch it would look like that!

For the first time the inhabitants of the valley looked up. Some gathered in a small group of welcome. A few of them shared the peculiarity of those two who had found her, their color of skin and hair changing as they moved. But the others were closer to the woman she had found dying. They were tall and slender and their hair remained very dark, their skin sun browned yet fair.

Four of those who so waited were men, wearing coats of fine mail which, when they moved, appeared to be as supple as cloth. There were two women, one of whom wore green garments which were no different from those of the one whose beast Kelsie shared. But the other had a long straight robe of gray which brushed the grass with its hem and had a circle of tarnished silver girding it. Her dark hair was drawn severely back and bound into a net also of silver, while her pallid face reminded Kelsie strongly of the woman who had died from the savaging of the hound.

It was she who started forward as they drew up, but her attention was all for the gem half hidden by one of the cat’s paws. Her lips moved, breaking the statue-like stillness of her face, and she stared first at the woman in green and then at Kelsie. It seemed to the latter that there was both suspicion and threat in that long moment of straight regard.

She herself slipped from the back of the sleek mount, her coat with the kittens still held close. But the cat had leaped lightly to the earth the minute they had come to a halt and was now weaving a pattern brushing against the long gray skirt, the chain of the jewel gripped between its teeth.

The woman stooped and drew her fingers across that bushy head and then looked again to Kelsie, speaking in that lilting language. Regretfully the girl shook her head.

“I do not understand—”

Several of those waiting looked startled and the woman in gray frowned. Then in her aching head Kelsie felt once more that troubling sensation:

“—who/—what/—”

For the second time she pictured the scene on the side of Ben Blair, trying to remember every small item. If these people could read minds surely they must be able to pick out an answer from what she spread before them. But the frown on the woman’s face only grew sharper and there was a murmur of near whispers speeding from one listener to another.

“———gate———” That had come from the woman who had found her. She now touched Kelsie’s arm to attract her full attention and pointed to herself:

“Dahaun.” She shaped that name with exaggerated movements of her lips, and once again Kelsie answered:

“Kelsie.”

“Kel-Say—” Dahaun nodded, pointed to the woman in gray, and said a word which again Kelsie faithfully repeated. Thus those others were made known to her.

After two tries the girl managed:

“Crytha, Yonan (who looked to be the youngest of the men), Kemoc, Kyllan.” And for the one who towered above the rest “Urik.”

The cat reared on its hind legs and clawed at Kelsie demandingly. When she put down the coat with its family the mother went to them at once, licking them all over as if she distrusted what might have happened to them during that ride. Kelsie herself was urged on into the nearest of the strange living houses and into an inner part of that where behind curtains there bubbled a shallow pool of water. Dahaun made motions to suggest that she shed her clothing and make use of such refreshment. She began to point hither and thither and give words which Kelsie said after her, striving to use the proper intonation.

By the time she was through with her bath and had toweled herself dry on a square of stuff she had a vocabulary of perhaps twenty-five words which she continued to say over to impress them on her mind.

She ate from a tray loaded down with fruit, nuts, and small cakes, feeling strangely free in the garments Dahaun had provided. There was an under smock of pale green and trousers not unlike rather tight jeans. Then came a long-sleeved jerkin which was laced up the front with cords of silver and belted with links of that same metal embossed and engraved into intricate patterns. On her feet were soft hoots, calf high, which fitted fairly well. She was offered a comb to set her short cut locks into order, still being lessoned all the while in the language.

There was a stir outside which even small rustling of the leaves set in the wall above did not hush. At a call from Dahaun a tall man, mail clad, tramped in. He carried his helmet on his hip, showing himself bareheaded and full faced. His was a face to attract interest. The skin was weathered brown as if he had been much in the open, and there were silver streaks in the very dark hair at his temples. His eyes were gray and he looked at Kelsie searchingly almost as if he would open her head if he could, and have out of her answers to questions she did not even know existed.

“You are from the gate—”

Startled, she stared at him openmouthed. He was speaking her own language!

“Gate?” she floundered. “There was no gate—just the stones. Neil knocked me down when I tried to keep him from shooting the cat. I had every right,” the almost forgotten heat of her temper was again a trace of warmth in her. “I had posted the land—up to the Lying Stones and beyond. Where… where is this?”

She made a small gesture to indicate what lay about them, house, strangers—this land itself.

“You are in the Green Valley,” he told her, “in Escore. And you came through one of the Gates—May the Lady turn her favor to you now.”

“Who are you?” she came directly to the point, “and what are the gates?”

“For the first, I am Simon Tregarth. And for the second—it would take an adept to make that clear to you—if he or she could.”

“How do I get back?” She asked the most important question of all.

He shook his head. “You do not. We have only one adept now and your gate is not his. Even Hilarion cannot send you back.”

The woman in gray had entered behind him. Now she pushed to the front though she kept a space between them as if she had some aversion to the man. She addressed him abruptly and he shrugged before he turned again to Kelsie. It was plain that there was little liking between the two of them.

“She who is Wittle would know how you came by that jewel. Surely you did not bring it with you.”

“She had it—the woman who died—Roylane.”

There was complete silence and they were all staring at her as if she had uttered some word or words which had dire meaning.

“She gave you her name?” countered the man who had called himself Tregarth.

Kelsie’s chin went up, she sensed disbelief in that question.

“When she was dying,” she returned shortly.

Tregarth turned to the woman in gray and spoke quickly. Though she might be listening to him she never looked away from Kelsie. Something in that unending stare made the girl more and more uneasy, as if in each blink of an eye she was being accused of the death of the traveler and her companions.

However, Tregarth had once more turned his attention full upon the girl.

“Did you also take her jewel, and by her word?”

Kelsie shook her head emphatically, her denial aimed more at that woman in gray than to him. “The cat took it,” she said. Let them believe or not it was the truth. And she added to her first statement by describing just how the animal had taken the gem from its owner. Once more she was aware of a brush of thick fur against her and looked down to see the wildcat come to a stop before her, seating itself with tail tip covering both its good foot and the mangled one together, as if it was the two of them against this world.

The woman in gray was plainly startled by the appearance of the cat. The ornament still lay around the animal’s neck. The cat dipped its head to catch the gem between its jaws once again.

Though she had started forward a step and uttered a sound as if denying the cat its trophy, the gray woman now stood, plainly completely astounded by the creature’s actions.

“This is as it was before?” Tregarth asked.

“Yes. Only the cat took that—” Kelsie thought it wise to make that point as soon as possible. She had no desire to be thought of as one who had robbed the helpless dead. Though why she would want such a bauble she had no idea.

“And the cat entered the gate before you or with you.” He did not make a question of that statement. But she saw fit to answer:

“Yes.”

Now it was Dahaun who broke in with a fast burst of speech in which Kelsie heard her own name and the word “gate” mentioned several times. First Tregarth and then the gray woman nodded, the latter reluctantly, Kelsie believed. She watched the other bring a small bag out of some hidden pocket in her robe and pull at its drawstring until the pouch lay flat on the mat covered floor. Going down on one knee she spread out the bit of cloth yet more and then turned to the cat, meeting it eye to eye though she uttered no sound.

If she was asking it to give up guardianship of the stone she was unsuccessful. For the cat drew back, though still facing her, until there was more space between them. A line showed between the woman’s eyes which looked so pale under her dark brows. She spoke now, something with a certain rhythm which could have been part of a ritual. But the cat did not move. At length she picked up the bag and as she did so shot another keen and threatening look at Kelsie, speaking as one with authority.

Tregarth heard her out and then translated for Kelsie’s benefit.

“You are bidden to make your familiar let the power go—”

“Bidden?” snapped Kelsie. “I have no control over the cat. Familiar—” a scrap of old knowledge came suddenly to the fore of her mind, “that’s what they used to say about witches—that they had animals to help them. Well, I do not know where your Green Valley is, nor Escore, nor any of this country! I am not a witch—such things do not exist.”

For the first time there was a quirk of smile about his lips. “Oh, but here they do, Kelsie McBlair. This is the very home and root of what you might call witchcraft in your own place.”

She laughed uncertainly. “This is a dream—” she said more to herself than him.

“No dream,” his voice was entirely serious and, Kelsie thought, he was looking at her with something close to pity. “The gate is behind you and there is no going back—

She threw up her hands. “What is all this talk of gates?” she demanded. “I’m probably back in a hospital somewhere and this is all coming from that bump on the head—” But, even as she tried to hearten herself with that thought and speech, she knew that it was not the truth. Something far past her ability to answer with anything believable had happened.

The woman in gray advanced another step, now her hand came out palm up to Kelsie and her frown grew the darker. She exploded into a burst of words which ran up the scale of sound near to a command shout.

“She is the witch!” Kelsie counterattacked.

“Yes,” Tregarth answered calmly and with a certainty which made it the truth. “Have you any control over the cat?”

Kelsie shook her head vigorously. “I told you she took the thing from that woman—that Roylane, when she was dying and the woman let her. It was not given to me. Let this—this witch beg it from the cat.”

Tregarth was already studying the animal, now he turned to the one who had brought Kelsie here. He asked her a question in that other tongue which sounded almost like the twittering of excited birds. It was Dahaun’s turn to face the cat, taking the disputed stone away from the self-proclaimed witch and moving it nearer her own hand.

For a long breath or two they ail stood waiting, Kelsie was plagued by the thought that the cat understood all that had passed and was content now to tease them. Then at last the animal dropped her head to spit the stone straight before her into the center of a piece of shimmery cloth which the woman of the riders had produced. The witch moved but Dahaun waved her back. It was she who drew the cords to make a bag and then held that by the drawstring.

“For the shrine—” Tregarth spoke to Kelsie. “Its power has died with she who held it.” Then Dahaun arose, leaving the bag on the ground where the cat caught it up by the string, and spoke to the witch whose pallid face was a little flushed now and whose mouth was a straight line of severity. She turned quickly, her gray robe spinning out at her momentum and went, all those gathered there allowing her wide room.

Tregarth watched her go and now it was his turn to frown. Once more he spoke to Kelsie.

“She is not in agreement with this. Stay away from her until she accepts the fact that her sister-in-power really did as you and Swiftfoot have said,” he gestured to the cat. “They have ruled too long, those of Estcarp, to take easily being thwarted, even in small things. And she had counted much on the coming of her sister-in-power. That one died—how?”

The “how” came with a snap of a whiplash. Kelsie told of the arrows she had seen which had cut down the guards and the hound which had attacked the woman.

“There was little to be seen, though,” she said and he was as quick to seize upon that:

“Rider?”

She told of him who had besieged her in the circle and Tregarth’s hand went to the hilt of the sword he wore, his lips drawn tight in a grimace which was far from a smile.

“Sarn! Sarn riders—and so close—” his words changed to the chirping speech of the Valley people and she caught one now and then which she understood—such as “near.”

“stone,” and “gate.”

Dahaun suddenly reached out and took Kelsie’s hands before the girl could move or draw back. She nodded abruptly to one of her own people, who produced a dagger in the hilt of which was set a piece of glittering blue metal, akin in color to the stones behind which the girl had sheltered. He passed it across Kelsie’s upturned palms, not touching her flesh but close enough so that she felt warmth as the metal seemed to blaze up for an instant. Then, with her eyes still on Kelsie, Dahaun’s face became a mask of concentration.

Some of the old pain awoke in the girl’s head. But there was more too—not words but thoughts—thoughts not of her own.

“You are—summoned one. Foretold—”

She was not getting the whole message, she knew, but those words made her blink. Summoned—she had been brought here, yes, but not called—unless their quick bearing of her away from the circle could be termed that. Foretold—more of this witchcraft business, that was what that seemed to mean. She spoke to Tregarth:

“I was not summoned—and how—”

Now she was sure there was a note of sympathy in his voice as he answered her.

“The gates open by powers we do not understand. That you came through one unused for generations is enough to single you out as one of importance. This is a land torn by war—Light against the Dark. It is easy to believe for those of us who have faced much which is outside ordinary experience to say that you were summoned. And it was foretold in the last scrying that one would come—”

“I don’t know what you mean! I don’t care! If there IS a gate let me go back—” she cried out then.

He shook his head. “The gates open but once, except when an adept lays a geas upon them. There is no going hack.”

Kelsie stared at him and within her a chill spread outward from the very center of who and what she was.