The Gate of the Cat

5

Kelsie arose abruptly, turning to the rock in which those weird spirals and indentations were plain as the sun moved.

“I know nothing of this… this geas—

He shrugged. “Sometimes that is so and you will find that it leads you only after many days—But where it points, there you shall go.”

“You speak as if you know something of such things beside just idle tales.”

Yonan again looked at her with the shadow smile. “Now that is also the truth. It once fell upon me—this need for doing an action which I did not plan and—”

Whatever he might have added came to nothing, for one of the lizard folk flashed into sight among the rocks. Yonan was instantly on his feet, staring upward at that green-gold scaled body as it descended the Valley wall with a speed which made Kelsie gasp so near was it to a downward plunge. The girl saw that while using all four limbs for his quick drop the sentry carried in addition something in his mouth, an untidy bunch much the same as the cloth in which Yonan had brought the cub and she wondered if another was to be added to Swiftfoot’s family.

Once the lizard reached relatively level ground where the two stood he spat forth what he carried and it slammed against the stone of the carving. There came a tingling sound and then a puff of black smoke accompanied by a foul odor. Yonan exclaimed, drew sword while the lizard man stood, panting to one side, his golden, black slitted eyes on the man.

The tip of the sword caught in the covering of that untidy package, flipped part of the covering up and back. The smoke had disappeared but the odor was stronger, seeming to poison the very air about them.

Under the flap of the material Yonan had lifted there lay a short rod, perhaps the length of one of the lizard man’s long-lingered hands. It was a murky grayish color and there was a knob at either end. Plainly it was hollow and a smoky substance within appeared to swirl and billow as if it fought for freedom.

Moving with what appeared exaggerated care Yonan rolled it out of the cloth. By the expression on his face he was as puzzled as the girl as to what this might be. Though she knew from her instant reaction to it that she would not have laid her bare hand upon that artifact, even had she been offered free passage back through the gate. Her quick, nauseated reaction puzzled as well as alarmed her.

There was something like a far off fluttering of speech within her head and then the lizard was gone, running at top speed toward the houses closer to the river, leaving his find under the sword point of Yonan.

Tsali goes for help—” the young man said. “He must have found this in the rocks above on the very rim of the Valley.”

“Look!” Kelsie may not have wanted to touch the stone but she clutched in her growing uneasiness at Yonan’s arm.

For that thing on the ground was moving!

Not from any stirring of the sword point. In fact it looked as if it were somehow veering left to escape touch with the steel. As if it were a sentient creature with a will to escape—escape or attack?

This was near to the same anger she had felt when the Witch Woman had turned against her. There was a will here, somehow clipped within, or acting from a distance without, upon that rod. It had turned enough now to be wholly clear of the cloth and she saw that the knob end coming around to face them was fashioned in the likeness of a head—a grotesque travesty of a human head in which eye slits boiled with the same evil yellow fire she had seen in pits of the hounds’ narrow skulls.

To her surprise Yonan reversed his sword in one swift movement and held toward that rolling thing the hilt instead of the point. There came a blaze of blue haze from the pommel of the weapon. It touched the rolling rod and—

That solid looking thing quivered as if it were indeed endowed with life. Also it would appear that Yonan’s quick action baffled it though it raised the head end a fraction and wavered for an instant back and forth.

“What is it?” demanded Kelsie. “Is it alive?”

“I have never seen its like before,” returned her companion. “But it is of the Dark—the Deepest Shadow perhaps.”

Before the words were barely out of his mouth there came a yowl of rage. One she had certainly heard before. Around the rock padded the cat, dragging behind it something which flashed with fiery light. The chain of the witch’s jewel dripped from between those cruel fangs and the gem itself boiled and throbbed as if it, too, had a new kind of life within. The cat made a wide circle about that which still quivered and fought for its freedom where Yonan held it in balk.

Padding straight to Kelsie, Swiftfoot dropped the chain of the jewel over the toe of her soft boot and, looking up into the girl’s face, gave a second demanding yowl.

The girl bent and scrabbled for the chain which had fallen into the gravel and arose with the sparkling gem twirled only inches from her hand, nearly crying out from the heat the thing was generating.

Now the rod went into a frenzy, rolling back and forth, hut Yonan was watchful and his sword hilt blocked any swing right or left which might take it even temporarily out of the ward that weapon kept upon it.

“Fool!”

It was the Witch Woman’s biting voice which led Kelsie to glance back over her shoulder. Her skirt caught up with both hands, the woman out of Estcarp was actually running, outpacing in this instant Dahaun and behind her two others, one in the mail of the Old Race, the other, whipstock steady, a girl of the Valley. But before the three of them came Tsali with a whir of speed.

“Fool!” The witch was panting a little but she arrived first and had strength enough left to swipe outward at Kelsie’s hand, as if she would wrest the jewel stone from her then and there. “Would you burn out the last of life—”

“Or the first,” Dahaun’s voice was much more collected. “What mischief has Tsali discovered within our borders?” She came closer to that trembling, fighting rod, dropping down to view the thing the closer. They were all silent now waiting for her to judge. But at last she shook her head.

“Never has the Valley had its ancient safeguards broken. Yet Tsali found this rolling between rocks and about to fall into the spring, perhaps to let the water hide and bring it down. It is not of the Sam, nor the gray ones, and certainly not of the Thas—or if so it is something they have never turned against us before. This is very old—and—”

“And,” for the first time the man in mail spoke. Kelsie thought at first he was Simon returned. But the face half seen below the helm’s nose guard was that of a much younger man. “And, what does that argue, Lady? That those of the Dark have broached some place of ancient weaponry?” He held no sword, rather what seemed a flimsy stick peeled of its bark and with half of its length colored the green-blue of the bird feathers which roofed the Valley houses.

“Well enough,” he said to Yonan, “let us see what the Valley can raise against this.”

Obediently Yonan stepped away and withdrew his sword hilt from the weaving pattern before the strange thing.

The other man spoke. The single word he uttered held no meaning for Kelsie but once more, as she had shrunk from the powers the witch had called upon her, so again her head was instantly filled with a roaring sound as if the very air about them had been ruptured, letting in she knew not what.

The green half of the wand the man held burst into real flame and with an exclamation, he threw it from him at that rod. It fell into the tangle of cloth and smoldered, beginning a fire which seemed to excite the rod for it rolled deliberately toward that piece of scorching fabric and thrust the head end into the small flame. It might have been feeding greedily on the fast dying spark.

“Ha,” the Witch Woman flung back her head and actually uttered a bark of laughter. “See what you would do, Kemoc halfling? This is not for such as you no matter what knowledge you dabbled in in Lormt. Get you off before you make bad matters worse. See—it feeds upon that very thing you would use to quiet it!”

The swirling within the rod part of the lizard man’s find did indeed appear to gather strength, and the murkiness was, Kelsie thought, taking on a glow. There was a sudden sharp pain in her hand and she looked to see that the gem was also awhirl at the end of its chain and the links of the chain were sawing at her flesh.

“By Reith and Nieve—” was that her own voice? Whence had come those names? From her lips right enough, but they had not been generated by any thought of hers!

The twirling stone was throwing off sparks, though none reached as far as the object on the ground. She discovered she could not stop the motion of her wrist which controlled that passage through the air.

“No!” Again the Witch Woman gave tongue and she aimed a blow straight at Kelsie’s arm. Only Yonan’s left hand intercepted that and she was forced a little backward by his abrupt rebuttal to the stroke she tried to deliver.

“She is no witch!” The voice reached a screech. “She dare not use the power. Would you have that which waits fall upon us all? Stop her!” The Witch Woman looked to Dahaun who had made no move either at the destruction of the wand or at the witch’s foiled attack on Kelsie. But now she spoke.

“We do not give names—those are given to us. She was given a name and perhaps more by one of your own kin—”

“Who is dead!” That sounded as if the witch thought such an ending might have been well deserved.

“Who is dead,” Dahaun agreed. “But in dying she may have passed—”

“There is no likelihood of that,” cried the witch. “She has no right—she could not have done so. This one comes from where? She is not of the blood, she has no training, she is nothing except a danger to all of us. Give me the jewel!” Her demand was aimed at Kelsie who had just made a discovery of her own.

Just as she could not stop the twirling of her wrist which kept the gem in motion, so she could not now loose her grip upon it. Instead she was pulled forward as if someone tugged at her with greater strength-than she could sustain. The witch gem swung faster, though its circle was wider until it seemed to rest upon the air itself a distance beyond the circumference of that rod.

All the while the rod flapped up and down, strove to roll and could not, as if it did indeed hold life within it. The whir of the jewel grew faster until Kelsie’s wrist seemed to be the center of a brilliant disc and the sparks it flung off now shot at the thing on the half-burned cloth.

Again Kelsie’s lips shaped words she did not understand:

“Reith—Reith—by the Fire of Reith—by the will of Nieve may this be rendered harmless!”

Wider and more accurate became the rain of sparks. Now they centered straight upon the rod. Then there was a burst of glaring light, first an angry threatening crimson, then blue above and nothing below save a twisted piece of what looked like half-melted metal.

Kelsie’s arm fell to her side without her willing it. It was numb as if she had lifted some great weight and held it out for a time past her own strength. The glitter from the jewel had vanished—it was an ashy gray, like a piece from the fire which had burned itself out.

Dahaun broke the silence first. “It is gone—the evil of it.”

“Back to the sender,” the witch’s harsh voice sounded no relief. “And what message will it carry so? That we have come seeking and are ready to stand with you—”

“Seeking you did come,” Kemoc reminded her. “But it was not to cast your lot and power with us—you thought to take, not to share.”

“Be silent, halfling who should never have been bora,” her harshness close to hoarseness as if she would scream at him but did not have the power.

“Halfling I may be,” he told her, “but that half blood has wrought well for Escore. And before that for Estcarp—

“Man!” she spat at him. “It is against all nature that a man has the power. Because your sire brought that with him through the gate—what has happened?”

“Yes, what has happened,” he returned. “The Kolders are no more, the way to Escore lies open—”

“Which is no blessing,” she interrupted. “Things from the foul Dark roam the mountains now and venture down upon the land. You and those two who share birthday with you have stirred into being a mighty stew of war, disaster and death. And now—” she pointed straight to Kelsie who was trying to rub life back into her numb arm, “there comes this one who took from one of the sisters—stole—what she does not know how to handle and so—”

“And so,” Dahaun’s voice cut clear and cold through that tirade, “and so this thing whose like we have not seen before has been rendered harmless.” She spoke to Kemoc and the girl of her own people. “Let it be buried where it lies and then do you,” she motioned to the stone in which the ancient carvings were still to be half seen, “set this upon it. Reith and Nieve,” she went to Kelsie and laid her hand protectively on that numbed arm. From her touch came a surge of warmth and the girl discovered she could flex her fingers. “Long and very long has it been since those names were called upon—though they were mighty weapons in their day. Do you still have a touch with them?” she asked the witch.

The latter looked around at the rest of them with both anger and contempt in her face, stronger yet in her voice as she answered:

“Such things are not for talking on—they are secrets—

Dahaun shook her head. “The time for secrets is long past. When the Dark arises, then the Light must stand united and all knowledge be shared from one to another.”

The witch answered her with what sounded like an exclamation of contempt. However, if she would have denied Dahaun’s suggestion she did not do so more openly. Instead she gestured toward the now dead looking stone which still dangled from the chain wound about Kelsie’s fingers.

“That is of our magic not of yours. “It should have been left to rest with her who first gained it. Not given to one who has none of the proper training. How do we know what she is, in truth?”

There was no mistaking the anger which still bubbled in her whenever she glanced at Kelsie. The girl was swift to reply. With the fingers of her left hand she plucked at the chain until it did unwrap from that tight hold and she offered to give it to the witch, only too glad to be free of it, but the woman in gray made a gesture repulsing it, seeming almost to shrink as it came near her.

“Take it,” Kelsie urged. “I do not want it—”

“You have no right—” began the witch making no move to accept the stone.

“She has the right of death-gift,” Dahaun said. “Did not she who died give also of her name to Kel-Say. And with the name might have gone her power.”

“She also had no right!”

“Then call her up and ask her of—

The flush was high on the angular face of the woman in gray. “That is foulness which you suggest! We have no dealings with such darkness.”

“If that is so, why question what your sister has done?” Dahaun asked. “One can pass the power willingly and she did—”

“To a cat!” sputtered the witch. “It was that beast who carried the seeing stone.”

“And in a time of need passed it again to one it judged would use it—”

Kelsie was tired of this wrangling over what she might have done or what she might be. She tossed the jewel from her, though she had to use all her willpower to achieve that. For it seemed that her body was a traitor to her mind and would not let it go. It arched through the air, struck upon one of the tall rocks and then slid down into the coarse grass clump at the foot of the stone.

“Take it!” Kelsie had never heard such a note in Dahaun’s voice before. Thus in spite of all her defiance and desire to be free of their quarrels she found herself moving forward, her fingers reaching down to a loop of the chain caught about a stiff blade of grass. Once more she held the stone. It was still opaque, showing a muddy gray, and she began to believe that it had burned itself out of whatever mysterious “power” it had shown while confronting the rod. She swung it a little as one might swing a smoldering branch to brighten fire again, but there was no answer from that lump of crystal.

“Give her the covering,” now Dahaun had turned that demand upon the witch, her anger plain to read in every stiff gesture brought out that patch of cloth which could be drawn into a bag and smoothed it out on top of one of the stones.

Thankfully Kelsie loosed the chain and let the jewel fall onto that circle releasing her hold. The witch had drawn the drawstrings the minute she placed it so and stepped away, leaving the knobby bag on the rock’s crown.

“Take it—” Dahaun ordered.

Kelsie dared to shake her head. “I do not want it—

“Such things of power choose you, not you them. This has doubly come to you, from the hand of she who earned it and from your use of it. Take it up—its use may be over. But I think not.”

Yonan had used sword and knife points to dig a pit, and he pushed the twisted, blackened rod into the earth. But as he did so he uttered an exclamation. For on the stone against which that thing had burnt there was now a boldly black picture—There grinned up at them a face which was more closely human than the one Kelsie had noted on the rod, yet so (bully evil that she could not believe any such thing could exist. During its destruction it had painted its likeness on the stone, into the stone, for when Yonan strove to pick away at it with the point of his sword he could not scratch a single fragment of the sooty black free.

Dahaun strode around the rock and came back in a moment her hands cupped, holding’ water which dripped down from her curled fingers. She bent her head and breathed on what she held, reciting words—perhaps names. Then she turned to the witch who, plainly against her will, yet moved by a belief strong in her, dabbed one finger in the fast disappearing water and muttered some incantation of her own.

Next it went to Kemoc who passed his hand above the clasped ones of the Valley dweller and spoke his own prayer or ritual. Thereafter Dahaun went to the black mask on the stone and allowed the water to cascade down upon the burnt picture of the demonic head. Kelsie was sure she saw the lips of that writhe as if it would call out. But the image blurred, thinned, and was gone.

With her foot Dahaun prodded that stone into the hole after the remnants of the rod, then from her belt pouch took some withered leaves and allowed them to flutter down on top of that defiled bit of rock. Yonan struck with his sword. A cascade of gravel poured down, to utterly hide the buried. But it took them all—except the witch who made no move to help—to loosen and push over that burial of evil the stone with the carvings. Dahaun was the last to withdraw her hand, rather smoothing with her fingers those long eroded signs and symbols carven thereon.

“What manner of weapon was that?” Kemoc asked when they were done.

Dahaun shrugged. “Its like I have not seen. But in the days when this land was rent, adept fighting adept and no safety to be found save here in this Valley, there were many weapons which have been long forgotten. Who animated this—We have had a measure of uneasy peace since we fought the battle of the cliffs. I think that that is now at an end—or nearly so. The very fact that this could be planted above, perhaps to open a road to the Dark, is a threat I never thought we would see. The Sam and the gray ones are up and out. If they stir so must the Thas and all the rest of the Dark. We must be ready to see perhaps something more than what lies here.”

Kelsie held the bag with the Witch Jewel. She felt battered and bruised inside. There had been too much too soon. She knew that this was no dream. She had to believe Simon Tregarth, that by some chance she had come into an entirely new world where other natural laws held sway. Yet it was only with difficulty that she could make herself accept that. If she went back to the circle of the gate with the jewel she now held—if she passed between those standing stones—could she not win back to a life which was real—

Oh, this was real enough but it was not her reality. Simon Tregarth seemed to have accepted it without question. But she—

“Keep you that—safe!” the harsh croak of the witch disturbed her thoughts then as the woman’s angular form stepped close to Kelsie. One long pale finger stabbed the air in the direction of the packet she held.

“I am no witch,” Kelsie returned, her dislike for the woman overriding all her caution at that moment.

The other laughed but there was only sneering amusement in that guttural sound. “Well may you say that, girl. But it seems that this Escore can turn upside down truths we know in Estcarp. Men hold power—” she favored both Yonan and Kemoc with a savage frown, “and those of no training wield the weapons of Light. But that has obeyed you once—”

“I gave no order!” Kelsie was quick to answer.

“If you did not—whence came the names you called upon? Out of the air which holds us all? What were you in your own time and place, girl? You have some power or that would not work for you. And an unknown power—” she shook her head, “who knows how it may hold when the times comes to face the Dark?”

Dahaun’s hand fell again on Kelsie’s arm, drawing her away from the witch toward the light trail descending into the heart of the Valley. “We have seen its work this day. I would say that you—and it—wrought mightily,” she said to the girl. “Be not fearful—or only so much as to make you cautious. You bear now that which will be half protection, half weapon. Kaththea sent us word three tens of days ago that there was to come one who would be a balance for us in new struggles to come. It would seem that she was very right—”

“The babblings of a half witch—a traitor who fled from the place of learning before she was knit to the sisterhood,” the witch was not to be overborne by Dahaun. Her sour mouth dropped the words like acid.

“She chose her own road,” Dahaun said. “And now she is Lady to Hilaron. Do you set even the combined forces of Estcarp against him, Wise Woman?”

“An adept? Who knows? In the old days it was those of his kind who rent the land.”

“And in these days he helps to heal it!” countered Dahaun. “Enough, Wise Woman. You say you come to us for aid and yet you do nothing but question what is done. Perhaps Escore and Estcarp have grown too far apart in these days to be allies.”

Her tone was very cool as she drew Kelsie with her, and they passed the witch on their way down into the Valley.