The Gate of the Cat (Witch World: Estcarp Series) (8 page)

“You—you—” for the first time Kelsie saw Wittle truly at a loss for words, her usual arrogance gone.

“Yes, I am not for your guiding, Lady Witch,” he said. “We have discovered other bits of power ourselves. Quan iron, in the hand of he who dares to carry it, lives. Now that we have settled that you are not to be so easily rid of me,” he allowed his pack to fall from his shoulders, “let us discuss the matter. The Lady Dahaun has sent a message to Hilaron. Do you also think that you have the power to stand against an adept? He feels strongly about this land and will not allow tricks to be played which will bring in the shadow forces past our control.”

“What would you do?” Wittle asked sullenly.

“Go with you. Do you not realize that we are as eager to mark sources of power as you are? That we must know what lies hidden whenever we can that the Dark does not reach it first?”

“This is no affair for men—”

“This is an affair for any who dare it!” he countered. “As a scout, and one who has dared before, it is my choice to come on this quest. You head for the Sleepers—”

Wittle's head jerked as if he had struck her across the mouth. “How know you that?” she demanded and for once there was flaming heat instead of the cold in her voice.

Yonan shrugged. “Think you that you can keep such purpose hidden in the Valley? We have known all the time you waited for your sister what it was that you would do.”

She glared at him and her hand tightened on her jewel as if she would again strive to try strength against strength with him. But he had already turned to Kelsie.

“You do this of your free will?” he asked.

“No, but not because of her urging,” she replied. “There is something in the jewel which has claimed me.”

“Take it off!” That was more an order than a request and her hands moved to obey—moved only a fraction. The stone blazed hot beneath her jerkin as if in warning.

“I can't,” she was forced to admit.

What she could see of his face was a frown. “Touch—” He held forth his sword by the blade and the blue band in the hilt had a subdued fire of its own. Kelsie reached for the hilt and then dropped her hand with a small cry of surprise. Her fingers were numb and that deadness was creeping across her palm and up her arm. “I can't—”

He nodded as if he had expected that very answer from her. “You are under a geas.”

“A what?”

“An order from some Old One or adept. Perhaps it lies in the heart of that stone you wear. That you must obey now that it is set upon you.”

Wittle laughed unpleasantly. “Think you that you can wear a stone of power and escape the payment it calls from its wearer? You are set upon this path now whether you will or not.”

It seemed to Kelsie then that this whole venture had been imposed on her even before the jewel of the dying witch had come into her life.

“I'm not one of you,” she protested. “Why must I be drawn into this?” It was a question that she might have asked hours earlier but it was not until the coming of Yonan that some bit of reality had broken into that drive which had held her.

“You have no choice,” Wittle turned and walked a step or so away to settle once more on the sand, her back to them, plainly preparing to return to the sleep from which Yonan had awakened her. Kelsie looked to the young man.

“I do not choose—” she began when he shook his head.

“Lady, in this land our choices are limited. I, myself, have walked strange ways because I was caught up in something which was stronger than any will of mine. This is a haunted place and what haunts it are bits and pieces of old struggles and old commands, which, once voiced, still hold. We have held against the Dark for many seasons now but there have always been rumors that inland,” he pointed with his chin upriver as he still held his sword in his two hands, “there are pockets of ancient power which are neither allied with the Dark nor with the Light. If such can be found, and what you wear is indeed a key to it or them, then there is purpose in what we do here.”

“Purpose but not choice!” she said bitterly. Her failure to touch the sword had given her a shock which had somehow awakened her, out of the bemused state which she now recognized must have encompassed her since they left the Valley.

“Purpose but no choice,” he agreed quietly. “Now, will you rest, Lady, this is the last night of the full moon and after that we shall move by day. And how far we travel, who can tell?”

Feeling was returning to her hand as she rubbed it vigorously. She wanted to argue but his complete acceptance of what seemed to have happened to her made her believe there would be no profit in that. She sought out her own bed in the sand and pillowing her head on her pack allowed herself to relax. She had not really expected sleep but it came and quickly.

She roused when an ungentle hand was laid on her shoulder and it was to look up into a sky with scudding clouds and the first drops of rain coming with the evening. Wittle stood over her, pack already on her shoulders, a piece of the dried journey cake in her hand.

“Time to go—” the witch said after she swallowed. Her shoes were once more in her belt and she waved toward the water. Yonan stood on the edge of the stream itself, the water curling up as far as his knees.

“We cannot take to this too long,” he commented as Kelsie found her own provisions and chewed at the dry bits which rasped her tongue and gums. “There may have been a hard rain upstream—the water is rising.”

But they did begin the night's trek splashing through the water. While the few drops which had fallen became part of a downpour to soak through Kelsie's clothing and set her shivering—though neither of her companions seemed to take any notice of the storm.

The night came fast though the clouds were illuminated now and then by flashes of lightning and there was the drumbeat of thunder to follow. The waves of the stream washed Kelsie up to mid-thigh now and she could feel the pull of the current. Once her foot connected painfully with a rock and she might have fallen had not Yonan's hand caught and held her up.

At length they were driven to the shore and huddled under the wide spreading branches of a willow to put on their foot gear. In the dark of the night and the storm her two companions were only half-seen blots and she wondered how they could keep together and whether it might not do well to stay in the flimsy shelter they had found until the storm passed.

She felt Yonan stir first and then came his low-pitched voice through the clamor of the rain and the stream.

“Do you smell it?”

She obediently sniffed, but all she was aware of was a musty, earthy scent which she vaguely associated with the wet ground. Yonan got to his feet and started away from the water. By the lightning flash she saw the gleam of his sword, drawn and ready in his hand. At the same time the flesh of her upper arm was bruised by a harsh grip of the witch seeming intent on holding her where she was.

There was a sound like a shout cut in half and Yonan disappeared into the ground. Kelsie broke away from the witch and ran forward only to have her feet swept from under her and feel herself falling. She thought she screamed and the jewel at her breast burst into a strong light as she landed, knocking Yonan face down into wet earth which was all about them. There was truly a stench here, one she had smelled before.

Thas! They had fallen into one of the underground ways of those dark dwellers. Wittle made no such mistake as Kelsie's and she did not join them in their tangle of arms and legs. By the time they had regained their feet in the hole one whole side of mudlike, noisome sledge fell in upon them, sending them to their knees again and nearly burying them.

Kelsie strove to escape when, out of the deeper dark which marked that part of the tunnel which had survived the cave-in there snaked a thick length of what seemed a root and it settled about her drawing tight enough to make her gasp as it pinned her arms to her body.

Eight

Another coarse-skinned line struck about her hips and in a moment all her struggling could not move her, except as her bonds wished, and she was being drawn straight to the shadowed side of the pit where there was an opening. By the floundering noises which she heard, Yonan was faring little, if any, better.

On her breast the jewel glowed, and she caught a faint glimmer ahead which might mark the power inset on Yonan's sword hilt. By the light she herself carried she could see now that what held her in bondage looked to be two thick roots. Yet they had the mobility of serpents and by these she was being pulled roughly along, bumped from wall to wall, down a passage intended for creatures smaller than herself. Dank earth smeared her all over and she was spitting to clear it from her mouth.

Also the scent which thickened the air was stomach churning and Kelsie had to battle the nausea which arose to choke her throat. She judged from sounds that Yonan was being forced along behind her as she heard exclamations of disgust and anger.

It seemed to her that that passage lasted at least an hour or more—though it could not have in truth. Then she was jerked like a cork out of a bottle into a place where there was a ghastly phosphorescent light, such as might come from something rotten, proceeding from the tops of crooked stakes set up in a square. Into this trap the ropes snapped her and a moment later she was bowled over by Yonan landing hard against her as her bonds withdrew and his followed.

There was a crunching sound. A rock taller and wider than her own body had fallen to close the gap in the cold fire of the palings around them. Yonan was already on his feet and facing that doorway.

The tops of the palings, where that weird light gleamed, were well above her head as she got to her feet. There the light gathered into an unwholesome mist which hid from sight what might lie directly over them. She crossed her arms, rubbing the bruises near her shoulders where the ropes had cut the hardest. There seemed to be scratches there which smarted under her touch as if the rough surface of the rope had rubbed the skin bare. Yonan, because of his mail, must have fared much better.

He had given but a short inspection to the stone which served as a door and was now prowling along the side of the square, sword out and ready as if he expected some instant move against them. At length he aimed at a crack between two of the palings and levered but the steel made no impression on the giant fence.

“Your jewel,” he said abruptly, “can it cut our way clear?”

The gem still blazed, but it seemed to Kelsie that the light was less, as if the waning beams from the paling smothered it. However, obediently she stepped closer to the nearest fetid smelling pillar and held up the stone so that a lesser beam of the blue light focused directly.

To her eyes the wood, root, or stone, whatever that fencing might be, did writhe under the prod of the light. However, when Yonan, with an exclamation, pushed beside her to add his sword tip to the spot of light there was nothing but an adamant surface there.

“Where are we?” Kelsie tried to tamp down her rising fear by asking in the most normal voice she could produce.

He shrugged. “In Thas hands. Where? We can be anywhere, as far as the outer world is concerned.”

“Wittle—”

“I do not think she was caught.”

“These Thas—”

“Serve the Dark,” he interrupted. “They hunt in packs and so can better pull us down. And their root ropes are harsh holding.”

“What do they want?”

“Beyond just evil mischief? I would say that jewel of yours. Probably not for themselves, they are servants of more mighty masters and have probably gone to report to those now. Soon we shall see what manner of the Dark they serve.”

“My jewel—” She slipped the chain over her head, allowing it now to dangle from her fingers and began to swing it back and forth. In her mind she concentrated upon it, bedazzled by the pulsation of its light as if she had never seen it so before. That waxing and waning followed a beat which began slowly but arose to draw faster and faster flashes from the stone.

Her own heart was beating quickly, in time with the stone? Of that she could not be sure. Nor did it matter. What did was that she must hold the jewel in her sight, concentrate on it completely, forgetting all else.

It was difficult at first, that concentration. Then in the whirl of light which followed the path of the jewel she saw something begin to form. There was no mistaking those hard features. Wittle! Yet the witch was not there, only a small semblance of her. Still Kelsie focused her full attention on that face and it seemed to her that Wittle was staring back as if she, too, could see them.

“Out!” Kelsie spoke the one word which meant the most to her now.

She watched Wittle's mouth open. If the witch spoke the girl did not hear her with her ears. However, into her mind flashed what might be an answer or even some mischief of the enemies. She stopped the whirl of the jewel with her other hand. The face of Wittle abruptly vanished.

But now she held the stone on her palm in spite of the heat it generated, which seemed enough to sear her flesh from her bones. Yet still she held and pointed a single shaft of light, governed by her tormented fingers, not at the stake before her where Yonan had made his attack but rather to its crown where the yellowish evil-smelling haze arose from some unsighted fire.

The point of that light thrust struck the haze, cut through it. She saw a bowl on the top of the shaft. It was that the light was attacking. She watched a blue spot appear on that side, grow not only in size but in brilliance. Then something dropped at their feet and the bowl showed a wide section shorn from it. Into that opening Kelsie beamed her light. But it was not enough. Into her mind spun that knowledge. She had not the full power she should have been able to summon—as a witch she was flawed by knowing far too little.

She spoke without turning her head. “Give to me the Quan iron. Lay it upon my wrist.”

Kelsie might have asked him to supply a brand to burn her past all healing. She gnawed at her lower lip, determined not to cry out—to forget the pain of her body, to concentrate only on what she had done and would do.

For that strip of blue metal was like a second force, feeding into the hands she had cupped about the jewel. The raw pain of it she would have to bear but the pulsations of the light grew greater and closer together, firing up the jewel's azure beam.

Then—

There was a roar—had she heard that with her ears or sensed the final confrontation of force against force in her body? From the now shattered bowl at the top of the stake shot another flash of light momentarily as vivid as lightning across the sky so far above them now. The haze itself appeared to catch from that flame and billow out not yellow now, nor blue but forming a white glare which punished her eyes until she had to close them. Something struck her shoulder, another object grazed her hip. She heard Yonan cry out. A mailed arm closed about her waist in an ungentle grasp dragging her back against his body as he, too, retreated. Her arms wavered and fell though she did not drop the stone except to spin by the chain she still held.

Above their heads there wove back and forth ribbons of fire and these coiled about the stakes which made up the walls of their cage. They burned then, those stakes, crackling open as might flesh caught in a blast of flame. The heat ate in as the two now crouched in the midst of the circle. Above the crackling of that fire Kelsie was sure she heard voices shouting a guttural refrain, but she could see nothing now for she had shielded her eyes from that searing display with one forearm. She was not even aware whether the stone had finished its mad spinning or not.

The crackling and the stench became worse. She was gasping and felt the similar labor of Yonan's chest against her as they fought for breath amid the conflagration.

As yet the burning debris had fallen outward, she guessed, for the heat which struck at them was airborne, not from the gutted remnants of the stakes. Slowly that heat declined. At last Kelsie felt able to uncover her eyes and look about her. There were stubs of the stakes still showing ribs of spark producing fire. But outside that destruction there writhed and flailed those captor roots which had dragged them here. Now and then when one of the butt stumps blazed up the girl was certain she caught sight of some scurrying creature which in this light looked like a wadded pack of rootlets. It was possible that the owners of this trap were spinning another now, a more substantial cage for their captives.

Yonan moved from beside her, slowly, as if worn-out after a long day of tramping. While she was too tired to move at all. He tottered toward the nearest hole in the wall where the paling had burnt clear down to its root in the stone and with his sword he cut and stabbed at the small core of flame-eaten wood still showing above the surface. Then he held out his hand to her.

“Come!”

“Can't you see that is just what they want us to do—they are waiting there,” she answered. She greatly doubted at that moment she could do no more than crawl on her hands and knees, and so provide easy meat for those waiting beyond.

He came back to her in two quick strides, and, his hand under her armpit, pulled her up to her feet.

“They are confused,” he said as he half led, half supported her to the exit he had contrived. “Whatever lord they serve—neither he nor his higher servants can be here now.”

Kelsie could not see how he was so sure of that. But she was too tired to argue and she needed what strength and courage she had left not to waste in futile argument, but to be ready to face what lay beyond. That the breaking of the cage set them entirely free she doubted very much indeed.

They stepped over the narrow path fire that Yonan's sword had opened for them. In the failing light from the almost destroyed paling she could see that indeed roots crawled across the floor, the nearer ones heading for them.

Yonan made a quick thrust to his left, not using the point of his sword but bringing down the hilt sharply against the raised end of the nearest root length. The thing squirmed and drew back. On its surface where the iron must have touched there was an oval of light which spread swiftly as if power continued to eat into it.

It was then that Kelsie heard clearly a dull thud, a thud which was drumlike in its regularity but muffled. Also, there were other sounds in the rhythm of a chant.

As the seeking root writhed away from them, bearing its growing glow, a second one threw itself out, or was so thrown from some perch in the dark, whipping across the floor as if meant to sweep them from their feet. Kelsie lashed out the chain of the stone which was now a sullen shadow of itself. That also landed fair enough to send the root rope out of their way.

She tried to concentrate on the gem as she had in the pen but she could not summon up the same sure power she had known then. There was only a die-away spurt or two. Yet that appeared to be enough to keep the roots at bay. She wondered if Yonan knew where they were going. As far as she could judge he was heading on, straight into the dark. Again it was as if he could read her fatigue-deadened mind.

“There is an opening ahead. Taste the air—” She could see in the faint light from jewel and sword his tongue tip showing then between his lips as if he did in truth test so the fetid atmosphere. And she copied his gesture.

There
was
something! It was almost as if she had been offered a cup of water in the midst of all the fumes and heat of this dark place. The girl could see that her companion kept his tongue so as he urged her forward. Some of her strength seemed to return as she went until she could pull away from him and walk forward on her own.

The steady thunk-thunk of the distant drums and a hissing noise filled this place and she could hear voices rise and fall until it seemed that she could sort out the direction from which those came—to her right. The root ropes kept pace with them and now one or another, or sometimes two together would try once more to entangle their former captives. Though it appeared that Yonan need only show them the Quan on his sword hilt for them to flinch back.

Kelsie became aware that the stone under their feet was sloping upward and once she was sure she caught sight of a pale streak of light before them. Then came a sudden silence. The drums and the voices ceased, even the hissing of the root ropes faded away. She tongue-tried the air again—

The freshness was still there but in her nostrils was an ever growing taint of filth and damp and other odors she could not put name to. There might be an entrance somewhere ahead as Yonan believed but there was also a menace in between.

She gathered the stone swinging on its chain into the tender flesh of her hand and held it against her forehead. There was no reason that she could have told for that gesture, it simply seemed the right thing to be done.

Though her eyes were fastened upon the darkness ahead, there appeared in her mind another picture—that of a packed mass of the misshapen creatures she had only half glimpsed in the fire-lit ruin of the cage. To the fore were three who pounded with misshapen fists on the flat surface of bowl-like instruments they held between their knees. While the tooth-filled jaws of all showed as they sang no—called! Called upon what or whom? Kelsie shrank from knowing but she did not break the touch between her forehead and the jewel.

There was a swirl of reddish-yellow just before them drawing in upon itself, curdling into something far more sturdy than the mist from which it was born. Kelsie had expected a face, even a full figure, but what she saw was a sign which was a mixture of dots and lines, a pattern which reached outward for her own mind—offering more danger than the burning cage. She let the jewel fall forward but not before she gained a firm belief that that which had set the pattern had also been aware of her, and that they were far from being free from the hands of the servants—Thas—or perhaps even other and more powerful aides.

Only Yonan continued to walk steadily ahead and she saw that his attention was all for the Quan iron as if that could act as a scout and give them warning. Was the stone equal—