Authors: Marion Z. Bradley
Eduin's hand caught Damon's arm in an agonizing grip. Out of the corner of his
eye, a quick backward-flipped glance over the shoulder, Damon saw why. Out of
the thick forest at the edge of the road, spreading out behind the three
Guardsmen to cut them off, cat-men were padding quietly on large, soft paws. Too
many cat-men. Damon couldn't begin to count them and didn't try. He found that
Dom Esteban's sword was in his hand, but despair took him. Even Dom Esteban
could never fight his way out of such an ambush!
The Dry-Towners were closing in slowly, knife and sword in each hand. Damon had
forgotten the dagger hanging, at his own belt; he was startled as his left hand
plucked it out and extended it toward the enemy. He found himself in a stance
almost the direct opposite of the one he had been trained to, looking over his
left shoulder at his foe past the point of the extended dagger, his sword-hilt
cold against his right cheek. Of course. Esteban had traveled beyond the
Dry-Towns, knew how the desert people fought.
He thought, coldly, that there must have been an ambush back there. If they had
mounted and fled, as the Dry-Towners must have expected, they would have ridden
straight into the cat-men.
"Take them!" the Dry-Town leader snarled.
There was no escape; the alternatives were death or surrender, Damon's mind hung
undecided, not knowing what to do, but his body knew. As the two blades of the
Dry-Towner came at him Damon saw the tip of his own sword dip suddenly, sweeping
sharply across the sword and dagger, driving them aside; felt his feet shift and
his body dip.
So Dom Esteban thinks we can cut down ten men and get away, he thought, ironic
and detached, watching somehow without involvement as his sword and dagger drove
both points at the same time into the Dry-Town leader's side. He heard the
clatter of steel on both sides of him, and saw another one circling toward his
back.
His head turned and as his sword jerked free a simple motion of his forearm
brought it around. The other man, running, had let his guard slip. Damon felt
his own weight shift suddenly, and then his sword went between the man's ribs.
He caught a glimpse of Eduin, his sword red in the last glare of sunlight,
running to meet another man who was falling back, fear on his face. and then he
was spinning away, dagger lifting to fend off a thrust that had been coming
straight at his throat. His sword flashed at an elbow and the Dry-Towner was
screaming at his feet and Damon's stomach turned at the sight of the raw horror
where the man's arm had been torn half through.
"They're demons," one of the Dry-Towners shouted. "They're not men at all."
Damon saw that the Dry-Towners still alive were falling back, jostling up
against the restive horses which made a wall behind them. They had never seen
five men die that fast before.
Demons. the Dry-Towners were known to be a superstitious lot.
One of the remaining Dry-Towners shouted something in his own language, trying
to rally his remaining comrades, and ran toward Eduin. Damon ignored him, diving
deep into the focus of the starstone, even noticing the man's hand was too high.
Damon's body whirled and stepped, and his sword went between the man's elbows,
slicing so expertly that it touched no bone, and the man fell. Damon himself did
not notice. He reached deep into his subconscious, into the dark closet where he
had locked away the nightmares of his childhood, and brought forth a demon. It
was gray and scaly, horned and taloned, smoke and flame gushing from its
nostrils; he hurled the picture into the lens of the starstone, focusing it
between him and the Dry-Towners.
The Dry-Towners screamed and ran, trying to catch their wildly plunging horses,
which were now running wild, maddened by the smell of blood and the musk of cat.
Wild screeching rose from the cat-men behind them. Damon pictured-knowing they
all saw-the demon turning, charging down the village street toward the
cat-people, roaring, fire shooting from its mouth and nostrils. Some of the
cat-men broke and ran. Others, perhaps sensing it was not quite what it seemed,
tried to dodge around it.
Damon reached blindly for the bridle of his horse; the rearing, fear-maddened
beast kicked and plunged, but Damon, his mind still on the demon he had set off
ravening among the cat-men (it was stalking them now, reaching out right and
left with a great stench of burning cat-fur), found himself tearing the reins
loose and vaulting to the saddle with a command of horsemanship as much beyond
his own as-as Dom Esteban's, of course.
One of the cat-men was too close, and he had to guard against a slash from the
deadly claw-curved sword. He lopped at it; saw sword and paw fall together,
twitching convulsively, and lie still. He never saw what happened to the
cat-man's body; he was already pulling his horse around.
Something like a lightning bolt struck the gray-scaled monster Damon had
created, and it flared up in a column of gray dust and smoke and vanished.
Damon's mind reeled with horrid shock.
It was Esteban who guided the terrified horse, who cut down the few cat-men who
ran at the beast's heels and tried to hamstring him, who guided the horse along
the road upward to the caves. Dimly, distantly, Damon knew what Esteban was
doing with his body and his horse, but he himself was flying above the
overworld, borne swiftly and unwillingly through ever-thickening, boiling mist
toward the black heart of the shadow, from which glared, unveiled, and blazing
out like the fires at the heart of a volcano, the terrible eyes of the Great
Cat.
With the eyes, blazing and scorching, were claws, claws that reached, snatched
at Damon where he wheeled and turned, dodging, evading them. Damon knew that if
even the tip of one of those deadly claws touched him, raked into his heart, he
would be forced back into his body and the Great Cat could do with that as he
would, blast him lifeless with a single scorching breath.
Damon thought, What are cats afraid of? His body, in the overworld, shot up; he
dropped on all fours, and knew that where he had flown and dodged from the claws
of the cat, now a great, wavering dark wolf-shape grew and solidified before the
cat. He plunged at the cat, hearing the terrifying werewolf-howl reverberating
through the over-world, a paralyzing cry before which the cat-thing dimmed and
wavered for a moment. A scorching breath seared the wolf's eyes, and he howled
with rage as Damon felt himself tremble with the blood-lust. He flung himself at
the throat of the cat-thing, great dripping jaws closing, the teeth of the
werewolf-thing fastening over the cat's throat, the stink of cat-musk-
The great furred threat thinned and vanished from between the teeth; Damon heard
himself howl again and tried to spring at the darkness, maddened with the insane
hunger to tear, to bite, to feel the blood burst out under his fangs.
But the cat was gone, melted away, and Damon, shaking and drained, sick to his
very toenails, and retching with the taste of blood in his throat, sat swaying
in his saddle. The cat-adept had been forced off the astral plane by Damon's
werewolf-form. For the first time, it looked as if the Great Cat might not be
invulnerable, after all. For the road lay bare ahead to the caves, with nothing
before them except bodies of the dead.
A brief sharp shock, like the shock of falling, brought Andrew Carr awake. The
brief winter day was waning, the room was dim, and by the fading light of the
window he saw Callista at the foot of his bed. He saw for a moment, with relief,
that she was dressed in a skirt and loose tunic, and her hair braided. No, it
was Ellemir, and she had a tray of food in her hands. She said, "Andrew, you
must eat something."
"I'm not hungry," Andrew muttered, still disoriented with sleep and confused
dreams-giant cats? Werewolves? How did it fare with Damon? Was Callista still
safe? How could he have slept? How could Ellemir speak of food at a time like
this?
"No, you must," Ellemir said, accurately following his thoughts. That would take
some getting used to. Well, he'd better get used to it, he told himself.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and said, "Matrix work is terribly draining;
you must keep up your strength or you'll overload. I knew you wouldn't feel like
it, so I brought you some soup, and things like that which are easy to swallow.
I know how you feel, but try, Andrew." She said, shrewdly, the one thing which
would have persuaded him.
"Damon cannot reach Callista. Once inside the caves of Corresanti, he may not be
able to find her in the darkness; it's a dreadful labyrinth of dark passages. I
was there once, and I heard of a man who wandered there until he came out months
later, blinded and with his hair turned white with fear. So you must be ready
when he needs you, to guide him toward Callista. And for that you must be
strong."
Reluctantly, but convinced by her argument, Andrew picked up the spoon. It was a
meat soup with long noodles in it, very strong and good. With it was a nut bread
and sharp jelly. Once he tasted it, he realized that he was half starved and he
ate up everything on the tray.
"How is your father?" he asked for courtesy's sake.
She giggled faintly. "You should have seen the meal he put away an hour or so
ago, telling me between bites how many cat-men he had killed-"
Andrew said soberly, "I saw it. I was there. They are terrible!" He shuddered,
knowing that part of what he thought a dream had been his mind wandering among
the villages blighted by the shadow of the Great Cat He put down the last bread
crust. Briefly, turning his mind inward to the starstone and the contact with
Damon, he saw them. nearing the caves, the slope clear before them.
This time it was easier to step into the overworld, and because the dim light of
the winter day was fading, he discovered that he could see better in the dim
blue glimmer of what Callista had called the "overlight." Blue? he thought. Was
that because the stones were blue and somehow cast the light through his mind?
He looked down at himself and saw his body slumped back on the bed, and Ellemir,
setting the tray on the floor, knelt beside him and laid her hand on his body's
pulse as she had done with Damon.
He realized briefly that in the overworld he had left behind the heavy
fur-and-leather garments he had borrowed from Ellemir's servant, and was wearing
the thin gray nylon tunic and trousers he wore around the office at Terran HQ,
with the narrow band of jewels on his collar, eight of them, one for each planet
where he had seen service.
Damn cold for this planet. Oh, hell, this is the over-world. If Callista can go
around in her torn nightie without freezing to death, what difference does it
make? He realized that he had moved an immense distance from Ellemir and he was
outside Armida, on a gray and featureless plain with distant, shimmery,
miragelike hills in the distance. Now, which way to the caves of Corresanti? he
asked himself, trying to orient himself in the gray distances, and as if by the
wings of thought he found himself borne swiftly over the spaces between.
He found that between his fingers he still held the starstone, or rather
whatever referent to it existed in the over-world, and that here it gleamed like
a firework, sending off brilliant sparkles of fire. He wondered if it would take
him directly toward Callista. Yes, he was moving, and now he could see the hills
clearly, a great darkness seeming to emanate from their very center. Was it
behind that darkness that Damon had seen the Great Cat? Was it he who held
Callista captive beneath the great illegal matrix jewel?
Andrew shuddered, trying not to think of the Great Cat. Or rather, to transform
him, in his thoughts, to the Cheshire cat of Terran children's tales, the great
harmless cat which grinned enormously and made amusing conversation. Or
Puss-in-Boots. He's just a character out of a fairy tale, Andrew told himself,
and I'm damned if I'll let him get on my nerves. Instinctively he knew that was
the safest way to protect himself from the power of the Great Cat. Puss in
Boots, he reminded himself. I hope Damon doesn't meet him again. .
As if the thought of Damon had given him a definite direction, he discovered
that he was standing (though his feet were not quite touching the ground) on a
slope just outside a great dark cave-mouth, and a little below him, Damon and
his two men, swords drawn and ready, were slowly working their way toward the
cave-mouth. He tried to wave to him, to make Damon see him, and then that
curious merging happened again; and again he was seeing out from behind Damon's
eyes.
. Scarcely breathing, placing his feet as silently as possible. As we had to do,
scouting, in the campaigns last year.
He could see the great indolent cats sprawled before the entrance of the cave,
drowsing at their post; secure in their faith that the Power they served would
guard them in return.
But they were still cats, and their great tufted ears lifted suddenly at the
soft brushing of boots through grass, and instantly they were on their feet, the
claw-swords ready. Damon found himself leaping forward, sword already alive in
his hand, driving toward the nearest in a long lunge. The cat's curved blade
whipped down in that curious, circling guard they used, blurring to a half-moon
before its body, driving his point down and away, and Damon saw bright steel
flash toward his side.
Then he was looking at the back of his wrist as his arm jerked up, and felt the
blade trembling in his hand as the other struck its earth-aimed point; he heard
its edge hissing past his ear as it whirled around his body, slashing at the
furred shoulder. The cat-man's sword lifted to meet it; he leaped back, and saw
the blurred point of the scythe-sword slice the air an inch in front of his
eyes. The great circling blows of the curved blade looked clumsy, and yet it
seemed to take all Esteban's skill to find a weakness in that whirling defense.