The Adventure of the Temple of Ubasti

spirit."

  "Then what is it?"

  "The banshee Cridedub."

  Shocked, she flinched and cried out without thinking: "You must be mad!"

  Neither the cat queen's expression nor her posture changed, but the assembled mob erupted into squalls and yowls of indignant protest, joined by a few council members. The tumult did not still until the Herald called out.

  "Let there be silence!"

  "You may well be correct," the Queen said, "but if so it is a madness born of desperation."

  "It would have to be, to take such a gamble."

  "We understand the risk."

  "I doubt that."

  "Then let us say that we are willing to take the risk, however much we have misjudged it."

  "But I am not."

  The Cat Queen cocked her head to one side. "So, you defy our command?"

  She responded with a tight smile. "You forget, Selgach Mor, the bansidh is not a spirit of the dead. It is one of the Daoine Sidhe, masquerading as a ghost."

  The cat narrowed her eyes. "On the contrary, the day I forget anything is the day I return to the Great Mother." There was an edge to her voice.

  "My point is, I refuse as much for your good as for my own. To summon one of the Daoine Sidhe against its will is to court disaster."

  "And my 'point', O Daughter of Cruacha, is that you have no choice."

  She sneered. "Are you threatening me?"

  The Queen's manner was one of perfect calm. "Yes, I am: you will raise Cridedub before this assembly, or you will not leave this clearing alive."

  Alarmed, she took an involuntary step back. The Queen had never threatened her before, and while she had no doubt she could escape with her life, she also knew that the mob would do her considerable harm before she could get free, and that she would have to kill a considerable number to do it. That would make her a fugitive, forever on the run, fearful of feline justice, with no place to hide.

  Still, her first thought was defiance, and she would have spoken out if Cucath had not spoken first. "It is the advice of this Council, that should the woman Medb be reluctant to render us this service, the nature of the emergency should be explained to her, so that we may gain her enthusiastic cooperation."

  The Queen did not take her eyes off her. "Very well, I shall heed the advice of my Council. You are familiar with the machinations of the Fomorians."

  It wasn't a question, so she held her tongue. She wanted to make some suitable sarcastic remark, but she decided it wouldn't be prudent under the circumstances.

  "They once ruled the Waking World, but now they are scattered, their numbers greatly diminished, and in hiding, fearful of being discovered by humans."

  Again she said nothing. Those facts were already familiar to her, having played a significant role in breaking their power. Also, she recognized that the Queen was being pedantic.

  "In this they share common cause with the Faerie Host, who also once ruled the Waking World long before the Fomorians, and are also in hiding, fearful of human intrusion."

  That she also knew. She wished the cat would come to the point.

  "In the past, their mutually exclusive goals kept them apart, sometimes at war with each other, mostly just ignoring one another. Recently, however, we have received intelligence that Elatha, the leader of the Fomorians in the Land of the Dreams of Men, is seeking an alliance with the Fairies. He has offered to allow them to claim the Waking World for themselves, if they help him and his brethren take over the Dreamlands. In this way, the two races may both achieve their ends without either discommoding the other."

  "Damnaigh!" She felt her blood chill. "I understand, but why take the risk of raising Cridedub?"

  "Among the Fomorians, only Elatha and his son, Bres, know the full details, but we have not the time to travel to Hazuth-kleg and seize one of them. Therefore, we must consult the Faerie Host."

  "Perhaps, but the bansidh is unlikely to know anything important."

  "True, but through her we may be able to extract what we need from those who do."

  She shook her head, her long, straight, loose gold-tinged bronze hair waving like a flag behind her back. "The Sidhe are not a...damnaigh, I forget the word."

  "Hive-mind. No, they are not, but their mutual telepathic link will allow us to search the minds of the leaders through her."

  "I cannot do that."

  "I can. All we need you to do is summon Cridedub to our presence and hold her; we will do the rest."

  She looked around the clearing, at the mob, the council members, the herald, and finally Cucath. In the light of the full moon, their eyes shined with eerie green or red glows, and she saw determination in their taut bodies and alert faces. She recognized that they were going to go through with it, with or without her help, and she realized that they stood a better chance with her cooperation.

  She turned back to face the Queen. "Very well, I will do as you request." With her words, a deep, throbbing murmur filled the air as every cat began to purr. It sounded to her like a great sigh of relief.

  However: "I cannot guarantee success. I have only a small chance of binding her, and I must first find her and force her to come through the gate I will open, which will be difficult. The best way to do so is to attract her attention; then I may be able seize her after she appears, but she will be forewarned, and thus forearmed."

  "We understand. How long will it take you to prepare?"

  "Only a few minutes, and I can open the gate as quickly, but I cannot predict when or even if Cridedub will come, and the longer I leave the gate open, the greater the chance something else will come through instead."

  "We appreciate your concern; please proceed."

  She looked around the clearing. "I would need to work in the center; could you have the mob form a circle around me?"

  "So as it was spoken," Cucath announced, "so let it be done!"

  The Herald stepped forward. "Form a circle!"

  The mob dispersed, then surrounded the massive woman as she move into the center. Removing her foot-long, heavy-bladed, double-edged dirk from her black leather belt, she thrust it into the ground and stepped three paces from the center to draw a circle on the bare dirt with her cloth-yard-long, leaf-shaped sword. She retrieved her knife and stepped out of the circle to stand with her back to the marble pillars, so that the Council and the Queen could face the banshee. She drove the sword point-first into the earth and stuck the dirk back into her belt before stepping out of her shoes and pulling the hem of her smooth, long-sleeved, peplos-style dress up to mid-calf, stuffing the folds in her belt to hold it in place. She rubbed her hands together in an idle manner as she looked around to make sure the circle of cats was unbroken, before clasping her hands, closing her eyes, and commencing to take deep, rhythmic breaths.

  She concentrated on a mental image of Cridedub, using it to focus her will. She began chanting under her breath, keeping the sound just above a whisper. She matched the rhythm of her speech with that of her breathing, and pushed her consciousness out into the circle as she sought the resonance of the Otherworld. She did not find it hard to locate; she was acquainted with its feel, having spent seven years there, a prisoner of the Sidhe. Once she had it, she focused her mind on it and matched it with the rhythm of her chant. Finally she unclasped her hands and spread her arm wide apart as she opened her eyes.

  The air above the center shimmered, as if from heat rising out of the ground, as the fabric of space between the two universes stretched and grew thin. She felt her body pull energy out of the earth to meet the demands of piercing the dimensional barrier and she directed it into the center, using the circle of cats to contain and concentrate it. The sound of the chant began to come out of the very air itself, soft at first, but rapidly growing louder, and the shimmer intensified with it. Then without warning, with the crash of a huge wave breaking against the shore, it tore in half and spread open, to reveal a lush, twilit garden, which appeared bright against the backdrop of night in the council
clearing.

  The chanting stopped. "The gate is open." Her voice sounded strained to her, but she felt as if she held a great weight she dared not drop.

  From "The Golden Mushroom"

  By that time they had reached the spot indicated on the map. It was a boggy hollow, in area a little larger than a baseball field. Pools of debris and silt-filled water lay interspersed by mounds and ridges of soggy earth. The trees were small and thinner there, and more widely scattered, but the only other vegetation were thick mats of a ground-hugging herb.

  Shadow sat on a rock waiting for them as she gazed into the hollow. The long, lean, smoky-gray cat looked up at them with her mint-green eyes as they came abreast of her. "This may be a little more difficult."

  To Eile she sounded smugly satisfied. "What do you think?" she asked Sunny.

  "It doesn't look too bad." But there was a hint of uncertainty in her tone. Eile couldn't blame her. While it wasn't going to be as easy as the other items, it looked simple enough: avoid the pools, stay on the land, and hope it was solid enough to support them. But it would make searching for the gilded toadstool all the more difficult.

  "If only we knew where to look," Sunny added in frustration.

  As if her words were a prayer, a shaft of sunlight dropped out of a break in the clouds and fell on the central mound. At its center an object winked and twinkled with a distinctive metallic sheen.

  Though stunned, Eile felt suspicious too.