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

  She drew a deep breath and then another. On her breast was a warm pulsing and she did not need to feel for it to know that it was the gem.

  “Where—where are we?” Her voice was a weak whisper.

  He drew her up higher against him so she could see more. Beside him lay the sword no longer a-ripple with power but still a small beacon of light. Kelsie could see now more walls and overhead the night of moon and stars. It was plain that wherever they were it was not the copse in which they had been besieged.

  “Where are we?” He echoed her question. “I do not know—save that we are away from those who nosed so closely on our trail. This was once a mighty keep, I think.” He was looking about, too, as if trying to see what had once stood complete and formidable.

  “But how did we get here?” she asked quickly. It would be a long time before she would forget that passage through the Other Place where her kind went at great peril as she was now aware.

  “We had a key; we used it—” His hand went out again to the hilt of his sword. “A year agone Urik found such a path when the gray ones had him at their mercy, or so they thought. The old ones had their own ways of travel which are not ours except when the choice may be certain death behind.”

  Ten

  Their new shelter had nothing of the stench of the Thas caverns, nor of the indescribable odor which had filled the copse from which they had been so strangely snatched. It was dark, save where the moon struck through rents in the walls, and very chill. So that the two of them huddled together for the sheer need of bodily warmth. Nor did they sleep, but dozed and awoke and dozed again until the gray of early morning showed them more clearly where they had come.

  The walls of the place might have been laid by giants for there were great blocks fitted together with no sign of securing mortar—rather as if their weight alone, once they were in place, were enough to cement them for all time. These formidable barriers extended well up. Above was rubble less expertly laid, much of which had cascaded down into the great room where they were sheltering. By the revealing light of day Kelsie could see that they had spent the night in the center of another great star many times the width of that which Yonan had uncovered but fashioned in the same way. Between the points were symbols engraved on the pavement. One of those recalled a memory for Kelsie—of Wittle sketching a like pattern in the air.

  Yonan was a-foot, first going to the nearest wall and jumping until his hands caught on the rougher stone above. Then by a feat of strength he was able to pull and work himself up, sending small cascades of ancient stones sliding down in a cloud of dust.

  “Where are we?” Kelsie had turned around to survey the place of the star. That had been fashioned close to the wall, but there stretched out a large segment of space beyond. She could see no ground entrance to this room—only the walls about.

  Yonan balanced, slowly turning his head from side to side, working his way around on the treacherous coating of the upper wall so that he could see at least three-quarters of what lay beyond.

  “A keep . . . I think . . .” he was plainly uncertain. “But a very old and long since deserted one. There are such to be found, though usually we avoid them. But with that,” he nodded at the star in which she still stood, “I do not think that this is any trap of the Dark. Look to your jewel—does it blaze in warning?” He held onto his perilous perch with one hand and with the other sought the hilt of his sword. There was a warmth in her stone but no fire and she reported as much.

  He nodded. “The power is very old here—near exhausted and—” His head swung suddenly around and she could see his body tense.

  “What is it?” She had moved now to the wall directly below his perch.

  He made a silencing gesture with his hand. It was plain to Kelsie that he was listening, listening and staring beyond to seek the source of whatever it was he heard.

  Now she concentrated on hearing, too. There was a distant bark—but it did not have the fierce threat of a hound's cry. Then, from the air, sounded a trilling which was far from the hoarse cries of the dark flying things which companied those of the Dark.

  From Yonan's own lips came a whistle, close in pattern to the trill. Kelsie saw the flash of rainbow wings, the light body those carried. There hung in the air before her companion one of the flamen, the small humanoid body supported by the fast flutter of the wings. She had seen them often in the Valley and knew what was told of them, that they were capricious and short of memory—they might carry messages but could easily be turned from their task by something else new which caught their attention.

  Now it landed near to Yonan, its wings only half folded, as if it would make off in an instant, peevish at being controlled even by so little as answering his signal. He whistled again, his face set in a mask of impatience.

  Kelsie was as aware of the hostility of the flyer as much as if it had cried aloud denial of having to have anything to do with the two. There was a coaxing note in Yonan's whistle and then he spoke rapidly in a series of singsong words she could not recognize.

  The flamen shook its head violently, gave an upward bound which carried it out into the air and almost instantly beyond Kelsie's range of sight. Yonan whistled twice more but it did not return.

  “Not of the Valley,” there was a disappointed note in his voice. “It is one of the unsworn. Which means—” He fell silent.

  “Which means what?” she demanded, when he did not continue.

  “That we have come far eastward—perhaps well beyond all the trails known to the Valley people.”

  “Can you still see your mountain?”

  He shifted carefully about and searched the air so far above her. “That may be it. But . . . there are leagues now between—” He was facing at an angle to the room below.

  She waited for that touch of buried compulsion which always in her answered any thought of returning to what safety this land could offer. Yes, it still rode with her even now. Without thinking she, too, turned to face in near the opposite direction from Yonan's stance. Whatever drew her lay still ahead in the unknown.

  However, when she spoke it was of more immediately practical things.

  “We need food and water—” Both hunger and thirst were making themselves known now.

  “Come up!” He lowered himself to his belly and reached down his hands. She gave a jump and felt fingers catch one of her wrists while her other hand missed and scrabbled at the stone until he managed to seize it also. He was stronger than he looked, this warrior of the Valley, for somehow, with very little assistance from her, he brought Kelsie up beside him on the crumbling top of the wall.

  What stretched for a distance before her and on every side were more walls marking rooms, or passageways, long unroofed. In addition the pile stood on a mound or small hill, and stretching out from that was a patchwork of fields each also partitioned by broken walls. There was an opening not far to their left which suggested a road had led here and that that maze of rock had been the entrance to this place. But nowhere was there any hint of water.

  “That way—” Yonan pointed north and rose to his feet cautiously. His motion, as wary as it was, started a slip of loose stone down into the room of the star.

  “There are no doors.” Kelsie had noted that almost at once. These walls sealed in each room one from the other, and their only path to freedom appeared to be by the tops of those shaky divisions.

  “That is the truth. Therefore we must take these upper ways and with full care. Follow me, and, if you can, place your feet where mine have been.”

  The sun was up and beginning to warm the rocks about them before they reached that point which once might have been a gate. Not only was Kelsie hungry and thirsty but she was also trembling from the tension of that journey. Twice they had had to make detours which had lost them much time because the wall tops were too unsteady to allow them footage.

  Though she looked with hope into each room they passed she saw no way of going except by this dangerous path they had
chosen. There were no doorways, no trace of any floor side opening from one space into the next. This amazed her.

  “They might have had other means of entrance,” Yonan commented when she spoke of this. “If they were winged for example.”

  “Flamen!” she burst out in denial. She could not think of the small airborne creatures as the architects of such massive walls.

  “There may be—or were once—other flyers beside the flamen,” he told her soberly. “It is well known that the adepts played with the very forces of life itself, creating new creatures for their own use or amusement. Such are the Krogan, the water people, and even the Thas. There were few of true blood left when the rest of the Old Ones thought to flee such unnatural dealings and went into Estcarp, laying upon themselves forgetfulness of their land lest they be tempted to so misuse the power again. But whoever set these stones together are now long gone. Ah, take this wall, and then that, and we shall be at outer bailey at last.”

  Perforce she followed him, though the footing was never safe and she tottered on the edge of slipping twice before they reached the point he indicated and could look down at the earth below.

  Yonan selected a portion of the wall path which appeared to show the least of time's erosion and lay flat on it. Then he ordered Kelsie:

  “Give me your hands and swing over. You will drop but I think that the space is not so much we cannot make it. We have no other choice.”

  There was a drop certainly and she hit ground, to roll over the edge of another small fall, coming to stop painfully against one of those broken field walls. There was a whir in her face which made her start and cry out as two birds took off out of a clump of grass before her, not ascending very high into the air but covering a goodly space before they alit and disappeared again into the tall cover of the field.

  When Yonan joined her he was fumbling with his sword belt and produced a length of what looked like tough cord, a small weight fastened to either end.

  “Circle,” his command was delivered in a voice hardly above a whisper, and he motioned with his hand toward where the birds had taken again to cover. “Come at them from the south if you can, but get them up.”

  She obeyed in spite of her bruises, trying to walk as noiselessly as she could through the vegetation which was waist-high grass, giving support here and there to a loaded seed head as if it were some form of wild sown grain.

  There was another whir and eruption of feathered bodies. Something whirled through the air and one of the birds fell, entangled foot to wing by Yonan's weighted cord. A moment later he passed her in a leap, knife in hand, and used that expertly to put an end to the wildly struggling bird.

  Following the same method of hunt they added two more of the low-flying prey to their first capture. Then Yonan, swinging the birds by their feet, turned aside from the open into an ancient field where the stones at one corner had shifted forming a small half cave. He went to work at once, skinning and gutting the birds, saying:

  “Get some dry wood.” He jerked one hand toward where a straggle of trees stood. This once might have been an orchard, Kelsie decided, but only one or two of the trees showed any signs of life by ragged greenery. Some storm of the past had laid others low and she went among those breaking off branches and carrying an arm load to where Yonan was conducting his bloody business.

  She watched him lay a fire of sticks hardly more than twigs and then light those with a stone from his belt pouch struck against his knife until sparks flew into a handful of grass in the center of his cave oven.

  “This will break the smoke,” he told her as he worked and she felt that he was deliberately sharing with her information which was the result of long training at living off the land, a land which had nearly as many perils as blades of grass in the field. He had pieces of the birds spitted on trimmed branches and already over the fire while others were hung well out of the flames but where the smoke, partially trapped under the stones, could reach them.

  He was right as that smoke emerged in wisps which drifted in different directions at the will of the breeze. Kelsie having built up a goodly supply of wood inspected more fully the seed heads in the field growth. She rubbed some free of their stems and between the palms of her hands, blowing away the chaff and being rewarded with a handful of what was unmistakably some form of grain. She tasted it, finding it chewable and slightly sweet. Then she set about gathering enough of it still on the stem to make an arm load. Though as she went she watched carefully what lay around.

  More of the birds were dislodged from their feeding and flew clumsily perhaps as far as the next field. She could smell now the odor of the cooking meat and it drew her, though she wanted most of all a drink of water to rinse away the dryness of the grain she had eaten.

  She returned to their improvised fireplace to find Yonan, his attention divided between the roasting meat and something he held before his hands to saw at with his knife. It was yellow in color and shaped not unlike a gourd of her own world, though larger than she had ever seen. Having chopped off its top he was now turning the knife around and around in its interior, shaking free at short intervals pieces of woodlike flesh hung with black seeds.

  Kelsie saw that two more of the odd vegetables, if that is what they were, rested beside his knee. She pulled loose the scarf that had covered her head when she had set out from the Valley and began to rub into it the grain she had harvested. Yonan looked closely at what she had found and then nodded.

  “Pound that into flour,” he commented, “and with drippings from those—” he indicated the birds, “you will have a kind of journey cake.”

  “What about water?”

  He slapped the gourd he was working on. “There is a spring in that last opening beyond where we came down. Did you not see the water reeds?”

  She had to admit that she had not, her full attention being on how she could zigzag along the walls without a slip. However, he did not wait for her answer as he set aside the first of his gourds and inspected the meat, turning the spits on which the chunks were impaled with the familiarity of an expert at such cookery.

  The meat was done to his satisfaction and laid on the large leaves which he had harvested from the same plant as bore the gourds. Then he took the first of those and stood up, looking at her appraisingly.

  “Can you give me a foot up. It is over the wall for our water.”

  She was willing enough, her dry throat and mouth sending her to stand braced against the outer wall while he got himself to her shoulders. His punishing weight only lasting there for a moment before he was up on the wall.

  The sun was already well toward that rippling black line which marked the horizon as she stood there, pressed to the rough stone, wondering how they could find any safe shelter for the coming night. That memory of the howling hounds and the black rider were very clear in her mind. They might have come to this ruin through some knowledge of another race but that did not mean that they were free of pursuit, and she had an idea that the creature Yonan had called by the name of a once man—Rhain—would not so tamely accept defeat.

  Kelsie was fingering the chain of the jewel when she heard a scrambling on the wall top and jumped back away from a clatter of some broken pieces which heralded Yonan's return. He lowered to her by the aid of the same cord which had entangled the birds a gourd slopping water. It was so full she had to exert all her self-command not to hold it to her mouth and drink long and full. Then he was over and down beside her and said:

  “Take small sips—” he waved away the gourd when she would have given it back to him, “small sips first.”

  Obediently she sucked in a mouthful and held it for a long moment of sheer delight before she swallowed. Yonan had brought something else with him, a bundle of reeds, and as they went back toward their fire and the waiting food he picked up two of the fallen stones, each of which fitted snugly into his hand. With these he began to crush the reeds, turning them swiftly into strings of fiber which he twisted tightly one to anot
her until he had a lengthline of rough cord.

  Night was now fully upon them and their small cooking fire had been purposefully allowed to dwindle to a near dead ash, the sparks sheltered from sight by more stones. Yet Yonan bent over his task by that smallest gleam of light and continued to work. When he had a length of the coarse and, to Kelsie, not-to-be-trusted stuff, he set up two sticks and began to weave between them back and forth methodically, more by touch than sight.

  She sat cross-legged at the other side of their palm-sized fire and at last curiosity won:

  “What are you doing?”

  “We need a bag for that,” with a shadow of gesture he indicated the meat they had so haphazardly smoked, “also we need shoes—”

  “Shoes?” Startled her hand actually went to the half boots she was wearing. They were scuffed and perhaps scratched past all polishing but they were still intact on her feet. To throw such away for a rough mass of the stuff Yonan was playing with was the act of a fool and she bit her tongue to keep from saying so.

  “The gray ones,” he was continuing, “hunt by sight and scent together but the night hounds by scent alone. We shall give them such scenting as will send them off our trail for a goodly time.”

  He had laid to one side part of his rough weaving and now he moved his foot into the faint glow of light. From the pouch at his belt he took out the mass of illbane which he had harvested and began to rub it vigorously along the length of rope. When he had done he laid aside the mass of leaves and began to wind the rope around one of his own feet, shaping it back and forth until he was sure by touch that the entire metal-enforced boot sole was completely covered.

  “That will help?” Kelsie wanted assurance, though she had begun to grasp what he would do.

  “We can wish it so—illbane has many services. Now we shall test one of these.”

  Thus when they settled for the night, one to watch for a space and the other to sleep, their feet were encased in stringy reed and small bits of torn vegetation. The clean, clear smell of illbane was in her nostrils as Kelsie took first watch, allowing the fire to die into ash. The moonlight gave her the only sighting of the pile of the ruin and the fields about.