The sound of hooves caught his ears; turning, he glimpsed the riders, coming swiftly in single file down a road that ran from a hill above the village. Here in the ruined village they had seen no horses, or cattle, nor any domestic beasts of any kind.
They were near enough now to be clearly seen; they wore shirt-cloaks and breeches of a strange cut, and they were all tall, thin men, with thick, rough pale hair, but they were men. Human men, not cat-folk, unless this was another of the illusions cast…
Damon focused through his starstone, through the dimming haze which still seemed to obscure, like murky water, everything that was not close to him. But these were real men, on real horses. No horse ever foaled would stand quiet for a cat-man to mount. Nor were these the mindless faces of the villagers, terrorized into immobility and apathy.
“Dry-Towners,” muttered Eduin. “Lord of Light be with us!”
Now Damon knew where he had seen tall, pale, rangy men like that before. The desert folk rarely penetrated to this part of the world, but now and again he had seen a solitary caravan of them, traveling silent and swift toward their own part of the world.
And our horses are already wearied; if the Dry-Town men are hostile… ?
He hesitated. Rannan leaned across to grasp his arm. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get out of here!”
“They may not be enemies,” Damon began. Surely humans would not join the cat-folk in this plunder and terror?
Eduin’s mouth was a grim, set line. “There were small bands of them fighting among the cat-folk last year, and I’ve heard there were cat-men helping the Dry-Towners in that trouble down Carthon way. They trade with the cat-men, I’ve heard. Zandru knows what they trade, or what they get in return, but the trading’s a fact.”
Damon’s heart sank. They should have fled at once. Too late now, so he made the best of it. “These may be traders,” he said, “and have nothing to do with us.” In any case they were so close now that the leading Dry-Towner was reining in his mount. “We’ll just have to bluff it through; stay ready, but don’t draw swords unless I give you the signal, or unless they attack us.”
The leader of the Dry-Towners looked down at them, lounging in his saddle, the faint trace of a sneer on his face—or was that just the normal cast of his features? “Hali-imyn, by Nebran! Who would have thought it?” His gaze swept over the empty streets. “What are you folk still doing here?”
“Corresanti has been a village of the Alton Domain for more years than Shainsa has stood on the plains,” said Damon; he was trying to count the horsemen reined in behind the leader. Six, eight—too many! “I might as well ask you if you are astray from your normal trading paths, and demand you show safe-conduct from the Lord Alton.”
“The days of safe-conducts are over in the Kilghard Hills,” the leader said. “Before long it will be you folk who learn you must ask leave to ride here.” His teeth bared in a lazy grin. He slid from his horse, the men behind him following suit. Damon’s hand slid into the basket-hilt of his sword, and the small matrix there felt smooth and hot in his palm…
… Dom Esteban laid down the meat-roll he had been eating, and leaned back against his pillow, his eyes wide, staring. The servant who had brought him the food spoke to him, but he did not reply…
“It will be long before I ask leave to ride in my kinsmen’s lands,” Damon said. “But what are you doing here?” His voice sounded oddly shrill and weak in his own ears.
“We?” said the Dry-Towner. “Why, we’re peaceful traders, aren’t we, comrades?” There was a chorus of assent from the men behind him. They did not look particularly peaceful (Of course, Damon thought in a split second, Dry-Towners never did), their swords jutting from their hips at an aggressive angle ready to draw, swaggering like tavern brawlers. The horses behind them began to paw the ground nervously, and frightened snorts filled the air.
“Peaceful traders,” insisted the leader, fumbling with the clasp of his shirt-cloak, “trading here by permission of the Lord of these lands, who has given us a few small commissions.” The hand whipped out of his shirt-cloak, holding a long ugly knife, and then he jerked his long, straight sword free of its sheath. “Throw down your weapons,” he grated, “and if you’re fool enough to think you can resist, look behind you!”
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 tur
ning, 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.
* * *
Chapter ELEVEN
« ^ »
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. Eduin and Rannan were engaged nearby—he heard then: swords clashing and battering behind him. He felt his arm snap forward in a feint—he knew it was a feint because his feet did not move. The curved claw-sword whistled down; Dom Esteban’s sword dropped out of its path, whirling back and up, and came down between the tufted ears.