The Catswold Portal (27 page)

M
elissa left Braden painting—already he had roughed in a canvas of the Victorian house. She went up the garden toward Olive Cleaver's, retying the scarf around her hair, watching Olive, above her, sweeping her front porch. She had decided to take the direct approach. Olive seemed gregarious, outgoing about her research, and Braden said the old woman liked to talk about what she was doing. What harm would it do to ask Olive, directly, what she was finding?

Within minutes Olive had hurried her inside, put the kettle on, and laid out her notebooks and a heavy, leatherbound volume. She cut some angel food cake, and as they waited for the tea to brew Olive opened the thick book. “This is on loan from the Cat Museum; it's quite valuable.” The old woman sat with her back to the window, her face in shadow, her frizzed hair looking wild against the light. Carefully her wrinkled hands turned the frail pages, then she passed the book to Melissa. The open page showed the picture of a door carved with a running cat.

Olive said, “I've had a time searching out such examples. I've used every resource in the city, and of course inter-library loan.”

Melissa was shaken. She watched the old woman warily. “What the book says about the man being half-cat—that's just made up, of course.”

Olive smiled. “Of course that part is folktale. Oh, there are wonderful tales. They've been all but lost.” Her faded brown eyes shone. “How lovely if they were true.”

She opened a leather case and began shuffling through papers. “I've found mention of several such doors carved with
cats.” She looked up at Melissa. “Are you sure you're interested in all this?”

“Oh, very interested.”

“Well, you've seen the door in the garden, of course.” She studied Melissa rather too intently. “There are curious stories surrounding each door—fears, superstitions. That's the aspect that interests me most. Are you a cat person?”

Melissa sat very still, fear swamping her. She daren't move, daren't speak.

“Do you like cats, my dear? Are you a person who likes cats?”

She let the fear drain away; she felt weak; her heart was pounding too fast. “Oh, yes, I like cats. But cats don't like me much. Tell me about the other doors.”

“In a tomb in Egypt, a door was found hidden behind the sarcophagus. The cat carved on it is standing upright like a person. In her left hand she holds the crescent moon, in her right she holds the sun. She is wearing a tear-shaped pendant.”

“A pendant?” Her heart thundered.

“An amulet. Surely it symbolized some power.”

Melissa waited, afraid to speak.

“There are tales of an amulet,” Olive said. “An emerald amulet with the powers of Bast.”

“Do you mean magical powers? What—what kind of powers would such a thing have?”

“I have found several mentions of the pendant in works on ancient Egypt, but they do not describe the powers.” Olive seemed to take the amulet very seriously. “The emerald is tear-shaped, and its setting is formed of two gold cats, their paws joined to protect it.”

“I suppose it is in a museum?”

“Oh, no. It has never been found. And there seem to be no other really good pictures. I suppose if it really does exist, it lies buried in some undiscovered tomb.”

Melissa studied Olive. “In the tomb where that pendant is shown in the carving—has anyone searched for it there?”

Olive smiled. “The archaeologist writes that behind that
door is a solid clay wall. I have wondered, if one dug there…” She shook her head. “I'm sure others have thought of that. I'm sure the archaeologist himself must have dug into that wall, though his published work doesn't mention it.” She poured more tea, filling their cups. “There is a door in a Celtic grave which shows an amulet around the neck of a cat, though not such a clear image. All that remains of that door is a fragment, a piece of dark oak bearing the marks of a hinge, and the forequarters of the cat.

“And there is said to be such a door in Italy, where a cat wears a jewel around its neck, but I have found no good reference. But that's intriguing because—do you know about the cats of Italy, the Coliseum cats? Hundreds of cats living there in that magnificent ruin…”

There was no need to answer her, Melissa need only listen, Olive was completely engrossed.

“Hundreds of cats. And there's a strange myth in Italy that intrigues me, though I don't know how they could be connected. It is said that every now and then a stranger appears in Rome without money or identification—no passport, nothing. A stranger who is confused by the city and its traffic—innocent, like a child.

“He will be around the city for a few days then disappear. No one knows where such people go, or where they came from.” Olive picked up the book, wrapping it in brown paper. Melissa's fists were clenched in her lap, her nails biting into her palms.

T
hree hundred cats roamed within the fenced, wire-roofed compound in the center of the Lillith Ranch. Within the two-acre enclosure cats hunted through the high grass, played, slept, fought, and bred. Some had marked off territories and defended them. Beyond the cat compound and separated from it by low hills stood the barracks housing the human refugees from San Francisco's streets. The buildings crested the far side of the hill, and included besides the barracks a mess hall, recreation buildings, a gym, stables, tack rooms, and weapons rooms. There was a riding ring large enough to accommodate sword training and mock battles. The human trainees were encouraged to handle the horses under supervision, but they were not encouraged to visit the cat compound.

Some of the cats were strays. Some had been stolen from the yards and gardens of San Francisco's residential areas; some came from animal pounds. All were Catswold, carefully selected; one could tell by the eyes, by the unusually long ears, by something singularly unsettling in the expression. Vrech had not liked collecting them.

The toughest, most adaptable cats among the group did not bother to hunt, but sprawled arrogantly in the hot California sunshine, disdainful of hunting such easy game as the white mice freed daily into the enclosure for their pleasure. Instinctively they waited for normalcy to return to their lives, for times to fall again into the lean pattern of precarious survival they had learned in San Francisco's alleys. Here, the effort to hunt was wasted; here food was brought twice daily.

Some of the cats, feeling too crowded, skulked along the fence or climbed irritably up and down the oak trees that had been pruned to stubs to allow for the wire mesh roof; they clawed at the mesh, staring through to freedom. The more dependent cats simply gorged on the white mice, which hardly knew how to escape a cat's claws.

The area was relatively safe from idle discovery. It was protected by miles of fenced grassland owned by the Lillith Ranch, and the fences were spell-cast to discourage intruders. Small boys with twenty-two's would turn away from it white with fear, not knowing what they were afraid of. And of course the gates were spell-locked.

Within the compound Vrech and Havermeyer had for some days watched the cats and studied them, but it was Vrech who would do the training. Havermeyer had proven totally inept, and the night before last he had returned to the city offices of Lillith Corporation. Vrech knew he had been sent up to the ranch simply to oversee him. He preferred working alone, now that he had selected the female to be trained as the false Catswold queen.

She was darkly mottled, her coat a brindled, muddy mix of black and rust unrelieved by white. She was so mean she ran off males and females alike, and had lacerated the hands of two keepers who tried to pet her.

He caught her with raw meat, wearing heavy gloves. He put her into a cage, and carried her into a locked room with barred windows. When he said the spell, when she found herself turned into a woman, she leaped at Vrech, clawing at him. He grabbed her and turned her toward the full-length mirror he had provided. She stopped clawing him, and stood looking. A curiously childlike wonder transformed her face.

She was naked, of course, and she stared at her bare skin, at her breasts and her long legs and long slim arms, clasping and unclasping her hands as if her fingers had retractable claws.

Then she looked at her hands, examined them, and began to use them. She turned the doorknob, but couldn't open the door. She flipped the window latches and reached through to
try to remove the bars. She pinched Vrech and stroked him, then tried to undo the buttons of his shirt.

She was thin, hard, angular, and well muscled. She had amber eyes, street-wise under her dark lashes, and dark, arching brows. Her black hair was red-streaked and lank, hanging to her shoulders. She watched Vrech with a shrewdness that kept him alert.

“Helsa,” Vrech said. “Your name is Helsa, after a lesser entity of the Hell Pit.”

“Helsa,” she said, touching her breasts and cupping them.

Vrech smiled.

Here in this room she was prisoner. She would remain so until she was sufficiently trained and trustworthy. He would be selective about the spells he taught her. She might be appealing and lusty, but he had no illusion that he could trust her. When he took her into the riding ring he would keep her spell-cast.

He clothed her in jeans and plain shirts. He spent three days teaching her horsemanship, then began to train her to the sword. He did not trust her sufficiently yet to take her to bed. In between riding lessons he taught her about the Catswold nation. When she understood its stubborn, defiant history and understood what Siddonie wanted of her, she saw at once the possibilities. Soon she lusted to lead the Catswold people, to hold absolute rule over them. She respected power and wanted power. She quickly understood that she would sell the Catswold nation for her own complete and absolute power. She understood that soon the queen herself would come to be with her and train her in further skills.

She could soon wield a spell to make the other cats storm the fence, make them leap and tear at the wire roof or fight one another. She could make the compound cats stop eating for days, or force them to gorge themselves. It was some weeks after Vrech began training her that Siddonie arrived at the ranch.

She was in the blue Rolls; Havermeyer had driven her up from the city. She had come up to San Francisco to sign business papers and check on him; he was good with the de
tails but she didn't like to give him total freedom. The corporate takeover was so complicated that Havermeyer could too easily cross her.

She had used the tunnel that opened out of Xendenton. She kept a car in the parking garage into which the tunnel opened, deducting the monthly parking fee from her taxes. It was ludicrous to her that she must pay upperworld income taxes. She had brought only a dozen staff with her—they had gone directly to the hotel where she kept a suite.

She exited from the pale blue interior of the Rolls dressed in a black riding suit with diamond cuff links closing the sleeves of her white silk shirt, diamond earrings, and diamonds at her throat. Her black hair was piled into a complicated arrangement caught with diamond pins. Sleek and impeccably groomed, she ordered Vrech to bring Helsa to her in the compound office.

The office featured an orange-and-cream Khirman rug, and cream leather chairs against a wall covered entirely by a spell-cast antique mirror that did not reflect. Siddonie stood before the patterned gold mirror watching the Catswold girl enter, watching her eyes. Seeing Helsa's immediate envy.

Within an hour Siddonie, with skillful spells and with promises, had made Helsa her slave. The girl not only envied Siddonie's beauty and was determined to copy it, she lusted after the power Siddonie offered her. When she rode out with Siddonie in late afternoon, Helsa was totally committed to her.

Siddonie watched Helsa send her loose horse away and bring him back, watched her change shape in the saddle from woman to cat, balancing lightly; and when after an hour's ride they returned, she watched Helsa ride into the cat compound and lift her hand, drawing hundreds of cats running to her. She watched her make them swarm up the stunted trees, make them fight, stop fighting, watched her make them change to human then return at her command to cat. Siddonie meant, as soon as the girl was sufficiently trained, to bring all the upperworld Catswold and human
troops down through the mining tunnel that led into Zzadarray, directly into the Catswold nation.

There the false queen would gather the Zzadarray Catswold, join them with her own armies, and move west until she joined Siddonie at the front lines. The Catswold would help defeat the rebels, and when the war was won Siddonie's loyal soldiers would slaughter the Catswold soldiers, both those from the upperworld and those from Zzadarray.

And, when she had no more use for Helsa, she would kill the false Catswold queen herself.

Already in the south she had brought Shenndeth and Pearilleth into line without bloodshed, peacefully confiscating most of the horses and all the food stores. And in the first skirmishes in the outlying lands, rebel soldiers had been driven mad with spells and had turned on their brothers and killed them. In Cressteane, spells of sickness had cut down dozens of rebels with illness of the bowels and stomach. And when the rebels' own healing spells failed, many among them had taken wine and, starving, quickly become too drunk to resist capture.

When Helsa turned and smiled at her, Siddonie smiled back with a cold, predatory satisfaction. This girl would pay, as would all the Catswold, for the fall of Xendenton.