The Gate of the Cat (Witch World: Estcarp Series) (17 page)

She did not know if similar temptations had been thrown at Wittle, though she was sure that she had seen the other jewel also falter for an instant or two. But the witch had been long lessoned in what she did. Perhaps those who spun that web had built it for the people of this world, and the very fact that Kelsie was not born of it was not a weakness but a strength.

The gems spun on as the red beam closed around both women. It was more than a mind goad now; heat came from it searing her flesh as if she were thrust into a fire. And that pain was the final key which set Kelsie free of any temptation which might have moved her. She set her teeth and held to the jewel, concentrating upon it with all her might. Power as Wittle understood it she might not have. But perhaps that which she had brought with her was as solid and steadfast in its own way.

The spin no longer faltered but grew swifter and the sparks it once more flung off were brighter. Down in the basin world shadows retreated. Here and there a fresh blue glow answered from newly-freed land. She felt the concentration of the red fire building up and knew that while it still tried to disrupt the power of the jewels it was now also being bent toward her in a last frenzy of battle. She could have screamed under the lash of that heated beam but she did not—to her own growing wonder she held. Kelsie saw Wittle begin to lever herself up from the stone, her gaunt face turned toward the spinning gems.

Suddenly, instead of trying only to hold to her own, Kelsie tried to fight back—to actually aim those sparks of cleansing light to the portions of the basin where the darkest of the shadows clung in a noisome and threatening mist. The blue glows elsewhere grew stronger, spread. There! Exultation filled her—she had actually placed a spark where she willed and, though it was dimmed by the dark, it was not forced into oblivion. It remained. There came another not far away.

“Ninatur!” Through the concentration which held her she held her control though Yonan was being forced back toward them. There were crumpled forms, both human and monstrous, marking the path of his retreat, and blood dripped from sheared mail on his own side. But still he was buying them time. Time for what? How long could they hold their jewels and defeat the semblance of the dark? No—any doubt weakened her control—she must concentrate on what spun out there above the basin land.

The red haze thickened. Yonan was hidden from her; even Wittle was only a shadow within the bloody fog. But that could not hide the flash of the jewels nor the fact that the shadows were in retreat from that light.

“Die then!”

The threat may only have touched her mind, spun out of the fog, but it was like a shout to awaken echoes from her very bones. In an instant the red beam loosened its struggle with the jewels, was shot straight to where she and Wittle carried on their part of this strange duel.

“Die!”

She was gasping for clean air, her lungs filled instead with thick flaming gas. Yet that was not true, another part of her proclaimed. This was the last weapon of the shadow—and where was her weapon—out there!

She held to her thought of the jewel, unable to see it now that the thick haze wrapped her round. Hold—only hold—

Past her will there worked another order which she could not contain and defeat. Fight! Aim the jewel not toward the land she had guarded but down the beam of the red curtain—strike so a blow of her own. The gem answered to that impulse. No longer did it spin and weave its own kind of protection above the world in miniature—instead it wavered on its axes and then settled into a sharp pattern of its own, speeding down the ray of red which formed a guide. It hurled its way as she might have thrown a stone full force. From it came a whining note, rising ever higher and higher, until she could no longer hear it, only feel it throughout her body.

But Wittle's jewel held in place though it threw off no more of the life inducing sparks and the shadows began to gather once again. On sped the star which was Kelsie's borrowed stone. There was no sight of it by eye anymore; only in her mind could she follow its furious pace. Around her the fierce lash of the heat was beginning to fail—whoever had raised that was indrawing all strengths, preparing for a final battle. She felt no lack of confidence. Instead a fierce pride and exultation. As if by carrying battle to the enemy she had doomed her own cause.

“Ninatur!” Again came Yonan's war cry out of the ruddy dusk, seeming farther away. Kelsie crouched, her whole sense of will and strength concentrated on the disappearing jewel.

She had a vision which dazzled even her open eyes, causing her to blink. There was a single figure on the other side of the basin. She could not see it clearly, but she had a mind picture of a gleaming white body twisting and turning as if in some strange formal dance. From each footfall on the stone there came a new puff of red to fit itself into the stream of the beam. But the jewel had reached there and come to hang over the dancer's head.

Kelsie threw forth in that moment all her strength of will. The jewel steadied, began to spin as it had above the land in the basin. Now she could mind see it, now she could not as another blast of red fumes arose. But she sensed something else—that the dancer had not expected this, that it must take time to recall the strength of the beam in self-defense. That time must not be allowed. As she had struck sparks by will from the star in the basin, so Kelsie now tried to gain the same from the spin of the jewel in that place the Shadow's servant believed safe. Round—so! Round again!

She felt as if the beam were searing her to her very bones yet there was that in her which would not recall the miniature sun which now fought her battle beyond the reach of eyesight. Turn—spark—spark! There!

A first speck of light broke from that encircling brilliance about the jewel. The flying feet of the dancer were fashioning a new pattern, one which must not be allowed to become a form. There—another spark and the dancer faltered for a single instant, less than a breath out of time. But faltered it had! Now!

With all the strength she could summon up Kelsie aimed her second blow. And perhaps her last. She was so wrapped up in the haze that she felt she was completely encased from the real world, entrapped in this torment. Perhaps the mind picture she held to was also an illusion and she was being tricked.

There was a tremor down the beam which closed her in so. And then a second one. She could breathe without those torturing rasps for throat and lungs. Her spirit arose. Yes! The dancer was not so sure of the pattern now—there were sparks—not as great as those which the jewel had flung into the basin world but enough to cut through the web the other wove, to loosen here and there some portion of the intended design. Now!

Kelsie threw herself to the left, rolled over the rock until her body thudded against that of Wittle. One hand lashed out and tightened about the witch's bony shoulder.

“Give me power!” Kelsie may not have shouted that cry but it rang through her body. Perhaps the very suddenness of it made Wittle obey. Through her hand upon the other came a surge of strength and in the girl's mind the jewel began a wider swing, following the dancer in and out, emitting a shower of sparks which struck downward.

Kelsie felt as if she were swelling through her own body—that what she gathered in from Wittle was too great to be held or she herself would be consumed—and she fought to channel it in her mind—aim it toward that other world weapon she could not see.

The red curtain enclosing the two of them began to diffuse; she could see the witch now—though Wittle had not turned her head nor made any gesture to suggest that she saw Kelsie. Wittle's gaze strained instead out over the basin. There, very dim in the red of the slowly disrupting beam was her own jewel—still suspended in the air but no longer spinning so swiftly, rather wobbling as if what supported it was nearly gone.

But Kelsie had no mind for that—the battle moved across and they must defeat the dancer not the again growing shadows over the smaller world.

“Release—send!” demanded the girl. “Give strength—”

She could still feel the inflow from her hold upon the witch but it was lessening. Her mind picture of the dancer grew hazier and hazier until she could not be sure that that other existed at all, that she had not been drawn into a trap which had finished both the jewels and left the basin world open to the Dark.

Seventeen

There was dark, a fume filled, suffocating darkness and in that still moved the dancer though the lightsome patter of feet had become a desperate shuffle. Then—nothing—

Kelsie opened her eyes. She lay by the edge of the basin and near her was a heap of travel-stained gray which would only be Wittle. From far overhead came the faint crystalline music she had first heard when the jewels had been loosed over the miniature world. With an effort she turned her head, edged toward the verge of the basin. The red wave was gone and afar there twisted and turned a single jewel—Wittle's, she thought. Her hand sought her own breast somehow hoping that she had not lost what had seemed to be a burden she had never asked to carry but which had become a part of her.

“Yonan?” she called in a voice which sounded cracked from the ordeal of the heat. There was no answer. She got to her knee then and started to search toward where she had had the single sight of him during the battle. There were bodies there—two of them—one in mail.

Somehow she got to her feet and lurched in that direction. There was an emptiness about her as if something had withdrawn or been banished from that world within a world. Not only her jewel, she thought.

Past those bodies she tottered, stooping to make sure that he in the mail was not the Valley warrior. But it was a dark, cruel face which met her gaze. She skirted well by the monster having no desire to see it the closer.

There were splashes of blood on the stones and she kept to that trail. Where her jewel had gone, that was where she must go also. Though she already knew that she had no talisman, no weapon she could now claim.

A third body mail clad, lying face down. She made herself stoop and lift the head, turn it to look upon more strange features. Where was Yonan? She lifted her voice and called aloud his name which came in echoes back from the world of the basin. On she plodded, now working her way from the support of one pillar to that of the next. More blood, a hacked body of a monster thing all hair and talons. Then she could see a little ahead.

Someone sat, back to a column, head fallen forward on his breast.

“Yonan!” she pushed away from the pillar she had just embraced and stumbled on. There was blackened stone here, and the stench of fire-seared flesh. Yet she was sure she had seen a movement in the one who was seated. She had almost reached his side when she saw that other. Crumpled as if all strength of body had been withdrawn in a single instant lay a child!

Nausea arose in Kelsie. Among the bodies, half seared, half flame eaten, those white limbs were intact with no sign of the fire which must have exploded here.

The man by the pillar turned his head slowly. Yonan! She had found him in truth. His sword, the blade snapped off raggedly a handsbreadth from the point, lay beside his empty hand. In the hilt the Quan iron was dulled, spotted black like a fruit in decay.

He raised his head a little to look at her. For the first time she saw a slow smile move his lips, striking years from his somber face.

“You are hurt?” She stood over him uncertainly, knowing nothing of the healing arts for men, only those which she had used with animals. But now she knelt and strove to free him from the blood-stained mail to get at the wound in his side.

With fumbling fingers he tried to help her. Then she uncovered a gaping slit in his flesh which bled sluggishly. From her shift she tore a strip and bandaged him as best she could, using the very last of the powdered illbane which had clung to the inner seams of his own belt wallet to spread upon the stout cloth before she wound it about him.

He lay passive under her hands now, his eyes closed, that curious youth which had touched him earlier all the more plain, so that she could no longer see him as the self-contained scout who had led and protected them, but only a young man who had fought with raw courage to advance a quest which had only been half-possible from the first.

When she had made him as comfortable as she could, curiosity, a fearful and half-ashamed curiosity, brought her to the white figure who lay so still. A fair body of a very young girl, dark hair streaming to conceal her face. Her bare feet so small—surely matching the track they had seen before. Still there was something about her— Was this the dancer who had sought to make an end to the jewels—to them?

Though she shrank from it she made herself uncover the face of the dead, lifting away a heavy strand of the hair. Beauty, yes, and yet with a subtle marking of evil, though Kelsie did not know how or why she judged that. There was the tinkle of crystal and, peering more closely, she saw that on the arm, on the white skin of the dead, was a shifting of small bits of crystal—one or two still alight with a faint bluish glow. The jewel! Again Kelsie knew a pain of loss. Never hers, yet she had borne it and dared to use it. And it had been her final burst of will which had killed this child, brought an end to a battle and—what else had it done?

She went to the rim of the basin and looked down.

Wittle's jewel still spun, slowly, but from it emitted sparks of blue which fell to the world and she saw that the shadows had not altogether been banished but had withdrawn into somber pools of dark here and there and seemed fewer and smaller.

Wittle had come to find power. In a manner it had found her and made use of her—as well as of Kelsie. What they had accomplished here the girl could not understand—maybe it would take an adept such as the people so often spoke of to measure what had been done and whether for good or ill.

“It was an eftan.” Yonan spoke for the first time as she turned away from the inner world. “They had suborned an eftan to their purposes.”

“An eftan?”

“An air elemental,” he explained. “They who can dance up a storm if they wish. And this one danced on the pattern set there—” He pointed to the pavement which was so blackened and scarred around which lay the bodies of the dead save for her who rested inside.

Rested inside?

There was a faint line or two still to be seen on the stone. But— Kelsie put both her hands to her mouth and held back a scream. The white body—it was dissolving—tendrils of whitish smoke from a fire were curling from beneath it. Now she saw the dark disappear, a blast of chill—as from the edge of a mountain snowfield spread outward as the smoke gathered into a long finger. She shrank back a step or two waiting for that ice to thrust at her—to freeze her where the others had burnt from the fire.

But around the white there was a tinge of blue and the smoke arose straight up into the sky above the roofless columns, streaking outward like a thing suddenly released from captivity. Then it was gone and all that lay there was the tiny shreds of crystal.

“What—?” she found it hard to frame proper words. Surely the dancer had died.

“Back to its own place,” Yonan said and grimaced, his hand going to his side. “Maybe it was spell-held to what it did here and is now free. Those of its kind seldom mix in the affairs of men—or of demons—” And he glanced at one of the fire-scorched bodies which lay near him.

“Will it come back?” she demanded. “The jewel—it is broken.”

“I do not think we shall see that weapon again,” he replied, “which does not mean that they will not try other ways.” And his grimace grew as he reached for his broken sword, looking from the break to the discolored Quan iron. “We seem to be singularly weaponless now, my lady.”

“There is Wittle's jewel—”

“If it still answers her; if she wishes it so—” he did not sound very confident.

“Can you walk?” Her own question sounded harsh and demanding. But she did not want to leave the witch alone. To have their mismatched party all together was her object for the present.

“I am not to be counted out yet, Lady,” he made answer and struggled to get arms under him to lever himself up. She was quick to aid. At his gesture she sheathed what was left of his sword and slung the battered coat of mail over her shoulder, placed her arm about him so that they made a slow journey back around the edge of the basin, moving from one pillar to the next and halting many times when she saw the drops of sweat on his forehead, the set of his mouth, as if the last thing he would ask was a slower pace or perhaps a longer rest.

Before they reached her Kelsie heard Wittle's voice. The witch was singing, hoarsely and with a crack in the rhythm of her words. She sat, they could see, on the very edge of the basin, not looking down at the land beneath her but rather out at the slow spinning jewel. And as she so sang she reached out her hands as if to cup it again and hold it unharmed against all comers. There was an avid hunger in her face, the eyes which watched the distant jewel were as deep sunken in her head as if she had been fever-ill for a long time. She paused in her song now and then to rub her forehead with her hands, pressing her fingers on her eyes as if to clear away some film to enable her to see what she wanted to see—that which was a part of her winging its way back into her hold.

Yet the jewel did not pause in its turning, nor change a fraction of its stance. It was playing a strange new sun to the basin world, one seemingly as fixed as might be an actual fire globe in Escore's own sky, the warmth of which reached them now between the pillars.

“Wittle,” Kelsie released Yonan against the nearest column and went to put her hands on the witch's bent shoulders. “Wittle!”

She might have been calling now upon the wind or upon that tongue of frosty air which had formed the dancer who had so nearly put an end not only to them but also the world in the basin.

“Wittle!”

The witch swept out one arm, catching Kelsie at thigh height nearly spilling her into the basin. Looking down and out over the miniature world Kelsie could see that there was still a fleeing of shadow, a rain of sparks sending that into nothingness here and there.

“She is one with her jewel,” Yonan's voice behind her sounded as if from a distance. “She will be one with it to the end.”

“But I—that other jewel—” protested Kelsie.

“You are no witch, at least not one of Estcarp where the power is one with the person. If she recalls her jewel, then she is safe. But if it comes not to her urging—”

“We must get away!” Kelsie had thrown off most of the spell which had been woven about her. With the gem she had carried now nothing but splinters, she felt oddly naked, weaponless, prey to be easily hunted down. And she could not believe that they had indeed defeated that which had striven to destroy not only them but all that lay in the basin.

Now she looked and saw the Valley—of that she was sure. And there were other places where the blue of the Light promised comfort and safety. She began to study the miniature land carefully to see where was the nearest of those islands of true safety. The place of columns as it was in the basin seemed unduly large in comparison with the rest of the countryside. And to the north of that was one of the darkest blots of shadow—though that had been driven back in upon itself she was sure. Originally it had reached out to touch upon the place of pillars. But if she could not rouse Wittle from her trance, nor support Yonan for long, then how could she—

“Get away?” her own earlier words repeated back to her. “Think you we are now meant to get away?” Yonan's voice was low and very tired. She glanced at him quickly. He had slumped farther down against the pillar and now lay there, all color faded from his face so that his weather tan looked gray and dulling.

Kelsie's chin came up and she looked at him straightly. “So far we have won—”

“One battle in a war,” he answered her slowly and closed his eyes. Wittle, meanwhile, regarded nothing but the spinning jewel to which her hands still stretched, her crooning now reduced to a hoarse whisper. Kelsie looked out over the bowl. Her stubbornness would not allow her to accept the defeat which seemed to have fallen on Yonan, the entranced state of the witch. She settled down on the rim of the basin and began a survey threaded from the place of columns back toward the Valley. That they would come again to any great source of power such as Wittle sought she did not believe. The compulsion which had carried her on and on to this very place was gone with her—or Roylane's jewel. There was retreat which could save them. If they left the columns here and went so—a little farther west—there was a river and she could trace there to within a short distance of the Valley. Surely once they were back into patrolled territory they would be found, taken back.

“Wittle,” she moved along until she knelt by the witch again and now she took her by the shoulders and shook her so hard the woman's head flopped back and forth on her shoulders— “Wittle!”

The dark eyes stared through her as if she were as bodiless as smoke. Nothing she could do would rouse the witch from her need and longing for the jewel. But Kelsie was not through. Now she slapped that lean face hard, on one cheek and then the other so that the print of her hand began to show in reddened patches.

This time there was a flicker in the eyes, the straight stare was broken.

“Wittle!” Under her hands the witch's body twisted as the woman attempted to see beyond Kelsie to the spinning jewel. Now the sparks from that had become fewer and fewer, only a handful were spilled to hunt the shadows out of the corners in which they lay.

“Wittle, they will be hunting us. We must go.”

“By Hofer and Tem, by the ten lights, and the nine cups, the six faggots and the three fires—” Her words were understandable but they made no sense to the girl. Wittle raised a hand and drove it finger straight for Kelsie's face, aiming at her eyes. The girl ducked and lost her hold on the witch.

Wittle arose then, the strength of her body such that she had no trouble in tearing away from Kelsie. She took two steps forward, over the edge of the basin.

Kelsie screamed, Wittle was gone. She might have stepped through a door when she had taken that stride forward. There was no sign of her body crashing on the mountains of that other world. At the same time the jewel picked up speed where it hung in the air, whirled twice as fast, threw off a greater volume of sparks. It might have been that Wittle's act had revived it.