The Gate of the Cat (Witch World: Estcarp Series) (7 page)

Back they edged and now Kelsie came away from the wall against which she had taken shelter and continued to swing out the jewel its light growing ever brighter. She was aware of a draining down her arm, through her fingers and into the chain, as if she herself was the energy which had revitalized the thing and brought about this awakening.

The attackers fled while Swiftfoot licked her litter, still raising her head to snarl now and again. What the trio sought was a tumble of earth and stone at the back of this slitlike cave, apparently the burrow through which they had made entrance here. The first of them reached that and threw itself forward as one might enter surf pounding on the shore of a sea. There was a frenzied scrabbling and an upward shower of earth and small stones. Taking heart at the very visible fear of the noisome invaders Kelsie resolutely drove the other two after the first. She faced now a hole through which she would have to creep in order to advance and she had no intention of doing that. However, she continued to stand and wave the jewel back and forth until her arm tired and fell heavily by her side, as weary as if she had been carrying some great weight.

Nor was it only her arm which was limp with fatigue, her whole body was suddenly struck by a feeling of great lassitude so that she sank to her knees before that evil smelling opening, the light of the jewel fading to a dim glow.

Thas—the underground workers of evil. The very name in her mind appeared to open a door of knowledge. How dared they come into the Valley? There were age old guardians here and those the People of Green Peace believed could not be broached. Yet had the Thas not chanced into the cave Swiftfoot had chosen as her den what might they have done?

“Much!” That answer to her thought was spoken aloud and she nearly sprawled on her face as she strove to swing around to confront the speaker.

Wittle stood there. The gray of her robe faded into the shadow so only her bone-white face and her hands, cupping her own jewel where it swung about her throat, could be clearly seen. For the first time since she had first met her Kelsie saw no animosity in the witch's expression. Instead Wittle was studying Kelsie with an intensity which had something of astonishment in it.

“You are—” her voice was hardly above a whisper.

“Kelsie McBlair!” The girl flashed back. For all her dreaming this night she would hold to that with every bit of strength she could summon.

“She—she chose you then—it is the truth. She exercised the choice!”

“I am not Makeease—” Kelsie denied.

“You have that of her in you now whether you will it or not!”

Wittle's hands dropped away from cupping about her own jewel and it broke into a clear blue light. The stink of the Thas seemed to disappear and Kelsie's strength began to return so that she was able to stand without feeling that her legs were ready to give way under her.

“This must be closed,” Wittle was past her in two strides to face the hole. Swinging her jewel by its chain, even as Kelsie had earlier swung the one she carried, she began to recite a cadence of words, words which called upon the very earth itself to provide a stopper to evil. The air between her jewel and the opened earth was filled with ever changing symbols which curled in and out and at times seemed to catch upon one another and cling. Until there was formed a kind of net which floated on until it crashed between the pile of excavated earth and the wall behind it.

“Be it so!” The three words crackled like a flash of lightning across a storm rolled sky. Instantly stone and rock moved, were tossed, pounded, driven back into a firm wall once again. Still glowing therein were flecks of blue as if the net still held. The witch had already turned her back on what she had wrought and was again measuring Kelsie with narrow eyes.

“The Sisterhood grows smaller each year,” she said, as if she were reminding herself of something. “Perhaps it is to the gates we must look—and Makeease at her dying saw the truth. You are of us whether you won your jewel by lessoning or by gift—”

“I am not!” Kelsie dared to deny that. Wittle had always been her enemy, why now was she changing, subtly calling upon Kelsie to join forces with her?

“I do—” Again it was as if the other read her thoughts. “We were sent and we have not yet obeyed that sending—”

“I am not a witch.” Somewhat to the girl's surprise the witch inclined her head in answer to that.

“By our laws you are not. Yet Makeease knew it. Though perhaps it was because she was on the edge of death that it was made clear to her. You cannot deny what lies in you now—”

“There is nothing in me!”

Kelsie backed away, even as she had during the night dark attack of the Thas, until her shoulders were against the rough, cold stone. Perhaps she would have run— But she could not! That same compulsion which had brought her here had swooped back, to seize upon her once again. She could have screamed in her rage and fear. That she was not master of her own body was the most frightening thing of all. Yet she could not take the single step which would carry her past the witch and on her way out of here.

The girl said in a voice she fought to keep from trembling. “Stop playing your tricks on me and let me go.”

Wittle swept both arms outward in a gesture which offered Kelsie full freedom. “I play no tricks. Look within yourself to see what lies there now.”

Look inward? Kelsie tried, not sure of what the witch might mean. She discovered that, without knowing it, she had set the chain of the jewel about her own neck and it, pulsating, rested on her breast even as Wittle wore hers.

She gasped a ragged breath.

“What would you have me do?” she asked in a small voice. The drain she experienced was not yet repaired, she felt as if, should she stand away from the wall, she might fall.

“Breathe so—” Wittle was drawing deep, slow breaths. “Think of your body, of the feet, the legs which support you—of the blood which runs through them nourishing, cleansing. Your body has served you well, think kindly of it, slow—ah, slow, sister. Think of having slept through the night sweetly with no dreams to disturb your rest. It is morning and you awaken renewed, filled, mistress of yourself, sister to your jewel which will serve you now even if you try to send it away. Come—”

Without waiting to see if Kelsie obeyed her or not, Wittle bent her tall form and left the cave and indeed the girl discovered that she was drawn after. There was still silver moonlight among the rocks and the witch sought out a place where the beams were full. She stood there, her arms upraised and out, as if she desired to indeed draw the moon down into her hold. Hesitatingly Kelsie followed suit.

Her jewel was glowing again. Not with the forceful blue it had shone when it had stood against the Thas, but with a pure white light. It warmed and the warmth spread through her also, so that the last of that backaching fatigue was banished. She felt rather as if indeed she had awakened into a good day and had bathed cleanly at the pool in the Valley, that all was well within her and that she had already accomplished much that she had been set to do.

How long they stood there Kelsie could not reckon, but at length Wittle lowered her arms as a shadow of stone crept to them and there appeared a cloud touching the moon shield overhead.

“Good—” Her voice held a sigh. “So it is with the power when one uses it. It draws, ah, how it can draw,” there was remembered pain in her voice then, “but there is always the renewing. How is it with you now, Makeease—” then she hesitated, “No, for one there is one name, for another another. You have received no name in company—”

“I am Kelsie!” Some of her old antagonism flared.

“Do you not understand,” she had never expected Wittle to show such patience, “to use your birthing name so boldly is to invite the ill to enter. It will offer a key to that which we must fear the more. The body can be ill used by the Dark Ones, yes. But it is the worse when the inner part is touched. Perhaps it is different with you and the naming of names is not a danger.”

“Sometimes perhaps,” Kelsie had a sudden memory of times which a name might bring a person into danger even in her own time and place—perhaps not the same kind of danger, but peril as her world knew it. “Yet we do not change them—” No, that was not so either. People did change their names, their very kinds of life—what of witnesses and spies? Still she was neither and her name was a part of herself she was not prepared to surrender, for by doing so she might well join herself even tighter to wild adventure.

Seven

The witch reached behind one of the rocks and drew forth a backpack, and then another which she slung over to fall at Kelsie's feet. The girl edged back and away from it.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“We go,” Wittle returned calmly. “What we were sent to do lies still before us. If we wait upon the favor of these of the Valley we may never reach it. They war when attacked or when the Shadow draws too near, they do not invade its own places.”

“I won't!” Kelsie watched Wittle draw her arms through the lashings of her own pack, settling it on her shoulders with a shrug.

“You cannot now do otherwise. You have used the jewel—it is yours and you are its.”

Kelsie would have fled away from this mad woman, taken the trail down back to the Valley. But once more her body rebelled against her will. With warmth from the stone flooding through her, she discovered she must also stoop, pick up that burden and prepare to carry it.

“Do not fight it, girl,” the witch's voice held its old superior and contemptuous ring. “You are of the sisterhood whether or no and this is the geas laid upon you.”

Thus against all her desires she began to climb, following Wittle farther and farther up the steep slopes using toes and fingers, striving to compensate for the backward pull of her burden. They reached the top of that barrier which nature, or those who dealt so close to nature that they could summon her services on demand, had set about the Valley. Beyond was a country which seemed to draw more shadow than light from the moon, to be truly a place of peril. That Wittle was calmly descending into that, taking Kelsie with her, the girl could not retreat.

If there were sentries and watchers on duty in those heights (Kelsie was sure that there were) the witch had her own method of passing unseen and was able also to encompass Kelsie. For there arose no one to bid them halt or inquire what they would do.

There was a usable trail which zigzagged down the opposite side of the heights and they did not take it swiftly, Wittle making methodically sure of her footing while Kelsie followed close behind her.

Once a winged blot of darkness flew swiftly over them and the witch stood still, Kelsie freezing into a similar halt. But the thing did not return, and, after a time in which Kelsie drew short shallow breaths, Wittle once more started on. Again she froze into immobility, startling Kelsie so that she nearly ran into the pack the other wore when there sounded a single ear-grating howl from the lowlands toward which they were going. This time Wittle hissed an order to the girl:

“A gray one. Put your jewel into hiding! They have eyes which can comb the darkest shadow.” She was fumbling with her own jewel, holding open the neck opening of her own robe and dropping her glowing gem within the inner folds. Kelsie followed and nearly yelped aloud. For the heat that the stone now emitted was such as if she had slipped a live coal against the skin of her breast.

Wittle appeared to believe that this was the only precaution they need take, for she was striding on again. Kelsie, perforce, still drawn by that overriding other will, must follow.

They came to the stream which burrowed a way through the mountains to feed the Valley river and here the witch kilted up her long robe so that her thin white legs were bare to her knees, motioning for Kelsie to shuck her soft boots even as the witch abandoned her sandals.

Free of foot Wittle stepped into the shallows of the stream and marched confidently forward Kelsie again behind. Perhaps it was because she had a need for establishing her superiority again that the witch whispered:

“Running water is disaster to some of the Dark Ones. It is best to hold to it while one can.”

Trying to keep her own voice low Kelsie demanded with what small power she could summon:

“Where are we going?” That she was following one she did not trust was the stark truth, but if she could summon the strength of the jewel again perhaps she could break free of Wittle should the other release any of the control she had established. Meanwhile to humor her might be best.

“Where we are led,” was the very unsatisfactory answer she was given. “As you know—no,” the witch corrected herself. “You who are one of us and yet not one—perhaps the knowing was not given with the jewel. We seek the source of the ancient power—that which formed our sisterhood in the beginning and where we must stand again to gather to us that which will raise up anew all that we were once. That it lies to the east is all that we know. Sister Makeease was questing for it—”

“And she died!” The cold of her own frightened self fought the warmth of the jewel she wore. “What promise have you that your purpose can be served—”

“She went with guards—she rode openly though the warning was clear. But she would not listen to those of the Valley,” Wittle's tone was once more cold and sharp. “This is not a search which can be done by a trampling force of clumsy men. She was wrong and so she paid for it. We shall search by night and this—” she cupped her hand over the wan glow shining through her robe, “shall be our guide. For we brought the jewels out of this land in the ancient days and they will be drawn to that which gave them their first life. This much we can be sure of. If we watch them carefully by their waxing and their waning shall we be guided.”

“What if,” Kelsie moistened her lower lip with her tongue tip before she continued, “this source you seek is now held by the Dark?”

“It may be besieged by the Dark well enough,” Wittle agreed, “but taken it has not been or our stones would die. The Light and the Dark cannot lie together.”

“Shadows and moonlight do,” Kelsie was finding apter words of protest than she had known existed in her mind.

“The Moon is at full, as long as it remains so we can draw sustenance from it. When it begins to wane,” the witch hesitated, “then we tread even more carefully.”

It was clear that she had a vast confidence in herself and Kelsie, as wary as she was, was cowed by that as they went forward through the night, keeping to the stream as their roadway. When the first shafts of gray dawn appeared along the horizon the witch pointed ahead to where a sandbar projected well into the stream. On three sides it was surrounded by water, which flowed with a swifter current in midstream. The fourth was connected to the land by a narrow neck on which drift had caught in a tangle as if there had been some recent storm which had brought such debris out of the land before them.

The witch waded out on this neck of land and Kelsie gratefully followed, though she had to tread over gravel as well as the sand. Then they were ashore and Wittle shed her pack, Kelsie following her example, her shoulders aching from the strain put upon them. But if she were tired from their night's tramp, Wittle was not. Already the witch had approached the drift and was pulling at pieces of it, working crooked branches around to form a barrier across the narrow scrap of land which connected them with the shore. She was plainly building a barricade, though what such a defense might save them from Kelsie had no idea. That Wittle appeared to think this important set her working beside the witch.

It was not until they had a breast-high barrier there that Wittle seemed satisfied and went back to her pack, worrying open the strap around its midsection to bring out a packet of wilted leaves fast lashed about. She freed those also and Kelsie saw that she had a flat cake of some darkish substance from which she broke a small piece and began to nibble around its edge.

“Eat,” she sputtered through a full mouth and gestured toward Kelsie's own discarded pack. The girl found a leaf-wrapped parcel within containing the same rations, and tasted a bite gingerly. Though its looks were not encouraging the flavor was better and she got it down, washed by several palmfuls of water from the stream.

However, here on this patch of sand, though barricaded as it now was from the land, she had no sense of security. Thus as she watched Wittle settle herself on her bundle for sleep in the early morning Kelsie wondered at the unconcern of the witch. Was she so very sure that they were in complete safety?

“Trust your jewel, girl—” Wittle's eyes were closed but it was as if that allowed her to discern Kelsie's thoughts better. “The Dark hunts mainly by night—”

“Then why do we—?” began Kelsie bewildered.

“Travel by dark?” Wittle finished for her. “Because as long as the full moon is overhead we can cast for the better that trail we must discover. Where the Dark masses—there we may discover the seed we seek.”

Wittle might be very sure of herself and her methods of hunting but Kelsie did not agree. The witch was breathing evenly asleep while the girl still sat looking around her with a wariness which was an ever present part of her now.

The stream ran across the plain until it reached the hills over which they had come during the night. She could sight some moving humps in the distance ahead to the east which she thought might be animals browsing. The sky was very clear, with not even a trace of cloud, and once in a while again to the east some shape flapped lazily across it.

There was life in the stream also. Now and then a fish broke the surface of the water chasing one of the gauzy winged insects which near filled the air only a few inches above the river, engaged in some complicated dance or maneuvers of their own. Then there crawled out in the sandbank a lizardlike creature as long as her forearm which paid no attention to the two already occupying that stretch of territory but wheeled about its head pointing waterwards and apparently went to sleep in the rapidly warming sun.

Though the plain stretched well to the east there were also the irregular lines of hills or mountains to be sighted beyond and here and there were dark clumps of trees gathered in thick copses as if they had been deliberately planted so. There were also tumbles of stone perhaps a half mile farther on which to Kelsie suggested ruins of a very ancient and now unidentifiable building. While the tall grass of the meadowland, already beginning to brown under the sun's searing heat, was troubled now and again, not by any wind (for the dawn breeze had died away and there was no movement of air at all). Those waving fronds and blades must mark the comings and goings of small life.

The sun was hot and she found her head nodding, her eyes shutting of themselves. At length she chose a place closer to the barrier they had woven from the drift and, in spite of her wariness, fell asleep.

What nightmare awoke her, shaking and sweating, she could not piece together once her eyes were fully open. Perhaps it was just as well that her waking mind repudiated that memory for the fear carried over and she huddled shivering by the mass of drift.

Wittle lay exactly as she had when Kelsie had gone to sleep. Almost she could believe that the witch had died save that her breast rose and fell with long deep breaths. The creature from the stream was gone again and—

Kelsie looked about her for a weapon. There was a water smoothed root bigger at one end than the other. She worried that loose, winning so a crude club. She must have slept half the day or more away—the sun was to the westward. But though the land looked as peaceful as it had before, she was sharply aware that there was something moving toward them through the tall grass.

Very slowly she pivoted where she still knelt, giving each section she could see a questioning survey. Those moving stands of grass which she had earlier believed marked the coming and going of the inhabitants of this land were no longer in evidence. There was a stillness over the whole of the land which instinct told her was not natural. Then she heard the splash of water and turned instantly to front the screen of willows downstream.

A figure pushed through them, treading as she and Wittle had done barefooted in the water, his boots slung by their lacing cords about his neck. He was fully armed and the metallic links of light mail which formed a veiling about the helm he wore showed only a very small portion of his face. Yet she knew him.

“Yonan,” her word was but a whisper but it appeared to carry to him for he threw up one hand, whether in salute or warning she did not know—in this time and place she took it for the latter.

She was on her feet, though she still grasped the club, and her own wave was a vigorous one, beckoning him on. Had he been sent to take them back? She would indeed welcome such a summons, if this strange compulsion she was caught up in would allow her.

As she and Wittle he wore a small backpack, and, seeing that, she was not so sure that his coming meant the end of their journeying. There was an angry exclamation from behind her as Wittle moved forward, to stand nearly at the water's edge watching that newcomer.

“What do you here?” demanded the witch while he was still some distance from them, her voice low but carrying over the splashing he made as he moved.

“What I am sent to do,” he returned. One of the veil strips of his helm swung free, and Kelsie could see by the set of his firm chin a suggestion that he was angered.

“We do not need you—” Wittle's voice was that of Swiftfoot's hissing growl.

“Perhaps that is so,” he replied, now near enough to wade out of the stream, by his very coming forcing the witch back a step or two. “This is a troubled land, we will not have it troubled further— Return to the Valley lest you be taken. There are mighty forces on the move.”

“Who has been a-scrying and read that in her bowl?” Wittle's contempt once more ruled her voice. “Certainly this is a troubled land. Perhaps we move to put an end to some of that troubling. Let us reach the force and—”

“And be blasted by your own folly? Well enough, if that means that only you will suffer. But each bit of the power is precious and to risk it in the midst of enemies—”

Kelsie saw Wittle's hands snap upward to jerk at the jewel chain and bring her gem out of hiding. Even in the daylight its blue fire was not diminished. She took it in one hand and pointed it toward Yonan.

He laughed and swung his sword out of its sheath, holding the blade and raising the blue stone grip between them. There was a flash from the jewel, a similar answer from the stone, and those two met, pushing each other until there was nothing left but a wisp of smoke.