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

  “——gate——” That had come from the woman who had found her. She now touched Kelsie's arm to attract her full attention and pointed to herself:

  “Dahaun.” She shaped that name with exaggerated movements of her lips, and once again Kelsie answered:

  “Kelsie.”

  “Kel-Say—” Dahaun nodded, pointed to the woman in gray, and said a word which again Kelsie faithfully repeated. Thus those others were made known to her.

  After two tries the girl managed:

  “Crytha, Yonan (who looked to be the youngest of the men), Kemoc, Kyllan.” And for the one who towered above the rest “Urik.”

  The cat reared on its hind legs and clawed at Kelsie demandingly. When she put down the coat with its family the mother went to them at once, licking them all over as if she distrusted what might have happened to them during that ride. Kelsie herself was urged on into the nearest of the strange living houses and into an inner part of that where behind curtains there bubbled a shallow pool of water. Dahaun made motions to suggest that she shed her clothing and make use of such refreshment. She began to point hither and thither and give words which Kelsie said after her, striving to use the proper intonation.

  By the time she was through with her bath and had toweled herself dry on a square of stuff she had a vocabulary of perhaps twenty-five words which she continued to say over to impress them on her mind.

  She ate from a tray loaded down with fruit, nuts, and small cakes, feeling strangely free in the garments Dahaun had provided. There was an under smock of pale green and trousers not unlike rather tight jeans. Then came a long-sleeved jerkin which was laced up the front with cords of silver and belted with links of that same metal embossed and engraved into intricate patterns. On her feet were soft boots, calf high, which fitted fairly well. She was offered a comb to set her short cut locks into order, still being lessoned all the while in the language.

  There was a stir outside which even small rustling of the leaves set in the wall above did not hush. At a call from Dahaun a tall man, mail clad, tramped in. He carried his helmet on his hip, showing himself bareheaded and full faced. His was a face to attract interest. The skin was weathered brown as if he had been much in the open, and there were silver streaks in the very dark hair at his temples. His eyes were gray and he looked at Kelsie searchingly almost as if he would open her head if he could, and have out of her answers to questions she did not even know existed.

  “You are from the gate—”

  Startled, she stared at him openmouthed. He was speaking her own language!

  “Gate?” she floundered. “There was no gate—just the stones. Neil knocked me down when I tried to keep him from shooting the cat. I had every right,” the almost forgotten heat of her temper was again a trace of warmth in her. “I had posted the land—up to the Lying Stones and beyond. Where . . . where is this?”

  She made a small gesture to indicate what lay about them, house, strangers—this land itself.

  “You are in the Green Valley,” he told her, “in Escore. And you came through one of the Gates— May the Lady turn her favor to you now.”

  “Who are you?” she came directly to the point, “and what are the gates?”

  “For the first, I am Simon Tregarth. And for the second—it would take an adept to make that clear to you—if he or she could.”

  “How do I get back?” She asked the most important question of all.

  He shook his head. “You do not. We have only one adept now and your gate is not his. Even Hilarion cannot send you back.”

  The woman in gray had entered behind him. Now she pushed to the front though she kept a space between them as if she had some aversion to the man. She addressed him abruptly and he shrugged before he turned again to Kelsie. It was plain that there was little liking between the two of them.

  “She who is Wittle would know how you came by that jewel. Surely you did not bring it with you.”

  “She had it—the woman who died—Roylane.”

  There was complete silence and they were all staring at her as if she had uttered some word or words which had dire meaning.

  “She gave you her name?” countered the man who had called himself Tregarth.

  Kelsie's chin went up, she sensed disbelief in that question.

  “When she was dying,” she returned shortly.

  Tregarth turned to the woman in gray and spoke quickly. Though she might be listening to him she never looked away from Kelsie. Something in that unending stare made the girl more and more uneasy, as if in each blink of an eye she was being accused of the death of the traveler and her companions.

  However, Tregarth had once more turned his attention full upon the girl.

  “Did you also take her jewel, and by her word?”

  Kelsie shook her head emphatically, her denial aimed more at that woman in gray than to him. “The cat took it,” she said. Let them believe or not it was the truth. And she added to her first statement by describing just how the animal had taken the gem from its owner. Once more she was aware of a brush of thick fur against her and looked down to see the wildcat come to a stop before her, seating itself with tail tip covering both its good foot and the mangled one together, as if it was the two of them against this world.

  The woman in gray was plainly startled by the appearance of the cat. The ornament still lay around the animal's neck. The cat dipped its head to catch the gem between its jaws once again.

  Though she had started forward a step and uttered a sound as if denying the cat its trophy, the gray woman now stood, plainly completely astounded by the creature's actions.

  “This is as it was before?” Tregarth asked.

  “Yes. Only the cat took that—” Kelsie thought it wise to make that point as soon as possible. She had no desire to be thought of as one who had robbed the helpless dead. Though why she would want such a bauble she had no idea.

  “And the cat entered the gate before you or with you.” He did not make a question of that statement. But she saw fit to answer:

  “Yes.”

  Now it was Dahaun who broke in with a fast burst of speech in which Kelsie heard her own name and the word “gate” mentioned several times. First Tregarth and then the gray woman nodded, the latter reluctantly, Kelsie believed. She watched the other bring a small bag out of some hidden pocket in her robe and pull at its drawstring until the pouch lay flat on the mat covered floor. Going down on one knee she spread out the bit of cloth yet more and then turned to the cat, meeting it eye to eye though she uttered no sound.

  If she was asking it to give up guardianship of the stone she was unsuccessful. For the cat drew back, though still facing her, until there was more space between them. A line showed between the woman's eyes which looked so pale under her dark brows. She spoke now, something with a certain rhythm which could have been part of a ritual. But the cat did not move. At length she picked up the bag and as she did so shot another keen and threatening look at Kelsie, speaking as one with authority.

  Tregarth heard her out and then translated for Kelsie's benefit.

  “You are bidden to make your familiar let the power go—”

  “Bidden?” snapped Kelsie. “I have no control over the cat. Familiar—” a scrap of old knowledge came suddenly to the fore of her mind, “that's what they used to say about witches—that they had animals to help them. Well, I do not know where your Green Valley is, nor Escore, nor any of this country! I am not a witch—such things do not exist.”

  For the first time there was a quirk of smile about his lips. “Oh, but here they do, Kelsie McBlair. This is the very home and root of what you might call witchcraft in your own place.”

  She laughed uncertainly. “This is a dream—” she said more to herself than him.

  “No dream,” his voice was entirely serious and, Kelsie thought, he was looking at her with something close to pity. “The gate is behind you and there is no going back—”

  She threw up her hands. “What i
s all this talk of gates?” she demanded. “I'm probably back in a hospital somewhere and this is all coming from that bump on the head—” But, even as she tried to hearten herself with that thought and speech, she knew that it was not the truth. Something far past her ability to answer with anything believable had happened.

  The woman in gray advanced another step, now her hand came out palm up to Kelsie and her frown grew the darker. She exploded into a burst of words which ran up the scale of sound near to a command shout.

  “She is the witch!” Kelsie counterattacked.

  “Yes,” Tregarth answered calmly and with a certainty which made it the truth. “Have you any control over the cat?”

  Kelsie shook her head vigorously. “I told you she took the thing from that woman—that Roylane, when she was dying and the woman let her. It was not given to me. Let this—this witch beg it from the cat.”

  Tregarth was already studying the animal, now he turned to the one who had brought Kelsie here. He asked her a question in that other tongue which sounded almost like the twittering of excited birds. It was Dahaun's turn to face the cat, taking the disputed stone away from the self-proclaimed witch and moving it nearer her own hand.

  For a long breath or two they all stood waiting, Kelsie was plagued by the thought that the cat understood all that had passed and was content now to tease them. Then at last the animal dropped her head to spit the stone straight before her into the center of a piece of shimmery cloth which the woman of the riders had produced. The witch moved but Dahaun waved her back. It was she who drew the cords to make a bag and then held that by the drawstring.

  “For the shrine—” Tregarth spoke to Kelsie. “Its power has died with she who held it.” Then Dahaun arose, leaving the bag on the ground where the cat caught it up by the string, and spoke to the witch whose pallid face was a little flushed now and whose mouth was a straight line of severity. She turned quickly, her gray robe spinning out at her momentum and went, all those gathered there allowing her wide room.

  Tregarth watched her go and now it was his turn to frown. Once more he spoke to Kelsie.

  “She is not in agreement with this. Stay away from her until she accepts the fact that her sister-in-power really did as you and Swiftfoot have said,” he gestured to the cat. “They have ruled too long, those of Estcarp, to take easily being thwarted, even in small things. And she had counted much on the coming of her sister-in-power. That one died—how?”

  The “how” came with a snap of a whiplash. Kelsie told of the arrows she had seen which had cut down the guards and the hound which had attacked the woman.

  “There was little to be seen, though,” she said and he was as quick to seize upon that:

  “Rider?”

  She told of him who had besieged her in the circle and Tregarth's hand went to the hilt of the sword he wore, his lips drawn tight in a grimace which was far from a smile.

  “Sarn! Sarn riders—and so close—” his words changed to the chirping speech of the Valley people and she caught one now and then which she understood—such as “near,” “stone,” and “gate.”

  Dahaun suddenly reached out and took Kelsie's hands before the girl could move or draw back. She nodded abruptly to one of her own people, who produced a dagger in the hilt of which was set a piece of glittering blue metal, akin in color to the stones behind which the girl had sheltered. He passed it across Kelsie's upturned palms, not touching her flesh but close enough so that she felt warmth as the metal seemed to blaze up for an instant. Then, with her eyes still on Kelsie, Dahaun's face became a mask of concentration.

  Some of the old pain awoke in the girl's head. But there was more too—not words but thoughts—thoughts not of her own.

  “You are—summoned one. Foretold—”

  She was not getting the whole message, she knew, but those words made her blink. Summoned—she had been brought here, yes, but not called—unless their quick bearing of her away from the circle could be termed that. Foretold—more of this witchcraft business, that was what that seemed to mean. She spoke to Tregarth:

  “I was not summoned—and how—”

  Now she was sure there was a note of sympathy in his voice as he answered her.

  “The gates open by powers we do not understand. That you came through one unused for generations is enough to single you out as one of importance. This is a land torn by war—Light against the Dark. It is easy to believe for those of us who have faced much which is outside ordinary experience to say that you were summoned. And it was foretold in the last scrying that one would come—”

  “I don't know what you mean! I don't care! If there IS a gate let me go back—” she cried out then.

  He shook his head. “The gates open but once, except when an adept lays a geas upon them. There is no going back.”

  Kelsie stared at him and within her a chill spread outward from the very center of who and what she was.

  Four

  There had passed two nights and this was the third day. Kelsie climbed from the green bowl of the Valley into its guardian heights and crouched in a huddle between two rocks facing that stretch of the unknown. She had to force herself to accept what Simon Tregarth had told her, that she and the wildcat had come through some mysterious gate in time and space to another world—and, as far as Simon knew, there was no going back. She was not ready to accept the rest of it—that she had been somehow summoned or kidnapped and brought by the Gate to answer some need here. It was far easier to accept that chance had entrapped her.

  If there was no going back then it was best that she prepare herself for this country. She worked hard at the lilting tongue of the Green Silences people, even picked up words from the other race who shared this outpost of safety, for such Tregarth assured her that the Valley was. It was only because she had been able to pass by certain symbols when they brought her here that she was judged to be worthy of the refuge at all. Even then she had been closely questioned concerning both the black rider and the dying witch several times over.

  That other witch—the cold gray pillar frightened her more than anyone she had met—even the Rider and his hound. Mainly, Kelsie thought, it was because the woman was here on equal terms and could influence minds against her if she so chose. That was a chance she would be likely to take on the first sign of any weakening on the part of Dahaun and her people. Kelsie avoided her with determination though she believed that twice at least that other had made an effort to approach her.

  Thoughts—or were they threats in the form of thought?—had crawled along the edges of her mind and she had fought them fiercely. She had discovered that fixing her attention full upon some object and concentrating intently seemed to baffle that crawling, creeping invasion of her mind. Twice she had been driven to inner battle to defend herself, both times when Dahaun and Tregarth were not there, nor even the gray woman so far as she could tell—only that pressure in her mind. Both times she had been able to banish such a ravishment of her inner self by thinking of the dying witch, by saying the name which had passed between them as a kind of talisman of protection.

  Each time she had detected that pressure she sensed that the impotent anger grew colder and more menacing. At least the other had not obtained the jewel which seemed her great desire. For the wildcat had taken it to the small lair Dahaun had caused to be made for her and her kittens, and she had not brought the gem into the light again.

  Resolutely now Kelsie began again to turn over and examine the facts she had learned. Not all within this place of safety were even of human form—yet they all appeared to share intelligence and a common purpose.

  There were those who went armed like Tregarth and others of his kind, both men and women. There were the people of Dahaun whose ever-changing color seemed to draw strength from the belts and arm bands they wore. These were made of bright blue-green gems which might have life—of a kind.

  There were the lizard folk, golden-green with crested heads and eyes as hard as gems, who skittered
in and out among the rest or sat at ease playing games with small brilliantly colored pebbles. With them were the Renthans—those tireless beasts, one of whom she had ridden hither. And there were airborne creatures even more strange.

  Those she had learned to call the flannen—tiny humanoid bodies supported by dazzling iridescent wings. To watch them dance in the air brought more astonishment than many of the other wonders. Then there were giant birds, or creatures which had the appearance of birds, who cruised the air in regular flights as if they would keep off some danger aimed from the heights. For, for all its assured safety, this Valley and those it held were under siege.

  Twice she had seen parties of sentries depart from or go up into the heights and once there had been a wounded man among those returning. Each night there was a great fire in the open space beside the river which was a loose coil of silver ribbon in the land. And into that Dahaun's people tossed in solemn ritual certain bundles of leaves and faggots of sticks so that the light smoke which arose was scented with spicy odors.

  “Kel-say—”

  She started. Under one of the soft boots she wore a stone loosened and rolled.

  Not Dahaun, nor Tregarth, but she whom Kelsie had taken the greatest pains to avoid—the gray woman. Now she seated herself composedly on a well-chosen rock where Kelsie could not get away without actually brushing past her.

  “You are very brave—or very foolish—” The woman might have been as at home in speaking the language as Tregarth—or else by some power she had opened knowledge for the girl she faced, “to give your name so openly. Do you not believe then in your own place that a name is the proper label of a being? Or are you so well protected that you need have no fears? What craft do you practice there, Kel-Say?”

  There was a mocking note in her voice and Kelsie was quick to define it. Her resentment for that moment was greater than the uneasiness and wary fear this one always aroused in her.

  “I practice no craft,” she returned sullenly. “I do not know why I am here and your gate—” she drew a deep breath.