Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

The latter looked around at the rest of them with both anger and contempt in her face, stronger yet in her voice as she answered:

“Such things are not for talking on—they are secrets—

Dahaun shook her head. “The time for secrets is long past. When the Dark arises, then the Light must stand united and all knowledge be shared from one to another.”

The witch answered her with what sounded like an exclamation of contempt. However, if she would have denied Dahaun’s suggestion she did not do so more openly. Instead she gestured toward the now dead looking stone which still dangled from the chain wound about Kelsie’s fingers.

“That is of our magic not of yours. “It should have been left to rest with her who first gained it. Not given to one who has none of the proper training. How do we know what she is, in truth?”

There was no mistaking the anger which still bubbled in her whenever she glanced at Kelsie. The girl was swift to reply. With the fingers of her left hand she plucked at the chain until it did unwrap from that tight hold and she offered to give it to the witch, only too glad to be free of it, but the woman in gray made a gesture repulsing it, seeming almost to shrink as it came near her.

“Take it,” Kelsie urged. “I do not want it—”

“You have no right—” began the witch making no move to accept the stone.

“She has the right of death-gift,” Dahaun said. “Did not she who died give also of her name to Kel-Say. And with the name might have gone her power.”

“She also had no right!”

“Then call her up and ask her of—

The flush was high on the angular face of the woman in gray. “That is foulness which you suggest! We have no dealings with such darkness.”

“If that is so, why question what your sister has done?” Dahaun asked. “One can pass the power willingly and she did—”

“To a cat!” sputtered the witch. “It was that beast who carried the seeing stone.”

“And in a time of need passed it again to one it judged would use it—”

Kelsie was tired of this wrangling over what she might have done or what she might be. She tossed the jewel from her, though she had to use all her willpower to achieve that. For it seemed that her body was a traitor to her mind and would not let it go. It arched through the air, struck upon one of the tall rocks and then slid down into the coarse grass clump at the foot of the stone.

“Take it!” Kelsie had never heard such a note in Dahaun’s voice before. Thus in spite of all her defiance and desire to be free of their quarrels she found herself moving forward, her fingers reaching down to a loop of the chain caught about a stiff blade of grass. Once more she held the stone. It was still opaque, showing a muddy gray, and she began to believe that it had burned itself out of whatever mysterious “power” it had shown while confronting the rod. She swung it a little as one might swing a smoldering branch to brighten fire again, but there was no answer from that lump of crystal.

“Give her the covering,” now Dahaun had turned that demand upon the witch, her anger plain to read in every stiff gesture brought out that patch of cloth which could be drawn into a bag and smoothed it out on top of one of the stones.

Thankfully Kelsie loosed the chain and let the jewel fall onto that circle releasing her hold. The witch had drawn the drawstrings the minute she placed it so and stepped away, leaving the knobby bag on the rock’s crown.

“Take it—” Dahaun ordered.

Kelsie dared to shake her head. “I do not want it—

“Such things of power choose you, not you them. This has doubly come to you, from the hand of she who earned it and from your use of it. Take it up—its use may be over. But I think not.”

Yonan had used sword and knife points to dig a pit, and he pushed the twisted, blackened rod into the earth. But as he did so he uttered an exclamation. For on the stone against which that thing had burnt there was now a boldly black picture—There grinned up at them a face which was more closely human than the one Kelsie had noted on the rod, yet so (bully evil that she could not believe any such thing could exist. During its destruction it had painted its likeness on the stone, into the stone, for when Yonan strove to pick away at it with the point of his sword he could not scratch a single fragment of the sooty black free.

Dahaun strode around the rock and came back in a moment her hands cupped, holding’ water which dripped down from her curled fingers. She bent her head and breathed on what she held, reciting words—perhaps names. Then she turned to the witch who, plainly against her will, yet moved by a belief strong in her, dabbed one finger in the fast disappearing water and muttered some incantation of her own.

Next it went to Kemoc who passed his hand above the clasped ones of the Valley dweller and spoke his own prayer or ritual. Thereafter Dahaun went to the black mask on the stone and allowed the water to cascade down upon the burnt picture of the demonic head. Kelsie was sure she saw the lips of that writhe as if it would call out. But the image blurred, thinned, and was gone.

With her foot Dahaun prodded that stone into the hole after the remnants of the rod, then from her belt pouch took some withered leaves and allowed them to flutter down on top of that defiled bit of rock. Yonan struck with his sword. A cascade of gravel poured down, to utterly hide the buried. But it took them all—except the witch who made no move to help—to loosen and push over that burial of evil the stone with the carvings. Dahaun was the last to withdraw her hand, rather smoothing with her fingers those long eroded signs and symbols carven thereon.

“What manner of weapon was that?” Kemoc asked when they were done.

Dahaun shrugged. “Its like I have not seen. But in the days when this land was rent, adept fighting adept and no safety to be found save here in this Valley, there were many weapons which have been long forgotten. Who animated this—We have had a measure of uneasy peace since we fought the battle of the cliffs. I think that that is now at an end—or nearly so. The very fact that this could be planted above, perhaps to open a road to the Dark, is a threat I never thought we would see. The Sam and the gray ones are up and out. If they stir so must the Thas and all the rest of the Dark. We must be ready to see perhaps something more than what lies here.”

Kelsie held the bag with the Witch Jewel. She felt battered and bruised inside. There had been too much too soon. She knew that this was no dream. She had to believe Simon Tregarth, that by some chance she had come into an entirely new world where other natural laws held sway. Yet it was only with difficulty that she could make herself accept that. If she went back to the circle of the gate with the jewel she now held—if she passed between those standing stones—could she not win back to a life which was real—

Oh, this was real enough but it was not her reality. Simon Tregarth seemed to have accepted it without question. But she—

“Keep you that—safe!” the harsh croak of the witch disturbed her thoughts then as the woman’s angular form stepped close to Kelsie. One long pale finger stabbed the air in the direction of the packet she held.

“I am no witch,” Kelsie returned, her dislike for the woman overriding all her caution at that moment.

The other laughed but there was only sneering amusement in that guttural sound. “Well may you say that, girl. But it seems that this Escore can turn upside down truths we know in Estcarp. Men hold power—” she favored both Yonan and Kemoc with a savage frown, “and those of no training wield the weapons of Light. But that has obeyed you once—”