Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

The whirling of the air condensed into shadowy forms, manlike, yet she could glimpse them only from the corners of her eyes, for her gaze held on Rhain. Even as he chanted so did Yonan begin to answer with one oft repeated phrase.

One of Rhain’s arms was held a-high as if he would urge on liege men into battle. She heard above his chant the rising squeals of the rasti. A wave of small dark forms rolled on, yet where the shine of the jewel was they appeared to shrivel into small black patches as if eaten up by fire.

Once more Rhain flung up his head and shouted—this time no rush of ritual words but what Kelsie guessed was a name. He might have called upon aid as a last resort.

The whirling shadows thickened, stood on the flooring of the cavern. Men, armed, battle-ready, each with weapon in hand and moving in with no care for the rasti whose bodies they spurned or overtrod.

There was the sweep of a mighty blow by axe at her head. She did not have time to twist or duck. Only the blade sheered away before it crashed against her. And to her right she heard a clash of metal against metal as Yonan at last found something solid he could attack. Yet still, moved by the will of the stone (for it seemed to her that that gem strove to make of her a servant, not tried to serve her) Kelsie advanced and Rhain withdrew step by unwilling step.

Then—

He was gone like a blink of eye, a shatter of lightning. With him vanished the shadow warriors. Only the rasti remained and from the dark behind came still the beat of the I has bowl drums. But Kelsie knew as if it had been shouted aloud, that the strength of the attack had departed from them and way to escape was open—for the present. That Rhain or those who might control him had finished with them—that she did not believe. More than anything she wanted the fresh air of the surface, to be out in the open where there would be honest light of day or of moon and no more of this burrows. For with Rhain gone she was suddenly drained and stumbled, keeping her feet with an effort. Then she was aware of a strong arm behind her shoulder, the support of Yonan even though he needs must still swing sword to keep off the rasti.

So they wavered together up to a place where there had been a fall of stone and earth and from a hole above there shone the beams of the sun. In her hands the jewel glow died and was gone and she slung the chain back around her throat as she began to scrabble for a hold in that earth slide, to be out of this place of strange meetings and crawling fear.

It was Yonan’s aid which brought her up and out and then they clung to one another as if, should they loose that grip, they would fall prey to the weakness in them. The man started to waver forward, dragging her with him, steering her around two great fallen stones spotted with an ugly orange-yellow fungus.

Then they were free and before them was a stand of brush by the roots of which flowed a trickle of water so clear that one could see the clustered stones on the sand of the runnel which contained it. She sank away from him, unable now to move one step before the next, and plunged her face into that water thrice over to wash away the remnants of the stench and the dust of the underground. She saw that Yonan had knelt beside her one hand cupping water to his lips, his other still on the sword lying bare now between them, his eyes sentry wise on all which lay about them.

Refreshed and somewhat more in command of herself, Kelsie looked back. The entrance to the underground world was centered in a scatter of fallen stone. Again her memory leaped to that similar ruin on the Scottish hillside. Had they come through another gate?

“Where are we?” she asked in a half whisper which seemed to be all she could voice at that moment.

She saw a trace of frown beneath his helm where it crossed above his brows. He arose and turned slowly, pivoting where he stood. Then he raised his sword and pointed to a way on her right.

“That is Mount Holweg. And this is to the north. We may have come farther than the Valley patrols have ridden. The shadow lies always north and east.”

She sat where she was, considering him. Before this venture had begun he had been only one of the men who had been soldier sentries for the Valley. He was younger than Simon Tregarth and slighter. Yet she did not doubt that in his way he was as expert at this game of weapons and spells as the man she had first met—that other displaced from her own world. Only she wondered, now that she had time to think about his relationship to the monstrosity they had confronted in the tunnels below, about his past. At least he had been able to assure her of one thing—that they had not gone through another gate—back there among the fallen stones.

“He knew you—” she began abruptly, determined to make what sense she could of those words they had exchanged below.

To her surprise her companion shook his head.

“He knew Tolar.” There was a straight line to his mouth, a slight forward jut of his chin as if he were fronting an enemy once more. “I am not Tolar—

“Then why—?”

For the first time he stopped his roving survey of the world around them and spoke directly to her:

“It seems that a man can be born again even if he has passed the last gate of all. I have some proof that perhaps I was once one Tolar who fought the Dark in the long ago—and lost. If that be so then perhaps this life is a chance to right the swing of the scales and be another man. For, I swear it by my name giving, I am Yonan, and not he who went down to defeat then—

“But you remember—” Kelsie dared not deny that anything was possible in this world. “You called that… that thing by name!”

“I remember… upon occasion,” he agreed somberly, and then changed the subject with a swift question.

“Can you journey on, Lady? We are still too near to that!” He was reaching down one hand to pull her up to her feet, his bared sword still in his other so he used his chin to point to that unwholesome appearing tangle of fallen blocks through which they had come.

“Yes!” All at once she was remembering, too, not distant times but the rasti and the Thas. The one who named himself Rhain was gone with his shadow army, but surely the creatures he had left behind were just as deadly in their own way. However, could she go on? The gem had so drained strength out of her that she wondered if she could keep her feet to reach even the first tree of a small copse which lay in the direction they now faced.

She made it, accepting only now and then the grasp of his hand on her arm. Though the water of the stream had revived her in part she was aware now of a great hunger and her temples throbbed with the pain of a headache as if she had striven at some task which had been nearly at the limit of her strength.

“Where do we go?” she asked then. “I don’t think I can go far.”

His still bared sword pointed to some small plants growing in between the trees toward which he had been urging her.

“That is illbane. Even a power hunter of the Left Hand Way would avoid such as that. We can lay up in their protection until—” his voice trailed away and she asked more sharply:

“Until what? Do we head back toward the Valley with your mountain as a guide?”

“Can you go?”

His return question startled her and then she remembered the compulsion which had sent her in the beginning on this trail across an unknown country thick with danger. Deliberately she turned to face the distant mountain. There were the beginning banners of sunset forming to the west but she had no thought of starting out to retreat in the dark.

.Kelsie took one step and then another, instantly aware of the movement of the gem which had begun a swing from right to left across her breast. Rising in her was still that need for pressing on, not backward to such safety as there might be in this country, but rather on in the opposite direction.