Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

Why they just did not fly higher and out of his reach Kelsie could not understand. But whatever plan governed them meant that they must travel close to the ground and fairly close to the two they would take.

She drew a deep breath and coughed, her throat rasped, her eyes burning. That breath from the monster was settling on them. She swung the chain of the jewel vigorously. That might keep off the birds but it had no effect upon the puff of crimson air. She coughed again, near strangled by the breath which she had been forced to inhale. There was a wretched burning, in her nose, her throat. Her eyes were beginning to water so she could hardly see. But still she strove to keep her feet and ward off this new peril—only it did not answer the jewel. Had she come to depend too much on that because so far it had not failed her? To everything there was a limit and here they two might have reached that.

For Yonan was also coughing hard. He stepped back and his shoulders were now against Kelsie’s so she could feel the racking shudders which shook him. The birds cried out again even as they had done at their first coming—harsh squawks but ones which held a measure of triumph in them.

She felt Yonan slump and turned just in time to swing the jewel out to stop a vicious bill which was aimed for him as he crumpled to the ground. There was blood on that part of his face she could see below his helm and the helm itself had been knocked askew. The bird which had launched a fight attack on him was on the ground, its long legs holding well above it but its head drawn back for a finishing stab at the feebly moving man who was trying to regain his feet.

“No—circle—” he gasped.

But it was too late. Kelsie was coughing with such pain and depth that she felt her very lungs would be brought up by her choking. She could only hunch over Yonan holding above the two of them the Witch Jewel. And that one of the fearsome flock who had been about to impale her companion drew back and sidestepped from the run which would have carried it to that action.

Moisture from her tortured nose dripped down on Yonan and she saw it form beads of blood on his mail. Her throat was rasped so raw that nothing mattered now save that she could find some refuge from this poisoned cloud.

Through her tearing eyes she could see an open space where the dancing red motes of the cloud made up the haze about them. On her knees, the gem in one hand, her other laced in Yonan’s belt she strove to reach that promise of freedom.

She did not understand that she was being herded, not then. But she had a full moment of truth before the end came. The cloud lifted—she saw before her the black gap of an opening and only there was the promise of breath which had become a matter of life itself. One last effort—One effort and a momentary awakening to the danger—She had reached the ominous door in the monster’s great belly and it was toward that she had crawled, dragging Yonan with her.

Kelsie strove to turn and the red haze settled. Coughing and tasting her own blood she fell forward into complete darkness in which she was lost.

Darkness again met her when she roused. For a moment she could not remember—and then the terror which had woven around her when she realized where they had been herded struck full force. She was not in that place of darkness where she had once been tossed, afraid and alone. No, she was truly awake and in a place of dark which was of this world. Her hands questing out on either side of her bruised and aching body were exploring over stone, rough and damp. Her fingers flinched away from a patch of slime.

She swallowed and her throat was sore burned by that last blast of the ruddy smoke. But this dark was so intense she was cold with another fear—that she was blind. She raised a hand feebly, for all her strength seemed drained and gone, rubbed across her closed eyes, opening them once more when she had done—upon thick dark.

Thick—for it seemed to have a quality of its own—smothering, holding her. Somehow she braced her hands on the floor and levered herself partway up, now depending upon her ears. There were no sounds—was hearing smothered and gone like her sight?

“Yonan!” There came no answer to her shout. Where-over she was trapped, she was alone.

Now she felt for that which had lain on her breast—upon which she had come to depend. Her fingers closed upon a cold stone; it could be any pebble she might have taken up. The life and warmth she had sensed in it from the very first were gone. It was dead—

Dead? Perhaps this was death and she had come from life into an eternal dark.

It was only when that last fear began to crowd all control from her mind that Kelsie first became aware of something which was not sound but rather a vibration, growing ever stronger and sinking into her own body. It followed a regular series of beats yet there was no extra rhythm in it as had been in the bowl drums of the Thas. This was more like the measured thud of a heart—a heart so powerful that it could echo outside the body which held it.

The black gate in the belly of the monster—had she entered a thing with a life of its own? Her thoughts squirmed away from that—even in this country of strangeness and hallucinations such a thing could not be true.

She sat fully up in the dark and with her hands explored her whole body. The last remnants of the illbane wrappings were gone from her feet, but at her belt, snug in its own sheath was the long-bladed knife which was a part of all the clothing of a Valley dweller. She edged that out of its covering now, afraid of dropping it in this thick dark and losing her only weapon since it seemed that the power of the stone had deserted her.

Kelsie did not try to stand up. Keeping the knife ready she used her hand as a sweep before her. Always at the back of her mind was the fear that she was in truth blind and that her movements might well be under observation by those who had arranged her capture. Yet she could not remain huddled where she was awaiting some unknown attack.

There was the faint grating sound as her knife swept across the stone and that broke somehow the pattern of the beating which seemed to grow stronger the more she moved. Suddenly her hand stubbed against an obstruction of some sort and she quickly felt a barrier of stone as high as she could reach and as far as her arms on either side could stretch.

Now she did pull herself to her feet, running fingers along that wall as she arose. Where the floor had been cold, slime-dotted and forbidding, this wall differed in that there was a warmth to the stone the higher she reached—and it extended tar above her head even when she stood on tiptoe.

The vibration which had reached her through the floor was more apparent here and she thought that somehow her own heart responded in beat to match that rhythm.

Now she began to move cautiously to her right. Feeling outward with the toe of one boot before she took any step with her weight upon it, running her fingers as a guide along the wall. The steady inpush of the dark around her made her doubly unsure of herself and she tested again and again her blind impression of what lay around her.

Then her hand slipped from the stone into open space—a door? She turned slowly with as much caution as she could summon. The flooring seemed secure enough. With knife she probed to her right and both heard and felt the touch of the blade to another obstruction. So—a door. Yet there was still no light to give her any help and she would have to travel anyway ahead with the same caution she had used before. Perhaps it would be better to explore the rest of the room before she attempted to use this other opening which might lead only to worse entrapment.

She sidled past that open space and once more encountered a wall under her touch. Now she began to count and was still counting when she discovered a sharp corner and changed her way to skirt a new wall. Three paces farther on was another opening and from that came a puff of air. Not the clean, lung cleansing breeze one could find in the outer world—this was moist and carried in it the stench of decay. Clearly NOT a way to follow.