Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

In a moment he was back. Wittle had seemed to drop once more into one of her possessed times when nothing about her could matter.

“We are on the monster’s head,” the warrior reported. “We must climb down.”

Kelsie nursed her numb hand and arm and remembered only too well how the monstrous carving or building had towered above the skull road they had followed. She had no hope of daring to descend the outer surface of that. No wonder they had passed so unchallenged through the last ways. She did not doubt that the enemy knew exactly where they were and had a good method of handling them in this exposed position. Why, an eruption of Thas from the mouth where she now rested could send them out into space. To say nothing of what the Sam Riders could do with their fiery bolts.

“There is no way down,” she said dully.

He was standing over her again and now he pulled her to her feet with less gentleness than he had used before.

“There is a way!” His voice was an imperative as if he had shouted in her ear.

“Look!” he pointed out a moment later.

There was an overhang beneath where they stood and the flare-out of a rounded ledge. All was pitted by time’s erosion with holes for fingers and feet. Were it not for her wrist pulsating with dull pain she conceded she might be able to climb down. But one handed she could not begin to try. However, it seemed that Yonan had taken that also into consideration.

He was working at the clasp of his sword belt and had that free before she could protest. Now he reached for her again.

“Your belt!” he demanded. One handedly she tried to obey, only to have him push aside her hand and open the clasp himself. Then he buckled two ends together, testing them over his bent knee. He set together the end of her own belt in a sling which he motioned her to put over her good shoulder and drew her to the lip of the drop.

“Down!”

Because she inwardly shrank from that action she set her teeth and made herself crawl over, dangling in a sickening fashion out into space, refusing to look at anything but the pined stone before her until her boots did thud home on the bubble of the cheek of that hideous visage and she looked perforce into one of the eye holes. She flinched away and pulled herself as far from that as she could get. For in its depth either memory played her false or she had seen the reflection of the flames which had danced in the bowl of that chamber of death she had spied upon.

Yonan had said nothing to Wittle but apparently the witch had decided on her own that escape was possible and she came down from one handhold to the next. However, Yonan won there before her and then busied with Kelsie lowering her farther—to the thing’s puffy shoulder.

She was wet with sweat when a last swing brought her to the ground after a time she had no desire to remember. Twice she had knocked the elbow of her wounded hand and the pain of that nearly made her sick so that it had been hard to even think what she was about until she made a last descent from the monster’s folded knee and felt dry earth under her weak and shaking legs. Then Yonan was beside her and she saw through eyes dimmed with tears of pain the back of the witch who was striding away from them as if she no longer chose to be one of their company.

Yonan got Kelsie to her own feet and steered her in the direction of the witch, keeping a close hand on the belt which still hung from her shoulder. Every moment when she could think at all beyond the pain of her arm Kelsie expected to hear from behind the hoarse bellowing of a hound, perhaps the shout of a Sarn Rider urging on a hunt. But there was nothing.

She turned to the warrior who was half supporting her. “They will not let us go—” she got out that protest.

“Have they in truth?” he returned. “They seek what that one,” he nodded to the witch now well ahead of them, “came here to find. Why not give her an illusion of freedom and let her lead them to what they would have also. Do you think that they have put aside all interest in why we roam where those of the Light have not ventured much before?“ ‘Then—you believe that it was all play with us?” she faltered. Three mice and a sleepy-eyed cat that let its prey run a little and then brought down a paw to end the game.

“Some of it was testing, I think. But I also believe that had they not wished it we would never have come alive out of that place.”

She tried to push aside his grim reply but the logic of it was too sound. They were mice, allowed to run. And there were those or THAT which would watch them well from now on.

However, if Yonan believed in what he said he acted as if their escape had been a true one, keeping a good pace and helping Kelsie to equal it. She purposely did not look back, for, in her mind, was a picture of the squatting monster rising leisurely and setting out in their wake ready to bring stamping foot or clutching hand upon them when and if it wished.

They had come to a tangle of growth—not the fleshy fungi of the inner ways but rather rank stuff with good-sized thorns, and it seemed to be so matted and grown together there was no way to get through it.

Only Wittle still in advance swung out her jewel which Hashed as it never had in the inner ways and sparks from it fell into the mass from which arose small twists of smoke and a backaway shriveling of the growing stuff.

If the witch believed also that they were allowed to run free just to bring their search to an end, she showed no sign of that, nor did she do anything to cover her trail. But the brush flaked swiftly into ash and parted before her and the other two followed where she led. Kelsie wondered how much longer she could keep her feet to stumble on. The pain had risen to her shoulder and was now moving over across her breast so that she could hardly draw a full breath. She wanted nothing so much as to lie down, close her eyes, and fall into a black nothingness.

Nor was she aware when the brush about them ceased to be an entwined matting of thorns and became fresh and well growing bushes, some with flowers enough to give forth scent. Save that she was free at last of the stench of the burrows. Kelsie was indifferent to everything but the claims of her own hurt body and she roused only when Yonan’s grip, which had grown more and more compelling, lightened and she was lowered to the ground.

From somewhere came the sound of running water—water or fire? She strove to struggle up again to make sure she was not back in the cavern. Wittle, bending over her, pushed her back and the other’s touch on her body brought with it such a thrust of pain that she dropped back into darkness at last.

There was a time when a fire did burn not too far away. And she was aware that the belt held now not her hurt arm but her good one. There was a punishing weight on her hurt arm and shoulder, so that she cried out and through tears saw Yonan waveringly turn from the fire his sword in hand.

The blade plunged down on her wrist. But what followed was not searing torment but cold, icy cold as if she lay in a bank of snow near frozen. And the cold spread from that touch up her arm into her body. She was awake inside the envelope of that flesh and bone but it would not obey her, nor could she even give tongue to ease the torture of the cold.

It withdrew and she felt the return of the fire, all the worse now because of the cold which had produced it. She heard words but they did not mean anything.

“The poison spreads—she will die—” Was that Yonan? Did it matter? Dead—maybe she was already dead or so near that gateway that she was done with struggle.

“Where is your jewel, Lady—?”

“It is not for such a purpose.”

“No? You would let her die when you know that she means much to your search?”