Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

A third body mail clad, lying face down. She made herself stoop and lift the head, turn it to look upon more strange features. Where was Yonan? She lifted her voice and called aloud his name which came in echoes back from the world of the basin. On she plodded, now working her way from the support of one pillar to that of the next. More blood, a hacked body of a monster thing all hair and talons. Then she could see a little ahead.

Someone sat, back to a column, head fallen forward on his breast.

“Yonan!” she pushed away from the pillar she had just embraced and stumbled on. There was blackened stone here, and the stench of fire-seared flesh. Yet she was sure she had seen a movement in the one who was seated. She had almost reached his side when she saw that other. Crumpled as if all strength of body had been withdrawn in a single instant lay a child!

Nausea arose in Kelsie. Among the bodies, half seared, half flame eaten, those white limbs were intact with no sign of the fire which must have exploded here.

The man by the pillar turned his head slowly. Yonan! She had found him in truth. His sword, the blade snapped off raggedly a handsbreadth from the point, lay beside his empty hand. In the hilt the Quan iron was dulled, spotted black like a fruit in decay.

He raised his head a little to look at her. For the first time she saw a slow smile move his lips, striking years from his somber face.

“You are hurt?” She stood over him uncertainly, knowing nothing of the healing arts for men, only those which she had used with animals. But now she knelt and strove to free him from the blood-stained mail to get at the wound in his side.

With fumbling fingers he tried to help her. Then she uncovered a gaping slit in his flesh which bled sluggishly. From her shift she tore a strip and bandaged him as best she could, using the very last of the powdered illbane which had clung to the inner seams of his own belt wallet to spread upon the stout cloth before she wound it about him.

He lay passive under her hands now, his eyes closed, that curious youth which had touched him earlier all the more plain, so that she could no longer see him as the self-contained scout who had led and protected them, but only a young man who had fought with raw courage to advance a quest which had only been half-possible from the first.

When she had made him as comfortable as she could, curiosity, a fearful and half-ashamed curiosity, brought her to the white figure who lay so still. A fair body of a very young girl, dark hair streaming to conceal her face. Her bare feet so small—surely matching the track they had seen before. Still there was something about her—Was this the dancer who had sought to make an end to the jewels—to them?

Though she shrank from it she made herself uncover the face of the dead, lifting away a heavy strand of the hair. Beauty, yes, and yet with a subtle marking of evil, though Kelsie did not know how or why she judged that. There was the tinkle of crystal and, peering more closely, she saw that on the arm, on the white skin of the dead, was a shifting of small bits of crystal—one or two still alight with a faint bluish glow. The jewel! Again Kelsie knew a pain of loss. Never hers, yet she had borne it and dared to use it. And it had been her final burst of will which had killed this child, brought an end to a battle and—what else had it done?

She went to the rim of the basin and looked down.

Wittle’s jewel still spun, slowly, but from it emitted sparks of blue which fell to the world and she saw that the shadows had not altogether been banished but had withdrawn into somber pools of dark here and there and seemed fewer and smaller.

Wittle had come to find power. In a manner it had found her and made use of her—as well as of Kelsie. What they had accomplished here the girl could not understand—maybe it would take an adept such as the people so often spoke of to measure what had been done and whether for good or ill.

“It was an eftan.” Yonan spoke for the first time as she turned away from the inner world. “They had suborned an eftan to their purposes.”

“An eftan?”

“An air elemental,” he explained. “They who can dance up a storm if they wish. And this one danced on the pattern set there—” He pointed to the pavement which was so blackened and scarred around which lay the bodies of the dead save for her who rested inside.

Rested inside?

There was a faint line or two still to be seen on the stone. But—Kelsie put both her hands to her mouth and held back a scream. The white body—it was dissolving—tendrils of whitish smoke from a fire were curling from beneath it. Now she saw the dark disappear, a blast of chill—as from the edge of a mountain snowfield spread outward as the smoke gathered into a long finger. She shrank back a step or two waiting for that ice to thrust at her—to freeze her where the others had burnt from the fire.

But around the white there was a tinge of blue and the smoke arose straight up into the sky above the roofless columns, streaking outward like a thing suddenly released from captivity. Then it was gone and all that lay there was the tiny shreds of crystal.

“What—?” she found it hard to frame proper words. Surely the dancer had died.

“Back to its own place,” Yonan said and grimaced, his hand going to his side. “Maybe it was spell-held to what it did here and is now free. Those of its kind seldom mix in the affairs of men—or of demons—” And he glanced at one of the fire-scorched bodies which lay near him.

“Will it come back?” she demanded. “The jewel—it is broken.”

“I do not think we shall see that weapon again,” he replied, “which does not mean that they will not try other ways.” And his grimace grew as he reached for his broken sword, looking from the break to the discolored Quan iron. “We seem to be singularly weaponless now, my lady.”

“There is Wittle’s jewel—”

“If it still answers her; if she wishes it so—” he did not sound very confident.

“Can you walk?” Her own question sounded harsh and demanding. But she did not want to leave the witch alone. To have their mismatched party all together was her object for the present.

“I am not to be counted out yet. Lady,” he made answer and struggled to get arms under him to lever himself up. She was quick to aid. At his gesture she sheathed what was left of his sword and slung the battered coat of mail over her shoulder, placed her arm about him so that they made a slow journey back around the edge of the basin, moving from one pillar to the next and halting many times when she saw the drops of sweat on his forehead, the set of his mouth, as if the last thing he would ask was a slower pace or perhaps a longer rest.

Before they reached her Kelsie heard Wittle’s voice. The witch was singing, hoarsely and with a crack in the rhythm of her words. She sat, they could see, on the very edge of the basin, not looking down at the land beneath her but rather out at the slow spinning jewel. And as she so sang she reached out her hands as if to cup it again and hold it unharmed against all comers. There was an avid hunger in her face, the eyes which watched the distant jewel were as deep sunken in her head as if she had been fever-ill for a long time. She paused in her song now and then to rub her forehead with her hands, pressing her fingers on her eyes as if to clear away some film to enable her to see what she wanted to see—that which was a part of her winging its way back into her hold.

Yet the jewel did not pause in its turning, nor change a fraction of its stance. It was playing a strange new sun to the basin world, one seemingly as fixed as might be an actual fire globe in Escore’s own sky, the warmth of which reached them now between the pillars.