Shirley Murphy - The Catswold Portal

The king coughed blood. “You are a fool, Ithilel. She has destroyed us, she has used you.”

“No! She…”

Melissa caught her breath, realizing suddenly that if this was young Prince Ithilel, if she was seeing the fall of Xendenton, then the little girl was Queen Siddonie. But who was the young woman?

The king fixed his eyes on Ithilel. “If you were a man you would kill the Catswold traitor. Your wife has betrayed us. Do you not realize she has destroyed us?” He coughed, spitting blood, then looked evenly at Ithilel.

“There is no choice, you must go from the Netherworld. Take your cursed wife—do not leave her here to do more damage.” He turned from Ithilel and reached to the child Siddonie, taking her hand.

“You are the strong one. You must keep yourself safe, my child, until you can win back Xendenton.”

Siddonie’s dark eyes were hard as glass. One thin hand remained clenched on her sword. “I will return.” She stared at her father, brazen with a queen’s challenge. “And when I return I will rule more than Xendenton.” There were tears on her face, but she smiled coldly. “One day I will rule the Netherworld. And,” she said, smiling, “I will build a formidable power in the upperworld as well—in memory of you, Father. And for my own amusement.

“And,” she said, “I will take revenge on the Catswold beasts. Revenge such as they have never dreamed.” She knelt before the king straight as a shaft, waiting without tears for his death. But the dying king clasped her to him, holding her rigid little body, his white face buried in her black hair.

The king of Xendenton breathed his last.

Melissa watched in the mirror as the prince crossed his father’s hands over his chest to protect him from the creatures of the Hell Pit that could come for the souls of the dead. He closed the king’s eyes with two gold griffons and then, rising, he took up a heavy bag of jewels from an iron chest by the door, and jerked his young wife out of the shadows.

Prince Ithilel sealed the wall behind them, making of the secret chamber the king’s burial tomb. They hurried along dark passages, the prince holding the young wife’s wrist. At last he opened the passage wall with words like spitting snakes and pulled his wife through the gaping hole and stepped aside for the child.

They lit three of the oil lamps stored within the tunnel, and then began to climb up the black twisting way. Their journey became a montage of the miles of tunnel. Melissa saw deep cracks in the ancient earth, dark trickles of water, falling space; time tilted and changed, and the earth around them changed as they rose within it. Melissa thought many hours had passed when suddenly thunder echoed above them and they entered a tunnel with smooth pale walls and a floor of glazed tiles marked with occasional shallow puddles. Then, where a black rune marked the pale wall, the prince said an opening spell.

A portion of the wall swung back. They passed into another smooth tunnel lit from above by yellow lights which were not oil lamps. This passage led to an echoing basement. They climbed iron steps strewn with paper and bottles. At the top of the long flight they pushed out through a metal door into white fog. Lights sped past them incredibly fast, smeared within the fog. A hissing noise ran with the lights, like wet snakes. The young woman drew back, afraid. The prince took her hand, urging her on. But Siddonie walked alone, small and erect, staring around her at this world with a sharp, canny interest.

The three refugees crossed half the city, climbing hills crowded with tall, pale buildings. High up, they left the fog behind them. It lay below them like a white sea. Now above them a black sky reeled away empty, pierced with lights that Melissa knew were stars. The vast space in which those stars swam terrified her.

Then came a scene of daylight painfully bright. Melissa could see through a large window the city spread below, the tall smooth buildings thrusting up through that vast space that was bright now, pale blue and awash with the yellow sun. She thought of elven tales of the sun. The yellow ball blinded her. The young wife stood at the window, her hair more golden than the sun. Behind her Ithilel and young Siddonie worked at a desk littered with papers. Another montage of scenes showed Siddonie and Ithilel writing in ledgers, entering figures, then the two out on the street, going into buildings carrying a leather satchel. She saw them enter a paneled room and empty Netherworld trinkets from the satchel onto a desk: emeralds, opals, diamonds, sapphires. She watched them trade these for a slip of paper. This happened many times. Their clothing became rich. Their dwelling changed to a huge house looking down at a bay. She saw servants, rich food, and rich fabrics. She saw in a last sharp scene the face of the child Siddonie looking directly into the mirror. Her black eyes were appraising and cold. Then Melissa was jerked back to the dungeons.

She felt as weary and drained as if she herself had made that terrible journey. Before her, the Harpy ruffled and stroked her white feathers. Melissa saw that the rebels were still in sight, searching the cellar as if no time had passed. She faced the Harpy crossly. “That was a fine vision but it told me nothing about who I am.”

The Harpy snorted with disgust. “Yes, it told you. You will figure it out soon if you are using your mind.” The beast looked hard at her then brought another vision. “After this I will have my mirror or I will yell so loud every guard in the palace will hear me.”

Chapter 16

Now in the Harpy’s mirror mist clung against the buildings of the upperworld city and shrouded the upperworld alleys where cats roamed lithe and restless. The sight of cats stirred a strange feeling in Melissa. She watched a yellow tom circle a doorway, watched a gray female shoulder out through the flimsy screen door in the back of a wineshop. She saw a thin tiger cat in the alley behind a grocery picking through trash, stopping often to stare up at the sky where, through fog, glowed the diffused light of the upperworld moon. She saw within a satin apartment a tan and brown cat waking her mistress with harsh cries then streaking past the woman’s silk-gowned legs into the night. She watched a fat white female cat lead four starving cats through an open cellar door into a shabby room. There the female vanished; and a white-haired woman opened tins of cat food and fed the strays, then went out again, leaving the door ajar.

Inside apartments cats cried and paced, staring out through dirty back windows or through curtained front windows, or leaping over furniture and across desk-tops seeking a way out into the moonlit night. All over the city cats moved restlessly, caught by the moon’s pull. Melissa knew more from the vision than simply what she saw. She knew that this night, not only the moon called to them.

In an alley between the Tracy Theater and a tall Victorian house, a big, heavy-boned tiger cat leaped from the fence to a rooftop. Pausing on the flat tar roof, he looked around, puzzled, restless and irritable, and a strange eagerness gripped him. Tail lashing, he jumped from that roof to the next, a four-foot span, and trotted to the next chasm and leaped again.

Covering the length of the block across the roofs of the store buildings, he dropped into the branches of a stunted tree that shouldered across an alley. There he settled himself in a crotch of branches as if he had done this many times. He listened, looking up at the sky, looking around him.

He was broad shouldered, with big paws and a broad, square head; he had the body of a fighter beneath his wide curving stripes of gray and silver. He lay limp along the branch, though beneath his indolence his spirit seemed coiled like a spring. His thick, striped tail swung idly. But then its tip began to twitch as, looking up through the mist, he watched the exact place where the moon would lift.