Shirley Murphy - The Catswold Portal

“Take off the robe.”

She removed the golden robe and lay it over her saddle, her eyes filled with ruined dreams. Melissa took up the robe with the tip of her sword, and pulled it on over her leathers as two Zzadarray soldiers took the reins of Helsa’s mount. The girl, nearly naked in her thin shift, seemed frail and vulnerable. Melissa touched the Amulet at her throat. “Tell the Catswold warriors your true mission. Tell them what they would have found if they had followed you.”

“Their death,” Helsa said tightly. “My mission was to lead them into Siddonie’s trap.”

“This was your real promise to Siddonie,” Melissa said,

“that you would bring the Catswold to her to die.”

“Yes.”

One of the five Zzadarray priests rode up close to Helsa, spurring his shaggy horse, his white robes open to reveal his fighting leathers. He faced Helsa angrily, showing no pity for her frailty and youth. “You are a Catswold woman. By what perversion would you destroy your own people?”

“By this perversion, priest,” Helsa said boldly. “I am to rule Zzadarray! I am to be Siddonie’s only heir. She has promised I will rule all the Netherworld after her death.” And suddenly Helsa turned, knocking Melissa’s sword aside, snatching up her reins and spurring her startled mount. Melissa caught the girl’s arm as the priest swung his blade. He struck Helsa from the saddle, cutting her throat in one blow.

Melissa stared down, shocked at the girl sprawled in the dust, and Helsa, as life bled from her, slowly changed to cat. Soon a thin, darkly mottled cat lay bleeding in the dust at the feet of the circling horses. Melissa turned away, shaken.

The priests of Zzadarray buried Helsa deep in the earth of a world she had never known. And Melissa saw, in the eyes of the upperworld Catswold who had come here with Helsa, the beginning of uncertainty.

She mounted Helsa’s horse and pulled the golden hood up to hide her hair. The horse was a tall, distinctly marked pinto that she suspected Siddonie had chosen so Helsa would be easy to see during battle. She turned to look at the Catswold troops gathered behind her, then led them out toward the tunnel that would bring them into Cressteane.

Earlier she had seen from the sky the lines of battle, the plains of Cressteane crowded with the armies of eight nations, their tents filling the dry plain some distance from the Hell Pit. And in the Hell Pit she had seen the leaping flames stirring wildly, licking up at the sky as if they would leap from the pit to run unchecked across the desert, consuming warriors and horses. She had seen deep down within the fires a darkness writhing, growing denser. She had watched a huge black beast take form among the flames, and watched it fight to leave the Hell Pit rearing, falling back to rear again. The Griffon had dived down close above the beast, looking, and she had felt its evil engulf her, more malevolent than any Hell Beast. She had never seen the beast before, but a deep race knowledge filled her, a memory that washed her with panic. This was the primal dark—this was the seed of evil. Nothing anywhere, in any world, could match its evil. This beast was the core, the primal corruption. The black beast had lunged up reaching for the Griffon as if they were toys flung in the air.

Now she looked at her troops for a long moment, then looked up at the sky where the Griffon glided. And, filled with fear of war, and with terror of what waited in the pit, she pressed on quickly, leading her armies toward Cressteane.

Chapter 69

It was midnight, the battle was stilled by darkness. Siddonie made her way alone from her tent across the sleeping battlefield toward the red glow of the pit. Around her, exhausted soldiers slept. She could hear the occasional snort of a horse and the moans of the wounded. She approached the pit, lusting to touch the dark beast.

“Apep,” she said softly. “Eblis. Apollyon.” Powerfully she willed the dark beast to her. Willed it to invade the minds of her enemies. She stepped nearer the edge where flames licked and exploded, and suddenly she wanted to climb down the sheer sides and leap into the fires. She longed to embrace the black dragon.

But suddenly that desire struck terror through her; she drew away shaking and sweating. She was daughter of Lillith. The dark beast had no right to control her. She had the right to use it. She—Siddonie —she alone was heir to the primal dark.

Chapter 70

The ponies jogged along steadily behind Braden’s gray gelding. The Catswold folk from the upperworld, dressed in borrowed Netherworld leathers, were hardly distinguishable from Netherworld peasants. Except, on closer inspection, they had better styled haircuts, and the women had pierced ears and painted nails. They handled their horses passably; they had learned more quickly than Braden had thought possible. Likely it was their feline balance. The sturdy ponies had made good time across Affandar.

By now, the women had wiped off their lipstick and tied their hair back or slicked it under caps, and their manicured hands were dirty and blistered, and they carried sharpened shovels and axes and crudely made bows. Above them the Harpy circled impatiently.

For Braden, the upperworld had faded, the Netherworld was all that was real. The earth beneath him was solid. The hard stones under the gelding’s hooves struck sparks. The smell of pine and juniper filled his nostrils. The cold rush of the river where they had stopped to water the horses had left his boots wet. The stone sky above him seemed totally normal, so that if he were again to face the emptiness of the upperworld sky he would feel too exposed.

He rode with one thought in mind, one goal. Melissa.

He turned once to urge on the pack pony he led. Each rider led a pack animal, heavily burdened with a long, cumbersome bundle.

And when suddenly the Harpy did a wingover and dove at the horses, he responded at once, moving his mount on fast. “Kick those ponies,” he shouted, “get them moving!”

“The pit is beyond that mountain,” shouted the Harpy.

“We will camp at the crest. On the other side, the valley is thick with Affandar warriors.”

Chapter 71

Melissa, riding the upperworld stallion meant for Helsa, wearing the golden robe Helsa had worn, led the Catswold warriors into the dark tunnel. The green of the Netherworld night disappeared behind them. As they pushed into total blackness they brought spell-lights. The Griffon walked among them, his wings folded in the tight space; he was cross and nervous confined thus, and the Catswold warriors kept their distance from him. Melissa was surprised he had stayed with them.

The journey took all night. They stopped once, at the tunnel’s deep springs, to water and rest the horses and feed them from the bags of grain they carried. It was well past midnight when they came up out of the black tunnel and turned south. The Griffon had burst out ahead of them, lifted away, and was gone.

Soon the stone sky grew red, reflecting the fires of the Hell Pit. Beyond the flaming pit burned hundreds of small fires in the camps of the two armies as the enemies waited, facing each other across an expanse of empty plain in the enforced truce of darkness. The air was filled with smoke.

Fear made Melissa’s hands sweat on the reins, and with her uncertainty the stallion began to fuss and shiver. She could hear, ahead, occasional low voices and the muffled cries of the wounded. They pushed on to the lip of the Hell Pit then drew back startled. The pit was broad here, and it seethed with liquid fire in rolling waves. But deep within the fire a blackness writhed—a dragon, its thick coils stretching away in both directions—humping, sliding, disappearing as the fires shifted. Melissa backed her trembling horse away.