The Forbidden Circle Read online

  The dark mist swirled again, veiling the great cat, and now only the glowing eyes and the fierce evil grin stared at him, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a lunatic whisper in Damon’s voice muttered half aloud, “I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat . . . ?” and Damon for a split second wondered if he were going mad.

  Only two of the little solid cat-things were still on their feet and fighting below him. Unconcerned, he saw one of them go down, spitted on the sword of the man who fought afoot. One of the horsemen struck down the second. The swirling shadow covered the great glaring eyes, their green glow changing, behind the gray wall of mist, to a red glow, like distant, burning coals; then the gray wall blotted them out. A black arrow of force hurled at him and he caught it on his flaming blade. He waited, but the grayness remained, unrippled, even the last glimpse of the glowing cat-eyes gone, and finally he permitted himself to sink earthward, into his body. . . .

  There was blood on his sword, and blood on the pale grayish fur of the twisted dead things in the snow. He rested the point of his sword on the ground, and suddenly became aware that he was shaking all over.

  Eduin wheeled his horse and rode toward him. He had broken open his face-wound and, from the blue unguent smeared over it to keep out the cold, drops of blood were trickling; otherwise he seemed unhurt. “They’re gone,” he said, and his voice sounded oddly faraway and weary. “I got the last of them. Will I catch your horse, Lord Damon?”

  The sound of his name recalled Damon from a blind, baseless anger, directed at Eduin, an anger he could not understand. Shaking, he realized he had been about to curse the man, to scream at him with rage for riding down his prey, an anger so great that he was shaking from head to foot, with a strange half-memory of charging the last of the cat-men, and the other had thundered past him and stolen the last of the quarry from him.

  “Lord Damon!” Eduin’s voice was stronger now, and alive with concern. “Are you wounded? What ails you, vai dom?”

  Damon passed his sweating palm over his forehead. He realized for the first time that there was a scratch, hardly more than a razor-cut, on the back of his left hand. He said, “I’ve cut myself worse at shaving,” and in that instant . . .

  . . . In that instant Andrew Carr sat up, shaking his head, sweating and trembling with the memory of what he—he?—had done and seen. He had lived through the entire battle in Damon’s mind and body.

  Damon was safe. And Andrew could keep contact with him—and with Callista.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The afternoon clouds were gathering when Damon and his party rode down a narrow and grass-grown roadway toward a little cluster of cottages lying in a valley at the foot of a cliffside.

  “Is this the village of Corresanti?” Eduin asked. “I am not overfamiliar with this countryside. And besides”—he scowled—“everything looks strange in this damnable mist. Is it really there—the shadow and darkness—or have they done something to our minds to make us think it’s darker?”

  “I think it’s really there,” Damon said slowly. “Cats are not sunlight animals but nocturnal ones. It may be that whoever is doing this to these lands feels discom forted by the light of the sun, and has spread a mist over it, to ease the eyes of his people. It’s not a complicated piece of work with a starstone, but of course none of our people would want to do it: we have little enough sunlight even in summer.

  Not a complicated bit of work. But it takes power. Whoever their cat-adept may be, he has power, and it is growing rapidly. If we cannot disarm him swiftly, he may become too powerful for anyone to do so. Our task is to rescue Callista. But if we rescue her and leave these lands lying beneath the shadow, others will suffer. Yet we cannot move against him until Callista is free, or his first act will be to kill her.

  He had been half prepared for what he was to see by the memory of Reidel’s words—“withered gardens”—but not for any such scene of blight and disaster as met his eyes as he rode past the little houses and farms. The fields lay shadowed beneath the dimmed sun, straggling plants withering in the ground, the drainage ditches fouled and filled with rotting fungus, the great sails of the windmills broken and torn, gaping useless. Here and there, from one of the barns, came the doleful sound of untended and starving beasts. In the middle of the road, almost beneath Eduin’s hooves, a ragged child sat listlessly gnawing on a filthy root. As the horsemen passed, he raised his eyes, and Damon thought he had never seen such terror and hopelessness in any face that could vaguely be called human. But the child did not cry. Either he was long past tears or, as Damon suspected, he was simply too weak. The houses seemed deserted, except for blank, listless faces now and again at a window, turned incuriously to the sound of their hooves.

  Eduin raised his hands to his face, whispering, “Blessed Cassilda, guard us! I have seen nothing like this since last the trailmen’s fever raged in the lowlands! What has come to them?”

  “Hunger and terror,” Damon said briefly. “Terror so great that even hunger cannot drive them into the darkened fields.” He felt a fury and rage which threatened to spill out into furious cursing, but he clutched at his starstone and deliberately stilled his breathing. Another score against the Great Cat and his minions, the cat-folk he had let loose to amuse themselves in this innocent village.

  The other Guardsman, Rannan, had no such aid to calm. He said, and his face looked green with sickness, “Lord Damon, can’t we do something for these people—anything?”

  Damon said, torn with pity, “Whatever we could do would be a small bandage on a deathwound, Rannan, and we could help them but little before whatever had overcome them turned its strength on us and we joined them, creeping into a doorway to lie down and die in despair. We can only strike at the heart of the cancer, perhaps; and we dare not do that until my kinswoman is safe.”

  “How do we know she is not dead already, Lord?”

  “I will know through the stone,” Damon said. It was easier than explaining that Andrew would somehow manage to communicate it. “And I swear to you, if once we hear she is dead, we will turn all our forces to attack and exterminate this whole nest of evil—to the last claw and whisker!” Resolutely he turned his eyes away from the horror of blight and ruin. “Come. First we must reach the caves.”

  And once there, he thought grimly, we’re likely to have our troubles getting inside, or finding out where belowground they keep Callista hidden.

  He focused his mind on the stone, looking across at the base of the hillside where, he remembered from a boyhood excursion years ago, a great doorway led into the caves of Corresanti. Years ago they had been used for shelter against the severest winters, when snow lay so deep on the Kilghard Hills that neither man nor animal could survive; now they were used for storage of food, for cultivation of edible mushrooms, for the aging of wines and cheeses, and similar uses. Or they had been used for these things until the cat-people came into this part of the world. There should be food stored there, Damon thought, to tide these starving folk over until their next harvest. Unless the cat-folk had destroyed their hoards of food out of sheer wantonness. They could bring the villagers through. Assuming, that was, that they came through themselves.

  It seemed to him now that a great and palpable darkness beat outward from the dark edge of the cliff, some miles from them, where the doorway of the caves of Corresanti was hidden. He had been right in his conjecture, then. The caves of Corresanti were the very heart of the shadow, the focus at the heart of the darkening lands. Somewhere in there some monstrous intelligence, not human, experimented blindly with monstrous, unknown power. Damon was a Ridenow, and the Ridenows had been bred to scent and deal with alien intelligences, and that ancient Gift in his very blood and cells tingled with awareness and terror. But he mastered it, and rode steadily on through the deserted streets of the village.

  He looked around, searching for any human face, any sign of life. Was everyone here terrified into insensibility? His eyes fell on a house he knew;
he had stayed here one summer, as a boy, so long, so very long ago. He pulled up his horse, a sudden ache clutching his heart.

  I haven’t seen any of them for years. My foster mother married one of the MacArans, a paxman to Dom Esteban, and I used to come here in the summer. Her sons were my first playmates. Suddenly Damon could stand it no longer. He had to know what fared in that house!

  He pulled the horse to a stop and dismounted, tying the horse to the post. Eduin and Rannan called ques tioningly, but he did not answer; slowly, they dismounted, but did not follow him toward the steps of the cottage. He knocked; only silence followed the knocking, and he pulled the door open. After a moment a man slouched toward the door, his eyes vacant; he cringed away as if by habit. Damon thought, confused, This is surely one of Alanna’s sons. I played with him as a boy, but how changed! He fumbled for the name. Hjalmar? Estill?

  “Cormac,” he said at last, and the blank eyes looked up at him, an idiotic smile touching the features briefly.

  “Serva, dom,” he muttered.

  “What has come to you? What—what do they want of you, what is happening here?” Words came tumbling out by themselves. “Do you see the cat-men often? What do they—”

  “Cat-men?” the man mumbled, a hint of question in his dull voice. “Not men—women! Cat-hags . . . they come in the night and tear your soul to ribbons. . . .”

  Damon shut his eyes, sickened. Blank-faced, Cormac turned back into the house; the visitors had ceased, for him, to exist. Damon stumbled back into the street, cursing.

  The sound of hooves caught his ears; turning, he glimpsed the riders, coming swiftly in single file down a road that ran from a hill above the village. Here in the ruined village they had seen no horses, or cattle, nor any domestic beasts of any kind.

  They were near enough now to be clearly seen; they wore shirt-cloaks and breeches of a strange cut, and they were all tall, thin men, with thick, rough pale hair, but they were men. Human men, not cat-folk, unless this was another of the illusions cast. . . .

  Damon focused through his starstone, through the dimming haze which still seemed to obscure, like murky water, everything that was not close to him. But these were real men, on real horses. No horse ever foaled would stand quiet for a cat-man to mount. Nor were these the mindless faces of the villagers, terrorized into immobility and apathy.

  “Dry-Towners,” muttered Eduin. “Lord of Light be with us!”

  Now Damon knew where he had seen tall, pale, rangy men like that before. The desert folk rarely penetrated to this part of the world, but now and again he had seen a solitary caravan of them, traveling silent and swift toward their own part of the world.

  And our horses are already wearied; if the Dry-Town men are hostile . . . ?

  He hesitated. Rannan leaned across to grasp his arm. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get out of here!”

  “They may not be enemies,” Damon began. Surely humans would not join the cat-folk in this plunder and terror?

  Eduin’s mouth was a grim, set line. “There were small bands of them fighting among the cat-folk last year, and I’ve heard there were cat-men helping the Dry-Towners in that trouble down Carthon way. They trade with the cat-men, I’ve heard. Zandru knows what they trade, or what they get in return, but the trading’s a fact.”

  Damon’s heart sank. They should have fled at once. Too late now, so he made the best of it. “These may be traders,” he said, “and have nothing to do with us.” In any case they were so close now that the leading Dry-Towner was reining in his mount. “We’ll just have to bluff it through; stay ready, but don’t draw swords unless I give you the signal, or unless they attack us.”

  The leader of the Dry-Towners looked down at them, lounging in his saddle, the faint trace of a sneer on his face—or was that just the normal cast of his features? “Hali-imyn, by Nebran! Who would have thought it?” His gaze swept over the empty streets. “What are you folk still doing here?”

  “Corresanti has been a village of the Alton Domain for more years than Shainsa has stood on the plains,” said Damon; he was trying to count the horsemen reined in behind the leader. Six, eight—too many! “I might as well ask you if you are astray from your normal trading paths, and demand you show safe-conduct from the Lord Alton.”

  “The days of safe-conducts are over in the Kilghard Hills,” the leader said. “Before long it will be you folk who learn you must ask leave to ride here.” His teeth bared in a lazy grin. He slid from his horse, the men behind him following suit. Damon’s hand slid into the basket-hilt of his sword, and the small matrix there felt smooth and hot in his palm. . . .

  . . . Dom Esteban laid down the meat-roll he had been eating, and leaned back against his pillow, his eyes wide, staring. The servant who had brought him the food spoke to him, but he did not reply. . . .

  “It will be long before I ask leave to ride in my kinsmen’s lands,” Damon said. “But what are you doing here?” His voice sounded oddly shrill and weak in his own ears.

  “We?” said the Dry-Towner. “Why, we’re peaceful traders, aren’t we, comrades?” There was a chorus of assent from the men behind him. They did not look particularly peaceful (Of course, Damon thought in a split second, Dry-Towners never did), their swords jutting from their hips at an aggressive angle ready to draw, swaggering like tavern brawlers. The horses behind them began to paw the ground nervously, and frightened snorts filled the air.

  “Peaceful traders,” insisted the leader, fumbling with the clasp of his shirt-cloak, “trading here by permission of the Lord of these lands, who has given us a few small commissions.” The hand whipped out of his shirt-cloak, holding a long ugly knife, and then he jerked his long, straight sword free of its sheath. “Throw down your weapons,” he grated, “and if you’re fool enough to think you can resist, look behind you!”

  Eduin’s hand caught Damon’s arm in an agonizing grip. Out of the corner of his eye, a quick backward-flipped glance over the shoulder, Damon saw why. Out of the thick forest at the edge of the road, spreading out behind the three Guardsmen to cut them off, cat-men were padding quietly on large, soft paws. Too many cat men. Damon couldn’t begin to count them and didn’t try. He found that Dom Esteban’s sword was in his hand, but despair took him. Even Dom Esteban could never fight his way out of such an ambush!

  The Dry-Towners were closing in slowly, knife and sword in each hand. Damon had forgotten the dagger hanging at his own belt; he was startled as his left hand plucked it out and extended it toward the enemy. He found himself in a stance almost the direct opposite of the one he had been trained to, looking over his left shoulder at his foe past the point of the extended dagger, his sword-hilt cold against his right cheek. Of course. Esteban had traveled beyond the Dry-Towns, knew how the desert people fought. . . .

  He thought, coldly, that there must have been an ambush back there. If they had mounted and fled, as the Dry-Towners must have expected, they would have ridden straight into the cat-men.

  “Take them!” the Dry-Town leader snarled.

  There was no escape; the alternatives were death or surrender. Damon’s mind hung undecided, not knowing what to do, but his body knew. As the two blades of the Dry-Towner came at him Damon saw the tip of his own sword dip suddenly, sweeping sharply across the sword and dagger, driving them aside; felt his feet shift and his body dip.

  So Dom Esteban thinks we can cut down ten men and get away, he thought, ironic and detached, watching somehow without involvement as his sword and dagger drove both points at the same time into the Dry-Town leader’s side. He heard the clatter of steel on both sides of him, and saw another one circling toward his back.

  His head turned and as his sword jerked free a simple motion of his forearm brought it around. The other man, running, had let his guard slip. Damon felt his own weight shift suddenly, and then his sword went between the man’s ribs. He caught a glimpse of Eduin, his sword red in the last glare of sunlight, running to meet another man who was falling back, fear
on his face . . . and then he was spinning away, dagger lifting to fend off a thrust that had been coming straight at his throat. His sword flashed at an elbow and the Dry-Towner was screaming at his feet and Damon’s stomach turned at the sight of the raw horror where the man’s arm had been torn half through. . . .

  “They’re demons,” one of the Dry-Towners shouted. “They’re not men at all. . . .” Damon saw that the Dry-Towners still alive were falling back, jostling up against the restive horses which made a wall behind them. They had never seen five men die that fast before. . . .

  Demons . . . the Dry-Towners were known to be a superstitious lot. . . .

  One of the remaining Dry-Towners shouted something in his own language, trying to rally his remaining comrades, and ran toward Eduin. Damon ignored him, diving deep into the focus of the starstone, even noticing the man’s hand was too high. . . . Damon’s body whirled and stepped, and his sword went between the man’s elbows, slicing so expertly that it touched no bone, and the man fell. Damon himself did not notice. He reached deep into his subconscious, into the dark closet where he had locked away the nightmares of his childhood, and brought forth a demon. It was gray and scaly, horned and taloned, smoke and flame gushing from its nostrils; he hurled the picture into the lens of the starstone, focusing it between him and the Dry-Towners. . . .

  The Dry-Towners screamed and ran, trying to catch their wildly plunging horses, which were now running wild, maddened by the smell of blood and the musk of cat. Wild screeching rose from the cat men behind them. Damon pictured—knowing they all saw—the demon turning, charging down the village street toward the cat-people, roaring, fire shooting from its mouth and nostrils. Some of the cat-men broke and ran. Others, perhaps sensing it was not quite what it seemed, tried to dodge around it.

  Damon reached blindly for the bridle of his horse; the rearing, fear-maddened beast kicked and plunged, but Damon, his mind still on the demon he had set off ravening among the cat-men (it was stalking them now, reaching out right and left with a great stench of burning cat-fur), found himself tearing the reins loose and vaulting to the saddle with a command of horsemanship as much beyond his own as—as Dom Esteban’s, of course.