The Forbidden Circle Read online

  One of the cat-men was too close, and he had to guard against a slash from the deadly claw-curved sword. He lopped at it; saw sword and paw fall together, twitching convulsively, and lie still. He never saw what happened to the cat-man’s body; he was already pulling his horse around.

  Something like a lightning bolt struck the gray scaled monster Damon had created, and it flared up in a column of gray dust and smoke and vanished. Damon’s mind reeled with horrid shock.

  It was Esteban who guided the terrified horse, who cut down the few cat men who ran at the beast’s heels and tried to hamstring him, who guided the horse along the road upward to the caves. Dimly, distantly, Damon knew what Esteban was doing with his body and his horse, but he himself was flying above the overworld, borne swiftly and unwillingly through ever-thickening, boiling mist toward the black heart of the shadow, from which glared, unveiled, and blazing out like the fires at the heart of a volcano, the terrible eyes of the Great Cat.

  With the eyes, blazing and scorching, were claws, claws that reached, snatched at Damon where he wheeled and turned, dodging, evading them. Damon knew that if even the tip of one of those deadly claws touched him, raked into his heart, he would be forced back into his body and the Great Cat could do with that as he would, blast him lifeless with a single scorching breath.

  Damon thought, What are cats afraid of? His body, in the overworld, shot up; he dropped on all fours, and knew that where he had flown and dodged from the claws of the cat, now a great, wavering dark wolf-shape grew and solidified before the cat. He plunged at the cat, hearing the terrifying werewolf-howl reverberating through the overworld, a paralyzing cry before which the cat thing dimmed and wavered for a moment. A scorching breath seared the wolf’s eyes, and he howled with rage as Damon felt himself tremble with the blood lust. He flung himself at the throat of the cat-thing, great dripping jaws closing, the teeth of the werewolf-thing fastening over the cat’s throat, the stink of cat-musk—

  The great furred threat thinned and vanished from between the teeth; Damon heard himself howl again and tried to spring at the darkness, maddened with the insane hunger to tear, to bite, to feel the blood burst out under his fangs. . . .

  But the cat was gone, melted away, and Damon, shaking and drained, sick to his very toenails, and retching with the taste of blood in his throat, sat swaying in his saddle. The cat-adept had been forced off the astral plane by Damon’s werewolf-form. For the first time, it looked as if the Great Cat might not be invulnerable, after all. For the road lay bare ahead to the caves, with nothing before them except bodies of the dead.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A brief sharp shock, like the shock of falling, brought Andrew Carr awake. The brief winter day was waning, the room was dim, and by the fading light of the window he saw Callista at the foot of his bed. He saw for a moment, with relief, that she was dressed in a skirt and loose tunic, and her hair braided. No, it was Ellemir, and she had a tray of food in her hands. She said, “An drew, you must eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Andrew muttered, still disoriented with sleep and confused dreams—giant cats? Were-wolves? How did it fare with Damon? Was Callista still safe? How could he have slept? How could Ellemir speak of food at a time like this?

  “No, you must,” Ellemir said, accurately following his thoughts. That would take some getting used to. Well, he’d better get used to it, he told himself.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “Matrix work is terribly draining; you must keep up your strength or you’ll overload. I knew you wouldn’t feel like it, so I brought you some soup, and things like that which are easy to swallow. I know how you feel, but try, Andrew.” She said, shrewdly, the one thing which would have persuaded him.

  “Damon cannot reach Callista. Once inside the caves of Corresanti, he may not be able to find her in the darkness; it’s a dreadful labyrinth of dark passages. I was there once, and I heard of a man who wandered there until he came out months later, blinded and with his hair turned white with fear. So you must be ready when he needs you, to guide him toward Callista. And for that you must be strong.”

  Reluctantly, but convinced by her argument, Andrew picked up the spoon. It was a meat soup with long noodles in it, very strong and good. With it was a nut bread and sharp jelly. Once he tasted it, he realized that he was half starved and he ate up everything on the tray.

  “How is your father?” he asked for courtesy’s sake.

  She giggled faintly. “You should have seen the meal he put away an hour or so ago, telling me between bites how many cat-men he had killed—”

  Andrew said soberly, “I saw it. I was there. They are terrible!” He shuddered, knowing that part of what he thought a dream had been his mind wandering among the villages blighted by the shadow of the Great Cat. He put down the last bread crust. Briefly, turning his mind inward to the starstone and the contact with Damon, he saw them . . . nearing the caves, the slope clear before them. . . .

  This time it was easier to step into the overworld, and because the dim light of the winter day was fading, he discovered that he could see better in the dim blue glimmer of what Callista had called the “overlight.” Blue? he thought. Was that because the stones were blue and somehow cast the light through his mind? He looked down at himself and saw his body slumped back on the bed, and Ellemir, setting the tray on the floor, knelt beside him and laid her hand on his body’s pulse as she had done with Damon.

  He realized briefly that in the overworld he had left behind the heavy fur-and-leather garments he had borrowed from Ellemir’s servant, and was wearing the thin gray nylon tunic and trousers he wore around the office at Terran HQ, with the narrow band of jewels on his collar, eight of them, one for each planet where he had seen service.

  Damn cold for this planet. Oh, hell, this is the overworld. If Callista can go around in her torn nightie without freezing to death, what difference does it make? He realized that he had moved an immense distance from Ellemir and he was outside Armida, on a gray and featureless plain with distant, shimmery, miragelike hills in the distance. Now, which way to the caves of Corresanti? he asked himself, trying to orient himself in the gray distances, and as if by the wings of thought he found himself borne swiftly over the spaces between.

  He found that between his fingers he still held the starstone, or rather whatever referent to it existed in the overworld, and that here it gleamed like a firework, sending off brilliant sparkles of fire. He wondered if it would take him directly toward Callista. Yes, he was moving, and now he could see the hills clearly, a great darkness seeming to emanate from their very center. Was it behind that darkness that Damon had seen the Great Cat? Was it he who held Callista captive beneath the great illegal matrix jewel?

  Andrew shuddered, trying not to think of the Great Cat. Or rather, to transform him, in his thoughts, to the Cheshire cat of Terran children’s tales, the great harmless cat which grinned enormously and made amusing conversation. Or Puss-in-Boots. He’s just a character out of a fairy tale, Andrew told himself, and I’m damned if I’ll let him get on my nerves. Instinctively he knew that was the safest way to protect himself from the power of the Great Cat. Puss in Boots, he reminded himself. I hope Damon doesn’t meet him again. . . .

  As if the thought of Damon had given him a definite direction, he discovered that he was standing (though his feet were not quite touching the ground) on a slope just outside a great dark cave-mouth, and a little below him, Damon and his two men, swords drawn and ready, were slowly working their way toward the cave-mouth. He tried to wave to him, to make Damon see him, and then that curious merging happened again; and again he was seeing out from behind Damon’s eyes. . . .

  . . . Scarcely breathing, placing his feet as silently as possible. As we had to do, scouting, in the campaigns last year. . . .

  He could see the great indolent cats sprawled before the entrance of the cave, drowsing at their post; secure in their faith that the Power they served would guard them in retur
n.

  But they were still cats, and their great tufted ears lifted suddenly at the soft brushing of boots through grass, and instantly they were on their feet, the claw-swords ready. Damon found himself leaping forward, sword already alive in his hand, driving toward the nearest in a long lunge. The cat’s curved blade whipped down in that curious, circling guard they used, blurring to a half-moon before its body, driving his point down and away, and Damon saw bright steel flash toward his side.

  Then he was looking at the back of his wrist as his arm jerked up, and felt the blade trembling in his hand as the other struck its earth-aimed point; he heard its edge hissing past his ear as it whirled around his body, slashing at the furred shoulder. The cat-man’s sword lifted to meet it; he leaped back, and saw the blurred point of the scythe-sword slice the air an inch in front of his eyes. The great circling blows of the curved blade looked clumsy, and yet it seemed to take all Esteban’s skill to find a weakness in that whirling defense. Eduin and Rannan were engaged nearby—he heard their swords clashing and battering behind him. He felt his arm snap forward in a feint—he knew it was a feint because his feet did not move. The curved claw-sword whistled down; Dom Esteban’s sword dropped out of its path, whirling back and up, and came down between the tufted ears.

  He jerked his sword from the bloody skull with an expert tug and ran to where Rannan, his shirt ripped and wet with blood, was falling back before one of the whirling blades. His own blade whirled and danced, raining cut after cut at the creature’s head. He jumped back from a great whistling stroke that could have sliced him in half at the waist, felt the blade coming around in an enormous circling cut that he thought was another head cut, until he felt his wrist drop and the long, thin blade sliced through the cat-creature’s knee. His arm jerked again and as the squalling creature fell forward the point jabbed into its throat. Eduin and Rannan were standing over the lifeless body of the last of the guards and again, for an instant, Damon felt that same strange baseless surge of Dom Esteban’s anger. . . .

  Damon shook his head. He felt oddly dizzy, as if he were drunk. What was he doing? He opened his eyes and sheathed his sword, aware as he did so of aching muscles at the base of his thumb and in his wrist: muscles he’d never known he had. Swaying a little, he turned his back on the grisly heaps of bloody fur lying on the ground, and tottered toward the cave-mouth, motioning to Eduin and Rannan to follow. As he ran, he saw a strange man’s form before him, clad in thin, gray unfamiliar clothing. It was a moment before he recognized Andrew Carr . . . and as the realization of who it was came into Damon’s mind, Andrew was back in his own mind again, standing a few feet away from Damon and motioning him forward.

  It seemed a little strange to Andrew to be able to see Damon when Damon was not in the overworld, but after all, he, “down there,” had seen Callista. He stepped ahead of him into the entrance of the cave. It was a great dark chamber, and for a moment, even in the overlight, it was hard to see. Damon was through the doorway now and was motioning, impatiently, for his swordsmen to follow; they seemed to be pressing against some barrier invisible to Andrew—and evidently invisible to Damon, too.

  For a moment the Darkovan looked puzzled, then—and neither then nor later did Andrew know whether Damon spoke aloud or whether he heard him thinking —Damon said, “Oh, of course. There’s a first-level barrier across the entrance, which means no one can get in and out unless either he’s carrying a matrix, or the operator lets him in or out.” Of course. It was just what the Great Cat would do. But it might mean an extra vulnerability. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, even with a matrix. But if they were lucky, he might not know that yet.

  Slowly, Damon moved through the huge vaulted chamber which was the entrance to the caves. Somewhere at the back he heard water dripping, and his eyes saw only the little bit of daylight admitted from the cave-mouth, which faded as he went farther. The cold terror of the dark was on him, and he hesitated, remembering, When I came here as a boy, there were torches, there were lights mounted by which we could see the walls and the pathways. Then he saw, seemingly emerging from the very wall itself, the spectral figure of Andrew. The Earthman’s figure seemed to glow with faint blue light, and between his hands he bore what looked like a great sparkling blue torch. The matrix, of course. Will it alert that cat-thing? If I must go into the overworld, to find my way, will he see my starstone?

  Now he seemed to hear a droning, humming sound, like some gigantic hive of bees. Out of the dim chambers of memory, he recognized it now: a powerful, unshielded matrix. A cold spasm of fear squeezed his heart in an iron band that was almost physical pain. That cat-thing must be mad! Mad or more powerful than any man or any Keeper! It would take a Circle of at least four minds to handle a matrix-screen that size!

  They never came that way in nature. They had made them artificially, in the heyday of starstone technology. Had he found this one, a freak, or could he have made it? How in Zandru’s nine hells does he handle the thing? I wouldn’t touch it for my life! Damon thought.

  Again he saw Andrew’s figure, beckoning dimly in the bluish glow. By the light of his starstone, he saw massive crystalline pillars, great stony spikes that jutted from floor to ceiling or down from ceiling to floor. Everywhere was the dark dampness and the sound of failing water, and the terrifying drone of the matrix. Damon thought he could find his way down to it by sound alone. But that would come later. Right now he had to find Callista and get her out of here before the cat-thing knew he was here and sent one of his henchmen to cut her throat.

  At the back of the chamber two passages ran back into darkness and dim far-off glimmers. He paused a moment, irresolute, before seeing, far down the left hand passage, the form of Andrew Carr. He followed the dim spectral figure, and after stumbling twice on the rocky floor—of course, Andrew in the overworld couldn’t stub his toes—he focused on his own starstone, warm and heavy and naked against his throat, to focus a ball of witchlight in front of him. It was hard and sluggish and Damon suspected that its power was being damped by proximity to the enormous one nearby, but he did manage to focus enough power to make a little light. Damn good thing too. How could I fight my way through, in case I have to, and hold a torch in my other hand?

  Andrew’s figure had vanished again, going far ahead. Yes, that was right. He should find Callista. Tell her help’s on the way, Damon reasoned.

  In the shadow beyond the faint witchlight something moved, and a voice spoke in the mewing speech of the cat-men. The voice changed to a sudden snarl. Damon saw one of the curved blades flash outside the circle of light. The droning in his head was maddening, painful. He drew out his sword, raised it, but it seemed a dead, awkward weight in his hand. Dom Esteban . . . he reached frantically for that contact, but there was nothing, only that droning, blurring sound, that pain.

  The curved blade came whistling down. Somehow he got the inert metal thing in his hand aloft, into the path of the cut, a barrier of steel. Fear choked him as he forced his weary body into stance, parrying automatically, not daring to expose himself to attack. He was alone, fighting with only his own meager skill!

  The barrier at the cave-mouth! Dom Esteban couldn’t reach him through it! And he thought, I’m dead!

  In a split second he remembered years of tedious lessons—always the worst swordsman in his age-group, the clumsy boy, the one never meant for the arts of war. The coward. Feeling sluggish with terror, feeling as if his sword dragged through thick syrup, he parried the skilled, circling strokes. He was doomed. He could not defend himself adequately against men fighting in the style to which he was trained. How then could he stand against these masters of a wholly alien technique? He backed away frantically, seeing out of the corner of his eye that a second guard was running to join the first, and in a moment he would face two of them—if he lived that long. He saw the terrible scythe-blade spinning in a blow he could never have caught, even though he knew how Esteban would have blocked it.

  The blade came up in the deft b
lock he had pictured, and, with a wild thrill of relief he saw the weakness in the cat-man’s position, and at the same instant drove his sword into it. The second guard ran up just as Damon, gasping, pulled his sword free. He turned to face it, knowing perfectly well how Esteban would attack this one, and as the thought formed in his mind his arm jabbed out, back; the claw-sword whirred down in that circling guard they all seemed to use; Damon launched himself in a long lunge, piercing the furred throat even as the sickle-sword reversed, striking his blade weakly in a feeble attempt to guard.

  He whipped the sword free, and the third cat-guard stopped crouching warily, and began to back away across the cave floor, its down-curved blade poised beside its head, ready to sweep down in that strange, spinning defense. Damon stepped toward it, warily, and waited. . . .

  Seconds crawled by, and his body did nothing he didn’t tell it to. He focused on the link . . . nothing. Only the pulsing, throbbing overload from the giant matrix, somewhere down deep in the cave, out of sight, almost out of knowledge, but there, present, dreadful. Dom Esteban could not reach him here. Had not reached him here. Damon nearly dropped his sword as realization shocked him. He had not been in touch with Esteban at all, yet he had killed two of the cat-men.

  And he would kill a third. Now.

  Why not? He had always understood all the tricks, he had been taught by master swordsmen, even though the practice eluded him . . . perhaps that was the problem. He had thought about life more than he had lived it, always his body and his mind had been separated; perhaps the contact with Esteban had taught his nerves and muscles directly how to react. . . .