Damon’s body sat his horse with careless, automatic skill; no one who did not know him well would have realized that his body was empty of consciousness, that Damon himself rode somewhere above, his mind sweeping over the land before him, seeking, seeking.
The shadow rose before him, a thick darkness to his mind as it had been to his eyes, and again he felt the memory of fear, the apprehension which he had felt on leading his men into ambush, unawares… Is this fear for now, or a memory of that fear? Briefly, dropping back into his body, he felt Dom Esteban’s sword, which lay loosely held in his right hand, twitch slightly, and knew he must control himself and react only to real dangers. It was Dom Esteban’s sword, rather than Damon’s own, because, as Dom Esteban put it, “I have carried it in a hundred battles. No other sword would come so ready to my hand. It knows my ways and my will.” Damon had carried out the old man’s wishes, remembering how the silver butterfly Callista wore in her hair carried the mental imprint of her personality. How much more, then, a sword on which Dom Esteban had depended for his very life, for over fifty years spent in battles, feuds, raiding parties?
In the hilt of the sword, Damon had set one of the small, unkeyed first-level matrixes which he had dismissed, at first, as being only fit to fasten buttons; small as it was, it would resonate in harmony with his own starstone and allow Dom Esteban to maintain contact not only with the energy-nets of his muscles and nerve centers, but with the hilt of his sword.
Spell sword, he thought, half derisively. But the history of Darkover was full of such weapons. There was the legendary Sword of Aldones in the chapel at Hali, a weapon so ancient—and so fearful—that no one alive knew how to wield it. There was the Sword of Hastur, in Castle Hastur, of which it was said that if any man drew it save in defense of the honor of the Hasturs it would blast his hand as if with fire. And that in turn reminded him of the Lady Mirella, whose body and hands had been burned and blackened as if with fire…
His hand trembled faintly on the hilt of Dom Esteban’s sword. Well, he was as well prepared for such a battle as any living man could be; Tower-trained, strong enough that Leonie had said that as a woman he would have been a Keeper. And as for the rest—well, he was riding in defense of his own kinswoman, taking up a duty for his father-in-law-to-be, and thus safeguarding the honor of his future wife’s family.
And as for being a virgin, Damon thought wryly, I’m not, but I’m as nearly chaste as any adult male my age could be. I didn’t even bed Ellemir, although Evanda the Fair knows that I would have liked to. To himself he recited the Creed of Chastity taught him at Nevarsin Monastery, where he had been schooled, like many sons of the Seven Domains, in childhood. The creed was adhered to by men working in the Tower Circles: never to lay hands on any unwilling woman, to look never with lewd thoughts on child or pledged virgin, to spend oneself never on such women as are common to all.
Well, I learned it so thoroughly in the Tower that I never unlearned it, and if it makes it safer for me on what is, basically, work for a Keeper—well, so much the better for me and so much the worse for the cat-men, Zandru seize them for his coldest hell!
He dropped back into his body, opened his eyes, and watched the land ahead of him. Then, carefully and slowly, he raised his consciousness again, leaving his body to react with long habit to the motion of the horse. He used the link of those open, staring eyes to send himself out over the physical landscape ahead, still brooding beneath that dark mist.
It was as darker clots of blackness just at the edge of that shadow that he saw them first; then the fine web of force that bound them to some other power, hidden in a depth of shadow that neither his eyes nor the power of the starstone could yet pierce.
Then he could see the furred bodies that those forces hid, crouched silent and motionless among little shrubs which could hardly have hidden them, visible.
Cats. Stalking mice. And we’re the mice. He could see his own little group of men, moving steadily toward that ambush. He began to lower himself toward his body again. Change their route. Avoid that ambush.
But no. He blinked, staring between his horse’s ears, realizing that the prowling cat-men would, doubtless, follow after them; and if another ambush lay ahead, they would be trapped between the two parties. He contented himself with turning his head to Eduin and warning, tersely, “Cat-men ahead. Better be ready.”
Then he willed out of his body once more, focused deep on the starstone, and was again floating above the cat-men, studying the tenuous nets of force that hid their bodies from his physical eyes, noting the way those strands fanned out from the shadow. Just where and when could those webs be broken?
He saw it, reflected in the tension of the cat-bodies which he could see clearly in the overworld, when he and his men came into view. He saw them drawing short, curved swords—like claws. And still he waited till the crouching cat-men came up to their feet and began to run quietly and swiftly over the snow, noiseless on their soft pads. Then he drew deep into the starstone and hurled a sudden blast of energy like a lightning bolt, focused on the carefully spun net of energies, ripping it apart.
Then he was back in his body as the cat-men, not yet realizing that their magical invisibility was gone, came running toward them over the snow. But before he regained full control of his body, his horse reared and screamed in terror, and Damon, reacting a split second too late to the horse’s movement, slid off into the snow. He saw one of the cat-men bounding toward him, and felt a tightening surge of something—not quite fear—as he fumbled his hand into the basket-hilt of Dom Esteban’s sword.
… Miles away, in the Great Hall at Armida, Dom Es-teban Lanart stirred in his sleep. His shoulders twitched, and his thin lips curled back in a smile—or a snarl—that had been seen on countless battlefields…
Damon found himself rolling to his feet, his hand whipping the sword from its sheath in a long slash. His point ripped through the white-furred belly and there was blood on the blade outstretched beyond, the blade that was already pointed at a second cat-man.
As that one slashed at his middle, he saw and felt his wrist turn slightly to move his point down, into the path of the cut; as steel rang, he felt his leg jerk in a little kick step, and suddenly his point was buried in the furred throat.
He caught a brief glimpse of Eduin and Rannan, superb horsemen like all the men of the Alton Domain, whirling their frightened horses, slashing down at the gray-furred bodies surrounding them. One went down under a kick from Rannan’s horse, but he had no more time to spare for them; wide green eyes glared at him, and a mouth of needlelike fangs opened in a menacing hiss. Tufts of black fur twitched atop the wide ears as the creature whipped its blade around to knock his point aside, and spun on, the scythe-blade flashing toward his eyes. Damon felt a spasm of terror, but his own blade had already whirled at the head; the two swords clashed and he saw a spark leap in the cold. The snarling cat-face lurched forward at him, and for a second he was fighting empty air.
It flickered in and out of visibility; whatever power lurked behind the dark edge of shadow was trying to hide its minions again. Stark terror and despair clawed at him for a moment, so painfully that be half wondered if he had been wounded. Then, with a deep breath, he realized what he had to do, and focused on the starstone. As he abandoned his body wholly to Esteban’s skill, he prayed momentarily that the link would hold. Then he forgot his body (either it was safe with Esteban or it wasn’t, either way he couldn’t help much) and hurled himself upward into the overworld.
The shadow lay blank and terrible before him, and from it questing tendrils were weaving, seeking, to cloak the angry red shadows of the cat-things that fought there.
He reached blindly into the energy-nets and found that without conscious thought he had brought a blade of pure force into his hand. He brought it down on the fine shadow-stuff and the half-woven net of darkness shriveled and burned away. Severed tendrils, quivering, recoiled into the shadow, and their ends faded and vanished. The shadow sw
irled and eddied, drew back, and out of the midst of the darkness a great cat-face glared at him.
He raised his glowing blade and stood fronting that great menace. Somewhere near his feet he was dimly aware of tiny forms fighting below him, four cats tinier than kittens, three little men, and one of those men… surely it was Dom Esteban, surely that was his sidestep, his twirling disengage… ?
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 in 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 discomforted 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 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 fanns. 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 monstrou
s, 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 questioningly, 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.
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