The Catswold Portal

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  But with a powerful enough spell she would be safe. If she could call from the pit the Lamia and force it to answer three questions, she might learn who she was. She might learn why Mag had kept the past secret from her.

  Soon they left the plateau and the pony made his way down a steep incline toward a dry, sandy valley. No blade grew here, no beast grazed. The brown expanse was surrounded by stone cliffs eaten with holes from the ancient seas. Above her the stone sky was eroded and scarred. She pushed the pony fast across the dry plain, and when at last they reached the far side, she pressed him up a new barrier of steep stone ledges.

  At the top she paused to let him blow. Their shadow on the cliff shone thin as breath. Before her the land dropped again steeply, and the granite sky rose away like the top of a bubble. Her every instinct told her to turn back to the cottage and to Mag and safety. But she urged the pony on down the bank. He picked his way carefully, sure-footed, as were all elven-bred beasts. But at the bottom where they entered into a tunnel, he snorted uneasily. She had no doubt this was the way; already she could smell the reek of smoke from the fires of the Hell Pit. The tunnel, without the green wizard light, was totally black. When she brought a spell-light the pony moved on more easily, and when he saw far ahead the end of the tunnel he hurried; the gleam of green light cheered Sarah, too. They came out at the foot of high cliffs.

  The air was hot, the land radiated heat. The smoke was so strong she sneezed. They climbed again, and by mid-morning, when they reached the highest ridge, the pony was sweating and balking. Now far, far below them stretched the Hell Pit. The scorched plain was dark with smoke, and was burned black in a wide swath along the edge of the pit. The pit belched smoke and seethed with flames leaping and sputtering. It was in some places wider than the broadest river, but portions of it were as narrow as a path. It was bottomless. Its magma burned and belched fire, bubbling up from the earth’s molten core.

  She forced the pony down the slick rock, the little beast skidding and sliding. The smoke smelled sulphurous. Soon sweat plastered her hair and ran into her eyes and glued her dress to her. The pony’s neck and shoulders ran with sweat. Suddenly ahead something black flew toward her, separating into three winged shapes.

  Three flying lizards skimmed along beneath the stone sky. When they were directly above her, they circled, watching her. She stared up at their little red eyes and shouted a spell at them. They flapped as if jolted, and flew away screaming. The winged lizards were the queen’s spies. Why would they want to watch her?

  As she drew near the bottom of the cliff, the stench of sulphur and smoke gagged her, and the pony put his ears back, wanting to bolt away. At the edge of the plain he balked completely, rearing and wheeling, fighting her. She slid off, let him run back up the cliff, then hobbled him halfway up with the strongest holding spell she knew. If he ran off, she’d walk home.

  On foot she crossed the burnt plain and approached the Hell Pit, coughing from the fumes, dizzy with the heat. Near to the pit, flames licked out at her, and the heat warped her vision. She stepped nearer.

  She could see deep down within the flames, dark shapes moving. Swallowing her terror, she choked out a summoning spell.

  She waited, then repeated the spell. When after a long time she thought no Lamia would come, she felt weak with relief. But suddenly something dark shifted within the flames and began to rise.

  A creature rose up within the licking flames, dragon-tailed and armored with scales, its woman’s face and jutting breasts covered with bright scales that glinted and changed color in the hot, warping air. Its thick tail lashed at the edge of the pit, dislodging stones that fell away into the flames. The hot air warped and shifted, and the Lamia hung before her—half-dragon, half-woman—its woman’s face fine featured but reptilian. Its mouth was red and wet, its black eyes hungry. Its hands darted out toward her: woman’s hands ending in sharp dragon’s claws. Its voice was a burning hiss. “What power have you, girl, to call me from the pit?”

  Sarah had backed away, her mouth too dry to speak.

  “Why do you call me, human girl? What do you want?”

  “I—I call you to answer my questions.”

  The beast lunged at her. “If I answer your questions, what do you offer in return?”

  She moved farther from the edge. “I offer nothing. You are bound by my spell to answer me.” Her heart pounded too fast, she couldn’t make her voice steady. “My spell allows three questions.”

  As the Lamia laughed, its colors changed, flickering into crimson spots and blue and silver bars that flashed across its breasts and thighs. It leaped at her suddenly, its claws pierced her shoulders and it jerked her into the smoke, swinging her out over the pit. She hung in space above the flames, the heat of molten earth and fire searing her, dizzying and sickening her. Below her, a dozen half-seen beasts writhed and reached, waiting for her to fall. She twisted, fighting the Lamia, sick with terror that she would fall, and she saw the hem of her dress burst afire. She grabbed the Lamia’s arm and stared into its scale-lidded eyes, shouting a spell to save herself. The Lamia’s eyes widened; it shifted, nearly dropped her. She screamed the spell again to ward away harm from herself, and suddenly the beast moved toward the bank and tossed her at the solid ground. She leaped from its claws sprawling, grasping at the earth, her heart thundering as she crawled away from the edge.

  She crushed out her flaming hem against the earth and rose to face the Lamia, shaken, still so dizzy she dared not look down into the pit. “Do not touch me again. You are bound by the ancient powers to obey me.”

  “I am bound only by my own power or one stronger. Your powers cannot equal mine.”

  “I had the power to call you here. I had the power to free myself from your obscene hands.”

  Its black eyes blazed, then narrowed. “What is your question?”

  “Who am I?”

  “Melissa,” it said obediently, its mouth widening in a bloody smile.

  A surge of rightness filled her, a wave of excitement. The name seemed right, seemed almost familiar. Melissa. I am Melissa. But a name was not enough. She stared into the Lamia’s hate-filled eyes. “I do not want to know only a name. I want to know who. What person? What family and history? What life did I have that I cannot remember?”

  “You asked none of that. You are Melissa.”

  “But who? The question means more than a name.”

  “I have told what you required.”

  She swallowed back her rage. She did not dare to lose control of herself before this beast. “Tell me about my mother.”

  “That is not a question.”

  “What—what was the lineage of my mother?”

  “Is that your second question?”

  “It is.” But even as she answered, she thought she had formed this question, too, unwisely. She had a sharp desire to attack the beast, some part of herself wanted to claw and kill the beast.

  The Lamia said, “Your mother was wife to the brother of my sister.”

  “That is no answer, it’s a riddle.”

  “I have told what you required.”

  “But she can’t have been…Wife to the brother of your sister? But my mother wasn’t…that is not possible.”

  When the Lamia began to fade, Melissa went rigid. “Child of Lillith! By the Ancient Wizards you are bound. You must answer my third question!”

  “Then be quick. It’s cold up here.” It licked its red lips, eyeing her hungrily.

  “What—what is the entire truth of my past?”

  “Too broad a question. I need not answer that.” It rubbed its dragon hands over its scaly breasts and began to grow indistinct, its body mingling with the smoke.

  “By the old laws, you must answer me!” Melissa shouted.

  “From—from exactly where and whom, and by what power, can I learn the entire truth of my past?”

  The Lamia stopped fading. Its colors were muddied now and sullen. Its voice was hollow, but its eyes glowed at her o
bscenely through the hot, warping air. “You can learn what you wish from the Toad.”

  “Give me the rest of the answer, child of Lillith. By the Ancient Wizards, you are bound to do so.”

  The Lamia’s black eyes fixed on her throat. Its claws moved as if to tighten around her flesh. “The Toad sleeps in the dungeons of Affandar Palace. It will tell the past if you can wake it. And if it likes you.”

  “No toad could be kept in a dungeon, it would slip out through the bars.”

  The Lamia’s colors flashed brighter. “I did not say how big a toad.”

  “Well? How big?”

  “That is four questions.” It shivered and began to vanish.

  “You have not completed the third question,” she shouted.

  “What power will I use to make the Toad tell me?”

  The beast’s voice was nearly bodiless. Flame and smoke warped her vision. “You need no special power,” it hissed. “Use your wits.” It appeared again faintly, its woman’s shape more dragonlike, its face sharpened to a dragon’s face. Then it disappeared in an explosion of licking flames.

  When it was gone she turned from the pit quickly and fled up the cliff to the pony. She stood hugging the warm, sweet-scented pony, her arms around his neck, trying to calm herself.

  At last she slid on and let him have his head. He leaped away up the cliff at a gallop, pounding upward as if pursued by the entire population of the Hell Pit. He didn’t slow until they were well away from the valley, on the highest ridges.

  Riding, clinging to him, she thought, Melissa…I am Melissa…Something of her true self had been given back to her, a tiny core of rightness. Perhaps now that she knew her real name—like knowing the key spell to potent magic—she could unravel her past.

  The pony was climbing the last ridge when suddenly fire exploded in their path and a huge tree stood blocking their way where, a second before, there had been only bare stone. Its branches spread over them broad as a cottage. Its left side was consumed by flame, every branch burned, every leaf and limb was eaten by flame. But the right-hand side was green and alive, the leaves as fresh and tender as the first new shoots of spring.

  She calmed the rearing pony and made him stand, though he shivered and trembled. This tree, that had burst suddenly into being before her, was the living symbol of the Netherworld: half of natural life, half of the shifting flame of enchantment. It held her powerfully. And it was the symbol of her own life, too: the half that lived with Mag in the cottage was natural and familiar. The other half was hidden within the flames of some inexplicable enchantment. And she knew that the tree, beneath its licking fires, was healthy and alive. Just as, beneath the secrecy of enchantment, her past was alive.

  She did not leave the presence of the tree, the tree left her, vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared. She went on, filled with a strange anticipatory excitement. But then coming down the bank to the cottage she saw Mag’s horse rolling in his pen, and she began desperately to invent a lie.

  She dared not tell Mag she had been to the Hell Pit or that she knew her name. She led the pony into the corral and unsaddled him and rubbed him dry, delaying, unable to think of any reasonable lie.

  In the cottage she found Mag kneeling before the wood stove bedding down newborn piglets in a basket, and she was filled with guilt. The sow had farrowed. Against Mag’s instructions she had left the cannibalistic sow alone.

  “I saved nine,” Mag said, scowling up at her. “Who knows how many she ate.”

  “I—I was hunting mushrooms. I felt stifled in the cottage, I forgot the sow—I had to get out in the air.”

  “And where are the mushrooms?”

  “I lost the basket down a ravine—the pony bolted, I dropped the basket. Flying lizards were everywhere.”

  Mag sat back on her heels. “Lizards don’t come for nothing. What were you doing, that they would watch you?”

  “I told you, hunting mushrooms. I’m sorry about the pig. Truly, I forgot her.” Why had she mentioned the lizards?

  Mag searched her face cannily. “Whatever you were doing, Sarah, it was to no good. And lizards promise no good. You’d best be wary, miss. You’d best stay in the cottage until the lizards tire of you.” Mag looked deeply at her. “You could be asking for more trouble than you imagine.”

  She looked back at Mag innocently, but she was shaken. What did Mag know, or guess? Mag said nothing more until supper. She was, Melissa felt certain, angry about more than the sow. Could Mag know that she had gone to the Hell Pit? Or did the canny old woman know about the papers she had found beneath the linen chest?

  Or was Mag’s distress about something else, some village crisis perhaps, or something to do with the secret rebellion? The rebels’ plans for war seemed so frail to Melissa. Yet the rebels were totally committed, and their ranks were growing. Selfishly she hoped Mag’s anger was centered around their problems, and not on herself.

  She waited until supper, than asked innocently, “Did you not trade well for your beautiful cloth? The blue one alone should—”

  “Traded fine,” Mag snapped, breaking the bread, her round, wrinkled face pulled into a scowl.

  “Was—was there trouble for the rebels?”

  “Yes, trouble!” Mag spread butter with an angry thrust. She had obviously been bursting to talk, and too upset to start the conversation herself. “Three leaders from Cressteane have been captured by the queen’s soldiers.”

  “Oh, Mag. But how?” The rebels’ movements and identity were so carefully hidden. It was only with well thought out plans that she and Mag ever approached a rebel cottage. Even where a whole village was against the queen, the rebels were painfully discreet.

  “Betrayed by one of our own,” Mag said. “And if those captured men are tortured into talking, our plans could be destroyed.”

  “Where are the captives?” she asked casually. “In—in the dungeons of Affandar Palace?” And the Lamia’s voice filled her thoughts, The Toad sleeps—in the dungeons of Affandar Palace.

  “Where else would they be but Siddonie’s dungeons?”

  She stared at her plate. “Who was captured? Are they men I know?”

  Mag looked hard at her. “You have never asked rebel secrets.”

  “If they are captive, they are no longer secret.”

  “The queen will not learn their names easily. What you don’t know, you can’t be forced to tell.”

  They ate in silence until at last Melissa, too tightly wound to sit another minute, rose and picked up her plate. At the stove she heated water and did up the dishes while Mag took the piglets out to the sow, meaning to guard them while they nursed. Melissa worked idly at the spinning wheel while she made plans, her mind filled with the imprisoned rebels.

  Rebellion had been building a long time against Queen Siddonie’s increasing enslavement of other Netherworld nations. And Siddonie’s rule within Affandar itself was crueler and more constricting each year. She had conscripted workers by enchantment, to go into the mines, and to serve in her growing army. She had torn families apart, and destroyed many of the traditional ways of making a living, destroyed people’s will to work. As a result, villagers were starving.

  When Mag came in and knelt before the cookstove, getting the piglets settled in their basket, Melissa climbed into her cot and pretended sleep. Not until hours later did she rise again and, in the near-dark, pull on her dress, pack some bread and ham, and take up a waterskin and lantern.

  Chapter 4

  Braden, barefoot and wearing cutoffs, set his coffee cup on the terrace table. The garden was barely light, the dawn air cool and smelling of wet leaves. He stood idly studying the tangle of flowers and small trees and bushes trying to get awake, trying to shake a faint but depressing hangover. The three houses up the hill were still dark. The studio behind him was dark, though if work had been going well it would be a blaze of light. He would already have set up a canvas, poured out turpentine and oil, and become lost in the painting.

 
; When Alice was alive they used to walk at dawn on Sundays, Alice striding out fast but seeing every leaf and change of color, every bird, every animal in every yard. They’d end up at Anthea’s in the village for breakfast, get the papers, read the reviews of the new exhibits. And when they were remodeling the house, they’d had breakfast out here on the terrace among the sawhorses and lumber, before the carpenters arrived. The front of the house had been torn out waiting for a new glass wall, gaping open to the garden like a bombed-out war casualty. They’d nailed canvas drop cloths over the forty-foot hole and Alice said that ought to be a big enough canvas for him to work on. Some of the inner walls had been torn away, too; they’d lived for ten weeks among bare studs and sheetrock dust. He could see Alice sitting here at the terrace table, her head bent, her long pale hair catching the light as she studied the blueprints. She’d been so happy to have the studio finished at last, to have her own place to work. The living room, dining room and entry hall had been turned into one forty-foot studio with rafters supporting the roof, and a skylight in Braden’s work area. Alice liked the softer light of the windows. She had taken a week to get her half of the studio set up, installing shelves, arranging the printing plates and handmade papers and etching and litho inks. Thinking about her was still like digging into a fresh wound.

  Above him up the terraces a sound jarred him—the snip, snip, snip of garden clippers. He stared up at the dark, thin gardener who was hunched over a bush methodically trimming away. Vrech was a greasy, unpleasant man. And what the hell was he doing here so early? Waking up everyone else in the garden houses. The snap of the clippers was like gnashing teeth.

  The six houses that circled the garden shared Vrech’s salary, but Olive Cleaver had hired him, years ago. The man did his job all right, kept the hillside tangle in just enough order to make the garden interesting, but he put Braden on edge; there was a cloying quality about him. Braden watched him, annoyed, pushing aside his sketch pad and pencils.

  He had meant to plan a new painting this morning—as much as he ever planned, a rough start, some direction to give a model—but nothing stirred him. Nothing wanted to come to life, to make the light glow in his mind with the brilliance of a finished painting. Nothing he had considered lately had that brilliance. He felt as dull as if mind and spirit suffered from a toothache.