The Second Ardath Mayhar

by Ardath Mayhar

  “Are those I see all the Clanless in the forest?” she asked.

  “No. We range the forest, and our calls can send the word from side to side in an hour.” He stared at her for a moment. “Wait. We must consult.”

  She nodded and lay, full-length, on the frosted grass. As she dozed, song-like calls rippled through the wood. Voices, melodies, cries mingled in a great canticle. In an hour, she rose to stand beside the young man in a wood gone silent again.

  “You have decided?”

  “Not to rape and slay you.”

  “That is comforting.”

  “But to join you, for our own protection.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Have you swift and secret ways to travel toward Rostath’s holding? Our ways are to the west. Time would be lost getting there.”

  “Have songbirds wings?” he asked. She caught a glimpse of the boy he might still be, as he grinned and swung his arm in a summoning gesture. “Others will join us as we go.”

  They moved then, so quickly and quietly that birds did not take flight or hares scutter from their way. When Yarusha looked behind, she could see gray-clad shapes moving along the track, too many to count. Night did not halt them, and dawn found them at the edge of the forest before Rostath’s House. The village was ablaze. Archers on the walls were finding targets among the ruins below.

  She stared closely, as she said, “Kenir will be at the rear, directing things. He will move if there is a frontal assault, but he does not risk his life easily.”

  The boy said, “I give you my name, Lady. Arvin Clinkmail. If we are to die together, that is fitting.”

  “Thank you. Take a large group and come from the far side of the wood, taking Kenir and his men by surprise. I will take another group and slip toward the place where I believe he is waiting for the time to strike. He killed my man, and I will slay him with my own hands.”

  “That is fitting,” Kevin replied. “Luck be with you, Lady.”

  “May you live to grow old,” she replied. Then he was gone, and she motioned to those nearest to follow her. The hut where Kenir waited seemed to glow in the light of her Gift.

  A clamor, after a time, told her that Arvin had made incredible time and fallen upon the troops from the other side. She smiled as a stocky shape emerged from the door of the hut and stood staring toward the uproar. Kenir! She ran, forgetting those who came behind. “Kenir!” she shouted. Her blade was in her hand.

  He turned. Yarusha recalled how she now looked. “Goddess, release me from illusion,” she prayed. She saw recognition dawn in the bold Lord’s eyes.

  “Jarob’s bitch, is it?” he cried. “Come to join your new Lord, have you?” His chuckle boomed as he thudded to meet her. His blade was snakelike, heavy to suit his brawny arm. His eyes lit with killing fire, but she knew that her own matched them.

  She ducked a blow that would have cut her in half and swung at his legs. A satisfying shock ran up her arm, and then she whirled away from another of his efforts. He was stronger by far, but she was light of foot. She dented his helm, cutting away the ribbon bearing a totally undeserved Purple. He blinked as she danced back. Then he came after, limping, blood streaming from the cut on his leg.

  Yarusha feinted a swing at his head. As he raised his blade to counter hers, she dipped forward and swung at the leg once more. Something hit her, searing across her back, even through the chain mail, but she had connected. The leg was laid open, the bone showing. Panting, she wriggled away.

  Kenir, intoxicated with battle, strode forward to finish her and fell, as the leg refused his weight. Yarusha was ready. She kicked the blade from his hand, which moved speedily to catch her ankle. She caught the hilt of her sword in both hands, swung it high, and hacked off the hand at the wrist.

  Kenir’s eyes went wide, white rims showing. His breath came in groans, both of effort and pain. “I will not die at the hands of a woman!” he shouted.

  She saw then that his attendants were kept busy by those who had followed her, and she stepped back and stared down at him. “A wife. A mother. A warrior. One of the Gifted. All those, besides woman. I would never have troubled you in your own place. Now I will kill you.” She cleaved off his head with one adrenalin-charged blow.

  Those engaging her followers threw down their weapons. A wail went up, and the clamor beyond the ruins lessened. Yarusha raised her head to shout, “Kenir is dead. Surrender yourselves to the mercy of the League of the Clanless!”

  She dropped to sit in the dust beside the headless corpse. She felt no twinge of guilt as she looked into Kenir’s dead eyes, but she covered his face with a kerchief. This was someone’s son.

  Feet appeared before her. Arvin...she rose wearily, her aging bones protesting. The activity of the past days now weighted her with exhaustion.

  She looked up at the young man. He returned her gaze, astonished by the change in her. She laughed quietly. “I am now myself,” she said. “My oldest child is not much younger than you. I knew your kind value the young, so I made myself look so, not as deception but to gain your ear.”

  He took her hand. “I thought age was a thing of weakness and lack of will. You have taught me better. This was the one who killed your man?” He touched Kenir with his foot.

  “Yes. His kingdom will fall apart now. His troops will flee homeward to forget the war. My children and your people will survive, though it will be a lean winter, for the crops have been burned.”

  She looked about. The Clanless stood in a circle about her, and there was a longing in their eyes that she suddenly recognized. “What do you need, my children?” she asked.

  Arvin fingered the hilt of his bloodied sword. “It has been so long,” he mumbled. “A blessing? From a mother?”

  She kissed his forehead. “My blessing to all the Clanless. Your western border is secure,” she said.

  They came past for her kiss and her blessing. Tears formed in her eyes, but she blinked them back. Somewhere, each of them had a mother, and some bit of each of these young spirits still longed for her.

  When the last had been blessed, she slung her blade and removed her mail.

  “What will you do?” asked Arvin.

  “I’ll go to Rostath and sleep for two days,” she told him. “Then home to my children. You’d best be gone, but I might come into the wood to call some evening. Will you hear me?”

  Arvin grinned. “Come at your will, Mother of the Clanless Ones,” he said.

  He ran into the forest, and Yarusha saw Rostath approaching. She waited as he came to her side and took her hand. She shushed his words of thanks.

  “Nonsense! Just show me a bed, that’s a good boy, and let me rest for days!”

  She stared at the forest after another good boy, in his strange way. Safe now as were her own children.

  “A good day’s work,” she agreed, as Rostath led her toward his unbroken home.

  THE GUARDIANS OF THE SHRINE

  Andre Norton got me hooked on fantasies about cats, and this is one of the results.

  The shrine guarded the Navel of the World, its ornate shape covering with its cloverleaf design the place where north met south, east met west. Columned porticoes topped long flights of steps leading down in each direction, but the door on the east was sealed with mortar and stone. Its columns were broken and blasted, and no one looked toward the towering green mountains rising beyond the meadows.

  The ginger cat, Tairos, guarded the northern door, sitting in the shell-shaped portico, his green eyes fixed on the chilly waste from which the north wind brought frequent flurries of snow. As far as the eye could see, the hills rolled away, cloaked in ice, studded with boulders frosted like wedding cakes. The broken ground was concealed beneath a smooth white blanket.

  The black cat, Ilysis, guarded the west. Her half-closed amber eyes kept close watch on the distant line of desert beyond the golden gr
asslands. From that direction came, at times, ranks of painfully sun-baked people, their wells dried behind them, their bellies empty and their children hungry. They had been known to attack the shrine, though no food was kept there for any save the cats, and their food was not that of Men.

  The white cat, Kyrsos, looked southward into the jungle, from which unseen eyes often stared back. The rubbery leaves of the trees and vines and the brilliant blossoms sometimes moved when there was no wind to stir them, for the savage tenants of the south coveted the imagined contents of the shrine. Kyrsos kept his blue eyes keen, for an attack would come some day.

  The gray cat, Grana, had guarded that sealed eastern door, but not one of her surviving companions ever mentioned her name. She was melted into the stone, shattered with the mortar, her blood forming a part of the bonding that shielded the hard-defended portal. It had been a terrible battle, but the shrine still stood, and the pearl at its heart was undisturbed.

  The cats guarded the tenant of the shrine, though for many generations of men and of ordinary cats their mistress had not stirred from her frozen sleep. Not since Grana died defending her had she waked, for those who came from the east had set a spell upon her, hoping thereby to take her reins and depose her as guardian. No one had come since, with knowledge enough to break that enchantment, and the cats were not magicians.

  The sphere in which she slept was a shimmering globe, its iridescent curves pearled with interior frost, revealing glimpses of the woman who floated in its center. White smoke moved about her, blue light shone upon her, and diamond sparkles sometimes glittered, even upon her skin.

  She was pale as milk, her hair a shining swirl of midnight about her shoulders. Into her hands, which were folded on her bosom, went the reins governing each segment of the planetary globe. Ribbons of white light, they pointed the compass, except for that one which should have gone eastward. That line ended in a crisped and blackened stub, as if some force had burnt it almost back to the hand of Tiri-na-oth, Demigoddess who safeguarded the Navel of the World.

  Tairos, being the least occupied of the guardians, thought often about the plight of his mistress. There were no attackers there in the north, only the wind and the cold, which he could not stay nor hinder. This left much time for remembering the ages during which he had watched here, growing with his siblings, through those long centuries, far larger than any cats known to humankind.

  He slitted his green eyes as wind knifed into the portico, carrying on its edge a freezing slither of rain. The north was growing colder, century by century. The west grew drier, the south steamier and more lush. What was happening in the mountains to the east he could not say, for no one could watch there. But Tairos had an intuition that the world itself was moving in upon the shrine, as if to squeeze it out of existence.

  If only Tiri-na-oth would awaken! Her strength, her knowledge, and her fierce will could halt the advance of the winter and the desert and the jungle and whatever came nearer from the east. She had, for millennia uncounted, kept the world in order, its regions holding to their old patterns, and if she could be brought back to consciousness, she could again bring them into alignment.

  He slipped backward into the portal and closed the heavy door behind him, slipping its bars, locking its iron hasp with a bronze bolt. He glanced about the shrine, seeing the cold glimmer of the light from the sphere shining on the polished stone and the rubbed wood and the metal sconces that held the weapons for defending the place. It was in order, and the backs of his companions were alert.

  He moved to the sphere and stared into its depths, willing the motionless woman to move, to open her eyes, to speak at last. When she fell in sealing that eastern door, Grana’s blood spattering her pale skin, she had already been touched by the enchantment sent by her attackers. Once washed and placed inside the protective bubble, she had never again showed signs of recovering, though the guardians had expended much thought and effort toward achieving that goal.

  Now Tairos sat upon the mosaic of the floor, placing his haunches on a crimson swirl inside the golden orb. He curled his ginger tail about his toes, grateful for his fur in this cold spot, and gazed into the orb, willing the demigoddess to open her eyes.

  He felt as if his strength poured out through his eyes and into her, urging, pulling, pushing at her to come to her senses. There was danger approaching, he knew in his bones, and she was needed in the world as never before.

  There was a solid gust of wind that pounded upon the northern door, and a thin wail of icy air moved through the shrine. To the west, Ilysis gave a warning growl and stood, her black tail stiffened like a war-banner. To the south, Kyrsos spat a signal and leaped backward into the shelter of the portico, his paws scrabbling at the wall where his weapon waited for his need.

  So. It was all coming together now, the attack of elements joining those of men to override the long rule of Law. Tairos knew that he should join one of his siblings to defend a door. Yet he felt that he might, this once, manage to rouse the demigoddess. And even as he thought that there came the hiss of power against the sealed door to the east, a blast of heat as something tried to melt its way through the stone.

  “From the desert! They come!” came the thought of Ilysis.

  “And from the jungle,” came the answering thought of Kyrsos. “Armed with the best they have, which does not compare with the armaments of the gods. Yet they are many and we are but three.”

  Tairos strained toward the sleeping woman, his breath forming a mist on the outer curves of the sphere. And one of her fingers twitched. The foreshortened rein leading eastward moved, very slightly, almost imperceptibly.

  The black hair swirled more quickly about the smooth shoulders, and she seemed to sigh, there in the timeless haven of her sphere. The ginger cat glanced about, desperate with his need. He had no hands, and paws lacked certain skills.

  There was an urn on each compass point of the golden orb formed by ancient artists on the floor around the pearl. They were tall and heavy, and each held incense that had never been needed or used. Tairos leaned against the northern urn and pushed, setting his clawed paws against the smooth floor, using his size and strength to move the thing.

  Slowly, hesitantly, it toppled forward, gaining momentum as it moved. The shattering of pearly glass mingled with a gust of chilled and scented air from the sphere, and then both were overwhelmed by the intense odor of the stuff released from the urn.

  The black cat was beside him at once, the white one little later. They stared at the ruin in silence, and he knew that they were wondering what he had done. He was wondering himself, for this might well mean the end of all that they had been assigned to do, through all those endless years.

  There came a distant shout from beyond the western doorway. Though Ilysis had closed the panel behind him, Tairos could almost see the straggle of frantic men and women running toward the steps. Those who came carried only bows and spears and fire-arrows. The shrine could hold them out.

  There came a pounding against the south door, and the rhythmic chanting held primitive power and terrible lust. Those carried similar weapons, and the shrine would not notice their assaults against its impervious walls.

  The wind, now shouting at the north door, could not enter here to do harm, though it had tried since the foundation of the world. But now at the eastern wall, against that melted and sealed portal, there came another assault, and at the sound the three cats quailed. This was the force that slew their sister and felled their demigoddess, and it had come again. Already the stones of the wall were growing warm, the steam of the melting frost filling the air with mist. The wall crackled and snapped as the granite and marble heated, and Tairos feared to look and find the stone shattering as it had done before.

  This time, he hoped, there had been no enchantment sent ahead of the attack. The demigoddess slept and had done for a thousand years. But now he turned to stare into the face of the
woman who now lay amid a tumble of veils at the bottom of the broken sphere. And those eyes opened, the dark irises dim at first with sudden waking and then sharp with comprehension.

  “They have returned.” It was not a question.

  She sat, her movements smooth and untroubled, as if she had not lain motionless for so very long. Then she stood, her veils moving about her as if they were smoke, and she stepped free of the shards of pearl.

  Facing the east, she extended her hands. The ginger cat moved to her left, the white to her right. The black cat set her back against that of Tiri-na-oth and her gaze on the two locked but unguarded doors.

  The heat grew more intense as the assault from the east maintained its power and focused upon breaking the wall. The demigoddess laughed. From her shoulders trailed the reins of north and west and south. Loosing her hands, she took them, one by one, and moved them through ancient patterns.

  The shouting in the south lessened, as if those who tried the door had lost their purpose. The sounds of that horde moved around the shrine, toward the east.

  Now those fleeing the desert were pounding at the western door, but a flip of the rein brought instant silence. Tairos knew that those who had gained the steps were looking back to see the longed-for rain falling upon their distant wastes.

  “Open the northern door,” said Tiri-na-oth. Before her, the stone was cherry-red, the heat dancing over the surface in wriggling patterns as the stone readied itself to snap.

  The ginger cat moved to the portal against the slivers of cold wind, opening the lock, taking down the bars, letting the panels blast open against the walls. The heart of winter filled the shrine, frosting the dampness of that melted rime.

  The cats’ fur fluffed out to shield them from the bitter blasts now chasing themselves about the cloverleaf shape of the place. The eastern wall chilled to gray at once, and the runnels that had begun trickling downward froze into ridges of stone.