The Forbidden Circle (23 page)

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 block 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.

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. . . .

The cat-man snarled and launched itself at him, and he hurled himself down, sword extended before him, catching himself with his other hand on the floor. The claw-sword hissed above his head, a clean miss, and something wet and sticky gushed over his arm. He pulled his own sword free with a sharp tug and raised himself. Now which way to Callista? Quickly, before the Great Cat finds . . .

He looked around for Andrew, and saw him, a split second flash at the far end of the passage, and then Andrew was gone. . . .

Andrew, wrapped up, sharing the battle with Damon, suddenly heard something like a cry, and in a flash he saw Callista. It seemed that she was lying on the floor at his feet and he realized abruptly that he had moved far down, into a deeper level of the caves, where the walls glowed faintly with pale greenish phosphoresence. Callista was lying in the darkness, but as she opened terrified eyes, Andrew saw, sneaking toward her and only a dim shadowy form in the darkness, the form of one of the cat-creatures. Callista scrambled to her feet and backed away, helplessly defending herself with her outthrust arms. The cat-thing had a curved dagger in its paws, and Andrew ran toward it helplessly, struggling.

I need my body, I cannot defend her from the overworld
. . . . For an instant he wavered between the cave where Callista blindly fled from the cat man’s knife, between the upper room at Armida where his body lay guarded by Ellemir, back and forth, struggling, torn.
I cannot go back, I must stay with Callista
. . . . Then there was a blue flash and a painful, dazzling electrical shock, and Andrew felt himself drop hard on his feet in the cave, in pitch-dark except for the glow of fungus, his ankle twisting as he came down.

He yelled a warning, ran blindly toward the cat-thing.
(How did I get here? How? Am I really here at all?)
He stumbled, his toes agonizingly banged on loose rock. He scooped up the rock; the cat-man whirled, snarling, but Andrew raised the rock and brought it down hard against the thing’s temple. It fell heavily, with an ear-splitting yowl, twitched feebly, and lay still. The force of the blow had spilled its brains all over the floor; Andrew found himself slipping in them and almost falling.

He said, idiotically, “I guess that settles that, I really
am
here.” Then he ran toward Callista, who was crouched against the wall, staring up at him in wonder and terror.

“Darling,” he cried out. “Callista—darling—are you all right? Have they hurt you?” He caught her in his arms, and she fell heavily against him. She was solid and real and warm in his arms, and he held her hard, feeling her whole body shake with deep, terrifying sobs.

“Andrew—Andrew—it’s really you,” she repeated.

He pressed his mouth to her wet cheek and repeated again, “It’s me, and you’re safe now, beloved. We’ll have you out of here in a few minutes—can you walk?”

“I can walk,” she said, recovering a little of her composure. “I don’t know my way out, but I have heard there are ropes along the walls; we can feel our way along and come at last to the entrance. If you will give me the starstone, I can make a light,” she said, remembering it at last, and Andrew gently took it out and handed it to her. She cupped it almost tenderly between her palms. In the pale blue light of the stone, paler than the overworld light but still enough to show him quite clearly in its radiance, her lovely delicate features were contorted with fear.

“Damon,” she whispered. “Oh, no—Andrew! Andrew, help me—” and in a single moment her fingers reached out for his hand and her thoughts were linked with his as they had been before.

Then, with another of those harsh, painful electric shocks, he was standing on the door of a great, partially lighted cave chamber, at the far end of which glowed, with a painful radiance, a jewel like the starstone—but a huge one, glowing and sparkling like an arclight, hurting his eyes. Damon, looking very small, was striding toward it, and then Andrew’s mind flowed into Damon’s again, and he saw, through Damon’s eyes, the crouching figure kneeling behind the great stone. Its paws were blackened, and its whiskers scorched away, and huge patches of fur had been singed from its hide. Damon raised his blade—

And found himself in the overworld, while before him, towering in majesty and menace, the Great Cat, taller than a tree, glared down at him, with great red eyes like giant coals, and snarled, a great space-filling roar. It raised one paw and Damon flinched, feeling how the stroke of that paw would fling him aside like a feeble mouse. . . .

At that moment Callista cried out, and two giant dogs—one huge and bull-throated, the other slender and whippet-quick—with great gleaming fangs, leaped at the cat-thing’s throat and began worrying it, snarling.
Andrew and Callista!
Without stopping to think, Damon dropped back into his body and ran forward, whipping up his sword. He lunged down on the prone, crouching cat-creature, feeling the droning rise to a scream, to wild snarling howls, to confused yelps and spitting hisses that filled all space. The sword wobbled as Damon, holding it steady with all his might, his hands scorching and seared, ran Dom Esteban’s sword through the body of the cat-thing.

It screeched and writhed, screaming, on the sword. The great matrix flared and spat sparks and great sheets of flame. Then abruptly the lights died and the cavern was dull and silent, except for the pale glimmer of Callista’s starstone. The three of them were standing close together on the stone floor, Callista sobbing shakily and clinging to them. On the floor at their feet a burned and blackened thing lay, scorched and stinking of burning fur, which bore only the faintest resemblance to a cat man, or to anything else which had ever been alive.

The great matrix stood before them in its frame, with a burned, dead, glassy glimmer. It rolled free, fell with a tinkle to the floor of the cave, and shattered into nothingness.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“So what will happen to the darkening lands now?” Andrew asked, as they rode slowly back through the dusk toward Armida.

“I’m not sure,” Damon said slowly. He was very weary, and drooped in his saddle, but he felt at peace.

They had found food and wine in the caves—evidently the cat-men had not bothered to explore the lower levels—and had eaten and drunk well. There had been clothing there, too, of a sort, including great fur blankets, but Callista had shuddered away from the touch, saying that nothing would induce her to wear fur again as long as she lived. In the end Damon had given the fur cloak to Eduin and wrapped Callista in the swordsman’s heavy wool cape.

She rode now on the front of Andrew’s saddle, clinging to him, her head against his shoulder, and he rode with his head lowered so that his cheek lay against her hair. The sight made Damon lonely for Ellemir, but that could wait. He wasn’t sure Andrew even heard the answer to his question, but he answered, anyway.

“Now that the matrix is destroyed, the cat-men have no abnormal weapons of fear or darkness. We can send out soldiers against them and cut them down. The villagers, most of them, will recover when the darkness is gone and there is no more fear.”