The Gate of the Cat (Witch World: Estcarp Series) Read Free Page B

rider pulled at the reins and his mount plunged forward as if to bring it and its rider down upon Kelsie. But it did not complete that charge. Instead the mount reared and the rider seemed for a moment to be fighting—his will against his mount's. The hound crouched closer to the ground, near creeping on its belly back the way it had come. Though Kelsie watched carefully there was nothing else in sight save the wheeling birds.
    The rider no longer fought his horse (if such a creature could be termed a horse). He allowed it to swing around to the direction from which they had come. Then, though he did not seem to be urging it, the creature first broke into a trot and raised that to a gallop as it disappeared in a cut between two of the hills, the hound now running beside it.
    Kelsie waited. The birds broke off their circling to fly east. She and the cat were alone in the circle of pillars which had indeed proved a sanctuary.
    The girl slipped to the ground, sitting cross-legged near her coat where the kittens now nursed—the cat having relaxed enough to allow them to her.
    For the first time since she had awakened, Kelsie had a chance to think clearly, to look more slowly about her, to weigh one strange thing against its neighbor. She had been struggling with Neil McAdams in the long summer twilight of the Scottish highlands. But it was plain that where she now was bore no relation to that. She raised her fingertips to smooth the damp shirt she had tied over her head wound. It was all so real—
    Slowly she pulled herself once more to her feet and began to make a complete circuit of the circle, looking outward for a point of reference which would assure her that she was still in the world she knew or at least recognized a little. She was not even of highland blood—even if she bore the name and had the heritage from Great-Aunt Ellen she had never been here before. She belonged back in Evart, Indiana, ready to start for the animal clinic, to dream her own private dream of somehow raising the money to get a veterinarian's degree. That was the world of people and things she understood. This was not. She swung the stone-weighted belt and tried to arrange her thoughts in a logical pattern. One minute she had been struggling with Neil to keep him from shooting the already injured wildcat and then she had awakened here—
    She wanted to run, to scream out her denial, to awaken from this nightmare. It went on and on and it was indeed so real. She could not remember ever having eaten and drunk in any dream before but the stains of the berries still were on her hands and she could taste their sweetness when she ran her tongue over her teeth. She looked to the cat who lay nursing the two kittens. The animal was believable. But the hound, the rider, and all that had happened since she had been besieged here—those were out of some fantasy.
    None of the distant, mist veiled mountains looked familiar. Also who had raised the fallen pillars to make this fortress to what it must once have been, a circle of protection?
    The cat arose, shook off her two clinging offspring and came to stand before Kelsie, regarding her straightly as somehow she had never seen an animal eye her before. It was as if an intelligence which was equal, or at least close, to her own looked out of those eyes and that some desire for communication moved the animal.
    Kelsie knelt and held out one hand to the cat.
    “Where are we, old girl?” she asked and then wished she had not, for her words sounded queerly here as if they had been picked up by one stone and echoed to the next and the next, coming back to her, not clearly, but in a hoarse whisper.
    The cat extended a tongue tip and touched it to the girl's thumb. And she knew a glow of triumph. So a wildcat could not be tamed—so much for all they had told her when she had spoken up for the animal last night. Last night? She shook her head and then wished that she had not, for the pain which flashed outward. She