Steel Magic (11 page)

T
he wood world awaited Sara now. As she sped toward the spider-web walls of the Castle of the Wood, strange new scents, smells which made her cat's nose twitch with excitement, arose from the ground under her paws and filled the air about her. She had never known before what it was really to be able to smell! Just as she had never known what it was to see. To her human eyes it had been dusk, a dimming of all color, a thickening and spreading of shadows. But now she could see into the heart of those shadows and so lost any fear of them.

But, though she was excited and pleased with her new body, her uneasiness returned in part as she neared the weirdly glowing spider webs. When she was still several feet away, she dropped the knife, planted both forefeet upon it for safety, and held her head as high as she could for a better look at the dead forest.

Sara shrank from touching the web. She had hoped to find
a place where her cat's body might spring over the sticky band. But nowhere in sight was there any section where the outer trees were not coated from roots to lower branches with the stuff.

She must use the knife—but where? Some of the inborn caution of the animal whose shape she now wore came to her. She slipped through a growth of tall grass and crept on, the knife again gripped in her teeth.

Fearing unpleasant sentries, she dared not make too large and easily discovered a hole in the wall. So Sara hunted until she discovered a place where two mighty tree roots stood half out of the ground. Strands of web closed the gap between them, but it was a small gap. She crouched low and used her paws as well as her mouth to guide the knife. It was a clumsy business and took much longer than it would have done had she used hands and fingers. But the strands withered away and she had a free passage into the forest.

As she entered, flattening her body between the roots, Sara could see well enough. Very luckily the web did not extend beyond the first line of trees, and there were blobs of greenish-yellow light ahead.

The blobs were fungi growing on rotten wood. Sara's paw broke one, and the air was instantly filled with drifting motes of dust. She sneezed and then crowded her front paws against her nose. When she sneezed she had dropped the knife and that was dangerous. Quickly she picked it up again.

Any leaves which had fallen from the dead trees had long ago turned to dust, because the ground was bare black earth.
She hated the slippery feel of it against her paws and, whenever she could, she walked along exposed roots or the trunks of fallen trees.

A human without a compass might have been lost in that maze where every tree copied its neighbor and the fungus lights confused the eye. But Sara's cat instinct took her without trouble toward the heart of this evil place.

She had not sighted any animal, bird, or insect. But she had a queer feeling that something lurked just beyond the limit of the eye, spying, waiting. And that Sara did not like at all.

Once she had to detour about a pool where the water was black and scummed. Bubbles rose slowly to the surface and broke. There Sara saw the first living thing, a pale, bleached lizard on a slimy rock, watching her with hard, glittering eyes.

At the other end of the pool Sara came upon faint traces of a path and she turned into it, eager to reach her goal. She had not forgotten caution, however, and it was with a cat's instant response to a danger signal that she halted at a faint sound. Was the lizard following?

Then she saw the enemy, not behind but to her right. A cluster of the fungus lights displayed its full horror. Sara tried to scream and the sound came from her furry throat as a hiss.

The thing ran along a tree trunk in a burst of speed she could not have bested and then halted. When it rested it was hardly distinguishable from one of the fungus lumps. Sara's claws dug into the ground as she flexed them. Warily
she looked about, studying fungi which might not be fungi after all.

Her alarm grew. There were three, maybe four of the giant spiders drawing in about her. Had she not been alerted by the carelessness of the first, they might have surrounded her before she knew it. One she might attack, but not a whole ring of them.

A strand of thread floated lazily through the air. It drifted down, lay on Sara's furry back. There was another—and another! A web was being woven to enmesh her. But at that moment she feared the spiders themselves more than their handiwork and she planned desperately. She must allow herself to be trapped. Then, when they were sure of her, she would use the knife to escape.

It was very hard to do, waiting for the floating threads to coil about her. But Sara flattened her body to the ground, her paws drawn under her, the knife between them ready to be pushed forward. She shivered as the mat of threads caught on her ears and hurriedly shut her eyes.

Once the net covered Sara's back and head it fastened her tightly to the ground in a few seconds. She had to depend now on nose and ears to guide her. Legs raced across her imprisoned body and she shuddered as the spinners tested the silky bonds.

What if the spiders stung her now, left her paralyzed and helpless in the wrappings? She could smell their foulness, hear the faint rustle of their passing. They were circling, adding to the weight of the web.

Then a last tug on the smothering cover over her. The
strong odor of the creatures faded. She strained to listen, to smell. If they left a sentry, there was no more than one. And one alone she could handle. Moving her paws against the ground, Sara pushed out the knife to touch her bonds.

There! Her right forefoot was free! Iron magic worked again. Sara arose from her crouch as the web broke and shriveled. She opened her eyes.

Facing her, standing erect on all its eight legs to challenge, was one of the spiders. It teetered back and forth and sprang. Sara struck with a front paw, knocked the creature to the ground, then swung the knife to touch it. She was not sure Huon had been right—that iron was poisonous here. She could only hope so.

The spider pulled its legs under it, becoming a white-yellow lump. Sara took the haft of the knife in her mouth and jumped, pulling the blade across the insect's round body. The spider wriggled in sharp jerks, its legs flexed, and then drew up again. Sara prodded it with the knife, not wishing to touch it with her paw. When it did not move again, she laid the knife on the ground, keeping one paw on it, and with her tongue cleaned the remnants of the web from her fur.

Then, carrying the knife, she circled the dead spider and went on. But she was alert for another meeting with the creatures, watching every near fungus cluster with suspicion. It was very quiet in the dead wood, for there were no leaves to rustle, nothing but damp soil underfoot. Now that earth was giving way to flat stones which might have been old, old pavement.

The path dipped with banks of tree-grown earth rising on
either side. Sara kept to its center, for in between those trees were more thick webs.

That sunken road brought her to a stream. This was no scummed pond but brown flowing water running in two ribbons about an island.

The outer rim of the island was a wall of stone so old and overgrown with dead vines and shaggy moss that it was hard to tell it from native rock. Once there might have been a bridge connecting it to the road, now there was only a series of water-washed stepping stones.

Sara prowled back and forth on the bank eying the stones doubtfully. Though she had not been told, she believed that the island was the center of the wood and held what she had come to find, but how to reach it was a problem. She could see unpleasant-looking water creatures swimming or moving back and forth on the stream bed, and she did not want to battle them. But could she leap from one wet stepping stone to the next without losing her footing?

She crouched, balancing the knife carefully in her mouth, and jumped to the first rock. It was slippery but she held fast. The second was flatter and better footing. There she sat, the knife under her forepaws, to study the third—for that had a rounded top and was green with slime. However, the fourth was another flat one. Could she leap to that from here? She crouched again, her hindquarters quivering, and tried.

Her hind feet splashed in the water as she scrabbled for a hold with her forepaws. There was a sharp pain in her tail and she heaved up and out. A clawed creature was pinching
her tail tip, and Sara growled, swinging the creature against the knife so it tumbled off limply into the stream.

Wet fur made her cat body miserable, but she could not pause here to lick herself dry. For there was now another and longer jump to reach the top of the island wall. Clenching her teeth upon the knife, she made it. The wet hair on her spine rose in matted spikes, her ears folded to her skull, and her tail swung as she stood stiff-legged staring down at what that circle of ancient wall guarded.

The spiders of the forest were nasty creatures which she hated on sight, but here was worse—a toad three times the size of her present cat shape. It squatted motionless in the exact center of the open space, but its yellow eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon her and Sara feared it more than the spiders.

Her small body was shaking with more than the chill of the water. Those eyes—they were bigger—bigger—they were filling up to the whole world! They were open places into which she might fall!

Sara blinked. It was dark, night had settled in. But those yellow toad eyes were bright enough to light up the island. The huge stretch of lips below them was opening—

She made herself as small a target as possible, the knife in her teeth. But the toad was so large, and the power of its eyes held her still. A black lash of tongue flickered out from between those huge lips, striving to whip her into the waiting mouth. But it touched the knife and snapped back.

The toad shivered, its bulk quivered, its mouth shut. Then
out from between those lips fell a round, glowing bead which rolled to the foot of the wall where Sara crouched. The bead was as clear as glass and at its core she saw a ring of dark metal.

The ring! In that moment she had to choose. She could not carry both ring and knife. If she took the talisman in her mouth she would have to leave behind her only weapon.

Sara moved quickly because she was afraid that if she waited she would not be able to do anything at all. She tossed the knife at the toad and saw it land on the creature's broad back. The thing writhed and twisted, and then crumpled as might a bag from which air had escaped.

She sprang from the wall and snapped up the bead. It was hard to mouth but she held it.

“Kaaaw—” A black bird such as those which had followed her and the fox dived from the air, sounding its battle cry. Sara moved with terrified speed, making the passage of the stepping stones in bounds, returning to the shelter of the dead wood. She paused under that cover trying to plan, fearing to travel the spider-infested path without the knife.

She had dropped the bead between her paws and it was only at that moment she remembered that the ring itself was iron and so might be her protection. But first the glass shell about it must be broken.

Dropping it on a nearby rock did not crack the covering. She stood upon it with the full weight of her forepaws, but it only sank in the mold and did not break.

“Kaaaw—” One of the birds hopped along bare branches just above her and he was answered from the air. Sara took
the bead in her mouth once more and ran at her best speed. As she went she bit at what she held, hoping her needle-sharp cat's teeth could crunch through.

With a leap she cleared the body of the spider guard where she had been trapped. Perhaps if she just kept running she could escape any harm. But there was the beat of wings in the air, a quick stab of pain in one ear. Sara backed against a tree trunk where a mat of dead branches made cover to keep off the birds. She would have to break the bead or she would never get out of the wood, she was sure of that now.

With her nose and forepaws she wedged the globe against a half-buried stone and then, finding another such stone, she pushed it against the outer surface of the bead with all her strength, moving it slightly so that the globe was ground between the two rocks. She was losing hope in her plan when with a small “pop” the bead was gone. Some dust glittered on the mold about the ring and that was all.

Sara mouthed the band, ready to run again. There was a scream from above. The birds were rising, leaving. Sure that she had a chance now, Sara ran, not realizing at first what was happening about her. For, as she sped among the trees, change spread with her.

Lumps of fungus dwindled, fell away. There was a cool wind rising, driving through the brittle branches, bringing with it a sweet cleanness. As she flashed about the pool where the lizard had lain, the water was no longer dull and scummed. It bubbled and sparkled, moved again by some long-choked spring.

When Sara reached the spot where she had crept beneath
the web wall, she no longer faced the stretch of murky stuff. The web was now only bits of patches, for the wind was tearing at it, shredding it loose. So she ran easily out into the moonlight to climb the slope to where the fox waited.

At the top of the rise she paused to look back. All the dead trees were bending and twisting in the wind. Most of the web wall was gone. It was as if the strong blast of air was sweeping away all the evil which had hidden there, making it ready for life again. She saw a whirl of birds rise up against the moon. They wheeled as they flew toward her, uttering their hoarse calls.

Sara turned and ran at her best speed. Perhaps the wood was free of evil now, but it appeared that the black birds still had the power to hunt.

B
efore Greg was transformation indeed—change as great Sara had seen in the wood. The village that had lain under the witch's spell came to life again. It's people, freed from their animal shapes, worked busily about their ruined homes. Two of those who had run as wolves now stood erect as lord and lady of the tower, to press upon Greg and his companions what shelter and food they had to offer. But when they had rested for a short space, Arthur's knight urged that they ride on, and now Greg was as impatient as he.