Tailchaser's Song (27 page)

“Did you hear him, Pounce? What do you think of all this, hmmm? Got your whiskers up, does it?” Fritti waited vainly for a response, then tried again. “What a story this will make when we get back to Meeting Wall, won’t it? D‘you think the Folk will believe us?” After a moment, Pouncequick raised his head and looked at Fritti plaintively.

“Where’s my friend Roofshadow?” he asked. His voice was so quiet that Tailchaser had to cock his ears forward to make out the words.

“We’ll find her, Pounce, I promise. I swear on my tail name—we’ll get away from here and find her!”

The kitten looked at him for a moment with a puzzled expression, then lowered his gaze to the ground once more.

Skydancer’s Ears and Tears!
Fritti cursed himself.
When am I going to stop making promises I have not the slightest chance of keeping? Still,
he thought,
I had to say something to Pounce. He has the look of someone who’s going to lie down and float to the Fields Beyond any moment. At least I got a word or two out of him.

Now Tailchaser noticed that the sound of the tunnel had changed. Below the near-silent padding of their paws, he thought he could discern a thin wash of voices—cat voices, but very distant.

Bitefast, the nearest Guard, turned and hissed: “We’ll be home, soon.
Your
home, too—for a short while, anyway.”

Finally the underground path widened again and turned downward. The pulsing had become constant and almost familiar, and the voices Fritti had noticed earlier sounded louder and louder. Then, when it seemed as if any moment they must come upon the source, Scratchnail stopped the procession.

“Now,” he said, fixing Fritti and his comrades with a hard stare, “we are about to enter Vastnir by one of the Lesser Gates. If you make any movement to escape I will tear you to ribbons, and be pleased to do it. And just in case you decide to try your luck” —here he narrowed his gaze on Eatbugs, who turned his eyes away uncomfortably—“even if you’re fast and tricky enough to get by me—which I doubt—you’ll come to wish you’d died at my claws, I promise you. The Clawguard are not the worst who home in the Vastnir Mound.”

Scratchnail turned to his fellows. “And you two. Remember, no one is to interfere—especially not the Toothguard. The prisoners stay with us until I say otherwise, understood? It had better be.”

They all followed Scratchnail downward, and shortly rounded a bend in the tunnel to find themselves in a wide entranceway before the gate. Silhouetted at the end of the tunnel by a fitful blue-green light stood two massive Clawguard, silent and terrible, bigger even than Fritti’s captors. On either side of the entrance they guarded, on small piles of raised earth, were skulls. One was of an enormous Growler, the eyesockets dark as sorrow. The other was the skull of a large horned beast. All four of these sentries looked down pitilessly on Tailchaser and his companions as they were led through.

As he passed beneath the arched tunnel mouth into the depths of Vastnir, Fritti felt a strange sensation. As he had in his catmint nightmare, he began to experience a burning feeling on his forehead. Whatever it might be, though, neither his friends nor the Clawguard took any notice of him.

Beyond the threshold was a vision that would stay with Tailchaser as long as he lived.

Before them sprawled a vast cavern, the roof as high above as the treetops of Rootwood. It was lit by the luminescent earth they had seen in the tunnel, and also by the faint blue glow of stones that protruded down through the ceiling rock. The phantom light rendered all in the cavern into spirits and vaulting shadows.

Below, on the cavern floor, countless cats moved back and forth like termites in rotten wood. Most of them appeared to be normal Folk, although their faces were so full of despair and pain that they seemed almost a different race. Among them moved the Clawguard, lumpish and huge, directing the streaming, insectlike hordes as they crept to and fro.

It’s like some horrible dream of Firsthome,
Fritti thought.

The stench of fear and blood and unburied me‘mre rose up on the hot air currents and filled his nostrils, choking him. With a snarl, Scratchnail herded them down to the cave floor, across the jutting rocks and warm, moist soil. They maneuvered among the lines of cats, brushing past Folk who did not even look up, but only plodded on toward whatever grim destination the ubiquitous Clawguard were leading them to.

As they passed one group Fritti saw a smallish cat, eyes and ribs bulging, who appeared to be sick. He coughed and staggered, then collapsed to the stones. Before Fritti could move to help him, a Clawguard shouldered his way past and bent over the sick one. Then the brute picked him up by the neck and shook him violently. Tailchaser could hear the sound of bones snapping; the Claw flung the broken body to the side with an impatient head-flip, and the line of cats moved on. Tailchaser stared after them, then over at the crumpled body lying unnoticed and unmourned in the dirt. His hatred flared, then settled into a low flame, banked deep inside himself. He, also, turned away.

As Scratchnail’s procession reached the far side of the great cavern and was approaching the gaping maw of another tunnel, a thin, piercing voice called out: “Ssscratchnail!” The sound seemed to come from one of the innumerable caves in the rock wall before them. The chief halted the group as a dim shape appeared in the darkness of a cave mouth.

“What do you want of me?” Scratchnail snapped angrily. His voice held an odd intonation.

“Hissblood wants to sssee you, Sscratchnail,” the thin voice said, sibilant and mocking. As the shape in the grotto spoke, Fritti could see the gleam of its teeth, but no reflected shine of its eyes.

“That’s a laugh!” the chief snarled. “Why should I care anyway?”

In the dark grotto the teeth were bared again. “Hissblood wantss to know who your prissonerss are. There wasss to be no more taking of captivesss. That was the understanding, no?”

“My business is between the Fat One and myself, and there’s no room for you crawlers to go sticking your hairless snouts into it. If Hissblood wants to have any dealings with me I’ll be in the lower Catacombs later on.” Scratchnail pivoted and walked away.

“He will meet you there,” said the thin voice, and the sound of deathly merriment came from the shadowed cave.

Entering the huge tunnel in the cave wall, Longtooth hissed at Scratchnail: “What do the Toothguard want with these, anyway?”

The chief turned on him with a growl. “You keep your muzzle shut!”

Longtooth asked no more questions, and they went some distance down the tunnel in silence. Scratchnail finally halted the group at a widening of the way. The chief pushed Eatbugs and Pouncequick roughly to one side, then turned to Bitefast.

“You and this dribbling me‘mre,” he barked, indicating Longtooth, “take these two down to the Middle Catacombs. They’re not to go anywhere else until I say so. Me, no one else!” Bitefast nodded. “Good. I’m going to take the clever one here for a special audience. I think you-know-who will be interested in him. Now move!” With this he propelled Tailchaser up the tunnel, and the other Clawguard herded Fritti’s companions off toward a side tunnel.

Tailchaser turned as he was pushed forward and called back over his shoulder: “I’ll be back for you, Pounce, don’t worry! Take care of him, Eatbugs!”

Scratchnail dealt him a stinging paw-blow to the side of the head that brought moisture to his eyes.

“Fool!” rasped the beast.

The winding way led farther down into the earth. The tunnel they traveled was strewn with rocks and bits of bone, and wet things that made Fritti wince when he stepped on them. He had to scrape against the dirt walls to avoid contact with the terrifying Claw chief.

Now the shaft pitched down steeply. The faint glow of the walls was interrupted by splashes of blue-and-purple light that seemed to be reflected from farther down the tunnel. Stepping along the sloping pathway, Tailchaser also noticed a change in the air—it was becoming much colder. Within twenty steps the chill had sharpened, and the ground underneath his pads seemed hard, perhaps frozen. With Scratchnail beside him, he ducked to pass beneath the low roof. When he raised his head again he found that they had passed into a great chamber—the Seat of Vastnir. They had come to the Cavern of the Pit... the heart of the mound.

The cavern was high-domed, the ceiling dark and distant. Around a central pit fissures in the ground spewed forth indigo light, stark beams glaring up through the mist of the cavern floor. The walls above were honeycombed with grottoes and tunnels, and everywhere dark shapes streamed in and out, bustling around the wide rim of the pit and climbing up the jagged stones to disappear into the holes above.

Fritti could see the plume of his breath in the icy air. Cold like this so far underground was terribly wrong—but what was not in this nightmare place?

Moving forward at Scratchnail’s harsh insistence, he looked now to the pit, and the massive shape that rose from it, dominating the subterranean chamber. As he neared, wonder turned to horror.

Up from the dark mist-shrouded center of the pit rose a squirming mass, a heaving pile of small bodies that protruded above the edge of the huge hole in the cavern floor like a volcano rising in a deep canyon. The squirming mountain was a mass of animals—tortured, dying, many already dead. Cats and fla-fa‘az, Squeakers, Praere, Growlers and Rikchikchik, the heap of writhing beasts gave forth a million ghost-faint sounds. Many of the creatures were maimed or dismembered; closer to the bottom, most were not even moving. The stench penetrated Tailchaser’s nose, and he gagged. He slumped to the cold ground, the mist billowing up around him, hiding for a moment the terrible sight. Scratchnail leaned down and butted him with his wide, flat head.

“Step up, now, you simpering beetle. You’re about to meet His Lordship.”

Weak in the knees and stomach, Fritti was prodded and dragged forward to the edge of the pit. He wanted to close his eyes. Instead, repulsed yet fascinated, he stared out at the squirming mountain, at the thousands of blank eyes and mindlessly sagging mouths puffing little jets of vapor.

The Clawguard stepped up beside him. “Your Mightiness! Your humble servant has brought you something!” Scratchnail’s voice grated and echoed from the towering walls.

“Oh. You have, have you... ?” bubbled a grotesque, suety voice. “Throw it in with the rest... I’ll eat it later.” A gigantic, dark shape—heretofore invisible at the top of the pile of bodies—turned its head and opened vast, eggshell-white eyes. Blind eyes.

Tailchaser gave a bleat of fright and leaped backward against the stone-hard body of Scratchnail. Cowering between the Clawguard’s legs, Fritti forgot for a moment even his fear and hatred of the chieftain—the thing atop the pit blew all else from his mind like a screeching wind.

It was a cat. Twenty, fifty, a hundred times bigger than himself, Tailchaser could not tell; its swollen body was so massive that its tiny legs could not reach past to lift it. It lay, bloated and supremely powerful, on the peak of the wriggling flesh-mound.

“No, Great One, it is not to eat... yet.” Fritti heard Scratchnail’s voice, distant, unimportant. “This is one of the ones you sensed, Great One. Do you remember?”

The hideous creature pivoted its neckless head until the blank, dead eyes were facing the shivering Tailchaser. The nostrils flared.

“Oh, yes...” said the voice slowly, a sound like mud splattering on stone. “We remember now. Did it have companions? Where are they?” The voice took a sharper tone.

“He had two, O Lord.” Scratchnail sounded nervous. “A kitten, Lord, a little mewling kitten, and a crazed old tom, filthy as sun and flowers. But this one, this is the one you want. There’s something to this one. I’m ... I’m sure of it.”

“Ahhh,” burbled the giant, and rolled back slightly onto its side, as if to think. It poked its round head down toward the pile on which it lay, but could not overcome its own bulk. A look of annoyance creased the vast brow, and suddenly three Clawguard, who had been watching with dismay from the opposite edge of the pit, leaped down into the hole. They quickly plucked the struggling form of a cat out of the midst of the heap and scrambled up to the monster. As they clambered over his belly he opened his mouth complacently. The wriggling, yowling cat was dropped in. Crunching sounds were heard as the great cat began to chew, and a look of contentment crossed the blind face.

As Tailchaser looked on helplessly, the beast swallowed, then turned its attention back toward him once more.

“Now,” it dripped, “let us see what kind of Folk threaten our designs.” There was a shocking jolt. Tailchaser felt for a moment as if a huge mouth had picked him up and shaken him. Then came a fiery pain, and something bored into his mind. Digging, burrowing, it tore through his thoughts, knocking them asunder—it waded through hopes and dreams and ideas; it carelessly crushed notions as it passed. An invisible force held Tailchaser to the spot. He contorted and howled as the mind of the beast invaded him.