The Catswold Portal (12 page)

M
elissa ran, ducking branches. She was just able to glimpse Vrech's yellow cape disappearing between the trees as his horse trotted away through the forest. Running, she felt twigs catch and pull her hair, and she jerked her skirt higher to avoid the grasping vines. Soon Vrech vanished beyond the palace among the forested hills. Her breath burned in her throat as she turned aside and ducked under the pasture fence.

With a quick spell she brought a pony to her. She grabbed his mane and slid on, opened the gate with a spell, and pushed the willing beast to a gallop. As, behind her, the gate slammed closed, she bent low over the pony, willing him to a run. Soon again she saw the yellow flash of Vrech's cape. He had slowed his horse. She slowed the pony and followed quietly in shadow. He was moving up along the river that wound through the forest. Her pony wanted to nicker but she quieted him with a spell.

Vrech followed the river for several miles. Among the trees flocks of birds fled away from him. Where a stream branched away from the river, he turned to follow it, but soon it flowed into a low cave and disappeared. As Vrech dismounted she turned the pony aside behind a tangle of mulberry bushes.

She watched him unsaddle his horse and tether it with a spell where it could graze and drink. He took from the saddle a lantern with a bundle. Carrying these, he disappeared into the cave, ducking low. She was cold with fear, wanted to go back. She spellbound the pony where it, too, could
graze and drink, and followed Vrech. Ducking into the cave, she was terrified he had seen her, that he would be waiting for her on the other side.

But he had gone on. Beyond the opening the roof rose higher, and far ahead the earthen walls were lit by Vrech's receding light. Vrech's shadow humped and twisted as the lantern swung. Beyond him, the tunnel snaked away into blackness. She followed slowly, trying to made no sound. At her feet beside the narrow trail the stream ran deep and fast. But its faint churl did not hide the sound of Vrech's boots on the rough stone.

The echo of his steps grew fainter and his retreating light dimmer. She stayed close to the wall so the green daylight behind her would not silhouette her, but soon that light was lost as the tunnel curved. She could see nothing now in the blackness but the glow of Vrech's distant lantern. The air grew colder, soon the path became slippery. She knelt, feeling out across solid ice. Vrech had surely known it was here, and he had hardly paused. Carefully she crawled over the ice floe, then rose. This was the tunnel to the upperworld; she had no question but that that was where Vrech was headed. The thought of climbing out of her own world into the vast, unending emptiness of the world above filled her with hollow terror.

At last the air grew warm again, then the stream dropped away from her feet into a chasm, and here the trail narrowed, too. The spaces below her echoed back to her with the scuff of Vrech's boots. When his passage dislodged stones, each fell down and down clattering until its sound was lost. She did not hear the stones strike bottom. She clung close to the one solid wall, and soon she had lagged so far behind that Vrech's light had vanished. She wondered if he had heard or seen her and had doused his light and waited around the next bend. She dared not bring a spell-light.

Maybe the tunnel had split, maybe she was lost. She moved on faster, feeling ahead with each step to be sure there was solid earth under her reaching foot.

But then soon, frightened and wary in the darkness, she
began to sense the path ahead of her, began to know which way the path was turning, and to sense the spaces and densities around her. She was aware of the solid wall almost as if she could see it, aware of the thrusting slabs above her, acutely aware now of the hollow chasm beside the path, as if some other sense than sight picked out the contours.

She had never had this sense before; surely this was Catswold sense, and it excited her. Accurately perceiving the inky spaces around her, she hurried on until she could see Vrech's light again. Moving ever upward, curiosity filled her, about the world above.

Mag said the upperworld was awash with falling water, burnt by the spinning fire of the sun, and scoured by tearing wind. Mag said love was deeper there, babies healthier, and that there was in the upperworld a power that had been lost in the Netherworld. She said they did not have magic, but that other power was as strong as magic. The old woman grew morose sometimes, longing for that world. Melissa had no idea why she had left it, or why she never returned.

The dropping chasm disappeared, the stream ran again beside the path, sending spray across it. She knelt and drank, wishing she had a waterskin to fill. She was painfully hungry, and she was cold again. She imagined the queen making this journey wearing a fur cape and warm boots and gloves, her servants carrying food and wine; a safe, cosseting entourage within which the queen would travel warm and cared for. As I would, she thought, if I were queen.

Well, to Hell with that. She would rather be herself, and free, than be like Siddonie.

She waited impatiently while Vrech stopped to eat. She could smell onions, and could hear him chewing. Her stomach growled. They seemed to have been in the tunnel forever.

After many more hours walking, as the tunnel rose it narrowed so tightly and the ceiling dropped so low she panicked. Walking crouched, her head bent, then creeping, she
held her fear in check, sweating, trembling. If she let her fear master her, there was no one to help. To beg help of Vrech would be to die in this tunnel.

But at last the constricted space eased, and the way rose more steeply. Twice more Vrech stopped to rest, and once to urinate. When she passed that place in the path she could smell his sour scent.

On and on up dark, winding ways. She sensed vast and dropping chasms, sensed jagged, tumbled boulders teetering across black space. Once she put her ear to the stone wall and heard beyond the stone the hushing roar of an under-earth sea. The tunnel grew so steep in places that steps were cut in the path. Hungry and afraid, she grew achingly tired. She went on heavily, wishing she were safe back in Mag's cottage. And then suddenly ahead Vrech stopped and spoke. The thunder of his voice, after the long silence, turned her cold.

But he wasn't speaking to her. He was reciting an opening spell. She heard stone scrape against stone and saw a stone wall swing in, then his light moved away beyond the wall, and the wall scraped closed, and she was alone in total darkness.

Tracing her hand along the rough wall, she felt adze marks where the earth and rock had been cut. She found the solid end of the tunnel and, to her right, a wall made of small stones set into mortar.

She repeated Vrech's spell.

The wall moved toward her, pressing in against her. She slipped around it ready to run back down the tunnel if Vrech was there. She stood looking into a storeroom, an earthen cave cluttered with a ladder, wheelbarrow, potting table, and garden tools. She was alone.

There was a door in the opposite wall. The streak of yellow-white light beneath it told her how bright this world must be. She moved to the door and pressed her ear to it. She could hear wind blowing; she could feel wind shake the door. And when she lifted the latch the door was pulled from her hands by the wind. Wind hit her, pummeling her. Sun
light exploded in her eyes. She stepped back, covering her eyes, pushing the door closed. Red spots swam across her vision.

When she opened the door again, she was ready for the light and the wind. Wind whipped her hair and dress against her. Light burned her. Squinting, she searched the brightness for Vrech.

She could make out nothing clearly. Masses of bright color swayed before her; tangled branches swung away to reveal blinding light, then swung back again. She was in a hillside garden. Down the hill stood three houses, their windows filled with the garden's bright, blowing reflections. When she turned she saw three more houses above, and above those rose the empty sky. She looked straight up at total emptiness and went dizzy, reeling. Clinging to the door she felt as if she would fall upward straight into that tilting and endless space.

And in the sky rode the sun.
Ra. Osiris.
Elven tales of the sun god filled her. She felt drawn by that powerful being. The sun made her feel weightless and giddy; she wanted to run through the garden leaping, wanted to bat crazily at blowing leaves. The wild abandon that filled her was beyond any human experience, made her long for claws to rake the trees, made her feel she must have a tail to lash.

And when, controlling her wildness, she turned to pull the door closed, she was facing cats, dozens of cats. She thought they were alive, then saw that they were carved from the wood of the door. They were familiar; she thought she had seen them before and she reached to touch their little oak faces.

Nine rows of cats, nine cats to a row. She didn't need to count, she remembered. She was a little girl again, wearing a short red dress, gazing up at the cats, waiting for them to speak, caught in an intense childhood game.

She stroked the dear cat faces and touched their little carved teeth, filled with raw longing for that lost time.

But the memory was connected to nothing. It hung in her mind suspended and alone.

She touched the heavy vine that framed the door, a vine
so old and thick that its cut branches, trimmed to clear the door, formed a deep, rough frame. How familiar the feel of the cut stubs, and of the young tendrils that had snaked out as if they would lash the door shut. How familiar the smell of crushed leaves where the vine had caught in the door's hinges.

Behind her the garden darkened suddenly, as if a huge beast had loomed over her. Alarmed, she spun around.

A gigantic shadow engulfed the flowers and small trees. When she looked above, she remembered Mag telling about clouds. The sun was hidden by clouds, like soft gray islands. And now, below the hill, the houses were absorbed by shadow. But as she looked she realized that the center house was familiar. Puzzled, intrigued, she started down the garden along a winding path. Ducking under small trees, skirting past tangles of flowers, she soon stood at the edge of the brick veranda that spanned the front of the house.

She remembered rolling a wheeled toy, bump bump, over that long expanse of brick. She remembered playing with dolls here.

She had been a child in this house. She had stood looking out at the garden. She could almost bring back the voices. In memory she could smell chocolate, and something lemony and sweet.

But again the memory was attached to nothing.

The front of the house was different. She did not remember all this glass, she had never seen so much glass; the whole front wall and door were glass. Its reflections of the blowing garden cast her own image back at her alarmingly.

She didn't want to look at her image, but she was drawn to look. She had never seen her full image. She put aside fear and studied her figure, and she liked what she saw. She was slim, long waisted. Her green dress looked darker in the glass. Her face was thin and pale against the blowing garden. She moved closer to look into her face and lost her image and could see into the room.

One big room ran the length of the house. Yet she remembered two rooms, with a little entry between them. In
the entry had stood a red lacquer table. This ceiling was different, too. It was higher. There were rafters now where they had not been before, and there was a glass window in the roof between the heavy beams. The house in her memory was changed, as a dream changes.

These walls were white, not flowered. And on them hung images. Paintings—they were paintings. Their bright colors exploded in the light-filled room, forming bright hills and trees and sky and the images of people. Paintings like the small image in Prince Wylles' chamber, only these were huge.

To her right was a little seating area, a soft-looking chair and a couch covered with lengths of silk and velvet in all shades of reds and pinks and orange. Down at the other end of the room were more paintings, leaning several deep against the walls. A sound made her turn.

On a lane beside the garden, cars were parked. She remembered cars, remembered the feel of movement, the smell inside a new car. A car had pulled up now and was parking, but when its door opened she stared.

Vrech was getting out. She fled for the bushes at the end of the terrace, shocked to see him so suddenly, and amazed to see a Netherworlder using an upperworld machine.

As she huddled beneath the bushes, Vrech crossed diagonally up the garden carrying a bundle, and let himself into the tool room that led to the Netherworld.

She assumed he was going back, and despite her fear of him she was unnerved at being left alone in this world. But then as she watched, he came out again wearing different clothes, and got back in the car. He had hardly driven away when she saw a man running toward the lane. As he crossed it, she moved deeper into the bushes. He came directly through the garden toward her. She didn't breathe. But he didn't glance toward the bushes; he crossed the terrace and went into the house. He was tall, dark haired, bronze skinned: he was the man from the Harpy's montage of visions. His bare legs looked strong and muscled, not like Efil's pale legs.

Soon he came out carrying a tray with two glasses, a tall
bottle, and a bowl. He was pouring himself a drink as another car pulled into the lane and parked. The driver headed for the terrace.

This man was short, dressed in a suit and tie. This pleased her, that she could remember upperworld clothes. So many memories flashed at her, but none with meaning. The tall man poured a second glass and the two went in the house. She moved so she could see inside.

They were looking at the paintings, standing together talking, moving along from one painting to the next; but as they progressed from one end of the room to the other they began to argue.

They came out again arguing, their voices cold with anger. The shorter man said, “This is why you kept putting me off, telling me to wait until I got back from London, then until you got back from Carmel, from Sonoma, to wait until after Christmas. Why the hell didn't you say something, Braden? I hate to sound stuffy, but under contract, you don't have the right to cancel the show.
I
like the work—it's not as great as the Coloma series, but it's good. You can't back out of a show, not so late.”