The Gate of the Cat (Witch World: Estcarp Series) by Andre Norton Page A

Greater Ones have seen fit to give us at our birth hour. There can be that locked within a man—or a woman—which such do not know that they bear and which comes forth at a time of stress unsummoned. Once awakened that can be trained as any weapon is mastered by one who wishes to wield it.” Now he smiled and pointed to the young man still a pace or so behind him. “Ask of Yonan what he found to be his portion.”
    But Yonan did not match that smile. Instead his face remained in somber lines as if he saw little that was lighthearted in his world.
    “Unasked for,” he said as Ethutur paused, “To so gain anything one walks a hard road. But—” he shrugged, “we come to you, Lady, to ask where walks that furred one who came with you through your gate.”
    “I don't know,” Kelsie was surprised at his change of subject and the young man must have read that in her expression for he added:
    “There is reason.” Yonan had been carrying one arm close to his chest, the bulk of a cloth wrapped loosely around it. Now he held it out to her and there sounded a thin mewling cry. The movement disturbed the wrapping of the cloth and she saw a small white furred head upheld, blind eyes fast shut, and a mouth open for another cry.
    “The gray ones,” Yonan's voice was harsh, “cornered a snow cat and had their pleasure with her and one cub. This one Tsali found and rescued. It will die if it cannot be fed.”
    “But it is so big,” Kelsie was already reaching out for the well-wrapped cub. “It must be as big as both of the kittens—and the wildcat—”
    “Swiftfoot,” he corrected her and she looked at him amazed.
    “Have you already named her then?”
    “She named herself to the Lady of Green Silences. All which run, fly or swim, and are not of the shadows, are friends to the Lady. But the cubling will die—”
    “No!” The weaving of that blindly seeking head, the small wail of hunger and loneliness brought Kelsie out of the preoccupation with herself and the anger of the witch to the here and now. “She took her kittens to a place of her own yesterday. I have not seen her save when she came to feed.”
    As he relinquished the weight of the cub into her arms she knew that she must indeed find her fellow wayfarer and see if Swiftfoot would accept a fosterling. Some cats did so readily as she well knew.
    Surely the wildcat had found a lair somewhere along the gashed cliffs which sheltered the Valley. Their many shallow caves and cracks would attract her—and it could not be too far from the living houses as the cat had easily come morning and evening for her own nourishment.
    Kelsie gathered the bundled creature to her and then looked to Yonan.
    “What is this?”
    “Snow cat,” he repeated shortly. “The mother must have been hunted well out of the mountains to come so far afield. The gray ones are roaming afar when they fasten on such prey.”
    The cub was nuzzling her fingers, sucking hungrily, halting now and then to whimper its need. Resolutely Kelsie turned her back on the gathering of houses and the tents of the people who were not Valley born and headed for the cliff side. As she went she began to call—not the “kitty-kitty” of her own time and place but with her mind. Before that moment she had not thought of trying to do that. It was easy enough to picture the wildcat and her kittens, to hold to that picture and keep on summoning, in a way she could not have put words to, that unsought companion in her adventure.
    She was aware that Yonan followed her, but some distance behind as if he feared in some way to confuse her searching. They scrambled over several falls of rock and past one stream which bored through the hills to find its path to the river. Then Kelsie stopped short.
    It was as if a new sense had been added to the five she had carried so far through life. This was not scent, sight, nor hearing, but it was touch of a different kind. As she concentrated upon it the wildcat came into