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

sight around the side of a large boulder, one of those on which ancient carvings had been so weathered that only traces of their pattern could be sighted. Kelsie took a step toward her and Swiftfoot's lips drew back in a warning snarl. Though the girl had carried both the cat and her kittens on their journey to the Valley, Swiftfoot was announcing that this had been only a temporary measure and she would allow no more such liberties. What had they said back beyond the Gate, that no one could tame a true wildcat? It would seem that such warnings were right.
    Kelsie went no farther. Instead she juggled the wrapped cub to one hip and braced herself against the ancient work to come to her knees at its foot. Then she settled the cloth on the ground before her and pulled away its folds so that the hungry and now continually wailing cub was wholly revealed.
    She carefully kept her thoughts to herself. Even if she could think Swiftfoot into coming to examine this newcomer she would not dare to try. She knew too little about this new force she had tapped to try to use it further.
    The cub continued to wail. Swiftfoot snarled and then her slitted eyes turned toward the youngling. Slowly, only an inch at a time as she might have advanced upon some prey, she came forward, belly low to the gravel, stopping now and again to eye Kelsie who held herself stiffly quiet, waiting.
    Perhaps the cub scented something of its near kin for now its head swung toward the cat, though its eyes could not see, and its wail reached a higher pitch. The cat sprang and Kelsie flung out one arm fearing that death rather than life for the cub was the result of her experiment.
    Swiftfoot crouched over the cub which was perhaps a fourth of her own size. Her tongue flicked forward and licked the blind head. Then she sought to grip the loose rolls of skin at its neck, to carry it as she might one of her own kittens. It was almost too great a task for her. The cub bumped along the ground, still wailing, as they disappeared from sight behind the rock. Kelsie turned and saw Yonan some distance from her watching intently.
    “She will accept it, I think,” the girl said. “But whether it can survive—that no one can promise.”
    For the first time she saw a shadow on his serious face—a shadow which might serve for a smile.
    “It will be well,” he seemed very sure. “This is a place of life, not death.”
    Kelsie thought of all she did not know about the Valley, about these people, of all which she must learn. Must learn? Again that thought thudded home. All Tregarth's talk of gates and how one passed by a single way through them, how much was true? Perhaps all the asking in the world would not tell her that. But what she could learn—that she would.
    “You are not of the Valley people,” she stated that as a fact not a question. There were truly two humanoid peoples within the Valley—to say nothing of those who were winged, pawed, hoofed, or scaled.
    “No,” he dropped down facing her, sitting cross-legged, the rumpled cloth in which he had carried the cub lying in a heap between them. “I am of Karston kin—also of the Sulcar—”
    He must have seen from her expression that neither word meant anything to her for he launched into more speech than she had heard since Simon Tregarth had ridden out a day earlier.
    “We are of the Old Blood—from the south—or my mother was. And when they drove us out because we were what we were we came into the mountain borderlands and took service against the Kolder and those who put our kinsmen to the death. Then when the witches turned the mountain—”
    “Turned the mountains!” Kelsie broke in. Maybe she could accept some things but the turning of mountains was not among them.
    “All those who ruled in Estcarp,” he continued, “they gathered their power so it was as if it were wielded by one alone, and that they threw against the earth itself, so that the mountains tumbled and arose anew, and no man could