The Catswold Portal

Helsa stared into the brilliance of the true amulet, clenching her lips, refusing to speak. Melissa prodded her hard with the tip of her sword. “Do you wear it to deceive the Catswold warriors?”

Reluctantly she nodded.

“Why do you deceive them?”

The choice of silence seemed no longer to remain to her. “I—I deceive them to defeat them. I—mean to defeat the Zzadarray armies.”

“Throw away the false stone, into the dirt.”

Helsa didn’t move. Melissa prodded her again, drawing a deep wound. The girl glared but did not cry out; now her eyes showed fear. Melissa prodded again, cutting down her arm, sickened at doing this and knowing she must. At last Helsa removed the false emerald and dropped it in the dust.

“Take off the robe.”

She removed the golden robe and lay it over her saddle, her eyes filled with ruined dreams. Melissa took up the robe with the tip of her sword, and pulled it on over her leathers as two Zzadarray soldiers took the reins of Helsa’s mount. The girl, nearly naked in her thin shift, seemed frail and vulnerable. Melissa touched the Amulet at her throat. “Tell the Catswold warriors your true mission. Tell them what they would have found if they had followed you.”

“Their death,” Helsa said tightly. “My mission was to lead them into Siddonie’s trap.”

“This was your real promise to Siddonie,” Melissa said,

“that you would bring the Catswold to her to die.”

“Yes.”

One of the five Zzadarray priests rode up close to Helsa, spurring his shaggy horse, his white robes open to reveal his fighting leathers. He faced Helsa angrily, showing no pity for her frailty and youth. “You are a Catswold woman. By what perversion would you destroy your own people?”

“By this perversion, priest,” Helsa said boldly. “I am to rule Zzadarray! I am to be Siddonie’s only heir. She has promised I will rule all the Netherworld after her death.” And suddenly Helsa turned, knocking Melissa’s sword aside, snatching up her reins and spurring her startled mount. Melissa caught the girl’s arm as the priest swung his blade. He struck Helsa from the saddle, cutting her throat in one blow.

Melissa stared down, shocked at the girl sprawled in the dust, and Helsa, as life bled from her, slowly changed to cat. Soon a thin, darkly mottled cat lay bleeding in the dust at the feet of the circling horses. Melissa turned away, shaken.

The priests of Zzadarray buried Helsa deep in the earth of a world she had never known. And Melissa saw, in the eyes of the upperworld Catswold who had come here with Helsa, the beginning of uncertainty.

She mounted Helsa’s horse and pulled the golden hood up to hide her hair. The horse was a tall, distinctly marked pinto that she suspected Siddonie had chosen so Helsa would be easy to see during battle. She turned to look at the Catswold troops gathered behind her, then led them out toward the tunnel that would bring them into Cressteane.

Earlier she had seen from the sky the lines of battle, the plains of Cressteane crowded with the armies of eight nations, their tents filling the dry plain some distance from the Hell Pit. And in the Hell Pit she had seen the leaping flames stirring wildly, licking up at the sky as if they would leap from the pit to run unchecked across the desert, consuming warriors and horses. She had seen deep down within the fires a darkness writhing, growing denser. She had watched a huge black beast take form among the flames, and watched it fight to leave the Hell Pit rearing, falling back to rear again. The Griffon had dived down close above the beast, looking, and she had felt its evil engulf her, more malevolent than any Hell Beast. She had never seen the beast before, but a deep race knowledge filled her, a memory that washed her with panic. This was the primal dark—this was the seed of evil. Nothing anywhere, in any world, could match its evil. This beast was

the core, the primal corruption. The black beast had lunged up reaching for the Griffon as if they were toys flung in the air.

Now she looked at her troops for a long moment, then looked up at the sky where the Griffon glided. And, filled with fear of war, and with terror of what waited in the pit, she pressed on quickly, leading her armies toward Cressteane.

Chapter 69

It was midnight, the battle was stilled by darkness. Siddonie made her way alone from her tent across the sleeping battlefield toward the red glow of the pit. Around her, exhausted soldiers slept. She could hear the occasional snort of a horse and the moans of the wounded. She approached the pit, lusting to touch the dark beast.

“Apep,” she said softly. “Eblis. Apollyon.” Powerfully she willed the dark beast to her. Willed it to invade the minds of her enemies. She stepped nearer the edge where flames licked and exploded, and suddenly she wanted to climb down the sheer sides and leap into the fires. She longed to embrace the black dragon.