The Catswold Portal

“I’ll tell them,” the queen shouted suddenly. She stood up in the saddle looking out at her armies. Her face was flushed, her eyes blazed, and she was laughing, a cold, brittle cry of sound. “You fought to become my slaves!

“You fought to enslave the Netherworld. To enslave yourselves.” Again she laughed, harsh and challenging. Standing tall in the stirrups, laughing in the faces of the kings who had followed her and in the faces of her soldiers, she shouted, “That is my power over you! Total power! You fought to become slaves to me. You have killed your brothers for me and have thanked me for the privilege of killing them!”

Her laughter broke as she shouted a spell toward the pit. At the same moment Melissa saw the Griffon dive directly for the pit, and as Siddonie’s spell spilled across the battlefield, Melissa’s blade was knocked from her hand and the queen lunged at her, her knife flashing as she pulled Melissa into the blade.

Chapter 72

Pain shot through Melissa’s shoulder. She unsheathed her knife as the two horses lunged and spun. The queen struck her a glancing blow that nearly jolted her out of the saddle. But suddenly Siddonie hesitated, and Melissa was aware of silence around them. No soldier moved, all were staring beyond Siddonie.

Behind Siddonie the black dragon had risen up out of the pit, its coils humping above the flames. As the black beast towered against the stone sky it became a dozen serpents reaching and striking, then became one again. It lunged at them, its head scraping the sky, its eyes blazing with the Hell fires. Deep within its gaping mouth Melissa saw the Hell fires burning. Its roar rang with the tortured screams of the damned souls that were a part of it.

Melissa’s horse was shivering, his eyes were white-rimmed, his nostrils distended. Siddonie sat her horse smiling, waiting, licking her lips as the serpent slid swiftly toward them across the battlefield.

It lunged at them like a mountain unleashed. Horses wheeled away, foot soldiers fled. But a dozen mounted soldiers attacked the beast, their spears striking at it like pins hitting a mountain. It snatched them up and drooled their blood. Melissa spun her horse, charging beside her troops. She saw the Griffon appear out of the smoke of the Hell Pit.

He dove at the dragon but the beast flung him aside. The Catswold troops charged the beast, and only absently did Melissa realize she was wounded, or pay attention to the faintness that gripped her. She thought her dizziness was fear. But as she rode straight for the beast she heard Siddonie cry a changing spell.

The change hit her: she was suddenly cat, clinging to the saddle of the running horse, her knife gone, the black dragon coiled over her.

Her scream was a yowl. As she was lifted in the dragon’s flaming mouth, she saw that all the Catswold warriors had changed. Around her hundreds of cats were sucked up from the saddle, fighting, twisting, into the black maw of the dragon. His body was like dense smoke. Choking, she tried to change to human and could not. She tried to bring a spell against the dragon and was powerless. The beast’s shifting form revealed glints of stone sky that vanished again as around her cats screamed, falling against her. She thought she heard Braden shout her name and felt rage at the deception.

A louder shout made the beast pause. Now suddenly the suspended cats dropped twisting down as if scattered from a cloudburst. Cats dropped to the battlefield and fled, changing to human. She saw Siddonie near to her. The queen had gone dead white. She sat frozen in the saddle, staring off to the south.

The calico leaped to the back of a riderless horse and saw across the battlefield a group of riders approaching, running their scruffy ponies straight at the massed armies. She dug her claws into the saddle, unbelieving.

Fifty immense white banners, slung from poles, flapped above the running horses. Melissa heard from the massed armies a sigh of shock. Siddonie seemed unable to look away from the banners. Her hands trembled, and the reins dropped loose under her fingers as she faced their powerful magic.

Each banner was blazoned with Siddonie’s face. A huge, lifelike portrait. The queen’s face was repeated fifty times, and in the wind of the galloping horses the banners stirred and flapped and the faces seemed alive, twisting and grimacing.

The Affandar queen cringed in the saddle, diminished.

The serpent she had called from the pit grew thin in breadth and thinner in substance so the mountains showed plainly through its coils, and it began to blow like smoke back toward the pit.