The Catswold Portal

The torchlight guttered and hissed, sending shadows running down the castle walls as a band of armed rebels moved out of the woods carrying ladders. They tilted them against the thick stone walls, but as they climbed suddenly mounted soldiers swept out of the castle gates. They picked men off with quick arrows, toppled the ladders and skewered men with their blades.

The king’s soldiers were making quick work of the small band, when from the forest boiled a mass of dark, small beasts running. Cats! They were cats. Hundreds of cats stormed the attacking soldiers and leapt onto the backs of their horses, raking claws into soldiers’ faces then leaping up the wall, swarming over. Cats dropped into the palace courtyard and onto the backs of mounted soldiers. And suddenly the cats changed to human warriors whose eyes reflected light.

Melissa stared into the mirror as, within the courtyard, a king tried to rally his troops against the attacking cat-folk. He was a broad, dark-haired man, and there was something familiar about him. She watched him kneel beside two fallen soldiers, touching their bloody wounds. She saw him pull a third man from battle, a young man so like the king, he must surely be the king’s son. She watched the two of them snatch a child from the fighting, a little girl wielding a bloody lance though she could not have been more than nine. The king shoved her at the wounded prince, and pushed them toward a door. “Save yourself—save your sister.” Melissa saw a woman join them, heard her whisper, “Ithilel.” The prince grabbed her arm and dragged her with them as, behind them, the king turned to fight off their attackers. Then the king fell, with a sword in his chest. She saw the small daughter break free from her brother and run back to the king and try to lift him. She watched the three lift him and carry him through the battle, escaping down a dark passage.

In a cellar chamber son and daughter laid the dying king on the stone floor and knelt over him. The young woman moved apart from them, watching from the shadows. She had many-colored hair, all shades of gold. Beside the king, young Ithilel wept but the little girl’s eyes held no tears, her dark eyes blazed. The dying king half rose, touching her face; then he stared toward the woman in the shadows. “How did the Catswold know my plan?”

“She is my wife,” the prince said hotly.

The king coughed blood. “You are a fool, Ithilel. She has destroyed us, she has used you.”

“No! She…”

Melissa caught her breath, realizing suddenly that if this was young Prince Ithilel, if she was seeing the fall of Xendenton, then the little girl was Queen Siddonie. But who was the young woman?

The king fixed his eyes on Ithilel. “If you were a man you would kill the Catswold traitor. Your wife has betrayed us. Do you not realize she has destroyed us?” He coughed, spitting blood, then looked evenly at Ithilel.

“There is no choice, you must go from the Netherworld. Take your cursed wife—do not leave her here to do more damage.” He turned from Ithilel and reached to the child Siddonie, taking her hand.

“You are the strong one. You must keep yourself safe, my child, until you can win back Xendenton.”

Siddonie’s dark eyes were hard as glass. One thin hand remained clenched on her sword. “I will return.” She stared at her father, brazen with a queen’s challenge. “And when I return I will rule more than Xendenton.” There were tears on her face, but she smiled coldly. “One day I will rule the Netherworld. And,” she said, smiling, “I will build a formidable power in the upperworld as well—in memory of you, Father. And for my own amusement.

“And,” she said, “I will take revenge on the Catswold beasts. Revenge such as they have never dreamed.” She knelt before the king straight as a shaft, waiting without tears for his death. But the dying king clasped her to him, holding her rigid little body, his white face buried in her black hair.

The king of Xendenton breathed his last.

Melissa watched in the mirror as the prince crossed his father’s hands over his chest to protect him from the creatures of the Hell Pit that could come for the souls of the dead. He closed the king’s eyes with two gold griffons and then, rising, he took up a heavy bag of jewels from an iron chest by the door, and jerked his young wife out of the shadows.

Prince Ithilel sealed the wall behind them, making of the secret chamber the king’s burial tomb. They hurried along dark passages, the prince holding the young wife’s wrist. At last he opened the passage wall with words like spitting snakes and pulled his wife through the gaping hole and stepped aside for the child.