The Catswold Portal

I am Bast, I am beauty, I am all things sensuous. In Bubastis, in the temple of cats, my saffron fur was brushed by slaves, incense was burned to me and prayers raised to me, and kings fought for my favor. I strolled beside lotus ponds where virgins knelt at my silken paws or at my sandaled feet and served me delicacies in golden bowls.

I am Bast, child of moon’s caress. I am Sekhmet, born of fiery suns. I have confronted the Serpent whose name is Deception and I have destroyed him.

Though the serpent will rise anew. My daughters will confront him and their daughters will face him. So I bequeath to my heirs the Amulet that holds the power of truth. I tell my daughters this: only by truth can the Serpent be defeated. Only by falsehood can he survive.

She put down the paper, shivering.

To speak of Bast or Sekhmet in the Netherworld would be to invite imprisonment. Cats and the gods of cats, by edict of the queen, were forbidden—evil and unclean. Why had Mag hidden this? What did it mean?

After a long time she took up the third page, and these words were more comfortable, like the language of the Netherworld tales; though strangely this page, too, spoke of cats.

I tell you an old Irish saying that “There’s crocks of gold in all them forths, but there’s cats and things guarding them.” And the Danaan people were driven out of Irish lands into the burial mounds and secret recesses. And they went down through crypts and graves into the netherworld. And there were among them the Cat Kings and the queens of the Catswold.

She did not know the meaning of Catswold. Yet the word alarmed her. Fearing Mag would return, she put the papers back beneath the drawer and sealed them with a spell. She rose and stood at the window, searching the dropping cliff; though if Mag had started up, she could not be seen. She stood looking, then moved to the shelf and took down the old woman’s spell book.

Leafing through the yellowed pages, she found the spell she wanted. She committed it to memory in one reading, and returned the book to the shelf, casting a spell of dust across it so Mag wouldn’t know it had been moved. Then she pulled on her cloak, snatched up a waterskin, and went to saddle the pony. The Pit of Hell lay to the east, cutting across a dry Netherworld valley where she had never been. She imagined the pit’s flame-filled gorge bisecting the valley, its fires leaping high and searing the land on both sides. She imagined the Lamia she must call from the Hell Pit, the beast half-dragon, half-woman, a beast thirsty for human souls. She had no choice. These papers had to do with her past. The time had come to learn about her past, and only from a Hell Beast would she get answers.

Chapter 3

She pressed the pony fast along the high, grassy plateau, her heels dug hard to his sides; her long skirt whipped in the wind that sucked down from the granite sky. Fear of the Pit filled her. Her imagination toyed too vividly with the Hell Beasts and their hunger for human souls, and human flesh.

But with a powerful enough spell she would be safe. If she could call from the pit the Lamia and force it to answer three questions, she might learn who she was. She might learn why Mag had kept the past secret from her.

Soon they left the plateau and the pony made his way down a steep incline toward a dry, sandy valley. No blade grew here, no beast grazed. The brown expanse was surrounded by stone cliffs eaten with holes from the ancient seas. Above her the stone sky was eroded and scarred. She pushed the pony fast across the dry plain, and when at last they reached the far side, she pressed him up a new barrier of steep stone ledges.