He sent a thankful thought to Bast that the door hadn’t been shut tight. It was unlatched, and a bare sliver of a crack separated door from jamb. He tore out claws on both front paws convincing long-rusted hinges to give him an opening large enough to get his head through, ripped holes in his fur and bruised his shoulders wrestling the opening wide enough that he could squeeze the rest of his body through.
Beyond lay darkness deeper than any night, and he sent a ball of conjured light bouncing down the stairs. Leaving bloody paw prints in the accumulated dust, he followed it down, calling up another light at the landing and sending it farther down. It came to rest at the foot of the stairs and, when he joined it, showed him what he sought.
The chamber was as featureless and bare as he remembered, unbroken by window or door. So, too, the floor, except for a medallion of heavy iron in the center of the inwardly sloping floor, two cats’-length in diameter and pierced by small holes. He’d remembered the room as being bigger, but that couldn’t be helped. It was the best chance they had, and it would either serve or it wouldn’t.
Protesting joints and tired muscles carried him back the way he’d come, every step up and out increasing the volume of frightening sound. The flames around the building no longer crackled, they roared. Even with his mind shielded, he could feel the fire as a living thing, a monster bent on devouring everything.
Rounding the corner into the hallway that led to the nursery, a new fear seized him. He had expected a cacophony of yowls, hissing, growls, feline voices raised in fear, anger, and endless combinations of the two, loud enough to drown out the sound of the flames. What he heard was nothing at all.
The fear lasted until he turned into the nursery space and every head turned to face him. He hadn’t realized there were so many. More than a hundred, he estimated, and somehow Ambrose had managed to get them organized while Myrrrthin had been gone. At the center of each small group was a female, her litter at her feet. Around her sat females, bred and unbred, and toms of every age from adolescent to mature.
Ambrose sat above the throng, on a shelf against the back wall. Myrrrthin caught his eye and nodded.
“All right!” the warlord shouted. “You each know your duty. Take up your charge and follow Myrrrthin. Single file, stay calm, and we’ll get through this. Let’s move!”
Ambrose was putting a confident face on things, and Myrrrthin could do nothing less. He waited for the first group to get hold of its kittens, then gestured to the mother cat, Ambrose’s alpha female, to take her station immediately behind him. He moved off, tail proudly weaving in the air, leading the way toward sanctuary. Behind him, he could hear an ever-increasing number of soft pawfalls joining the parade, and the squealing protests of kittens being carried by those with no practice in the art.
So far, Myrrrthin thought to himself, so good.
Had he been alone as he made the turn into the long hallway, he would have frozen in his tracks. Solid sheets of flame, just outside the windows, lit the hallway in ways it had never been lit before, casting demonic shadows and assaulting the ears with a roar that was almost a scream. Looking up, he saw sparkling among the rafters that could mean nothing other than the roof was beginning to burn. Hoping that the train of felines behind him could manage, he quickened his pace.
Reaching the stairway door, he turned and began a steady, confident mantra. “Single file, all the way down to the bottom. Kittens and their mothers into the corners and as close to the walls as possible. Everyone else, drop your kittens with their mothers and then fill in the center. Cozy in tight, and we’ll get through this.” Again and again he repeated it, one eye on the line squeezing steadily through the opening, the other on the bits of burning debris that had begun falling from the ceiling. After what seemed like an eternity, the last cat in line, Ambrose, slithered through the door, a kitten in his mouth and another clinging to his back. With a last look up at the now fully engaged rafters, Myrrrthin followed him down.
Pausing on the landing, the old cat surveyed the scene below him. The floor of the room appeared carpeted in gently-undulating, multicolored fur, so tightly woven that nothing of its surface showed through. Cats who wouldn’t come within yards of each other without display of tooth and claw pressed tightly together without complaint, and toms who, in any other circumstance would take the opportunity to kill young ones not their own, stood over those same young ones, protecting them from being crushed by the greater press of bodies. Terror lay as thick as the bodies, palpable and close, but none of those below him gave it voice. Only the wide flash of eyes showed their fear.
Never in all his years had Myrrrthin seen the like, and he felt a moment of pride for his species.
That moment was cut short by a loud thudding crash above them that shook the room and sent dust raining down. Almost immediately, the temperature in the room began to rise to a near-painful level. Myrrrthin leaped to a spot two steps above the crowded floor and, without preamble or show, gesture or affectation, closed his eyes and began to chant.
From the firestorm above, he pulled great amounts of hot and mindless energy. He reached below and pulled more, the energy of life that danced cool and delicate. From the emotions that rose in waves, he latched onto some of each: fear, the trust they had in Ambrose to lead them through this, maternal concern and willingness to sacrifice for the little ones. From Ambrose he snagged a sense of duty and pride of position. And from himself, he pulled his own doubt, his fear that his grasp on power had faded with his youth, that he was nothing more than a buffoon, a pretender, that his skill, even with the need so great, would fail him. All of it he pulled together into a great, invisible mass, shaping it with mind and will, charging it with purpose and need. And then he flung it out into the air above.
One beat. Two. A third. And nothing happened.
The old cat screamed his frustration, a sound more at home in a cougar’s throat than his own. The wrenching, bloody sound reverberated against the hard walls and collided with the massed energies. They flared with the intensity of an explosion, then began dividing to the purposes he’d set. Some of them soaked into the ceiling, giving strength to heat-weakened concrete and iron. A part of them hardened into a protective dome just below the ceiling. The rest coalesced into a cool mist that coated the walls, soaked into fur, and quenched the heat in the air.
Suddenly weak, Myrrrthin swayed before melting across the step. He was drained and exhausted. He could feel his heart pounding painfully in his chest, breath rattling in his throat, every muscle burning from strain, every nerve electrified and screaming. When the agony began to fade, he was thankful. Then sight dimmed along with his hearing, and he decided that he must be dying, a thought that he discovered didn’t particularly surprise him. As the last sensation began to fade, he hoped that his would be the only death this day.
Myrrrthin rose to consciousness with the thought that Bast had a rather nasty sense of humor. Wet and cold was not how one expected to arrive in the Lands of the Dead, and yet he was definitely wet and decidedly chilly. And tired beyond telling. Which made the repeated calling of his name several degrees past annoying. He’d earned his After-life, and he bloody well intended to enjoy it.
Again his name was called, and this time he growled. “Go away, you twit, and stop bothering me. Can’t you see I’m dead?”
Laughter was the unexpected reply to his grousing, followed by a voice that sounded familiar. “You are many things, Myrrrthin Starfur,” it said, “but dead is not one of them. No one is!”