“Gruu!” Her cry was loud. As she lifted herself, she gathered the cat’s head into her hands, stared into his half-closed eyes. I wondered if he had died, his life sucked out by whatever lure that thing had set for him. “Gruu!” She was smoothing the fur about his throat. Then her eyes wide, and with all the bemusement gone from them, she looked up at me.
“He is—no!” She added, her fingers dug deep into the fur at his throat. “He is not dead! You—” Still cradling the cat’s head against her breast she gazed at me again.
“You saw Gruu—what happened to him?”
That she had not seen the cat leap into that enticement should not have surprised me. I had already reckoned that the presence had set for each of us the most suitable temptation. Gruu had gone to another cat, doubtless a female of his own species. I had fronted that which had beckoned to me first for the body, as if my senses were like Gruu’s—and then touched on a more subtle line.
“He was drawn to that thing by sight of another cat, a female!”
“Dains—Dains was there!” The girl shook her head as if still she could not rid herself of that dream. “I had found the shrine—I was—” Then she stopped, though her hands still caressed the head of the cat. “You did not see her. You saw others—” Gathea looked at the flames now which sent waves of heat against my back, not at me.
“One who deals in false illusions.” She shivered as if her own fear chilled her enough to banish those flames. “And one of the Dark! But why—? And Gruu—” She looked down at the quiet head pressed against her.
“How did we get here?” she asked after a long moment, her voice steady now as if she had accepted what had happened as fact and then put it behind her, ready to face what might come.
I told her—of the cup and how the scent from it had banished all illusions for me, that I had prevented her going into the light and then we had been transported to this place. She listened. I believed she not only understood what I said, but was able to build upon it a little from her own strange knowledge.
“Three of us,” she said slowly. “It had to control three of us at the same time. That spell which its liegemen brought to us—yes, that could be held. For it was set to control our bodies together, and the wills of the three riders would help feed it. But when we fronted it alone, that control no longer worked. Poor Gruu, wise as he is he would have no understanding of a spell of illusion, therefore he was first trapped. And you—you were guarded in a way it did not suspect.”
“You did not see what it fashioned for me?” I asked as casually as I could. Why had she stood so silent and aloof while all that had been pictured for me? Or had her vision of Dains been produced at the same time as mine?
“I saw a shrine—a Moon Shrine—with the light full on the altar. I waited, for I knew that she would come—that that was the place I have searched for. No, I did not see what was made for you. Only, that spinner of vision could not hold two illusions steady, one for each of us. When you defeated its aims with your cup, then it wrought Dains—as I waited for her. It could not hold for the three of us at one time. Your cup power shook it, and you were freed, enough to free me—
“But,” she gave a sweeping glance which took in the flame wall, “where did it banish us when we would not yield?”
“Into some strong evil of its own,” I returned. “I do not know where anymore than I know how. If there is any way to win out of here we had better seek it before we are dried and cooked and so barred from all hunting entirely.”
Gathea laid her cheek against the cat’s head. “I no longer have the wand,” she said. “My learning is nothing here. Nor can we hope to reach the Light if we are deep in the realm of the Great Dark, for there is no passage between the worlds of the two. They meet at boundaries and there they struggle one with the other. Only I think that here we are well past that debatable land and no moon magic will come to my calling.”
I could not believe that she was resigned to whatever fate awaited her. I had learned, I was sure, that she would not give up, no matter how high the odds against us. That we had defeated in part something which seemed to have power far beyond my imagining at least heartened me.
Gathea was busy now, loosening the latching of her wallet. She brought out a packet of dried leaves. Sorting out seven of them she put them into her mouth and began chewing quickly and thoroughly.
“What—?” I began a question.
She shook her head and pointed to her mouth, signalling that she could not speak. Then her hand went once more to Gruu’s head and I realized that what she strove to do was for the sake of the cat.
15
Gathea took a pat of paste from her mouth, and pressing the cat’s eyelids down gently, she spread the mixture across the closed eyes. When she had finished she touched fingertips of both hands to Gruu’s skull between the ears. The girl appeared to take no note of the flame wall about us. The breath of that was, I believed, growing stronger. I strove to win some measure of sight through the play of the red tongues, but they seemed to stretch solidly.
Flame has been man’s tool for years uncounted, but it is also his bane. Now I felt that that space about us might at any moment narrow to consume us all. While Gathea sat supporting the head of the cat, her eyes also closed, using some inner power of her own to summon back whatever life essence our enemy of the tower had forced from its victim.
Gruu moved a paw, unsheathed claws. A mewing such as might issue from a bewildered kitten came from his mouth, which hung open to display his formidable fangs. Gathea caressed the fur behind his ears, rubbed along the line of his jaw.
“It is well. He is waking.”
“To what?” I retorted. “If he escaped this,” I waved toward the flame, “through illusion, why summon him back?”
My mouth was dry; I longed for a long pull at the water bottle hooked to my belt, except that I had no mind to waste the small store of liquid it contained. Sweat plastered my hair to my skull, ran in trickles within my clothing, making both linen and quilted jerkin cling tightly to my skin.
“Illusion,” Gathea repeated. She still soothed the cat. “It would seem that the weapon of this Power lies therein. And—”
She looked beyond me to the play of the flame wall. There was no need to put into words what thought had come into her mind.
“Perhaps that is an illusion,” I conceded. “Yet it is tight woven and I think we cannot break it—”
“As above, so below—” she said then, and the meaning of her words I did not understand.
“Illusion,” she continued, “means the drawing of thought from an enemy’s, or victim’s mind, building upon it. Then one summons from another plane the substance of that which is most feared—or desired—and the subject transposes it into life himself.”
“You mean, we feed this flame?”
“As long as we believe we see it, then our belief feeds it.” She nodded.
“And if you are not right, if we have indeed been dropped into a real place of fire?”
“Even reality can answer to Power. What can be summoned can also be dismissed. Have you not already proven that?”
I saw the trickle of sweat down her own cheek. Then Gruu’s head raised from her knee; the smears of dried herb paste cracked and fell away as his eyes opened; his gaze centered on her face. He made a sound between purr and growl.
Yes, I could accept the changes I had witnessed for myself as well-woven illusion—but this was something else again. For I was sure if I put out a hand those flames would sear my flesh to the bone.
My companion closed her eyes again and the great cat seemed content to stay where he was, as if he drowsed. In the red light I saw movement of her lips, though now no words were spoken aloud.