Once more another flight of stairs urged me up and on. Laboriously I climbed. Here the way was shut against me at the top by a trapdoor. I steadied my back as best I could against the wall, put the sword between my teeth, and pushed up against it with all the strength I could summon.
It yielded, rising, to fall back against the floor above with a crash which was doubly startling in the silence. I followed as quickly as I could, sure that must rouse any who sheltered here.
“Welcome—bold hero!”
I strained my head up and back on those crooked shoulders, trying to see.
Dinzil—yes, Dinzil!
But not in any disfiguring toadman disguise. He was as tall, as strong, as fair of face, as when I saw him last in the Valley. But added to that a vitality, as if in him some fire burned high, not consuming the flesh which held it, but giving an energy and force such as human kind did not know. To look upon him dazzled my eyes, and the tears dripped fast down my distorted jaws, but still I held that gaze. For hate can be a force to strengthen one, and I knew that all the hate that I had tasted before in my life was nothing to the emotion now in me.
He stood with his hands on his hips, and he was laughing—silently, his amusement a lash of contempt and scorn.
“Kemoc of Tregarth, one of the Three—I bid you welcome. Though it would seem that you have lost something, and gained something—not for the rest of your spirit, nor to delight the eyes of those—if there now are any—who look upon you with kindliness. Would you see what those would see? Behold!”
He clicked hips lips and straightway there appeared before me a burnished surface on which was painfully clear what must be my reflection. But the shock was perhaps not what he had expected, since I had already known of my changed body. Perhaps my composure startled Dinzil a little, if he were still able to be touched by human emotions.
“They say,” he smiled again, “there are places where what a man sees is not his outer form, but the inner; the thing he himself has fashioned through the years by his ill desires, his hidden lusts, the evil he has thought on doing but not had the courage to act upon. Do you recognize your inner self now—when it is turned to outer—Kemoc Tregarth, renegade from over-mountain?”
I was past such needling.
Kaththea! I thought that not at him, but as I had before, sending it seeking. Here, what showed as that thought was no longer a bright green flying thing, but rather a bird sore hurt, fluttering, trying to reach a goal, but hindered from it.
I saw Dinzil turned his head, follow it. There was startlement in his eyes for an instant. He swept up his hand in a forbidding gesture and the thought-bird vanished. Now he looked to me again and he was no longer amused.
“It seems that I have underrated you, my misshapen hero. I will admit, I wondered how you could come this road without misstepping somewhere along the way. So you still have the power to find Kaththea, have you?” He appeared to think for a moment and then brought his hands together in a sharp clap, laughing once more.
“Very well. I have weaknesses; one of them is for heroes. Such constancy and devotion must be rewarded. Also, it will be amusing to see if your tie is strong enough to really show you Kaththea.”
He said a word, raised both hands over his head and plunged them down. There was a whirling about me, with nothing to cling to—
We stood in the round chamber. On the floor lay the trapdoor I had pushed back. It was as it had been, save that all which had been ghostly was now solid. The tapestries on the wall were woven in time-faded colors, but jewels and metallic threads gave them sparkling life. The chairs, a chest or two, were heavily carved and plainly old. Dinzil still fronted me and now he made mock reverence.
“Welcome, welcome. I would give you the guesting cup, my poor hero, but I fear what you would quaff from it in this place would be the death of you. And that is not my wish—not yet. But we tarry too long. You have not come a-guesting—have you?—but to see another.”
He turned his head a little from me and I followed his glance. There was a small table and on either side of it stood a sconce as tall as a man, in which candles burned, with a mirror between. Before that mirror, as if someone sat there, a comb with a jeweled back moved slowly up and down, in the motions of one smoothing long, loose locks of hair. But that was all, just the moving comb.
I shuffled toward the mirror and table. My thought went out in a sharp calclass="underline"
“Kaththea!”
Did she in truth sit there, unseen by me? Or was that moving comb but a trick Dinzil used for my torment?
In the glass I saw something. But it was my toad self pictured there, no reflection of the beauty which was my sister’s.
The comb fell to the floor. There came out of nothingness such a scream of terror as I have never heard. Dinzil threw out his arms, folded them about something invisible to me.
Yet all of this could be his trickery and no truth.
“Kaththea!” Once more I called, mind to mind.
“Evil!” That was no answer, but a feeling of loathing strong as any physical blow, and following it, words, some of which I knew. She was using a spell. Dinzil did not trick me; no one but Kaththea could do this.
“Evil indeed, my love.” Dinzil spoke as one soothing a child. “This thing would have you believe it is Kemoc come seeking you. Hush; waste not your wisdom which cannot harm a thing of this place.”
“Kaththea!” To the mind call I added two words. If she was not entirely lost to all she had been, then those would assure her that nothing of the Shadow stood here, but one of the light.
“Evil!” Again that blast against me. Stronger this time. But not buttressed with any word of power. “Send it hence, Dinzil!” that voice which was my sister’s cried out of empty air. “Send it hence! To look upon it chills my heart!”
“So be it, my love!” He loosed his hold on that invisible body and then raised his hands once more and spoke a word. We whirled, to come again into the room furnished in mist.
“She has chosen, has she not, my hero? Let me show you something.”
Once more he brought out of nothingness that mirror. But this time it did not reflect me, or the room. There was a thing—female—akin to the monstrous weeper. That is, part of it was. But on the twisted shoulders of that foul body sat my sister’s head; over those shoulders and sagging breasts flowed her hair. Her hands were not paws but white and human.
“This is Kaththea as she now is.”
My hate for him was a poison rising in my throat. He must have known, for his hand moved and I was planted to the floor as if roots sealed my paws to the stone.
“You see in me one who can vanquish the dangers of this place. I am Dinzil; I remain Dinzil. Slowly Kaththea is learning. When she is wholly as I am, then will she be wholly Kaththea here as well as in your own world—outwardly. She learns well and fast. All women shrink from the monstrous. I let her see a little of her present self—not telling her, of course, that she was the one upon whose form she looked, but letting her think that that is what might happen unless she speedily put to use the safeguards I could teach her. Since then she has been most biddable. No, you are more than I thought you, Kemoc Tregarth. I had believed that most of the power was your sister’s. However, one must not lightly toss aside any potential weapon without considering carefully the possibilities for future use. So—we shall put you in safe keeping until I can make a decision.”
Once more his signs and the warping. Then I was in a stone-walled cell, where only the yellowish aura given off by my body provided the light. The walls about me looked solid, with no break in them. I crouched down in the middle of that small, cold space and tried to think.