Perhaps something in my expression silenced her. She still gazed at me and then turned away, and I did not look after her or speak. This was my own battle that I must face.
In the Dales I knew that I was distrusted—hated—for what I was. I had managed to set that behind me for a space, just as I had left Imgry and his camp. At that moment I still longed—in a part of me—to ride away, turn my back on the road and all that it stood for, even on these two who had learned a secret for living cruelly denied to me, a secret I was perhaps not even wishful to learn. That was the human part of me. What if I forgot the Kerovan who was? What would be my way now? Would it lie as straight as the road heading toward those distant heights—taking me out of the past?
And Joisan—but, no, Joisan was not to be left in the past, she was not to be forgotten. She was—I must admit it to myself now if I never did to any other—she was all that was real now in my world.
11
Joisan
I stood on stone and it was solid under me. I felt the cool of the breeze that tugged at the ragged, earth-smeared loops of my hair where the braids had come apart, I heard the nervous twittering and calls of the birds. All this I could believe in. But the rest—could one walk half in, half out of some spell? There had been enough behind me in the past hours that could lead me to believe that I might indeed no longer be able to think straight and clearly.
“Untaught—and no longer a cub. There is nothing but folly in such a one.” A new voice in my head, a contemptuous voice. “It was not so in the other days.”
Slowly I went to my knees that my eyes might be on a closer line with the bland gaze meeting mine. Beyond the cat, the bear yawned, its small eyes ignoring me. Surely—surely it had been the bear that thought-spoke that time!
These—these animals—I had no other way to name those who transferred speech directly into my mind—how . . . I fought down my fear. This was the Waste, I must always remember that and be warned. In a place where remnants of Power had been loosed for more generations than my people had built and lived in the Dales, how could I—dare I—marvel at anything that I might encounter here? Cats—a bear—who thought-spoke—these were no more extraordinary than the means by which I had been lifted out of an earth-walled prison into this outer world again.
“1—can—not speak—as—you—do . . .” I returned haltingly.
Now the smaller cat yawned with the same boredom the bear had shown. “Why state that which is so plainly true?”
That had come in direct answer to my speech! I had not fallen easy prey to hallucination, unless it was so strong a one, or a spell, that it carried this semblance of reason.
“Allow me time.” I did not wonder at my pleading with the cat; at that moment it seemed very natural. At least there was my old liking for its kind to make this easier. J still distrusted the bear. “I thought I knew a little of your people—but this—”
“Our people?” There was disdain in that. “You have never met with our people, witling.” The yellow eyes narrowed a little. “Our like does not live with yours—or has not for more years than it has taken these walls to loose their stones.”
I searched for an apology. It was plain that if this cat knew of those who roamed Dale keeps, it considered itself of a different breed altogether.
“Your pardon,” I said hurriedly. “I have seen some like unto you. They are of the Dales. But I do not know you, and if I have offended, then please understand it is done in ignorance.”
“Ignorance? If you are ignorant why then do you wear the key? That opens doors without, minds within.” Now the voice was impatient as well as condescending. My furred questioner plainly found me one she considered of inferior intelligence—I deduced that this was the female of the pair.
The gryphon! A key—Neevor had said so. My hand closed about the globe. It would seem that even these chance-met animals knew more than I about what I carried. I wondered if they could tell me, but, before I could search for the proper words, that other voice growled into my mind.
“It is time for eating, not talking. This one has no Power, is indeed a witling. Let it go away and stop troubling us. What it does with itself is no concern of ours.”
The bear had gotten up onto four feet, was swinging around toward the same wall gap through which I had earlier come. Now it lumbered toward it, never looking back, plainly divorcing itself from me and my concerns. Still neither of the cats seemed inclined to follow it.
I had found the words for my explanation, very glad that that red-brown body had disappeared. It was far easier for me to feel more comfortable—or as much at ease as my situation would allow—with the cats alone.
“I do not know the Powers of the Old Ones—perhaps the ones who once lived here . . .” I gestured about the courtyard. “This”—I held the globe out a fraction so that the sun shown full on the gryphon within—“was a gift from my lord. It has powers, that is true, but I am not one trained to use them. I do not even know what they may be. Please—can you tell me where is this place—and why—or how . . .” I floundered.
One part of me stood aside in pure wonder at what I did, that I sat on my heels and strove to talk to a cat. The rest of me urged that this was the only way for me to learn what might be of great importance to me—that I could no longer live by Dale ways or judge by Dale standards, but must accept all that came, no matter how impossible some of it might seem.
More than cats—yes. And I—was I less than any like me they might have once known? I suspected as much. I The smaller of the two—the female—still watched me with I that unwinking stare. She weighed me by some standards of her own and I suspected that I was so discovered to be sadly wanting.
“You say you do not know how to use the Key, yet you came here by the——” The concept, which followed words I did understand, was one to now leave me completely baffled. I had a faint impression of what might be wings beating the air, but that passed through my mind so swiftly I could not be sure I was I correct.
“I was trapped underground,” I explained, as I would to another person had I been welcomed into the ruins by one of my own kind. So I told my story—of the whirlpool in the earth, of the place of dark, of how I had beaten off the creatures and then found my escape by way of the gryphon, which, as I talked, I held cupped in my hand. To touch it so gave me strength, a feeling of reality, a link with the world I had always known.
I described the chamber of the low walls, and of how I had lain down in the middle of it, only to find myself transported here. While I talked the two cats watched me, nor did either of them use mind speech to comment upon, or to interrupt my tale.
“So I found myself out there.” I pointed to the gap through which the bear had gone—to that overgrown garden where I had discovered food and drink.
“It is true—you are as blind as a newborn kitten.” The female again. “You play with things beyond your knowing. All you do know is that you are hungry and that you want to find your way out—that you—”
“Kittens learn.” A milder mind-voice cut through this petulant recital of my lacks. “She will learn. Remember, it takes her kind much longer to grow from kitten to hunter—”
“Meanwhile she meddles foolishly with that which could bring notice—trouble for not only her, but for others. It has been very long since any one used the——” (again those words which had no meaning for me). “How can we be sure that the alarm of that has not belled, to awaken much it is better not to have any dealings with? Let her go and take her Key. That in itself is bait enough for many a Dark One. Such need only sense its presence with a least hint—and then—!”