Kelsie waited. The birds broke off their circling to fly east. She and the cat were alone in the circle of pillars which had indeed proved a sanctuary.
The girl slipped to the ground, sitting cross-legged near her coat where the kittens now nursed—the cat having relaxed enough to allow them to her.
For the first time since she had awakened, Kelsie had a chance to think clearly, to look more slowly about her, to weigh one strange thing against its neighbor. She had been struggling with Neil McAdams in the long summer twilight of the Scottish highlands. But it was plain that where she now was bore no relation to that. She raised her fingertips to smooth the damp shirt she had tied over her head wound. It was all so real—
Slowly she pulled herself once more to her feet and began to make a complete circuit of the circle, looking outward for a point of reference which would assure her that she was still in the world she knew or at least recognized a little. She was not even of highland blood—even if she bore the name and had the heritage from Great-Aunt Ellen she had never been here before. She belonged back in Evart, Indiana, ready to start for the animal clinic, to dream her own private dream of somehow raising the money to get a veterinarian’s degree. That was the world of people and things she understood. This was not. She swung the stone-weighted belt and tried to arrange her thoughts in a logical pattern. One minute she had been struggling with Neil to keep him from shooting the already injured wildcat and then she had awakened here—
She wanted to run, to scream out her denial, to awaken from this nightmare. It went on and on and it was indeed so real. She could not remember ever having eaten and drunk in any dream before but the stains of the berries still were on her hands and she could taste their sweetness when she ran her tongue over her teeth. She looked to the cat who lay nursing the two kittens. The animal was believable. But the hound, the rider, and all that had happened since she had been besieged here—those were out of some fantasy.
None of the distant, mist veiled mountains looked familiar. Also who had raised the fallen pillars to make this fortress to what it must once have been, a circle of protection?
The cat arose, shook off her two clinging offspring and came to stand before Kelsie, regarding her straightly as somehow she had never seen an animal eye her before. It was as if an intelligence which was equal, or at least close, to her own looked out of those eyes and that some desire for communication moved the animal.
Kelsie knelt and held out one hand to the cat.
“Where are we, old girl?” she asked and then wished she had not, for her words sounded queerly here as if they had been picked up by one stone and echoed to the next and the next, coming back to her, not clearly, but in a hoarse whisper.
The cat extended a tongue tip and touched it to the girl’s thumb. And she knew a glow of triumph. So a wildcat could not be tamed—so much for all they had told her when she had spoken up for the animal last night. Last night? She shook her head and then wished that she had not, for the pain which flashed outward. She was suddenly tired. Better to lie down here on the moss and just rest a little. If she slept so much the better, she might then awaken in her own place and time.
Only there was to be no rest. The wildcat suddenly yowled and Kelsie wondered, even as she clapped her hands over both of her ears, if the animal had sensed the same dislocation as she did now. This was a different kind of pain than that which had driven her since her awaking here. It was like a cry for help so intense and demanding that the girl was on her feet, stumbling back through that gate to answer it.
Back through the gate but not to her own place. The land about her remained the same. Her shuffle became a run as she was drawn on. She was aware of the furry shape which followed in her shadow, also pulled perhaps by that demanding cry which she knew now, but could not understand how, rang within her head not outside through her ears.
Together cat and girl rounded a heap of moss-grown stones which might have been the remains of some very ancient ruin not treated as well by time as the pillars behind. Kelsie skidded down the dale, the belt swinging in her hand ready to use. What they came upon were the signs of tragedy. Three forms lay there, a soaking of blood curling from between their shoulders where upstanding feathered shafts proclaimed arrows. Arrows!
The girl’s start lenient at that was gone in an instant when she saw the fourth member of the small party. A woman, both her gray clothing, and her flesh beneath rent, and soaking flowing blood, lay half rested against a stone. Before her crouched either the black hound which had not too long ago menaced them, or else its twin. There were blood flecks in the foam about its jaws yet it did not spring as it was crouched to do. The woman held in a shaking, near falling hand, something from which swung a chain and was glistening with light. Yet for all her struggle she could not continue to hold that steady.
For the moment, forgetting her own horror of that beast, Kelsie stormed in swinging the belt. The stone heavy buckle thudded neatly home on the hound’s bony side. It sprang, not at the woman but back, giving tongue in a fearsome cry. Kelsie swung again and this time the very edge of the rock contacted with the side of one forepaw. Again that cry and now the beast turned and fled though it did not go out of sight but ran back and forth as if awaiting reinforcements.
Kelsie backed away, toward the woman.
“Sister—”
The word rang in her head and she dared, for a moment, to look away from the hound to the bleeding survivor of that stricken party. The woman’s hand had fallen across her body, but her eyes were still open and fixed on Kelsie with such appeal that the girl dropped down on one knee. As she did that the wildcat moved in closer, ducked its head so that the woman’s limp hand lay but a fraction away. To Kelsie’s amazement the mouth in that white, pain stricken face drew into the shadow of a smile.
“Sister—in—fur—also—” The words were in her mind.
Kelsie shot a look at the snarling hound, but that had not advanced again.
“I—the—last—gate—” the words formed for her with pause between. Though she did not loose her belt weapon she tried to reach to the body before her. That steady streaming of blood—she must do something. As if she had in her turn spoken aloud she saw the woman’s head turn the slightest from side to side.
“The—last—gate—” came the mind word which Kelsie had to accept sprang from that limp body. “The jewel—” it was as if the woman had a last spurt of strength, “do—not—let them take it!” With infinite effort she again raised her hand.
It was the cat who darted head forward through the loop of the dangling chain. Straightway the woman loosed her grip on what she held so that a sparkling ovid fell free to dangle against the cat’s brindle fur.
“We must get help—” Kelsie for a moment looked wildly around as if she could produce by will alone medical assistance which did not exist.
The smile had not faded.
“Sister—I—am Roylane—” There seemed to be some great significance in that. Then the lean body shuddered and the smile faded. “The—gate—” She who was wounded looked beyond Kelsie at something which the girl, quick to turn, could not see. Then the woman sighed and her head dropped upon one shoulder. Though Kelsie had seldom seen death of her own kind before—just once and that was long ago—she knew that this stranger who spoke without the need for words was gone.
She held the belt between her teeth and straightened out the slight body, shrinking in spite of herself from the blood on her hands. Then she looked at the other bodies. Though the hound paced back and forth before two of them, the third lay closer and one outthrust arm pointed straight toward her still clasping a sword. With one eye ever for the hound Kelsie crossed quickly and freed that weapon from the flaccid fingers, finding it so heavy compared to the fencing foils she had known that she nearly dropped it. But clumsy as she might be with it she took courage from the very heft of that blade—a weapon much better than her belt—and-stone defense.