There was a croaking from beyond. The hound took heart from that, throwing back its head to voice another of the direful howls. At that sound the cat took off in great bounds and was gone back to the safety of the stones. Kelsie hesitated by the body of the woman. But there was nothing she could do for her now and apparently the reinforcements the hound expected were on the way. So she followed, but partially backing so that the evil thing could not jump her, swinging the belt warningly, lifting the sword in her other hand.
It made no move to lengthen its stride as it ran back and forth, nor to come at her. Only it howled and that noise tore at her. Finally she broke and ran.
“The gate—” the dead woman had said. Had she and those others with her been heading for the only gate Kelsie knew, that of the circle beyond? It might have been their gate of safety but somehow she knew that the “last” gate was not made of coarse stones and stood waiting here. No, beyond that lay what no living thing might guess.
She saw that gem the cat now carried so awkwardly about its throat give off glints which might be the sparks of a real fire. Already the animal had joined its family on the coat. Kelsie put on a second burst of speed to join it. Throwing herself down on the sod, the sword falling out of her hold, and gasping for breath, she looked back the way she had come. So far no lean black hound, no rider on a skeleton mount appeared.
Only that this was a land haunted with peril she was firmly convinced. She took up the heavy sword for a second time and examined it. The blade tapered from hilt to point, but not with the thin grace of a rapier. The hilt was plain, with a stiff wire wound around and around it to secure the grip. There was no ornamentation on it at all. She got slowly to her feet and tried a thrust and parry, but this was not a point weapon, she decided, rather one meant to be used with the edge of the blade for the blow and of that kind of fighting she knew nothing at all. Fighting? What did she know of that?
For the second time she turned slowly as if she stood on a pivot surveying all which lay beyond the circle. Had the murdered party beyond that down slope been trying to reach this place when they had been overwhelmed? But—where was here? What had happened to her? Somehow she could no longer hold onto the tattered story she had been telling herself that this was all hallucination. The “last gate”—did “last” signify that there were other gates which the dying woman had known of? She was facing a gate now—two unworked slabs of stone standing well above her height with a third laid across them. That was a gate—yes, and the one on Ben Blair’s flank back there—had that been a gate, too?
Kelsie shivered. There were tales enough told in the Scottish mountains—of people who had gone away and then returned—seemingly having been gone by their own measurement of time for but a night or so, but really for years!
Tales—
She got to her feet and walked toward that gate. There was nothing beyond but stretches of mossed rock, stands of the white bell flowers and the rise of stones which was a screen between them and the dead. If she tried could she go through?
She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the tumble of stones she had seen for such a short time before she arrived here. They had been in the long summer twilight with the moon hardly giving any help. One had lain so—she remembered that, for the cat had leaped it even as she had struck up Neil’s shotgun. And there had been—she held to a badly faded mind picture and took two steps more. She opened her eyes.
Yes, she had ventured out of the shadow of the gate but she was still in the unknown. Behind her came a warning cry from the cat and she saw the snaky form of the lean hound among the rocks. Kelsie leaped backward into what she had come to consider the only safety in this place of many alarms and death.
The cat snarled. Somehow she had managed to get her neck out of the chain of the jewelry. Now she stood once more before her kits one paw planted flat upon that fiery stone. Kelsie waited alertly for the appearance of a rider, since the first hound had come so attended.
Instead there was a crawling man, striving on hands and knees to come toward her, wavering back and forth. Kelsie’s first thought was to run to his aid. But she expected the hound to turn and rend him as he passed and the beast made no such move. It was that which held her in her place.
“Ahhheeee—” surely that cry had come from the crawler. And it was followed by another. If he spoke words there were none that she knew. On impulse she went down on one knee by the cat and reached for the chain but now the cat snarled at her and struck out with its injured paw as if it would flay the skin from her fingers.
“Aaaaahaaaa—” there was no mistaking now that the wounded man crawling toward the circle had thrown back his head and was screaming.
The hound crossed over behind him and was apparently driving him toward the very shelter that he sought. Perhaps the creature had by this some way to force the barrier which had defeated its fellow accompanying the masked rider. If so Kelsie had no mind to see how it would work.
She strode toward the gate with some vague idea of defense in her mind. Thrusting the sword point into the center of a bed of moss so that it stood up close to her hand she stood dangling the once tried and to her more effective measure of the weighted belt.
Now the crawling man was mouthing sounds like frantic words—though they meant nothing to her. Once he crouched, leaning heavily on one arm as he held out his other hand beseechingly in her direction. And, she noted, the hound did nothing to harass him. The creature wanted him in and anything which would serve that one’s purpose was to be avoided.
Now he was lower to the ground, drawing himself painfully along by grasping the turf. Between his shoulders an arrow shaft nodded back and forth. Still the hound held off, even withdrew a pace or so.
There came a keening call, Kelsie ducked as a shadow swept over her, looking up at a large black bird, its wing sweep stretched near as far as she was tall. She ducked, thinking that it was seeking her. But it shot up as quickly as it had swooped. Not before she saw that its overlarge eyes were, like those of the rider’s mount, pits of swirling, greenish-yellow flame.
Once more it planed down at her. She swung the belt wildly and snatched for the waiting sword, but it stayed just beyond her reach. She heard above the whimpering noise which was now coming from the crawling man, the yowling of the cat, crouched above its helpless kittens.
Whether the purpose of the bird thing would ever have succeeded and driven her out of the circle Kelsie was never to know for there shot through the air a flash of blue light followed by the cracking sound of a whip.
Kelsie, her back now firmly against the rock which helped to support the gate on one side, looked toward that slope down which she had gone to hunt water.
There were two of them, riders. But not like the muffled black one who had tried to reach her before. Their mounts were not horses but shining coated red-cream beasts, each with a horn on its forehead. And the riders—Kelsie blinked and blinked again. Surely now her eyes were playing tricks on her.
When they had first burst into view certainly they had been dark of hair, almost dusky of skin, but now that they were in the full sunlight they showed hair as gilt as true gold and cream skin which their vividly green clothing made all the more fair. There were no reins in their hands, they might have been allowing their striking mounts to range freely.