The Door in Crow Wood, Page 3

Chapter 2 Tsawb

  Back in the kitchen Simone sat down and collapsed over the table. Clay leaned on the sink counter, staring at his chafed wrists. They heard Snag issue a few orders before he followed them in. The Ulrig paused to look over the incomprehensible interior—the appliances, sink, lights—then dismissing them with a wave of his paw, addressed the teens.

  “Revered Sisskames, my soldiers are burying the Lady Razabera, and also the thing that killed her. Not that we care about it, but it is best not to leave anything that will arouse suspicion and perhaps lead humans to the Crow Door. However, the men’s bodies are too big for us to bury inconspicuously. I see you have one of the magic carriages here, such as we’ve seen on the roads. Couldn’t we all ride to the Door in it? And these men corpses we could take with us and hide somewhere along the way.”

  Simone looked at Clay. “Raspberry said we should go with them. She said if we don’t more witches will come, and they’ll kill us and kill Mom.”

  “Yes, come,” Snag said. “It’s only a short distance from the other side of the Door to our Ulrig Caves in the Middle Range. Once there, no one can harm you. No enemy has ever conquered our caves.”

  “Where is the Door?” Clay asked.

  “It’s in a great cave just a few miles southward.”

  “Mullins cave?”

  “Yes, Mullins is the word written on sign boards all around. I can read the Latin letters. Now if you’ll show us how to open the back of your carriage, we can put the men corpses within.”

  “Couldn’t we just call the police?” Clay asked.

  “Police?” said Snag, questioning the unfamiliar word. “The government? No, no, they’d not believe you unless you took them through the Door itself, and that you musn’t do. Besides, who knows if your local authorities could really protect you from the witches? Magi have been known to pass invisibly through any defense. These tonight came visibly, but who knows about next time?”

  “But it’s our mother, you see,” Simone said. “She won’t be back till late. If there are more witches, and if we’re not here to at least warn her—”

  “They don’t want her, they want the Emperor Clay,” said the wolf-captain. “By coming to the Fold, you’ll draw them away from her. The Emperor’s enemies won’t think about the Queen Mother unless the Emperor himself were to die, and we Ulrigs pledge to prevent that.”

  Simone stood and looked at Clay. “We can’t let Mom die,” she said wispily and in English. “I’m packing a few things.”

  “I’ll get my lock picks,” he answered. “That gate at the cave has a padlock on it.”

  In a few minutes both teens had packed tote bags and stowed them in the old Dart. Snag’s squad had already brought the witches’ bodies to the back yard. Clay opened the trunk and spread a plastic sheet within, and the Ulrigs dumped in the bodies, adding the men’s swords, candles, cups, and a metal cage that had held the Fijat-killer.

  It was arranged that Simone and Clay sit in front while all four Ulrigs crowded into the back seat and crouched down. Simone turned the key, hoping that, if the oil pressure was as bad as the gauge said, the engine might still last for the few miles to the cave. As they pulled onto the highway, rain began. Clay pointed to the drops on the windshield.

  “This’ll wash away the bloodstains back there on the grass,” he said quietly to Simone.

  On a dark part of the road Snag had them stop. He and his soldiers dumped Ven and Icky with all their things and the plastic sheet into a ditch a little distance from the road. They drove on and in a few minutes parked before the tall chain length fence before the entrance to Mullins Cave. The highway behind them was deserted, and no house was in sight, but the area was uncomfortably well lit.

  Clay went straight for the gate’s padlock. He took off his belt and carefully removed one of the picks kept hidden in it. With an expression of perfect concentration he inserted the pick and began to feel around.

  “No, no, please, Your Eminence,” Snart said to him. “When we came through the Door we found ladders leaned against the fence. See, over here away from the light—ladders on both sides.”

  Clay followed them and saw the ladders. “You just found them like this?”

  “Yes, Emperor.”

  “But why would they—?”

  “The witches, Your Eminence,” said Snag. “Their scent is on the rungs. They came from the cave ahead of us Ulrigs, found the ladders in this enclosure, and used them to climb out. They were three, one of them a woman. She went out with the other two but hasn’t come back.”

  Clay looked to Simone.

  “Well, will she try to kill our mother?” Simone asked.

  “I think not, Princess Simone. As I’ve said, they want the Emperor. She was probably left to watch the Door, and if so, will be watching us now from some hiding place beyond these lights. After we’ve passed the Door, she’ll follow.”

  Simone hesitated. “We should have left Mom a note, to warn her.”

  “She wouldn’t have believed it, Sim,” Clay said. “You know how Mom is. Try to tell her about witches and Ulrigs and other worlds?”

  Simone laughed miserably. “You’re right. We’ll just have to go on and try to lure them away from her.”

  With some difficulty all six got inside the fence, leaving the ladders in place so the remaining witch might follow. Simone and Clay had both brought flashlights and now flicked them on as the Ulrigs led them within the cave. This was one of those great, tangled cave systems found in southern Indiana that have been adapted for tourists. They walked on elevated wooden ramps, occasionally descending a few stairs. The temperature dropped twenty-five degrees. The teens had never been in Mullins with so little light, and each formation lit by their puny flashlights stood out weird and almost threatening.

  Simone shivered in her t-shirt. “How far back is this Door?” she asked.

  “Not far, Sisskame,” replied Snag. “but we must leave this walkway soon. Here, now we smell the way; it’s here that we climbed up.” He sprang off to the rocky floor of the cave, and as the others followed, slowly led them over obstacles to the edge of the great cavern, a distance of no more than thirty yards. They gathered by a pit in the floor into which Snag directed Clay to shine his flashlight beam. Here was a small opening, easily overlooked. It might have been, and looked like, just another shallow niche like thousands of others in the cave.

  “This is the way to the Door, your Eminence.”

  Snag clambered down and struggled through this hole, and one by one the others did the same. Simone slid through with an Ulrig ahead of her and another—bearing her tote bag—behind. To her relief they only had to worm through for a few yards before the passage widened, and after ten more yards they could stand.

  The room in which they arrived was small, no bigger than the Gareth’s kitchen, the floor smooth for a cave passage, and the walls almost devoid of formations. Simone had little time to notice these things, however, for her attention was focused on the wall opposite their entrance point. This appeared perfectly flat and black, as flat and black as if someone had stretched a black sheet there. She trained her flashlight on it and found that it was unsolid. The beam extended a little way past it, as if penetrating dense smoke. Clay did the same with his light.

  “This is the Door,” Snag said. “Don’t be afraid. We came through safely from the other side.”

  Simone extended her hand tentatively and indeed found that her fingers passed into the sheet without harm. “It seems OK,” she said to Clay in English.

  “What’s it made of?” Clay asked Snag.

  “Nothing, Sisskame. Who knows?” Snag appeared agitated, but spoke ingratiatingly. “Very old. Formed, they say, by Ulrumman when the Fold was made. Naturally, such Doors have guards. We have already talked with the guard of this Door, when we came. He is friendly, but—he is not expecting you and the Princess. We will have some ex
plaining to do.”

  “Why are you only just now telling us about a guard?” Simone demanded. “This was supposed to be easy and safe. Who is this guard?”

  Snag hesitated. “His name is Tsawb.”

  “OK, so what is he? Is he an Ulrig or a Fijat or what?”

  “No, no, nothing like that, Sisskame. He is—”

  “What?”

  “The Great Turtle,” Snart supplied. “He is ancient, proud.”

  “Silence,” ordered Snag. “My lady, we will talk with him. We have talked with him before. Don’t be afraid. You see that he has not harmed us.”

  “Let’s go on,” said Clay, who was still studying the Door. “I want to figure this out.”

  Simone continued to argue but her heart was not in it, for she felt that go they must, whatever might happen, if her mother was to be protected. When Snag pointed out that Razabera had come through the Door, passing the guard Tsawb, she gave up. They all walked forward into the smoky interior of the Door.

  At once everything changed. The smoke, if that’s what it was, seemed to recede in every direction as a fog does when you walk in it. But so did the walls of Mullins Cave. Though they stood on some sort of solid ground, they no longer seemed to be in a cave. Neither were they outside under the sky, though Simone had a feeling of great space around her. She looked back but even with her flashlight could not see the cave room, back beyond the smoky veil. Already she was not sure quite what direction they had come from. Also she was even colder than before, uncomfortably so, to the point of trembling. The air was moist and weighted, and something smelled strange—and very strong. Worst of all, she could hear huge, slow breaths. Something enormous was breathing.

  “Is that Tsawb?” she asked. But before anyone could answer, a hulking figure began to appear in front of them, and without a word spoken, they all stopped moving at once. At first Simone thought this quite natural, but then she tried to move—backward—and found she could not. The will of the thing before them held her, held them all.

  It came closer. How it was that she could see it, she never knew, for the flashlights could not illumine something so huge even if they had been trained upon it, which they were not. Yet she did see the Great Turtle, Keeper of the Fold, his head the size of a room, his shell like a hill, his eyes great tanks of fluid. She felt the tremendous, oppressive weight of Tsawb’s will and ego.

  “Ulrig liar,” the Turtle thought toward Snag. “You promised to bring back the Fijata who broke through my Door, and the three human witches as well. Not only do you not bring them, but you are trying to pollute the Fold with humans from the Old World. Nothing must come from that world into ours. What you are trying to do is worse than escape from the Fold. It is betrayal of the Fold!”

  “No, Great Keeper,” said Snag with terror in his wolfish voice. “Nothing has escaped. We’ve succeeded in doing your will. The Fijata and two of the humans are dead.”

  “Two of the humans?” thought Tsawb. “Where is the third?”

  “A harmless girl,” Snag said, “beneath your notice, Great One.”

  “Nothing is beneath my notice!”

  “And she will return,” Snag hurried on. “She is one of the witches, determined to kill Lila’s heir who stands here. So she’ll have to follow him back to the Fold. And as for these two humans, they are indeed Lila’s heirs; this man is the lost Emperor. Isn’t it prophesied? They will heal the wounds of our world, surely you’ve heard?”

  “You sniveling rat!” Tsawb cried in thought. “Take them back. They’ll not pass here, and neither will you until you bring me the third human or kill her. Do you realize that, until the cursed Fijata Razabera came, no one had passed my Door in all the 4,451 years of my guardianship?”

  (“How did she get through?” Simone wondered. “Had Tsawb really said that Raspberry broke through?”)

  “Always,” Tsawb groaned, “always, my guardianship has been perfect. No one was ever to pass in either direction. So now you must go back and kill the third human. Then return to me, just you four Ulrigs, so my record will again be clean.”

  “But this is the Emperor,” Snart said in a sort of whine.

  “Go back!”

  “We could never find her, Great Tsawb. The Emperor’s land is vast and filled with people. She will come of herself, as I have said. Furthermore, we are sworn before our leaders to return with the true Lila-me. Perhaps we cannot go forward, but we will not go back.”

  Tsawb’s anger was like a storm blowing against them, felt in their souls. He raged inexpressibly until the storm subsided enough for him to speak.

  “Do you doubt that I could devour you once you have passed the Door into my temple? But no—that would be too quick an end to your sufferings. What I will do to you is—”

  He paused as if some thought had distracted his purpose. The silence lengthened while they stood paralyzed. Simone watched with anguished fascination the movements of Tsawb’s nostrils as he breathed. When at last he spoke, his thoughts were level, almost pleasant.

  “My anger is sometimes assuaged. You have broken the Ancient Law, but no doubt with good purpose. Why should I therefore seek revenge? I withdraw your punishment and give you permission to pass the Door.”

  At once the Gareths and the four Ulrigs were released from their paralysis and could move freely. Even their minds were clear and unoppressed. “Go straight forward to your goal,” thought Tsawb. Then he slowly withdrew himself backward into the smoke, until only his red eyes were visible, and then these too disappeared. The supernatural chill went with him. They looked at one another and dared to breathe.

  “What happened?” asked Snart. “Why did he change his mind?”

  Snag growled irritably. “Who knows? Let’s move quickly before he changes it again.”

  The other two Ulrigs (whom Simone had mentally named Cruel and Drool) picked up Clay and Simone’s tote bags from where the wolf soldiers had dropped them when Tsawb had mentally seized the group, and they all ventured forward through the smoke. Very soon they came to another unsolid, black wall.

  Snag was elated. “This is the way back to the Crow Wood near our mountains,” he announced.

  He plunged into the space beyond, and the others followed until all six stood in a cavern passage with the flat, black wall behind them. But this passage was different from the room they had left in Mullins Cave. It was narrower, full of stalactites, and wound its way forward an indeterminable distance.

  “Captain,” Snart said nervously. “This is not the room that we came in by at the Turtle’s temple.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Snag snapped. “It’s probably just a cave beneath it.”

  “But it doesn’t smell right,” Snart said.

  “Well, what do you propose we do? Go back? Do you want to face him again?”

  Snart was silent as Snag led them forward. Along the way they passed so many openings that to the teens it seemed like a maze, but Snag led them confidently for he was, as he said, following his nose to fresh air. At last they came to a tall and narrow cleft in a great, smooth sided stone, and from this opening came a flow of warm air that even Simone and Clay could both smell and feel. The cleft was about ten inches wide. Fortunately the Ulrigs were every bit as lean as the teenagers. One by one they squeezed through. Simone was next to last, with Snart behind her. Even as she came near the darkened outer world and looked up greedily at a few stars, she was surprised to hear Cruel and Drool making odd sounds—a cross between a whine and a snarl. When at last she pulled free from the great riven stone and stood by Clay, she saw that the two Ulrig soldiers were indeed behaving strangely. They were slinking around among great ruined blocks that littered a plain all around. Snag stood rigidly and simply stared.

  “Kreenro take me,” he muttered. “Siskiral that Turtle! Kreenro take us all to perdition!”

  “Stop swearing,” Simone
said, “and tell us what the matter is.”

  “What the matter is! My lady, do you see woods here? Do you see mountains?”

  She looked out at the level plain, all moonlit, unbroken by any tree, and remembered apprehensively that they were aiming for someplace called Crow Wood near the Middle Range.

  “No, Snag.”

  “Well, they aren’t here and Rum knows where they are. Garg! And Rum knows where we are!”

  By this time Snart had emerged from behind them. He began to howl in despair. Snag cuffed him.

  “Quiet! Who knows who or what might be lurking and listening? Tsawb sent us into this place by trickery, so wherever we are, you can be sure it’s dangerous. Oh, Rum strike me! That’s why the old Turtle changed his mind and let us through. He knew he’d be well rid of us. We could be ten thousand miles from the mountains, we could be—”

  “On another planet,” Clay suggested.

  Snag growled softly, his eyes wide. He had never in his life thought of such a thing.

  “Well, let’s turn off the flashlights,” said practical minded Simone. “They’ll only attract attention, and if we’re orbiting Alpha Centauri, we’ll need the batteries.”