The Jargoon Pard (Witch World Series (High Hallack Cycle)) by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton [Norton, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Premier Digital Publishing
Published: 2012-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

Of the Snow Cat and What Chanced in the Haunted Ruin

My struggles were to no avail. Such writhing only drew about me more tightly the cords of the trap into which I had fallen. And, where the bonds crossed my hurts, they stung like living fire until I screamed aloud my pard's squall of pain and terror.

What held me so was part of a web. Fighting to think clearly, to overcome my witless fear by human senses, I could perceive a resemblance, in the now torn strings wrapping me around, to the small webs one finds in the early morning spread in lacy patterns, pearled with dew, in garden and field.

What kind of creature could weave this—a web large enough to hold securely a plunging, fighting pard? That was a chill thought as my struggles grew less, my Kethan mind gaining control.

No man of my own people had ever ventured far into the forest or the hills beyond. Our knowledge of the forbidden country was limited to a handful of second-hand impressions and stories. There were strange creatures aplenty to be seen or met therein, that most men were united in believing. And few of them were ready to welcome my kind—save as prey.

My fighting against the web had tethered me to a tall standing rock. This, I now saw in the light of day, bore deeply incised carvings, which were so old and timeworn that it was difficult to distinguish any real pattern from their curves and lines.

A second such pillar reared some feet away, and it was between the two that the web had been anchored. My struggles had ripped the lines into streamers that had caught about me and the pillar against which I now half hung. Very thin and fragile the threads looked, but I could testify as to their strength.

As I tried to keep control, ceasing my plunging, examining them as best I could, I sensed something else.

Just as I had known that the Star Tower held no evil within its protective barriers, in fact, could be a refuge of sort against the Shadow, here was that reversed. From the pillar beside me came an emanation of cold, of a deadly chill to turn a man's heart and mind into frozen ice. The evil in the chill encased me in a loathsome effluence, as if I now sank slowly into the slime of a pestilent bog.

At first the evil was disembodied, a cloud without form or person. But the more it lapped around me, the more aware I became that it was in some way almost tangible.

And that I would face that —thing—and soon.

Shudders I could not control shook my body now. In spite of my furred skin I was naked to the freezing force of whatever Dark Thing had so entrapped me. There was nothing I might do, save wait helplessly for it to come—to—

Movement!

I tried to screw my head farther around, to see more plainly what I had only glimpsed from the corner of one eye.

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