The Mighty Cathron

There is a 'mythical' cat in my Lore Series, which the accompanying images remind me of. The other day I went through the various books to find references to the cathron - this is the result :)

The Kinfire Tree

There were birds both common and uncommon, colourful insects and reptiles, and furry creatures afraid of nothing; hares and rabbits, buck and rodents, minxes and other wild cats. The mighty cathron, indigenous to Valaris and believed to be extinct, roared on clear nights amid the mountains, although the great cat had not been seen for a thousand years.

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The Drowned Throne

Vannis shouted as an otherworldly creature approached him through the dust and smoke, wearing Torrullin’s face in its belly, roaring like a wild cathron.

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The Dragon Circle

Torrullin no longer stood still, but moved about Quilla’s chamber like a caged cathron, and as dangerous, his face pale, his eyes dark.

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The Kallanon Scales

The latter shattered him, for they began with images of his mother, shifting into pawing cathrons into wolverines into demonic creatures into snakes and rats, but none of it in the known sense.

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The Nemisin Star

Cat waited at the arch.

“Quilla has granted you a place here, and Skye and Lowen will join you,” Torrullin said.

“You’re protecting me.”

“It’s better this way, for now. Saska will be like a cathron back at the Keep and it’s not safe at Skye’s in Luan.”

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The Sleeper Sword

Margus prowled the battlements like a caged cathron, unable to rest.

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The Dreamer Stones

Torrullin looked at Samuel. “What did you see?”

“Four tall white pillars with a silver knocker in the shape of a cathron set in the ground before them and a black floor.”

“Gods. You saw different. I cannot recall it ever happening before. Primula!” The Elder, a woman, rose from alongside the tripod. “Two different readings. How do we proceed?”

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The Nowhere Sphere

A silver knocker protruded from the blackness ahead, otherworldly because it was set in the floor and not upon a door somewhere. It was in the shape of a cathron, Valaris’ mighty predator cat. A cat no one had seen, ever, and still legends abounded.

*

Tymall pointed at the cathron knocker. “A link to Valaris. My blood was conceived and grown on Valaris and thus the connection. The black floor, the connection to Valleur power. The crucible, the connection to Grinwallin, if only as a nod at something heard of. Rough rock, the connection to Avaelyn … not that I have seen it either.” His mouth twisted briefly before he went on. “The pillars connect to Akhavar.”

“Imagination draws on memory.”

“Exactly, and thus it is real. But not purely memory; tales also, as well as the past, our shared past.”

Tianoman stared down at the silver cathron. And looked up. “Why?”

*

“What did Samuel see?” Tymall asked.

“This. Four white pillars, black floor, silver cathron. Apparently silver was a common element, therefore my name. ‘The door that shines, shining being’.”

*

“Find the place where a silver cathron lurks in the black floor.”

*

Tianoman glanced at Tristan supporting Teighlar, and Elianas doing so for Sirlasin, and added, “I must tell you there is a place below that speaks of my scrying - Samuel’s images.” In a rush then, for Tymall closed in, “Four pillars, black floor, silver cathron …” He ceased speaking and stepped aside, his expression shuttering.

*

Sabian did as bid, this time spending long minutes carefully studying the whole. When he drew back, he said, “Black floor, white pillars, silver cathron knocker …”

“That’s from Tian’s Naming,” Caballa said.

*

“Gods, Torrullin, how silent can a man be and still be a man?” Teighlar whispered back, his heart bouncing in his ribcage.

A low laugh. “Are you calling me an animal?”

“Cathron, fucking sabre tooth.”

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The Master Mechanism

The man’s face was gouged and scratched as if a wild cathron had raked him repeatedly.

*

Soon hundreds and then thousands of documents and gifts arrived on Akhavar. He sent every artefact on to Avaelyn, and gradually the niches filled. Valaris too was represented, in the form of a cathron statue carved in onyx, with perfect garnets as its eyes. Torrullin murmured that he always saw the cathron in his imagination to have green eyes, not red, but was happy with the gift. The cathron indeed represented Valaris, a creature of myth, yet endemic to Valarian culture.

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Note: The Nowhere Sphere and The Master Mechanism is still to be published, coming this year ;)