by Diane Duane
Yes. I know.
A long silence. Very sorry. But, Rhi, we do need you. T'hom has been asking for you.
I'll come, Rhiow said after a moment… though it seemed to take about an hour to force the words out. Give me a little time.
All right.
Saash's presence withdrew from her mind, carefully, almost on tiptoe. Rhiow wanted to spit. This is what you have ahead of you, she thought to herself. Days and months when your friends will treat you like an open wound… assuming you don't all die first.
Maybe dying would be better.
She winced at that thought too.
Rhiow got up, made herself stretch, made herself wash, even very briefly, then went over to the food bowl.
Iaehh had left her the tuna cat food that Hhuha had thought so highly of.
Rhiow turned and ran out her door.
* * *
They all met in Grand Central, upstairs at the coffee bar where Rhiow had watched Har'lh drink his cappucino, about a hundred years ago, it seemed. Tom was there, with several of his more Senior wizards, two young queens and a tom a little older than they; all of them had coffee so that the staff wouldn't bother them. All of them looked as if they had had far too much coffee over the past several hours. Rhiow and her team, sidled, sat up on the railing near them.
"The patches aren't taking," Tom was saying. "We've been able to hold them in place only by main force, by sheer weight of will, all night and all morning… and we cannot keep doing this. It's as if the nature of wizardry is being changed, from underneath."
"We had our first hint of this earlier in the week, didn't we?" Urruah said. "That timeslide that didn't take, out in the Pacific. That seemed weird enough. But now we're seeing the failure of something as simple and straightforward as a patch with congruent time. If it does fail… then we're going to have real trouble. This is going to become a New York where two or three thousand people were hurt or killed in the Sheep Meadow and Grand Central, and where Luciano Pavarotti has been eaten by a dinosaur!"
"We can't have that," Saash said, under her breath.
"Except it wasn't a dinosaur," said Arhu.
Everyone looked at him. "Oh, sure," Urruah said, hearing the uncertain tone in Arhu's voice. But Rhiow turned, the dullness broken for just that moment, and said, "No— let him explain. You were saying something about this yesterday. Something about all these big ones, these tyrannosaurs, being all the same one—"
"They are," Arhu insisted. "Their heads feel exactly the same inside. These big ones aren't the same as the saurians, who're all different. These big ones are all someone else… who doesn't mind getting killed. Getting killed doesn't take for him."
They all sat silent, thinking about that.
"Immune to death," Saash muttered. "A nice trick."
"It's going to be interesting to look into," Tom said, "but it's a symptom, not the main problem. Wizardry in this world is being changed. The change has to be at least arrested… preferably reversed. For anything that can change the nature of wizardry can also change various other basic natures… like science. That is not something the modern world would survive; and from our own planet, the change could spread… to other parts of the galaxy, to other galaxies, possibly even into other universes."
That was obviously not something that could be permitted… though to Rhiow, it all seemed faraway and somewhat unimportant, next to the pain inside her. "We will, then, be doing another reconnaissance," Rhiow said. "Much deeper, I would think. All the way down…"
Tom nodded. "We'll be assembling a force to come down after you. But we must know exactly what the danger is and equip ourselves properly… because the odds of being able to send a second expeditionary force down, should the first one fail, seem nonexistent. Once you get word back to us how to intervene successfully, we'll follow immediately."
"Very well," Rhiow said. "We'll advise you when we're ready."
She and her team left, Arhu bringing up the rear. Rhiow walked on up to the waiting room, which was quiet now: no ehhif walked among the bones, which stood as they had stood the day before, dry and seemingly dead.
Off in one corner, Rhiow sat down and looked at the skeletons. The others sat down with her, Arhu again a little off to one side, watching the older wizards.
"Now what?" Saash said.
"We wait till the gate's ready. Then we go down again. How are you about that?" Rhiow said.
A long silence. "Scared," Saash said simply. "You know why. But I don't see what else we can do. I'm with you."
Rhiow switched her tail "yes." " 'Ruah?"
"You know I'm ready to go where you lead."
She gave him the slightest smile. He might be unduly hormonal and odd in the head about ehhif singing, but Urruah could always be relied upon.
"Arhu—"
He looked up at her. "I don't know about this—" he said.
"You're too damn uncertain about most things," Urruah said. "Your particular talent, especially. I for one want you to start doing your share of the hunting in this pride— pushing this gift of yours a little more aggressively. If you'd been actively using it for what it's for— looking ahead to see what's going to affect us in our work— you might have seen what happened to Rhiow's ehhif, and she might have been able to stop it—"
"Oh, yeah?" Arhu was bristling. "You're not running this team. And what're you going to do if I don't roll right over and do what you say?"
Urruah leaned at him, reared up, shoulders high, beginning to fluff. "Some of this, maybe," he said, lifting a paw slowly, putting his ears down. "Come to think of it, maybe I should have done this a while ago—"
Arhu's growl answered his: they began to scale up together.
"Stop it!" Rhiow said. "Urruah, cut it out. You can't force vision." But her anger wasn't directed so much at him as at herself. It was embarrassing enough for Rhiow to hear Urruah say, out loud, something she had been thinking… another of those loathsome selfish thoughts that made her so furious with herself. The thought of begging Tom for a scrap of congruent time, just a little of what had been used to patch Grand Central and the Sheep Meadow, to keep a cab from turning a particular corner at a particular moment… The Powers will never notice…. She had actually caught herself thinking that. Leaving aside the thought that all patches were an iffy proposition at the moment— and what point was there in patching that bit of time, then having it come undone, so that Hhuha would have to die twice— thoughts like that were a poor kind of memorial for her ehhif, who had always had a short temper for other people's selfishness.
How long have I been a wizard now, and not learned? Use your gifts for things for yourself… and they'll shut down. They're not designed for it. But Rhiow did have one thing that was lawful for her to use… her anger. Lone One, sa'Rráhh, Tearer and Destroyer, Devastatrix— we are going to have words, you and I.
"He sees what he has to," Rhiow said. "That's the nature of his gift. He's already doing better at that than he has previously. He'll learn to see more completely as time goes on."
Arhu had been crouched down on the floor, ears flat, through all this. But now he looked up, and he was as angry at Rhiow, who thought she had been defending him, as at any of the others. "Why should I?" he growled. "I didn't ask for this gift, as you call it. And I hate it! It never shows me anything good! All I see is fighting in the past, and dying in the present, and in the future—" He licked his nose, shook his head hard. "This seeing doesn't do anything for me but hurt me, make me feel bad. If I ever run across one of these Powers That Be, I'm going to shove it down Their throats—"
He hunched himself up again.
"I'd give a meal on a hungry day to see that," Saash said mildly. "But right now we have other troubles." She sat up, sighed, and started scratching. "We're going to have to go down again, as soon as the other gate teams have finished work. I am going. Urruah is going. Rhiow—"
They looked at her. "I have to go," Rhiow said. "I don't feel like moving or speaking or doing
anything but crawling into a hole… but I've blown one life of nine on the spelling dispensation we're going to need: damned if I'm going to waste that. And I have a grudge against the Lone One. I intend to take it out on It any way I can. All of this is plainly sa'Rráhh's work… and I'm going to take a few bloody strips out of her hide, and pull out a few pawfuls of fur, before all this is over."
Saash, in particular, was staring at her, possibly unused to hearing such bitterness, such sheer hate. Rhiow didn't care; the emotion was a tool, and she would use it while it lasted. It was better than the dullness that kept threatening to descend.
Arhu was staring, too. Finally, he said, "I have to go do hiouh, excuse me…." He got up and hurried out.
Rhiow breathed down her nose, scornfully amused at his discomfiture. Urruah looked at her, and said, "Not your usual line, Rhi."
"But this hasn't exactly been a usual week, 'Ruah. We are being pushed into something… some big change. The Powers That Be are on our cases, directly. And it's all Arhu's fault."
"I'll buy that," Urruah said immediately. But he sounded less certain than usual and gave Rhiow an uneasy look.
"What kind of 'something,' Rhi?" Saash said.
"I don't know. But it's plain we are a weapon at the moment… and I can't get rid of the idea that Arhu is meant to be the claw in the paw that strikes. We're just his reinforcement, the bone to which the claw is attached: his bodyguards, as an ehhif would put it. I think he is going to be subjected to an Ordeal so extreme that he wouldn't be likely to survive it… and so important that he mustn't be allowed to fall. Which is why we're being sent along."
"Wonderful," Urruah said, looking slit-eyed at the door through which Arhu had left. "I just love being expendable."
"I don't think we are," Rhiow said slowly. "I think something severe is intended for us too. And the Lone Power is stepping up Its resistance." She looked over at Saash. "Better keep an eye on your ehhif," she said. "Though yours is probably safe: I don't think you two were as… emotionally attached… as, as Hhuha…"
She had to stop. Just the mention of her name brought the whole complex of scents and sensations that had been associated with her ehhif: the warmth, the silent purr…
The others watched Rhiow, silent, as she crouched there and did her best to master herself. It was hard. Finally she lifted her head again and said, "When will one of the gates be ready?"
"This evening. It'll be our friend beside Thirty."
"All right. Load yourselves up with every spell you think you can possibly use… I've bought us the right to overcarry." She licked her nose, swallowed. "Ffairh went right down into the Roots, once upon a time. Not all the way down: there wasn't need. But he knew at least part of the way and left me directions. At the time, I just thought he was being obsessional about cleaning his mind out before he died. Now I'm not so sure."
* * *
The time when they would have to leave for Downside was approaching. Rhiow had returned to the apartment, hoping to see Iaehh before she left, but he seemed not to have come back, and Rhiow could understand entirely why not. The emptiness of the place without Hhuha, the silence, must have been as unbearable for him as for her. But it was all Rhiow had left of her. She sat on the sofa, in Hhuha's spot, staring at the pile of papers she had left there, saying, "Maybe never again…"
The memory hurt. Nearly all memories hurt, for Rhiow had been with Hhuha since kittenhood, and not until she was offered wizardry, went on her Ordeal, and achieved the power to have more autonomy did she ever begin to contemplate a life without her ehhif. She had started to be very active then, in the way of young wizards everywhere: going out on errantry, sometimes even offplanet; meeting and socializing with other wizards; doing research on gating in general, and specifically on the spell that had come with her Ordeal.
Well, not precisely with it, as if in a package. But not too long before she had gone on the errand that made a wizard of her, there she had found it, like something left on the bottom of her brain, in rags and tatters: bits and pieces of a spell, half-assembled or badly assembled, like someone's leftovers. She had gone straight into the difficult part of her Ordeal then and had forgotten about this spell until much later: when she found she was fully confirmed in her power as a wizard, still alive after the challenges that had faced her, and not yet on assignment— left with a little time of her own to recover, and look at the world through new eyes. Little by little, she had started piecing the thing together, or trying to, anyway, the way Hhuha would piece together a quilt—
Rhiow flinched from her pain. But the simile was apt, and it was too late now to get rid of the image of Hhuha sitting on the couch, completely surrounded by little strange-shaped pieces of cloth with paper pinned to them: hunting among them for one in particular, turning it around and around to find the place where it properly fit, and then slowly stitching it in place, while Rhiow rolled among the fragments and cuttings and threw them in the air, scuffling and scrabbling among the papers and the fabric scraps. The work on the spell had been very like that, except for the scuffling part.
Most wizards learned to keep a workspace in their minds, a place where a piece of information or a spell could be left to gestate, to be worked on or added to slowly over time. Words in the Speech would lie scattered on the floor of her mind, glowing with attention or dim with disuse; long graceful graphic arabesques, hisses or spits of sound, fragments of thought or imagery. You would come and sit in the dimness sometimes, or stroll through the untidy farrago of scents and sensations, peering at a word shattered to syllables, poking them with your paw to see if they could be coaxed or coerced into some more functional shape: pick them up and carry them around, squint at them to see what they did when conjoined— how the joint shape fulfilled or foiled the separated ones, when a phrase suddenly became part of a sentence, or tried to declare its independence and secede from a paragraph or sequence already fitted together. The tattered spell had been in this kind of shape for ever so long, for Rhiow had no idea what it was trying to be. Part of the problem was that it kept falling into impossible shapes, configurations that seemed to lead nowhere, dead-end reasonings.
Its power requirements when she found it were strange— seeming to come to almost nothing: its power output estimates were weird, too, for they seemed to indicate the kind of result that you would expect from, say, a gate's catenary— big, dangerous power, likely to burst out without warning. Rhiow wondered if the spell had gotten its signs reversed somehow when she inherited it, for this indication went right against the rules for wizardry. Every spell had its price, and the bigger the spell, the higher the price: magic was as liable to the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of matter and energy as anything else. She could feel those laws, particularly the last one, in her bones at the moment: there was an empty place where her fifth life had been….
When a spell makes no sense, you normally leave it alone and come back to it later. This Rhiow had been doing for two years, idly, with no significant result; now as she looked again at the spell, lying there in its bits and pieces— though they were larger ones than two years ago— it still said nothing to her, except that you could get almost everything for almost nothing, just by saying that you wanted it. It was a spell for the kitten-minded, for those who would chase a reflected sunbeam across the floor and think they had caught it.
She sighed. I've done enough of that in my time, Rhiow thought. Here with my ehhif, I thought I'd caught the sunshine under my paw. Peace, and a happy, busy, exciting life: what could go wrong?…
Now I know.
Rhiow sighed again: she didn't seem able to stop. Slowly she wandered across the broad dark plain of her workspace, making her way to the place where Ffairh's instructions for the route down into the Mountain lay.
He had always been of a surprisingly visual turn of mind, even for one of the People, precise and careful: the diagram he had left her, of the twisting and turnings through the labyrinthine caverns, looked more like it had b
een designed using some ehhif's CAD/CAM program than anything else. Through it all stretched the paths of the catenaries that fed power to the world's gates: those lines of power were shadowy now, reflecting the nonfunctional status of the catenaries. All of the catenary structures branched out in the upper levels of the Mountain, each feeding one complex of gates. Farther down, in the great depths, they began to come together; and in the greatest depth, which Ffairh knew about but to which even he had never gone, all the "stems" of the catenaries fused together into one mighty trunk, the base of the "tree structure" rooted (as far as Rhiow could tell) in the deepest regions of the Earth's crust layer, and in a master gateway or portal to their energy source, whatever that was. White hole, Saash had said casually, or black hole, or quasar, or whatever…
Rhiow suspected that it was more than something so merely physical; or there might indeed be such a physical linkage, but coupled to energy sources of very different kinds, in other continua right outside the local sheaf of universes. That had been Ffairh's suspicion, anyway. Too far out for me, Rhiow had said when he'd told her about that; Ffairh had looked at her, slightly cockeyed as he often did, and had said, You never can tell.
She studied the map again. The way down to the root catenary, the trunk of the "tree," was a long sequence of more caverns like the ones they had traversed earlier. But Ffairh had mentioned that the caverns were densely populated with the saurians. That I believe, Rhiow thought, seeing again in mind the thousands of them pouring out into the upper track level of Grand Central, and then into the Sheep Meadow. He had not said much more about what he had found, except to report continued attacks by more and more of the creatures, who howled at him that they would have their revenge on him, and the "sun-world," and anything that dared to come down to them from there: that someday they would come up into the sun themselves, and then all the creatures that lived in the sun, and squandered it, would pay…
He had come away, barely, and lived to tell the tale. At the time Rhiow had wondered whether Ffairh was exaggerating, just a little, to make sure that she didn't indulge herself in casual runs to the Downside for the pleasure of owning a big cat's body. Now, though, she knew much better….
