The Big Meow - Diana Dueyn

The Rift grew, or grew closer: it was hard to tell which. But it’s not frightening, Rhiow thought, bemused. Why isn’t this as upsetting as what we just saw? “But then,” Arhu said, “it skips. It says, ‘The old suns will be eaten. The dark and the light will merge and both be destroyed.’ And a little further on, ‘Call upon the Destroyer, do not forget Its name. It will betray – ‘”

He stopped. “Betray what?” Urruah said.

“I don’t know,” Arhu said. “Don’t you see it? I’m losing it. I can’t See – “

Rhiow shivered. For that short time they had all been able to feel with Arhu the equivocal meaning that trembled in the very structure of the stone. But now it was fading, the hidden message of the carving and draining away even while they watched, untl the piece of white jade was just a stone again, carved with strange signs, beautiful but mute.

“I don’t understand it,” Rhiow said, looking up at the tablets. “Why is the context so troublesome all of a sudden — ?”

It’s being interfered with, the Whisperer said.

Rhiow blinked. The thought of the kind of power that could interfere with the functioning of wizardry itself, the very basic use of the Speech to make the normally unintelligible intelligible– But this is the problem. We’re dealing with powers and forces from outside.

“It’s a good thing you did as much as you did without the Eye,” Urruah said. “If you’d used it to start with, we wouldn’t have anything like as much to work with as we have now.”

“Yeah,” Arhu said. But he sounded dispirited as he sat down again, and Rhiow knew what he was thinking without having to overhear it. This was the most important piece, the key to stopping what’s trying to happen — What can be done?? Rhiow said to the Whisperer.

Here and now, that voice said, nothing.

Rhiow held still and considered. Then perhaps we need to look elsewhere for answers than here or now.

The Whisperer paused… and Rhiow felt the other’s whiskers go forward.

“I think we need to do an end run,” she said. “And I’m not going to let myself get too desperate about the Devourer of Worlds until I have a talk with the Devourer of Darkness.”

The others stared at her.

Or Pastrami, said the large calm voice inside all their heads.

*

“Ith!” Arhu shouted, and sat up straight.

Rhiow’s tail waved in satisfaction and relief that Ith had been able to follow the proceedings after she had alerted him earlier. And the connection was surprisingly strong for one reaching so far uptime, and without a specific wizardry having been built to conduct it. “Cousin,” Rhiow said, “we have business in hand here, but it’s being hindered.”

I know, he said.

Hwaith’s ears twitched. “How?”

What my brother sees, I also see. They could all feel through the connection the scratching and rubbing together of saurian claws, Ith’s typical gesture when he was concerned about something. And today I see that I can be of help.

“Indeed you can,” Rhiow said. “Having seen what your brother was looking at – “

I will go to that place in our time and complete what has been begun. And I hear your concern, he said privately to Rhiow; indeed I share it. Forgive my brevity. I will go about this business now, and call you before you depart for your errand tonight.

“Ith,” Rhiow said, “you’re a star.”

She could feel that distant jaw drop in one of the gestures that felines and saurian shared. So it would seem, Ith said, and dropped out of the link.

Arhu came down out of the case and stood looking around him for a moment. “Rhi,” he said, “I’m sorry…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for!” she said. “You did brilliantly. Come on… let’s head out. We need to get back to the Silent Man’s and get some rest before this evening.”

“Though we might,” Hwaith said, “if you liked, stop and smell the roses…”

She chuckled, glanced at the others. “Please,” Urruah said. “I have to confess, the smog has been getting to me a little.”

They headed down the marble stairs and out through that high arched portico once more, wandering down the gravel walks and inhaling air strongly scented with something besides internal combustion. White roses, red ones, gold ones and pink ones, fat rosebushes and thin plants with showy single blossoms, heavy scents and sharp light ones, they were all there.

But there was all too little time to enjoy them. Rhiow was sitting by a white rosebush with huge lemony-smelling flowers when Ith spoke in her ear again: and the sound of alarm in his voice brought her up on her feet in a second. Rhiow, we have a problem.

What?

I have gone to the museum: to the very place I saw with the rest of you. And then to all other parts of it.

Oh, Ith, don’t tell me –

The tablets have not been here for many years. They’re gone…

The Big Meow: Chapter Ten

“Is there any trace – “ Rhiow said.

I can certainly feel their shadows here, Ith said. But after so much time, those are so faint as to be almost impossible to read. I can feel the tablets being wrapped and crated up, and then taken away. But to where…. Rhiow could feel his claws clicking together. Discovering that will take longer.

“This is all wrong,” Arhu muttered, sounding stricken. “Why can’t I See where they went?”

Rhiow licked her nose, intent on not letting her growing exasperation show. “Arhu, take a breath and try to let some of the tension go – “

“Why should I not be tense? We needed what was on that last tablet, it’s really important, I know it is!”

“You should try to stay calm because you’re not going to be able to See your own tail otherwise!” Rhiow said. “You should know by now that vision’s at its least effective when the seer is giving in to stress and trying to pressure the view into happening. Even visionaries with years and years of experience have trouble with — ”

“At this rate I’m not gonna have a chance to acquire years and years of experience,” Arhu hissed, “because we are all going to be dead real soon. In fact we’re going to die before any of us were even born, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that really frustrating!!”

My brother, Ith said, that estimation seems premature, since both of us still exist: and as I would not be here if not for you –

“Oh no you don’t,” Arhu said. “Don’t start with the big cheerful take on the time paradox stuff, because I understand it as well as you do, and the principle of temporal linearity means that – “

Among other things, Ith said, sounding a little dry now, it means I must now become very busy finding the tablets by other means. And from here on in I dare not dip into your timestream too often for the sake of giving you progress reports. Doing so might denature the local timestream enough to make it impossible to reach you when I do discover something useful. Or it might so alert our old enemy to our business that even more attention is brought to bear on you. And there seems to have been enough of that as it is…

“Ith,” Rhiow said, “your caution’s commendable. But we need something more concrete to work with within a few hours than the hints and riddles we’ve got so far. Otherwise we won’t have time to prepare a response by the time Dagenham’s group meets this evening–“

I hear you, Ith said. I will contact you as soon as I have something worth breaking silence for. Dai –

His end of the connection went silent.

Rhiow was unable to restrain herself from letting out a hiss of frustration. Arhu, meanwhile, had begun swearing under his breath again. “ – don’t care, I’m going to get back in there and stare at that thing for as long as it takes until I See what we came here for! And if sa’Rraah Herself shows up and tries to give me grief, She can just –”

Oh, Queen Iau, no more of this right now! Rhiow thought, and stood up to turn around and clout him until he saw a little sense. But to her great surprise Hwaith slipped past her and the increasingly concerned-looking Aufwi, moved gently over to Arhu’s side, whipped one forepaw up and hooked its foreclaw right into the soft middle of Arhu’s ear.

Arhu broke off, his mouth hanging open as he stared at Hwaith in shock, but he wisely didn’t move otherwise: that claw was well set in place to go deep if he so much as twitched. “Listen, young tom,” Hwaith said. “You have to watch what you ask for in circumstances like this. Right now I’m more than happy to answer you on sa’Rraah’s behalf and tell you that this claw right here is what she’s waiting to stick into every wizard who gets careless or foolish about how they work with others in the Art, especially when everyone’s under pressure. If your team leader is telling you to get a grip and be quiet, then that’s what you need to be doing.”

Arhu didn’t move a whisker even to narrow his eyes, as that would have meant moving his ears… an experiment he looked unwilling to try. All the same, when he spoke, his voice was just a whisker away from a yowl. “You think you know so much?” Arhu said. “You may think you’re a big deal gate tech in this day and age, but you’re not so hot that you didn’t have to come yelling to us uptime for help. And here or there, you are not the boss of me – “

“In the normal flow of events, actually I am,” Hwaith said, “since I’ve been a wizard a lot longer than you have, and the Powers expect you to defer to my judgment when there’s good reason, and to treat me with due respect. But since you’re not paying your team leader the respect she’s due either, then let’s move a tail’s width outside the normal management structure, shall we? Let’s see if you’re willing to move that pretty little not-yet-shredded ear of yours far enough to get loose and find out who’s really the boss of who.”

Arhu’s tail lashed furiously, but he didn’t move otherwise, and kept his mouth shut. “So then,” Hwaith said, and unhooked the claw –

Arhu lashed out at Hwaith fast with a forepaw. But this swept through air which Hwaith was simply no longer occupying, and from the formerly empty air behind Arhu both of Hwaith’s paws shot out and dealt him a one-two slap that left Arhu flat on the gravel of the garden path. He rolled and came right side up in a hurry, crouching down with his ears now well flattened back out of harm’s way, his tail wagging with fury like that of some demented houiff. Then he leapt at Hwaith, every claw bared. But once again Hwaith was no longer occupying the same volume of space when Arhu arrived there. The youngster sailed straight through it, coming down hard on the path, and when he tried to turn and spring again, once more Hwaith silently appeared behind Arhu, reared up and knocked him flat.

Arhu rolled and came up crouching again, panting a little now — but this time he didn’t move, just glared. Hwaith sat down in front of him, quite casually, and cocked his head a little, waiting to see what Arhu would do.

Rhiow blinked, astounded by the suddenness of what had just happened. Nonplussed, she glanced at Aufwi, who looked as bemused as she felt, and then over at Urruah. Far from intervening, he was presently smelling a large downhanging red rose on a nearby bush and acting as if his thoughts were entirely elsewhere. Is this some tom-style intervention you two cooked up? Rhiow said to him privately.

Not at all, Urruah said, taking a last breath of the rose’s fragrance. Kind of wish I’d thought of it. But we’ve been so busy with work here that disciplinary issues kind of got shoved to the back of my mind. Now, though –

He strolled over to where Arhu was crouching, and leaned down to peer at the ear by which Hwaith had briefly held Arhu still. Just a drop of blood marked the spot. “That could’ve been interesting,” he said to Hwaith.

Hwaith gave him a casual sidewise look. “No point in half measures,” he said. “If you’re thinking about pulling someone’s ear off, make sure you’re in the right place to pull it all off…”

Urruah merely flirted his tail in agreement. Seeing this, Arhu’s eyes went a bit less outraged and furious, a little more scared.

Urruah bent lower. “Just because you’re useful,” Urruah said, “don’t get the idea that you’re so indispensable that you can be rude to those of us who outweigh you – in seniority, or otherwise.” The way he was looming over Arhu, in a more massive manner than the slighter Hwaith could manage, suggested that the always-loaded issues of relative weight and size were now on Urruah’s mind… or at least that he wanted Arhu to think they were. “Because if you let your hormones start talking for you, believe me, we’re going to talk back.”

“And as for Hwaith having come to us for help,” Rhiow said, coming up beside Urruah, “you of all People have no business complaining about where errantry’s needs might lead a cousin in the Art! Or, for that matter, anyone’s ability to handle a problem with or without assistance from others. You had plenty from us, as I recall.”

The three of them stood looking down at Arhu for a few moments more. He kept still, but Rhiow could see that some of the tension was going out of him, if only to be displaced for the moment by embarrassment. Not entirely a bad alternative under the circumstances, Rhiow thought.

“All right,” she said at last. “For the time being, it might be smart if you busied yourself with something concrete while we start setting up our plans for this evening. Go on back to the Silent Man’s, tell Sif to take a break, and go over the structure she’s setting up for us. I’ll want a report on its strengths and weaknesses from you when we get back.”

Arhu stood up as they all backed off to give him transport space. “It’s just makework…” he said under his breath.

All three of them just looked at Arhu and didn’t say a word.

Arhu looked away, the ear Hwaith had put a claw into twitching a couple of times, and he vanished.

Rhiow and Hwaith and Urruah all looked at each other, and then practically in unison sat down to wash — as Aufwi was already doing off to one side, in the polite not-noticing mode of a Person not closely involved in a disagreement. All their whiskers were well forward in amusement, though– not just at Arhu’s discomfiture, but their own.

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said as she licked one paw, “…thank you for saving me the trouble.”

“Not a problem,” he said, scrubbing one of his ears vigorously: the same one in which he’d hooked Arhu, she noticed.

“I feel for our two kits, though,” Rhiow said. “They’ve been caught up in such serious events since we all came together… yet they’ve always produced the result. Which makes me wonder if we’ve come to depend on them too much while they’re still so young.” She glanced at Urruah.

He merely flicked his ears back and forth in a don’t-know gesture and kept on washing his face.

“In any case, it can’t be easy having the Eye so young,” Hwaith said. “Not that the Ear’s exactly a nap on a sunny rock either…”

“But what you said before…” Rhiow paused in mid-face scrub. “Is it hormones? Or just stress?”

“Stress has a hormone,” Urruah said as he finished his wash. “But Rhi, it occurs to me that there may be entirely different hormonal business on Arhu’s mind.” He exchanged a glance with Hwaith.