"It's big," Arhu said, almost in a whisper.
Rhiow wondered if what he was really thinking about was size. "And old," she said, "and strange. These ehhif used to keep their dead in containers like this; it was to keep their bodies safe."
"Safe how?"
"I know," Rhiow said, "after a body dies, the further processes of death tend not to have any trouble finding it. But these ehhif did their best to give it difficulty. I'm afraid it was from something we told them, or rather our ancestors did. About our lives—"
They walked along a little. "You get nine," Arhu said, looking around at the everyday things in the glass cases: a glass cup here, rainbowed with age and exposure; a shoe there, the linen upper and leather sole still intact; a little farther on, a crockery pot shaped like a chicken, intended to magically produce more chicken in the afterlife.
"We do," Rhiow said, "but it seems that ehhif don't. Or if they do, there's no way to tell because they don't remember anything from the last life, as we do— none of the useful memories or the highlights, the People you knew or loved… anyway, ehhif don't think they come back. But when People back then told them how we did, and told them about the Living Ones, the ehhif got confused, and they thought we meant that they were going to do something similar…."
They caught up with Saash and Urruah, who were standing in front of a massive granite sphinx. "What's a 'Living One'?" Arhu said. "Is that another kind of god?"
Rhiow smiled slightly. Should an uninstructed young wizard see such a being going about its business, he could be forgiven for mistaking it for a god. "Not quite so elevated," Urruah said. "But close."
"After your ninth life," Saash said, "well, no one's really sure what happens… but there's a story. That, if in nine lives you've done more good than evil, then you get a tenth."
"With a mind that won't get tired," Urruah said, "and a body that won't wear out, too fast and tough for even Death to claw at… so you can go on to hunting your great desire, right past the boundaries of physical reality, they say, past world's end and in toward the heart of things…."
"If you ever see a Living One, you'll know it," Rhiow said. "They pass through, sometimes, on Iau's business…."
"Have you ever seen one?" Arhu said, skeptical again.
"As it happens, yes."
"What did it look like?"
Rhiow threw an amused glance at the sphinx. "Not like that," she said, remembering the glimpse she had once caught, very early in the morning, of a feline shape walking casually by the East River in the upper Seventies. To the superficial glance, ehhif 's or People's, it would have appeared to be just another cat, a dowdy tabby. But the second glance showed how insubstantial, almost paltry, mere concretely physical things looked when seen with it, at the same time. Shortly thereafter the cat shape had paused, then jumped down onto the East River, and walked off across it, with a slightly distracted air, straight along the glittering path laid along the water by the rising sun and out of sight.
"Well, I sure hope not," Arhu said, somewhat scornfully. "Half the stuff in here is just lion-bodies with ehhif-heads on them."
"The ehhif did that because they were trying to say that they knew these beings the People were describing to them were intelligent… but essentially feline in nature. Ehhif can't help being anthropomorphic— as far as they're concerned, they're the only intelligent species on the planet."
"Oh please!" Arhu said, laughing.
"Yes, well, it does have its humorous aspects…" Saash said. "We enjoy them the best we can. Meanwhile, here's their picture of someone who is one of our Gods."
They walked on a little to where a long papyrus was spread out upright in a case against the wall. "It all starts with her," Saash said, first indicating the nearest statue. In more of the polished black basalt, a regal figure stood: ehhif-bodied, with the nobly sculpted head of one of the People— a long straight nose, wide, slightly slanted eyes, large graceful ears set very straight and alert. Various other carvings here wore one kind or another of the odd Egyptian headwear, but this figure, looking thoughtfully ahead of her, was crowned with the Sun: and on her breast, the single, open Eye.
"Iau," Urruah said. "The Queen, the Creatress and Dam. '… In the first evening of the worlds, Iau Hauhai'h walked in the Silences, hearing and seeing, so that what She heard became real, and what She saw was so. She was the Fire at the Heart; and of that Fire She grew quick, and from it She kittened. Those children were four, and grew swiftly to stand with their queen.' "
"It's the oldest song our people know," Saash said to Arhu. "Any of us can hear it: the Whisperer taught it to us first, and the wizards who heard it taught it to everybody else. And everybody else taught it to the ehhif… though they got mixed up about some of the details—"
"You're good at this, Saash," Rhiow said, "you do the honors…. I need to check those palimpsests that Ehef mentioned. Or Herself, rather." Rhiow glanced over at a third statue, farther down the hall.
"You go ahead," Saash said. Rhiow strolled off toward the papyrus cases in the back of the hall as the others went on to pause before another statue, nearly nine feet tall, standing by itself. Rhiow glanced at her in passing, too: she was not easy to go by without taking some kind of notice. Lioness-headed, holding the lightning in her hands, this tall straight figure was crowned again with the Sun, but a horned Sun that looked somehow more aggressive and dangerous; and the Eye she wore glared. Her face was not as kindly as the Queen's. The lips were wrinkled, fierce; teeth showed. But the eyes were relentlessly intelligent: this Power's rages would not be blind ones.
" 'Aaurh the Mighty,' " Saash said, " 'the Destroyer by Flame, who came first, burning like a star, and armed with the First Fire. She was Her Dam's messenger and warrior, and went where she was sent swift as light, making and ending as Iau taught her…."
Rhiow went back to the glass cases ranked against the wall, jumped up on the first one she came to, and started walking along the line of them. She visited here as often as she could, liking the reminder of the People/ehhif joint heritage, of this time when they had been a little closer, before their languages became so widely parted. As a result of all the visiting, there was little of this material with which Rhiow was not familiar, but every now and then something new came out of storage and was put out for public view.
The palimpsests were such material. They were not true palimpsests— recycled parchment used for writing, the old writing having been scraped off with knives— but an equivalent. Paper made from the papyrus reed was mounted on long linen rolls to make books, and the paper scraped clean of the old soot-based inks when the book was wanted for something else.
Rhiow peered down at the first palimpsest she found in the case she was standing on, turning her head from side to side to get the best angle on it. The ehhif of that period had had two different ways of writing: the hieratic writing, all pictograms, and the demotic, a graceful curled and swirled language, as often written vertically as horizontally, which shared some structural attributes with the present written form of the Speech. True to their names, these palimpsests had no visible writing left and were here mostly as examples of how papyrus was recycled (so Rhiow read from the museum's explanatory notes inside the case). But for one of the People, and a wizard, used to seeing the invisible, such paperwork was more revealing. Rhiow squinted a little at the first palimpsest, doing her best to make out the dim remnants of the characters there. Of barley, eight measures, she read, and of water, twenty measures, and of the day's bread-make, a lump of a fist's size: let all be set in the sun for nine days, and when the mixture smelleth fair and the life in it hath quietened, let all be strained and poured into larger vessels so that twenty measures more of water may be added—
Rhiow snickered. A beer recipe… The ehhif of that time liked their beer, having invented it, and were constantly leaving jars of it out for the gods. That it always vanished afterward struck the ehhif of that time as proof of deity's existence; it was evidence of their y
outh and innocence as a species that they rarely noticed how drunk the neighbors were the next morning.
Rhiow glanced up, looked over her shoulder at the others. They were in front of yet another statue, in a light gray stone this time. This figure was seated, with a roll of papyrus in her lap; again her head was that of one of the People, but wearing a more reflective look than that of Iau the Queen, and a much milder one than her sister. " 'Then came Hrau'f the Tamer,' " said Urruah, "who calmed the fires Aaurh set, and put things in order: the Lady of the Hearth, who burns low, and learns wisdom, and teaches it. In every still warm place she may be found, in every heart that seeks. She speaks the Silent Knowledge to the ears of those who can hear….' "
Rhiow twitched her tail meditatively and stepped along the top of the glass case to look at the next palimpsest, puzzling over the faintly visible characters. This one had been more thoroughly scraped off than the last, but she could still read the earlier writings. A long column of the demotic script ran down the side of the ordered page full of hieratic characters, stick-figures of birds and upheld hands and feathers and snakes, eyes and chairs and wiggly lines. At the top of the scripture, the hieratic writing was easier to read, though Rhiow still had to squint.— he performeth this by means of the mighty words of power that proceed from his mouth, and in this region of the Underworld he inflicteth with the knife wounds upon Aapep, whose place is in heaven—
An odd phrase. Rhiow knew that Aapep was one of the many ehhif names for the Lone Power in Its aspect of Old Serpent. She twitched her tail in bemusement, kept reading.— Ye are the tears of my Eye, and Iau in Her name of Mai-t the Great Queen-Cat and Sekhet the Lioness shall redeem the souls of men; She shall pour flame upon thy darkness, and the River of Flame down into thy depths; from the lake the depths of which are like fire shall the Five arise; atru-sheh-en-nesert-f-em-shet—
The rhythm changed abruptly, and Rhiow's tail lashed. It was the Speech, written crudely as ehhif had done in those days when trying to work the multiple compound feline vowels into their own orthography: two out of every three vowels were dropped out here. Part of a spell? she thought. Something jotted down by some human wizard of that time? For it was just a fragment: the circular structure familiar to wizards everywhere was absent.
Rhiow looked up for a moment, and saw Saash and Urruah eyeing each other with a slightly dubious expression, as if to say, And what about… the other one? Do we mention…?
Saash looked up at the next glass case close to them, instead. "And over here—" she started to say.
But Arhu was staring at the floor. Saash and Urruah glanced down at the spot he was staring at: Rhiow did, too, half-expecting to see a bug there. Arhu, though, said, very slowly, " '… Then after her came sa'Rráhh, the Unmastered Fire… burning both dark and bright, the Tearer, the Huntress; she who kills unmindfully, in rage, and without warning, and as unreasonably raises up again.' " He swallowed, his tongue going in and out, that nervous gesture again. His voice was dry and remote. " 'It is she who is strongest after Aaurh the firstborn, knowing no bounds in her power, yet desiring to find those bounds: the Dreadful, the Lady of stillbirths and the birth that kills the queen, but also of the Tenth Life: the Power who is called Lone, for she would hear no wisdom, and her Dam would not have her, driving her out in her wildness until she might learn better.' " Arhu gulped again, but his voice still kept that remote, narrative quality, as if someone else were speaking through him. " 'In every empty place and in all darknesses she may be found, seeking, and angry, for still she knows not what she seeks.' "
He looked up, openly scared now.
"Yes," Saash said. "Well, you plainly know now what the Whisperer's voice sounds like. If she goes out of her way to warn you about her sister…"
Rhiow flicked one ear forward and back. Well, madam, you're taking proper care of him. But what about me? What am I supposed to make of this? It makes no sense whatever— She moved a little farther down to look at the rest of the scraped-off papyrus.— semit-her-abt-uaa-s; mhetchet-nebt-Tuatiu ash-hrau khesef-haa-heseq—
Rhiow stopped, feeling something suddenly shift in the back of her mind. In the darkness there, light moved, reshaped itself, recognizing something that belonged to it.
The words were winged: they flew, fluttered in the darkness inside her, lodged among the other scrawls and curves of light. A moment's shifting, shuffling, as things resettled themselves. Then quiet again… but it was an unsettling sort of silence.
In that darkness in the back of her mind, though, there was no dramatic change: absolutely nothing was happening. Rhiow looked up, licking her nose uneasily. The others had moved on again. "Here's what the story's all about," Urruah said. "The first battle…"
They went to look at the glass case. Near the head of the long rolled-out papyrus was a picture of a huge Tree, under which stood a slightly disreputable looking tabby-tom, holding a great curved knife or sword in one hand, and using it to chop a large snake into ample chunks, the way someone in a hurry might cut up salami. The furious snake glared at the Cat, the impression being that simply being cut in pieces was not going to slow it down permanently.
Rhiow, her tail still lashing with bemusement, jumped down from the case and went to join them. "The Cat who stood under the Great Tree on the night the enemies of Iau, the agents of evil, were destroyed," said Saash.
"Urrua," Rhiow said. "He who Scars, the Lightning-Clawed—"
Arhu, who had been recovering a little, looked up at Urruah and started to grin. Urruah grimaced. "It was a pun," Urruah said, very annoyed. "My mother loved puns." For in Ailurin, adding the terminal aspirant to the Great Tom's name turned it into urruah, "flat-nose," a joke-name for someone who'd acquired so much scar tissue there that he could hardly breathe.
Rhiow smiled slightly, seeing Arhu getting ready to start teasing again. Saash said, "It says, 'There dropped from the Queen one last child, and he Burned dark and tore Her in his passing. And still His children tear Hers as He tore, when queen and tom come together.' " Urruah rolled his eyes slightly, as he tended to when this part of the full litany was recited. " 'Murderer of the young is He, sly Trickster, silent-roaming sire of all dangers that abide our people: but sudden Savior also, one-eyed Wanderer in the dark, midnight Lover, lone Singer, He Who Scars and is Scarred: Urrua, Whom the Queen bore last, the Afterthought, Her gift to Herself.' "
At the phrase "murderer of the young," Arhu looked suddenly at Urruah, who at least had the grace not to smile. When Rhiow finished, Arhu sat, looked down the hall and up again at the papyrus, and said, "So when was this big fight?"
"A couple million years ago," Saash said.
"The beginning of time," said Urruah.
"Now," said Rhiow.
Arhu looked from one to another of them, baffled. "Well," Rhiow said, "all three are true, really. This universe was barely cooling down from the fireball of its birth when the fight started. It's been refought many times since, though some battles stand out. And…" she sighed, looked down at Arhu, "we're going out to fight it again, this afternoon. And you're coming with us."
He stared at her…
…then leapt up and yowled with joy.
People all around the big room stared, didn't see anything, went back to looking at the exhibits. "This is great!" Arhu yelled. "We're going to have a fight! This is going to be terrific! When can we leave? Let's go now!"
More heads were turning all around. Rhiow looked at Urruah. Not even you, she said silently, could have been this excited about the prospect of going into a fight that could possibly get you killed.
I don't know, Urruah said, seriously seeming to consider it. Maybe I was.
Rhiow sighed again. "Let's get you out of here," she said to Arhu, "before security shows up." She glanced over Arhu's head at the others. "We need to confer and eliminate any duplicate spells you're carrying… and then we've got to get down to the Terminal. Our backup will be waiting."
They headed out. As they went, Rhiow threw one last
look over her shoulder at the statue of the Queen. What am I looking for? she asked herself a moment later. Poor rude rendering of another species' mystery that it was, done by creatures who couldn't ever quite get clear on the concept— But even so, sometimes it was consoling to have a concrete image to look at, however misleading one knew the concreteness to be, or the image of a regard that might actually fix on you.
The stone Queen, however, looked thoughtfully out into the dim blue space of the Egyptian Collection, apparently thinking her own thoughts. It was an expression that suggested to the viewer, What are you looking at Me for? Go work out your own salvation.
It was, of course, the only kind of look most People would accept from their Maker. But Rhiow, at this moment, found herself thinking:
Maybe I've been with ehhif too long….
She went after the other three.
Did you get what you came for? Saash said.
Rhiow shivered. I think a little bit more, she said.
Seven
The lunch rush was just beginning out in the streets, but there wasn't much the team could do about that except hug the building side of the sidewalk, all the way down, and try to keep from being trampled. It was a relief to get into Grand Central, where few people hugged the walls: the crush was in the middle, a river of legs and briefcases and shopping bags, flowing faster in the center of the stream than by the banks.
Rhiow and her team made their way down to Track 30. She was relieved, on passing the Italian deli, to find it so completely thronged with ehhif that not even the most reckless kitling could have gotten near it without doing violence to the crowd. Even so, Arhu threw a longing glance at it as they passed, then looked guiltily at Rhiow.