On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service fw-2

by Diane Duane

  “We’ll work something out,” Arhu said, with a confidence that Rhiow definitely didn’t feel.

  He looked over at where Urruah was trying to bump the groggy Auhlae up into something like a sitting position. As he did, Huff and Fhrio came rushing in.

  “Auhlae, Auhlae—” Huff cried. He ran to her and began to wash her ear. It was astonishing how fast Huff could move when he wanted to, or how tender and pitiful a sight he made despite his huge size. Rhiow turned away, and found herself looking at Fhrio, who was staring at Urruah as he backed away and let Huff take care of Auhlae. Fhrio was bristling.

  Oh dear, Rhiow thought. This is going to bring them to blows sooner or later … “Artie,” she said. “Will you be all right here for a little while? No other ehhif will come here: this is a secret place, for reasons I’ll explain to you in a while. But right now there are some things I need to attend to.”

  “All right,” Artie said. “What’s your name, puss?”

  “Rhiow.”

  “Reeoooowww,” Artie said.

  “Not too bad,” she said. “It’s a Scots accent, isn’t it? We’ll work on that. It’s one of the better ones for Ailurin.”

  Rhiow walked off a little way, then sat down again and put her ears forward, listening. Whisperer…

  She heard the purr that told her the Silent One was listening.

  We need help of a specific kind. There’s no time for me to visit the Old Downside just now. Will you tell the Serpent’s Child that his “father’s” friends need to talk to him? And will you guide him to us?

  A purr of agreement: then silence.

  Rhiow got up and headed over to Urruah, who was already walking toward her. “Ruah,” she said, “do me a favor. Let me see the spell that Hwallis showed you.”

  He half-closed his eyes. “Here.”

  Rhiow half-closed hers as well, and let her whiskers brush close to Urruah’s. A second or so later she could see what he saw, the Egyptian characters strung out in a line, but with gaps here and there where Hwallis had inferred that material was missing. Rhiow looked at the characters in her mind with a wizard’s eye, letting them rearrange themselves into a long broken pattern in the graphical version of the Speech.

  “It’s a spell all right,” she said, opening her eyes. “What an odd one, though. A lot of missing pieces. None of the power parameters are all that large, either … what there are of them.”

  “If there were meant to be thousands of these spells in the same place, all acting together,” Urruah said, “they wouldn’t have to be all that strong, individually.”

  “No,” Rhiow said, “but still … If a lot of little spells are gathered together to be used for some purpose, there still does have to be a master spell, one which invokes the whole aggregate of power and nominates specifically what it’s supposed to be used for. Otherwise all the little “packets” of power just fire off any old way, or seep away uncontrolled. No, I think Hwallis is right. We’ll get busy on finding this, if there’s any way it can be found here and now. Meanwhile, Ruah, do what you can about the timeslide: we’ve got to get at that “contaminated” timeline and get a date for the assassination that we can trust. Get Fhrio to help you if you can.”

  “I’d sooner be helped by a—”

  “Urruah,” Rhiow said. “He is not just a fellow wizard, but a gate technician of some skill. He might see something that you miss, under the pressure of speed. We can’t afford to forego his help … or alienate him by not asking for that help in an area where he’s gifted. Just you handle it.”

  He glared at her … then waved his tail, reluctantly acknowledging the necessity, and walked off.

  Rhiow breathed out and watched him go. This kind of thing was difficult for him, but they had no choice right now. Fhrio was a problem as well, but one that Rhiow couldn’t settle. The kind of behavior he routinely exhibited toward his own team would have caused Rhiow to box one of her own team members’ ears to ribbons, if they had tried it. However, Huff’s management style was clearly a lot less assertive than Rhiow’s … and she had no right to try to impose her own style on his team. But oh, the inclination…

  She sighed and just closed her eyes for a moment, wishing there were time to lie down and have a nap. When she opened her eyes again, Huff was heading over toward her. “She’s all right,” he said to Rhiow, very relieved.

  “Of course I’m all right,” Auhlae said, sounding just slightly cross as she came up behind him. “The shock of the transit just hit me hard for a moment, that’s all. I’m not made of fluff.”

  “No, I never said you were …” He head-bumped her, and Auhlae threw him an affectionate look, though the bump bade fair to knock her over again.

  “Well,” Huff said, when he had straightened up again, “what’s the situation?”

  “Our young ehhif is in fairly good shape,” Rhiow said, casting a glance over at where Artie still sat up against the platform wall, now with his legs stretched out in front of him, watching Urruah talking to Fhrio, and the two of them poking at various parts of the timeslide. “But we’re going to have to keep him with us for a while. Arhu says he’s required somehow for the solution of our problem.”

  Auhlae blinked at that. “Is he sure?”

  “Yes. Apparently he got a glimpse of him while he and Odin were off on their jaunt.”

  “Now there’s a new one,” Huff said. “Well, we’ll have to work out somewhere to keep him.”

  “Arhu is confident that that’ll be handled,” Rhiow said dryly. “So we’ll refer all inquiries to him. Meanwhile, have a closer look at this—”

  She put one paw down on the floor and began pulling it along, so that a tracery of pale fire followed it, “writing out” the partial spell which Urruah had shown her. Huff and Auhlae bent their heads down, looking at it.

  “Look at this name that keeps popping up,” Huff said after a moment. “In a few places. Different forms—but it’s the same personality that’s meant. The ‘Bright Serpent’.”

  “It’s not the ‘Old Serpent’, though,” Auhlae said, looking curiously down the length of the spell. “That would be written differently, wouldn’t it.”

  “Yes,” said Huff. “And here, the ‘Great Shining Lizard’. And another name still. ‘Sebek’.”

  “ ‘The one who binds together’?” Auhlae said. “Would that be it?”

  “I think so.” Huff sat down to look at it a little more closely. “Well, it’s interesting, but as spells go it’s long on nouns and short on verbs. Or more specific routines like power-expenditure instructions …”

  “Power,” Rhiow said, “yes …” She glanced back over toward the timeslide. Siffha’h had stood up just long enough to drag herself out of the pattern, while Urruah was starting work on it: then she had flopped down again, and was lying on her side. “Is she all right?”

  “Oh, I think so.” Auhlae looked over her shoulder.

  “I’ll check,” Huff said, and got up to head over that way.

  “I just … Don’t think I’m trying to intrude, please, but I worry about her a little,” Rhiow said. “She seems to push herself very hard.”

  “Yes,” Auhlae said, “she does.” She sighed. “She came to us very young. Just after her Ordeal, it was. She never said much about the details: well, as you know, that’s not information one asks about—it’s offered, or not, the way you would treat the question of how many lives along someone is. Finally she decided she wanted to work with us, and she settled in. But she was always …” Auhlae broke off for a moment, thinking, her tail twitching. Then she said, “There was always a sense that there was something still unfinished, Ordeal or not. Something she was still looking for … and it drove her. It drives her still … and all this unfocused energy of hers jumps out and ‘bites’ people, sometimes. Or makes her bite them herself …”

  Rhiow sighed. “The ‘unfinished business’ theme turns up often enough,” she said. “It happened to me, for example.”

  “And did you find
what you were looking for?”

  “I think so,” Rhiow said, “though, Auhlae, to tell you the truth, sometimes even when you have what you were looking for, you can get confused because it doesn’t look anything like the images you got yourself used to when you were still looking.” She put her whiskers forward. “Well, that’s another day’s problem … we have enough of our own at the moment.”

  “You’re right there, cousin,” Auhlae said, and sighed once more. “Let me go see if the child needs anything. She tends to give off her power in these big bursts, and then needs a lot of time to recuperate. I keep telling her she should pace herself, but does she listen … ?”

  “I know the problem,” Rhiow said.

  Auhlae went off to tend to Siffha’h, and Rhiow stood up and had a good stretch and went to the young ehhif: Arhu came along behind her, and behind him, Urruah. “Are you all right, Artie?” Rhiow said.

  “I’m rather hungry,” he said, very woefully. “I was on my way to get a bun for lunch when I saw you.”

  “Well, I’ll get you something,” Rhiow said.

  “Where?” Arhu said. “You’re going to have to steal.”

  “No. Well, not exactly.” Rhiow sighed. “Artie, would you like a sandwich?”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind,” Rhiow said. “Do you like cheese?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get you a pizza.”

  “From where?” Arhu said.

  “Hey, bring me one too,” Urruah said.

  Rhiow gave him a look. “Get your own pizza. I have enough problems. Are you and Fhrio in agreement about the timeslide?”

  “He’s looking at it for the moment,” Urruah said. “The idea of him catching something in the spelling that I missed seems to appeal to him.”

  She put her whiskers forward at him. “Now who says you’re all good looks and no brain?” she said. “I’ll be back in a little.”

  Rhiow trotted over to where Auhlae was lying by Siffha’h. “Auhlae, where’s one of the gates that is functioning? I need to run an errand.”

  “Back up the stairs the way we came,” Auhlae said, “down the hallway and turn left to the access for the northbound Circle Line train. It’s down off the left-hand end of the platform.”

  “Great. Right back,” said Rhiow.

  Sidled, she followed Auhlae’s instructions and made her way up to the Circle Line platform, past the unnoticing travelers waiting for the Tube train, and down the stairs at the very end of the platform. The gate’s tracery was very visible: some other wizard passing through had just used it, she saw from the status-and-log weft, for a transit to Vladivostok via Chur. She reached into the control weave, got her claws into the spatial location webbing, and wove its hyperstrings together until they matched the string-coordinate qualities of the roof of her apartment building.

  Normally Rhiow preferred not to do gatings of this kind: they were wasteful of energy, when you could walk. But at the moment, walking was out of the question, and everything seemed to be happening at once, and she couldn’t spare the time. Rhiow pulled the control weave taut, watching as the scene within its oval boundaries snapped into place. Gray gravel, ventilators sticking up…

  Rhiow locked the gate coordinates in place, set it for selective nonpatency except for her own return, and jumped through: came down on the gravel. Hurriedly she sidled, then trotted over to the square shape which was the outlet for the building’s fire stairs. The door was locked from the inside.

  She walked through it, feeding the atoms of her body past the atoms of the door, and ran down the stairs a couple of flights: then walked through a second door, the one which led to the hallway where her apartment’s front door was. Rhiow galloped down the hall, and walked through one last door, her own.

  There was no sign of Iaehh, which was just as well. Rhiow ran over to the refrigerator, did a very small-scale skywalk up to the handle of the freezer, and put one paw through it, pulling hard. No good. She sat up on her haunches, put both forefeet through, and pulled again. This time the freezer door came open, almost knocking her down. She ducked sideways out of the reach of the swinging door and looked inside. Thank you, Iau, she thought, for there were about five pizzas stacked up in there. Hmm. Pepperoni … not for a first-timer. Meatball … no. Pieces might fall off in transit. Plain with extra cheese…

  Her mouth was watering as she levitated the pizza out of the freezer down onto the counter. It’s been too long since I had pizza, Rhiow thought; but the hunger in Artie’s eyes suggested to Rhiow that it was going to be a while longer. She first did a small wizardry which would release the catch of the microwave oven and push the door back: then, while that was working, she spoke to the coefficient of friction at the end of the pizza box where the glue was, then levitated the box up on its side and shook. The pizza slid neatly out onto the rotating tray in the oven.

  Rhiow ran her wizardry backwards and shut the microwave door: then jumped down to the counter and stared at the controls. You have to be a rocket scientist to run these things, she thought, annoyed, trying to work out which control pad to push. Finally she succeeded in programming in five minutes’ run on “high”, and started the microwave going: then took a moment to take the empty pizza box and push it down into a briefly opened pocket in spacetime, off in a corner of the kitchen. She would empty the pocket out and get rid of the box later.

  The air started to fill with a very appetizing smell indeed. Rhiow’s mouth watered more earnestly. The only bad thing about this, she thought, is that he’s going to notice it’s gone. I think. Iaehh could be slightly vague about the contents of the freezer: he and Hhuha had had some pretty heated discussions on the subject. Either way … I’m going to have to replace it with one of the same kind as soon as I can. One more thing to think about…

  The oven dinged. Rhiow ran her wizardry again, forward this time, and levitated the pizza out into the air again. It was tricky: the thing was no longer solid, but kept trying to flop over in one direction or another.

  Rhiow stood there for a moment considering her options. She might be sidled, but the pizza could not be, not while she was handling it either directly or with a wizardry. She was not going to walk back down the apartment’s hall, invisible, with a visible pizza floating along behind her. Logistics … she thought.

  Oh vhai. She walked through the air over to the glass doors that opened on the terrace, the pizza trailing along obediently behind her, and straight out into the air to one side of the apartment. Let the neighbors think they saw a levitating pizza, she thought rebelliously … If any of them are even looking. With the pizza in tow, Rhiow skywalked up to the roof of the building, and back through the worldgate, which she shut down behind her and left in standby configuration.

  That only left the Tube station to deal with. Rhiow went down the stairs, then hung an immediate left and walked straight through the wall, trying to keep the directions back to the abandoned platform straight in her head. She took a few false turns, but finally found where she wanted to be: and had the satisfaction of seeing young Artie’s mouth drop open as she walked straight through a wall not far from him, the pizza floating along behind her.

  She put it carefully down on the floor. “It’s fairly clean here,” she said: “sorry I couldn’t bring a plate. Here, just pull it apart with your hands. Watch out, it’s still hot.”

  Artie pulled his first slice off, bit it tentatively: finished it immediately and pulled off another. “Good,” Rhiow said, and went over to Urruah, who was lying nearby. “Now then. What’s next?”

  He looked at the pizza.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Rhiow said. “I went to a lot of trouble over that. How’s he doing?” She glanced over toward Fhrio and the timeslide.

  “How would I know? I’ll wait until he tells me. He might genuinely be in the middle of something I don’t want to disturb.” Or I might just not want to get my head bitten off.

  Rhiow put one ear forward and one back, a w
ry expression. “Is Siffha’h all right, did Auhlae say?”

  “Recovering,” Urruah said. “She’s just exhausted after doing two big power feeds close together—and apparently the fact that something knocked us ‘sideways’ affected her too: she tried to force us through anyway, and so she took the brunt of what hit us.” His tail thumped on the concrete. “She tries real hard. It’s not like she has to prove anything to anyone …”

  “I know,” Rhiow said. “If she only—”

  “What’s that?” Siffha’h said suddenly from the other side of the platform, pushing herself up again. “Something’s coming—”

  Everyone looked up in alarm. Mostly they did it just in time to see the air in the middle of the platform stretch and sheen like pulled plastic wrap, then peel apart.

  A dinosaur stepped out.

  A casual viewer could have been forgiven for mistaking it for a dinosaur, at any rate. It stood about six feet high at the shoulder, and its long neck arched up another couple of feet to terminate in a long, lean, toothy muzzle: a pair of well-made and delicate forelegs with six claws each were folded decorously in front of the creature’s chest. It stood mostly upright on its long-clawed hind legs, and a tail about five feet long lashed out behind it, helping it keep its balance. The shadowy lighting down here did not show off to best advantage the subtly patterned hide patched in red and orange: but somehow the small golden eye found the light, and kept it.

  The London team stared at this apparition in astonishment: the saurian bowed to them gracefully, bobbing forward and back. “I am on errantry,” it said in a soft hissing voice, “and I greet you.”

  “You’re well met on the errand,” Huff said, still very wide-eyed. “Rhiow, is this the help you said you were sending for?”

  “Indeed so. Ith, let me make you known to the London team.”

  She strolled over and took him around, making the introductions. Huff and Auhlae recovered their composure quickly: Fhrio, caught in the middle of doing something technical to the timeslide, simply stood for some moments with his mouth hanging open. Siffha’h gazed at Ith too, and spoke to him politely enough when introduced, but Rhiow couldn’t help noticing her expression … a peculiar look of half-recognition, as if she had seen him before sometime, but couldn’t place where.