by Diane Duane
“I can’t, it’s not—” But it was. It was ready. It lay shining, complete and deadly in her mind, and Rhiow wondered that she had never perceived the sheer unbalanced dangerousness of it, even earlier when it had first started to come together. A spell is like an equation: on either side of the equal sign, both sides must balance. This one, though, was weighted almost all one way … toward output. The power and parity configurations, the strange output projections, they were all complete now … and all of them violated natural law.
Except that the natural law Rhiow knew was not the one operating down here.
I don’t know how natural law operates down here! It could backfire! It could—
Sometimes you can be too reasonable, Urruah had said: or something very like that. But sometimes, maybe reason wasn’t enough.
Sometimes you might need to be unreasonable. Then miracles could happen.
It worked for the younger wizards, didn’t it?
But I haven’t been young for a while, Rhiow thought desperately. She was a team leader. She had to be responsible, methodical, make sure she was right: others’ lives depended upon it. And even now, all that method hadn’t helped her team: they were all going to “die dead,” and she felt old— old, failed, and useless.
Don’t listen to It, Rhiow! Arhu yelled into her mind, writhing, trying to get up. I’ve got enough young for all of us! But I can’t do this for you. You have to do it. Let go, Rhiow, just do it, do the spell!
It could destroy everything—
Big deal, Saash was going to do that! And we all agreed she should! Now she can’t! Do—
Urruah leapt at Haath. turning loose whatever spell he had been working on. Haath slashed at him, and Rhiow felt that spell abruptly come to pieces as Urruah went down, kicking, then froze, held pinioned on the stone, spell-still. Rhiow launched her mind against the wizardry that held him, trying to feel what it was, to pry it off Urruah … but there was no time, she couldn’t detect the structure—
Haath leaned over him, lifted his claws, and slashed Urruah open as casually as an ehhif would slash open a garbage bag with a razor.
Everything spilled out…
Haath reached in one more time, hooked one long claw behind Urruah’s heart, pulled. It came out, as if on a hook, still beating; beating out its blood, until none was left. Smiling, Haath released the spell. Urruah rolled over in Rhiow’s direction, squirming; he cried out only once. His eyes started to glaze.
Just let it go, he said. Just do the spell. Rhi—
And then silence.
Haath looked at her and grinned.
Rhiow held very, very still, and the rage and horror grew in her…
…for it was almost exactly what she had been saying to everyone else: Arhu and Ith in particular.
Sometimes we do not hear the Whisperer even at her loudest because she speaks in our own voice, the one we most often discount.
Rhiow took a long breath…
…and started to use the spell.
It was not the kind you could hold “ready-for-release” and then turn loose with a word: within minutes you would be staggering under the weight of its frustrated desire to be let go. It had weight, this spell. You had to shoulder into it, boost it up to get at the underside where the words of activation were. The weight of it pushed down your neck and shoulders, your eyes watered with the strain of seeing the symbols, and then you had to get the words out: big hefty polysyllabic things, heavy with meaning. Rhiow fought with the spell, pushed past and through its inertia and got out the first two words, three, five—
—when something seized her by the throat and struck her dumb.
She gagged, clawed at her face … but there was nothing there. Trickery, she thought, but her throat would still not work. The Lone One. And, Aha, she thought. It must be worth something after all—
She fled inward, into her workspace, where the spell lay on the floor of her mind, and hurriedly started to finish it there. Spells can be worked swiftly inside the practiced mind, even when working through the graphical construct of a spell diagram; Rhiow, terrified and intent, was too swift, this once, for even the Lone One to follow her in and stop her. Power flashed around the spell-circle. The whole thing flared up, bunding. Its status here inside her was as far along toward release as it had been when her outward voice was choked. Only a few words left to complete the activation: but here they were not words but thoughts, and took almost no tune at all. One word to make all complete, knotting the circle together, setting the power free—
Rhiow said the word.
The spell went blasting out of her like a wind that swept her clean inside, threw her down on the stone, left her empty, mindless, half-dead.
There Rhiow lay, waiting for something to happen.
Silence… darkness.
Nothing happened.
It didn’t work, Rhiow thought in complete shock, and started to stagger to her feet again. How can it not have worked?
A spell always works!
But the nature of wizardry is changed, said that thick, slow, soft, satisfied voice in her mind. It only works if I want it to.
Slowly, slowly, Rhiow sat down.
Beaten.
Beaten at last.
She hung her head…
…and then something said, No.
Liar, it said.
Liar! You’ve always lied!
It lied the last time. It’s lying now.
She had trouble recognizing the voice.
It’s live! Activate it!
Arhu?
Call them! They have to come! Like in the park—
She staggered, blinked, unable to think what on Earth he meant.
Wait a minute. The park. The o’hra—the ehhif-queen in the song who demanded that the Powers That Be come to her aid, on her terms—
—and They did—
—but to require the Powers to descend, to demand Their presence: it was not something that was possible, They would laugh at you—
No, Rhiow thought. That was someone else’s idea, some-thing else’s idea. Yours! she said to the Old Serpent. Yours! As it was your idea what happened to my Hhuha. As it was your idea what happened to Arhu’s littermates and almost happened to him. No more of your ideas! You have had only one, and I’ve had enough of it for today.
Reconfiguration, Rhiow thought. To change the Lone One’s perception… it would take this kind of power. And others’ perceptions could as easily be changed.
Rhiow staggered to her feet again, opened her mouth, looking for the right words … Let it come, she said, let it come to me: I will command!
Instantly the huge power blasted into her, as the activated spell had blasted out, leaving room for her to work. She tottered with the influx of wild power, staggered like someone gone distempered, unable to see or hear or speak, unable to feel anything but the fire raging inside her, striving to get out, get up, do something. It did not know what it wanted to do, though. This is always the problem, said the Voice inside her. It must be disciplined, or it will ruin everything. Hold it still, keep it until the right words come.
But with that power in her, she knew the right words.
“what has become of MY children?” Rhiow cried. She knew the voice that shouted; it was her own—but Someone else’s too: the sun burned inside her, and fire from beyond the sun readied itself to leap out. She could not believe the rage within her, the fury, but there was a core of massive calm to it, the knowledge that all could yet be well, and the two balanced one another as the sides of the spell had not. “Where is Aaurh the warrior, and sa’Rrahh the Tearer, wayward but dear to Me? And what has become of My Consort and the light of his eye, without which My own is dark?”
The ground shook: the Tree shook: the Mountain trembled under her. “Old Serpent, turn You and face Us, for the fight is not done—!”
She could not believe her own strength. It filled her, making the initial release of the spell from her seem about as worldshattering by
comparison as a stomach-growl. And she could not believe that the Old Serpent, the Lone One Itself, now looked at her from the Tree with eyes suddenly full of fear. Rage, yes, and frustration … but fear first. Is that all it takes? she thought, astonished. One sentence—one word, one command? “Let there be light—”
Here and now … the answer seemed to be “yes.”
It was “yes” before too, said Queen Iau. But the voice was Rhiow’s own.
The Serpent began, very slowly, to uncoil Itself from around the Tree. As it did, the huge gouge that It had bitten in the Tree’s trunk began to bleed light afresh.
Oh no You don’t, Rhiow thought furiously, stepping forward. Where do you think You’re going?
She was immediately distracted by the way the ground shook under her when she moved. Rhiow would have been frightened by it except that inside her, acting with her—part of her, as if from a long time before—was One Who was not afraid of Her own power in the slightest.
Rhiow was abashed beyond belief. Not in her wildest expectations had she anticipated the spell might have this kind of result: she would hardly have dated to think of herself and the One in the same sentence. Oh, my Queen, I’m sorry—I mean, I—
Don’t apologize, came the thought of Iau Hauhai’h, and it was humorous, if momentarily grim. Usually gods don’t. Not in front of that One, anyway. Say what It needs to hear! We’ve got a lot of work to do.
Rhiow stood there, feeling the majesty cohabiting with her… and then held her head up, thinking of that statue in the Met, poor cold copy that it was. “Am I not the One,” She cried, “to make power against death strong, and power for life stronger still? Shall I allow the darkness to prevail against My own? Their life is in Me, and of Me: save that You destroy Me as well, never shall they be wholly gone; and Me You cannot destroy, nor My power in Them. Rise up then, Aaurh My daughter, and be healed of Your dying; the dark dream is over, and awakening is comer.
Off to one side, where a shape lay dark and charred on the stone, there was movement—and then a flash of fire. If a form can burn backward, this one did. Flame leapt from nowhere to it, filled it, wrapped it round—not the cold white fire of the catenary, but flame with a hint of gold, the sun’s light concentrated, made personal and intense. Substance came with the fire: the shape filled out, rolled to its feet, shook itself, and stood, looking proud, and angry, and amused. It was a lioness, but one in whose pelt every hair was a line of golden fire, and the Sun rode above her like a crown—though it was not as bright as her eyes, or as fierce. “I am here, my Dam and Queen,” said the voice of Aaurh the Warrior, the Queen’s Champion, the Mighty, the Destroyer-by-Fire; but it was Saash’s voice as well, and Rhiow could have laughed out loud for joy at the sound of that voice, itself nearly shaking with laughter under the stern words.
Oh Iau, Saash— I mean, oh— And Rhiow did laugh then: it was amazing how your vocabulary could be lessened by realizing you suddenly had the One inside you, and that it sounded surpassingly silly to be swearing at, or by, Yourself. Saash, are you all right?
A snicker. Are you kidding? I’m dead. Or I was. But live by the fire, die by the fire. And she chuckled. It’s an occupational hazard.
“Rise up then, sa’Rrahh My daughter, and be healed of Your sore wounding; stand with Us against the Old Serpent that would have worked Your bane!”
The prone form that lay clutching painfully with its fore-claws at the stone now lifted its head and slowly began to glow both dark and bright, like its fur—night-and-moon-light, the pale fire and the dark one mingling, starfire and the darkness behind the stars: the essence of conflict and ambivalence. But neither fire burned less intensely for the other’s presence; and as the tigerish shape rose up to stand with its Dam, the eyes that looked out of its mighty head were terrible with knowledge of past and future, decisions well made and ill made, and action and passivity held in dangerous balance. Those awful, thoughtful eyes looked down at the body they inhabited … and suddenly went wide.
“Look at me! Just look at me! I’m a queen!”
Iau Kindler of Stars let out a long sigh. “Son,” She said, “shut up. It happens to the best of us.”
Rhiow put her radiant whiskers right forward in amusement It had not occurred to Rhiow that Arhu might manifest as sa’Rrahh, but the Tearer had always been as ambivalent about gender as anything else. “Oh all right,” said the Dark One. “I am here, my Dam and Queen. Now let me at that ragged-eared— ”
“In a moment. Rise up then, My consort, Urrua Lightning-Claw; be risen up, thou Old Tom, O Great Cat, O Cat Who stood under the Tree on the night the enemies of Life were destroyed. Urrua, My beloved, My Consort, rise up now, and stand with Us, to slay the One Who slew You!”
Off on the black stone, where blood lay pooled around a tom, silver-striped shape, darkness now pooled as well. It gathered together about that shape and began to weave brilliance into itself, the tabby coloration shading pale, to moondust grays and silvers and a brilliant white like the Moon at full, a light as pitiless in its way as the Moon looking down from a clear sky on those who would wish to hide, and can find no hiding place from what stalks them silently. That shape stood up, and was a panther’s shape, heavy-jowled and white-fanged, with unsheathed claws that burned and left molten spots on any stone they touched. The mighty shape shook itself, shedding silver light about it, then padded over to join the others, looking at them with one eye that was dark and terrible, knowing secrets; and the other that burned almost too bright to look upon, for battle was in it, and the joy of battle. “I am here, My Dam and Queen, My Consort,” he said, and then added, “ ‘My consort,’ huh?”
“Don’t get any ideas, you… the post is purely ceremonial. —Lone Power, Old Serpent, for these murders, now We pronounce your fate—”
“No, wait a minute, lam first,” said sa’Rrahh suddenly.
Slowly, very slowly, Haath had begun backing away as he first caught sight of his Lord and Master beginning to unwrap Itself from the Tree. By the time Queen Iau had begun to raise Her dead, Haath was already running away across that great dark expanse at the best speed a tyrannosaur could manage, which was considerable. Now, though, the Queen looked after him… and suddenly Haath appeared directly in front of them again, and fell on his face with the suddenness of his translocation.
“Haath, Child of the Serpent,” said Rhiow and the Queen as he struggled to his feet, “you have brought your fate upon you: but still it lieth with you to save yourself, if you will. Renounce your false Master, and you may rejoin your kind, though your wizardry, not coming from the One, is confiscate. ”
Haath crouched, his head low, and looked from the blazing, terrible forms before him to the dark radiance still in the process of slowly, slowly slipping from around the Tree. “I…” he said. “My Master … perhaps I was deluded in thinking…”
Allow Me to save you this crisis of conscience, said a huge, soft voice, by first renouncing you.
Haath looked up in horror, already feeling the changes in his body. Rhiow knew, as Iau knew, that the Lone One had not told Haath the whole truth about his immortality: that even for the gods, death comes eventually, and mortals who try repeatedly to put it off may succeed for a while, but not forever. With his master’s renunciation, all of Haath’s deaths simply caught up with him at once. All that could be seen of the process was the look of shock and rage and betrayal on his face, those twelve claws lifted for one last wizardry … but there was no time for anything else, either action or reaction. Suddenly, he simply was not there; and if there was even a little dust left, the wind blowing through the darkness swept it unregarded into the River of Fire.
The Serpent’s cool eyes dwelt on this, unmoved. And then another voice spoke. “Great One,” it said, “Lord—”
The Four turned their attention to the source of the voice. It was Ith. He stood now, gazing at the Serpent with an odd intensity.
Ah, my son, said the Old Serpent’s voice. Now that the other is gone, we ma
y speak freely, you and I.
This should be fun, said Aaurh silently to the others.
Pay no heed to the strange violence you have seen done here, said the Old Serpent softly. These creatures are our ancient enemies, and need have nothing further to do with our kind or our power. Our kind have different needs, different desires.
“Lord,” Ith said, “the Sun. The world above…”
None of our kind can live in that light without My help, said the Old Serpent, slow, persuasive, reasonable. It is fair, but it kills. Nor would they, would you, be able to find food enough for all. You will die there unless you are ruled by one who is wise, who knows time and the worlds. Long I have ruled you, to your advantage. It shall be so again. And you shall be My Sixth Claw, this time. You have won the right. You have proven Haath flawed, and that flaw would sooner or later have done your people, My people, great harm. Now you shall rule in his stead, and order all things for Me.
Ith swayed, looking up into the great, dark, wise, forgiving eyes. The others watched him.
They will bow before you like a god, a true god… not like these upstarts. But you must in turn surrender yourself to Me, to be filled with the power. This you must see and do.
A pause.
“… No.”
The Lone One’s eyes suddenly went much darker. “But this I do see,” Ith said, and paced slowly over to stand straight and still beside sa’Rrahh, or Arhu in her shape, now flowing with fire both dark and bright. “Our kinship with these others is greater than You claim. He came into my heart, the one You say is my enemy, and tried to save me. And I saw into his heart, and his mind. He had pain like mine, loneliness like mine, and anger. But he rose up again, through them, and tried. Death and hunger came to him, but he did not give in to them, did not cast himself in the fire. His clutchmates all died, but he lived, and kept living, though the pain pierced like a claw. And when we met, he felt pain for me, and did not run away, but bore it This is his Gift. To try again. We tried once and failed… and never tried again, for You told us that trying was no use. But gifts can be passed on to others who need them, even when the others are old enemies; and choices can be remade. They can be remade!”