She strolled over to sit down by Ith’s head. “You’re likely to be the key to all this,” she said.
“I thought it more likely you would be,” he said.
Rhiow suddenly got the feeling that Ith knew about her conversation in the darkness with the Lone One. “We’ll have to see about that,” she said. “But your presence back here definitely changes things in our favor. Not even sa’Rraah anticipated the way you were going to come out of the Old Downside, or that you’d turn her Old Serpent avatar against her and drag it up with you into the Light. Now you’re not only the White Serpent, but also a living connection between the Old Downside and the other complex-state worlds ‘beneath’ the world, the foundations of Earth’s physical reality.”
Ith looked thoughtful, his claws twiddling together. “Yet this time I am not meant to be just a connection,” he said, “but an anchor. The Serpent wrapped around the roots of the Tree…”
Rhiow waved her tail gently in agreement as Urruah came out to join them. “The dimensional and physical dissociation that will accompany the incursion of Tepeyollotl’s master will rip the planet apart if it can’t be held stable,” she said. “That stability’s going to have to be sourced from the more central dimensions, the Old Downside being the most easily accessible. You’re a direct and powerful link to a more senior and more ancient Earth, and you’re going to take most of the strain when the Outside One breaks through.”
“When it breaks through,” Urruah said, sounding disturbed. Arhu had rolled over as Helen came wandering out as well.
Rhiow’s tail waved gently, a gesture of uneasy agreement. “It has to,” she said. “And It will anyway. There’s no way we can stop It. Not Queen Iau Herself could stop It. However – once It’s through, we have a weapon it won’t be expecting.”
“Ith,” Arhu said.
“In part. After all, he’s Tepeyollotl’s rightful enemy: his battle’s a matter of legend that runs deep in local spacetime.”
“Even though it has not happened yet…” Ith said, sounding a little dubious, though he wasn’t arguing the point.
Urruah stretched. “But that’s the way things go in the greater field of being, isn’t it,” he said. “Echoes from the great battles travel both forward and backward in the local timeflow. We know that you’re going to fight him because the legends say you did…”
“All we need to determine now,” Ith said, his jaw dropping in a grin, “is whether I won or lost.” He glanced over at Rhiow. “On that count the tablets were, if nothing else, equivocal…”
Rhiow looked up at Helen. “And your presence here is vital as well, because you’re of this place, in both the past and the future. You and your folk are profoundly connected to this land in ways we can’t be: rooted in ways that People aren’t and not even ehhif usually are. You’ll be our other link to the deep world, Earth’s inner realities. If you and Ith between you can’t keep Earth in one piece around here, I don’t know what can, for you’re a shaman as well as a wizard. There are powers answering to you that we don’t fully understand… but we know they’ll be on your side.”
Helen nodded. “I think I have an idea of what to do,” she said. “I’ll start getting ready when we’re done here.”
“One thing,” Hwaith said.
Rhiow hadn’t heard or felt him appear between Urruah and Ith, but that was par for the course. Surprised, for they hadn’t heard him either, everyone else looked at him. But Hwaith’s his eyes were on Rhiow. “You’re not saying much about what your part in this is going to be,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “to produce the result we’re after, sa’Rraah is going to have to act as opener of the way. And to do it most effectively, she’s going to need someone to channel through. That will be me.”
Her team stared at her. “Why you?!” Urruah said.
“Because I’ve been set up for it,” Rhiow said. “The last time we got caught in this kind of situation, I wound up playing that role for the Queen Herself, remember? Apparently this has rendered me unusually suitable to contain the Lone One this time.”
“Wait just a minute,” Arhu said. “Last time I did the Lone One! I have previous experience –“
“Not enough for this,” Rhiow said. “It’s settled, Arhu. And so’s the script for this little drama.” She cocked an eye at Urruah. “We root the gate in your chosen site and power it up. When the incursion starts, I take sa’Rraah into me, manifest Her here, and synch Her with the gate to let the arriving guest know that Its welcoming committee is on site. Then the Outside One comes through the gate to accept the gift She’s delivering It. And when It does, and It gets physical enough to affect, you shove the claudication into our gate and mesh it to the incursion – “ From Hwaith, who was looking suddenly stricken, Rhiow looked back to Urruah. “’Blooey.’”
Everyone sat quiet for a moment. Then Urruah said with great enthusiasm, “I’m excited about this plan! I’m proud to be a part of this plan!”
Aufwi threw him a wry look, probably secondary to some tom joke. “…And then what?” said Siffha’h, who’d wandered out with Aufwi to see what was going on.
The question cheered Rhiow strangely, though at this point the cheer was irrational. “Then we clean up the mess,” Rhiow said. “What else? Probably the whole area will need major temporospatial patching. But for a team who once helped tidy up all of Central Park after an incursion by crazed dinosaurs – “ and she glanced at Ith with amusement – “none of us should even have sweaty pads afterwards.” She flirted her tail.
Her team and Helen looked at one another. “Water bowl full inside?” Rhiow said. “I could use a drink. Then we have a lot to do…”
She strolled back to the house, in the French doors, headed past the Silent Man’s empty chair into the kitchen, put her head down in the water bowl and drank and drank, for her mouth was very dry.
“Rhiow – “
She finished drinking before she looked up at Hwaith.
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” he said.
“I truly don’t see that I have much of a choice.”
“Let me rephrase that,” Hwaith said after a moment. “I really, really wish you didn’t have to do this.”
So do I! she wanted to shout.
“Of course,” Hwaith said very quietly, “that’s not anything you’re going to say, especially in front of your team. But regardless, you should know that someone hears.”
“The way you did inside the Silent Man’s mind,” Rhiow said. And just now. “Hwaith… I don’t forget what you did there – “
Hwaith’s ears went back: then he shrugged his tail and turned away. “Please,” he said, “don’t thank me again. I’m just sorry – “ He stopped, started again. “It should have occurred to me that this would never work, that there was no way you could – “
He moved away. “I really am sorry,” he said, not looking back. “We’ve got work to do. I am a wizard, and you can count on me to do my part, regardless of other matters. Just so you know. But it’s a pity that things aren’t otherwise…”
“Hwaith,” Rhiow said after a moment.
He stopped, his tail twitching, but didn’t turn.
“There’s no point in this,” Rhiow said. “We may win tonight. But even if we do win, it’s likely enough that I won’t survive. I’ve come away from containing a god once. But twice? And when the Power involved is sa’Rraah, and very likely to shatter the vessel out of spite once its job’s done?” She was trying to sound calm, and trying to be kind; but now, now that the time was getting so close, she couldn’t entirely keep the fear out of her voice. “Surely you understand that I can’t see the point in planning very far ahead.”
He did turn, then. His eyes, too, were filled with fear. But there was something else there: stubbornness. He simply was not going to give up. “Maybe you can’t, right now,” Hwaith said. “I can understand that. But there’s no harm in having a plan, Rhiow. The worst it can do is fail.”
She stared at him.
Hwaith gazed back for a moment, and then turned again to go out.
Rhiow watched him, and a curious feeling began to rise in her – a desire, in the face of the overshadowing darkness, to do something utterly nonsensical just this once. So much of being a team leader involved being careful, being sensible, not being distracted by your own wishful thinking, covering all the possibilities. Yet isn’t this a possibility? she thought. An insane one. And Iau only knows how it could ever come to fruition. But still. Still –
And especially when there was someone else who had such faith in her, regardless of everything that was happening — to deny that, to deny hope, to deny him, suddenly it just felt wrong –
“Hwaith,” Rhiow said.
He stopped, looked back one last time.
She put her whiskers forward. “Go on. Make that plan.”
Evening drew near.
In the Silent Man’s living room, Rhiow looked over everyone’s work one last time before they left, while the Man himself sat at his desk and kept a theoretically casual eye on the proceedings.
Siffha’h’s work concerned Rhiow most, for a temporospatial claudication with so much energy and mass packed down in it needed careful watching: if anything caused it to come unwrapped, the result would be spectacular damage. But Siffha’h had been extra careful about the safeties that held the claudication shut, to the point where it would practically take a nuke to undo it without the right keywords in the Speech.
“Are you sure you know the passwords by heart?” Rhiow said to Sif as she collapsed the claudication down to a glowing spheroid about the size of a pea and levitated it into an invisible otherspace pocket.
Siffha’h rolled her eyes at Rhiow. “Yes, mother…”
This reaction at least was normal. Rhiow went to watch Urruah gather up the master gating circle and collapse it in turn, vanishing it into the workspace in the back of his mind as he glanced out into the back yard, where Arhu and Ith were getting ready to transit. “The kits are taking all this pretty calmly,” she said in his ear.
“Youth has its advantages,” Urruah said. “One of them being the belief that you can never die. Or the refusal to take the belief seriously.”
Aufwi came up behind Urruah. “I have my copy of the circle,” he said.
“Got mine too,” Hwaith said from the other side.
“Everybody’s checked all their personal data in all the copies?” Urruah said. “Long-version names and terminology only? Good. Don’t want any handling routines failing to execute because someone’s using abbreviations – “
“This is possibly a caution that we’ve heard before,” Aufwi said.
“About a thousand times…” said Hwaith.
“A thousand and one is good,” Urruah said. “Let’s shoot for a thousand and two.”
From down the hallway that led to the bedrooms came Helen Walks Softly, and the Silent Man’s eyes opened wide. Instead of that beat-up LAPD sweatshirt or anything by Elie Saab, Helen was wearing a two-piece midcalf dress of beautifully tanned deerskin, the sleeveless top of which was embroidered with bead designs of whale and orca and salmon. The skirt was ornamented with geometric lightningbolt designs in white and brown shell, as were the deerskin boots below. Helen’s hair was tied back into a long, long ponytail, her cheeks were streaked with red and white clay, and her arms ringed in white clay paint bands; her milkweed-linen and flicker-feather headband had a fan of black condor feathers angling up from the back of it, and in one hand she carried a pair of condor-feather reed wands.
The Silent Man looked her up and down and pursed his lips to whistle soundlessly. I didn’t know the end of the world was formal, he said. I’ll go get my tux.
Helen smiled at him and waved the wands at him in amused blessing.
Rhiow walked over to him and reared up to lean on his knee. “You’ve been very kind to us,” she said, “and so very flexible through all this….” She stopped then, for there was no point in saying much more. “Go well, cousin.”
He put down a hand to scratch her behind the ears. If this is it, Blackie, he said, all I can say is, it’s a better end than I’d been anticipating. The last couple of days have been a hell of a ride… and I’d sooner go out knowing what I do, than not knowing at all.
“If we’re lucky…” Arhu said, and then stopped.
Don’t say it, Patches. Just come back, and we’ll laugh about it later. He looked around at the People and Helen. All of you.
“From your mouth to the Spirit’s ear,” Helen said. “Rhiow?”
She flirted her tail “yes”.
They vanished as twilight fell.
The spot that Hwaith had chosen for them was at the end of a long drive that came up the top of Mount Hollywood on the north side. In the middle of the drive stood a high white granite obelisk with a base like a seven-pointed star, in the angles of which stood statues of six ehhif astronomers. On a white pedestal just south of that, a bronze sundial with a steel-strip gnomon pointed at the North Star. At the other end of the drive, facing the mountain’s south slope and set in the middle of a broad green lawn, was the Observatory itself, with its great central dome all sheathed in rectangular greened-copper plates, and the two smaller ones each down at the end of the east-and west-oriented wings. It was a gracious and handsome space, and Rhiow looked around it and wished she’d had time to see it before the events that were about to unfold.
All around them, the brightening lights of Los Angeles lapped upwards toward the surrounding ridges, fading out into the faint speckling of the sparsely built-up hillside streets and then into complete darkness, with here and there a dark spot lacking any lights at all – virgin slopes not yet seen as useful for anything but the occasional theater or golf course. In the fading light of evening, the view across the ridges and canyons toward Cahuenga Peak with the sunset behind it was particularly lovely. The white of the sign that said HOLLYWOODLAND was clearly visible, in this lighting, despite all the dust kicked up in the air by the previous evening’s quakes.
Rhiow stood there for a while just looking at it, and watching the lights twinkle to life on the hillsides to westward. “Some days,” Hwaith said, “you can’t see that from here at all. A last glimpse…”
“You were right about the view from here, anyway,” Rhiow said. Reluctantly she turned away from it, looked at Urruah. “By my preference, I’d set up the gate right here on this entry lawn. I take it we’re past closing time now – “
“The last visitor-ehhif have just gone home. There are a few observatory staff, but Sif is going to make them feel like they want to leave. Maybe a little tremor to suggest there’s about to be an aftershock from last night.”
Urruah was paying this discussion no mind. He was looking behind them at the noble domed building with its white Deco columns, and his expression was distressed. “This is all wrong,” he said, “it’s just not fair – “
Rhiow looked at him in great bemusement. “What? What’s the matter?”
