“He’s been well educated, I’ll give you that,” Yafh said to Rhiow, blinking a little.
“All the best teachers,” Urruah said, dry, but still unsettled.
“That’s right, young tom,” Yafh said to Arhu, as Arhu abruptly sat up a little straighter, blinking himself. “That’s the whole pattern of the gameplay of hauissh, right there in the old words. There are endless variations on the theme, as you might well think. But the Queen raises up Her dead, though not forever, as we know; and then the Fight starts up again … and so it goes.”
“Yafh,” came a deafening and strangely pitched shout from across the street, “let’s get on with this! Are you in stance, or out?”
Everyone winced at the noise. Rhiow smiled, a little crookedly. The source was Hmahilh’. Delicate, graceful little creature though she was, with her demure semi-ehhif smile, she was also profoundly deaf: when she spoke, the noise was so alarming that Rhiow was often amazed that bricks didn’t shatter. Rhiow had tried several times, as any wizard might, to treat the deafness, but there was something about the nerve damage that resisted treatment. Rhiow half-suspected that the trouble was not the nerves, but the less educable “limbic” areas of Hmahilh’s brain, which had gotten so used to being deaf that they couldn’t understand there were other options, and so ignored or stubbornly undid any repair to the cranial nerves involved. As a result, a conversation with Hmahilh’, while enjoyable enough for her cultured and humorous qualities, otherwise tended to resemble an interview with a fire siren.
“Here, young tom,” Yafh said, “you watch this now. She’s always worth watching. All right, all right,” he yowled back at Hmahilh’, “I’m in, already.”
“What??”
With a sigh, he turned to face her, a signal she would recognize. Arhu sat watching this, seemingly fascinated, and Rhiow took the opportunity to gesture the others over to a neighboring doorstep where they could watch without being anywhere near another player’s stance.
As they went, Rhiow said to Saash, “Are you feeling all right? It’s been a busy day … but you look tireder than usual.”
“Yes, well. There were some more mice in the garage this morning. I was trying to catch them…”
“And?”
Saash flicked her ears backward and forward, a hopeless gesture. “Nothing. As usual. I’m so glad I live in the city, and have access to an ehhif with a can opener. If I were a country Person, I’d be dead of starvation by now.”
Rhiow gave Saash a sympathetic look. She had never been a hunter: it was as if there were something missing in her makeup, perhaps the essential sense of timing that told you when to jump. Either way, the situation had always struck Rhiow as a little unfortunate, or strange, in someone whose technical expertise and timing in other matters were so perfect.
“So what did you do about it, finally?”
“This morning? Nothing. I mean, I could have blown the mice up, but besides being overkill, what good would that have been? The garage ehhif would just have thought a car ran them over or something. When Arhu’s done here, I’ll ask him to see what he can do. Have to keep the ehhif impressed with our usefulness, after alclass="underline" otherwise we might have to find somewhere else to stay…”
“Oh, surely not. Abha’h likes you, he wouldn’t try to get rid of you!”
’True. But he’s not the boss in the garage. I’ll be making sure George sees whatever we catch.”
Rhiow sighed. “You let me know if you need any help,” she said.
They sat on the doorstep two doors down from Yafh’s stance. “Our boy is spending more and more time in weird-vision land,” Urruah said, looking with some concern at Arhu.
“Just as well,” Rhiow said. “It’s his wizardry … He seems to see things … and then try to avoid seeing them. I’m getting concerned about the avoidance.”
“Can you blame him? I’m not sure I’d want to be sitting on a doorstep one moment and looking at the original Battle at the Dawn of Time the next!”
Saash sat straight and scratched for a moment or so, then started washing. “I think the problem might be that he hasn’t really done much wizardry yet. Spells, I mean.”
“Yes,” Rhiow said. “Everything has sort of been done to him, hasn’t it?” Rhiow cocked her ears, then; for the statement, once made, created a sort of silence around itself. When you were a wizard, you learned to pay attention to those silences: they were often diagnostic. Sometimes the Whisperer whispered very quietly indeed. “And you’re right: I haven’t really seen him do a spell. Initiate one, I mean. Well, he walked through a door or so, and in the air. And the sidling…”
“As regards the physical stuff, he’s pretty good,” Saash said. “It’s the nonphysical I’m more worried about. Nine-tenths of our work is nonphysical…”
“There are a lot of different styles of wizardry,” Urruah said. “I think we should try to cut him a little slack, here. Not everyone jumps straight in and starts doing fifty spells a day.”
“You did,” Saash and Rhiow said, practically in unison.
“Well, we can’t all be me.”
Rhiow and Saash looked at each other and gave silent praise to Ian the Queen of Everything that this was so. “But it’s not like there’s a quota,” Urruah said. “Or some kind of template for Ordeals. Everybody knows you get the occasional ‘sleeper’ Ordeal that takes months or years. Or ‘second’ Ordeals, if you don’t finish your first one.”
“The universe doesn’t usually have that much time to spare for the first kind,” Rhiow said, “as you know; and the second kind is as rare as working balls on a ffeih’d tom, as you also know. His passivity just worries me a little, that’s all.”
“He’s a tom,” Urruah said, with a wink. “He’ll grow out of it.”
This time Rhiow did not bother looking physically at Saash, and didn’t have to: she could inwardly hear the small, stifled groan. “You are in, how shall I put it, unusually male mode tonight,” Rhiow said. “Got another bout of o’hra coming on?”
“Night after next. It’s the big night, the concert. I’m going to need the time off, Rhi.”
“Take it, for Aaurh’s sake,” she said, waving her tail. “Get the hormones out of your system. If that’s possible.”
Urruah smirked briefly, but then folded himself down, and after a few seconds, looked a touch more serious. “Maybe the problem is that he just hasn’t noticed how much fun wizardry is,” Urruah said. “How good it feels.”
“I would suspect not,” Saash said, with a little more tooth in her voice than usual, “since his first experience of it came immediately before being almost bitten to shreds by rats…”
“ ’Ruah,” Rhiow said, “I have to admit that Saash has a point. And pushing Arhu won’t help. Till he comes to understand that satisfaction claws-on, there’s no point in describing it. If he has what it takes to make a good wizard, he’ll know it when he feels it… no matter how he may rationalize it to himself and others as time goes on.”
“… Well, I hope he has that time. Otherwise the crunch-part of his Ordeal may come upon him and he won’t have anything useful prepared. In which case…” Urruah chattered his teeth briefly, the way a cat will when seeing a rat or a bird, anticipating the jaw spasm that will snap its neck.
“We’ll see how he does,” Rhiow said, and yawned. “You going to see him home, Saash?”