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’Rrahh, 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, mat 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.