Arhu swallowed. The fear in his voice was growing. “It was cold. We were crying and trying to get out, but the black stuff wouldn’t give no matter how we clawed at it, our claws weren’t any good. And then we hit something, and after that it started to get wet inside, not just from our siss. Wetter and wetter. A lot of water. The bag was getting full. There wasn’t air. We kept falling in the water, and it got in our faces, we couldn’t breathe. We tried to stay up… but the only way we could stay up was by climbing on each, climbing on each other…”
Saash had slowly come to her feet now and was slipping close to Arhu, but he paid her no attention, only gazing up at Ith. It was as if he saw, in those reptilian eyes, the one vision he had been steadfastly denying himself, or saw it mirrored, as the other saw…
“They bubbled,” Arhu said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “They bubbled when they breathed the water. They stopped moving. Their smells went away. They died. And the rest of us had to climb on them, on their bodies, and put our heads up and try to breathe, and there was less and less room, less and less air, and it was so cold.”
Barely even a whisper, now; even that faded. “So cold. Nowhere to breathe. Sif died last. She was my twin almost, she had my same spots. She bubbled underneath me. I felt the breath go out, I smelled her scent go away…” I was the last one. I was the strongest. I climbed best. Then the last air went away. I started to bubble. It was cold inside me. It got black. I said, Good, I want to be with my littermates. But I couldn’t. Something grabbed the thing, the bag we were in, and pulled us out, and broke the bag open. It was an ehhif. It saved me, it dumped me out on the ground. Incredible bitterness at that. It dried me off, it took me to a bright place, they fed me, they put me in a warm room. Later another ehhif came and took me away. She fed me, she kept me in her den. She gave me a hiouh box, but every time I made siss or hiouh in it, it would smell of them, and I would remember my brothers and sisters, how they smelled finally, and how they started to bubble, and I couldn’t go back to the box. I had to make the hiouh somewhere else in the ehhif’s den. And then she took me out of her den and put me in a shoulder-bag and took me in another loud thing, a bus, and she put me down in the street, and she went away fast, in another bus. I couldn’t find her den again. I went to live behind the Gristede’s.
His claws were starting to splinter. Saash, behind him, began slowly to wash his ear. Arhu was still looking up at Ith, into the saurian’s eyes.
I heard the laughing, Arhu said, over the soft grating of his claws on the stone. When the ehhif threw us in the water. And while we were drowning: that laughing. It knows nothing can stop It, or what It does. It can do it whenever It wants. It was the Lone One at the bottom of the ehhif’s heart that made it do that. It’s always at the bottom. I see It now. And It’s at the bottom here. I see…
You also see, Ith said, how there is nothing but the pain, no matter what we do against It.
There was a long, long pause: almost one of Ith’s own.
I don’t know, Arhu said.
He said nothing more. Saash washed him, her purr of pain and compassion rumbling and echoing loud in the long dark hallway. The flexing of Arhu’s claws was slowly stopping; his head dropped so that he was no longer staring at Ith. Arhu lay there gazing down at the barren black stone of the floor, and did not move or think, at least for any of them to hear.
Rhiow slowly got up and paced over to where Urruah leaned against the wall. What now? Urruah said to her.
Let him alone for a while, Rhiow said. He needs time to recover, after that. And frankly, after hearing it, so do I. Arhu’s pain had shaken Rhiow, in some ways, worse than her own had been doing.
They went away and sat down together, leaving Saash with Arhu, while Ith leaned down over them both as Saash washed, a peculiar kind of company.
So, Urruah said. The Lone One tried with you, and failed… I think. Now It’s tried with him… and there’s no way to tell how It’s done. Who’s next?
I think, Rhiow said, It may have tried with him once already. And it failed then. I’m not sure… but It may have tried one time too many.
But It’s getting desperate, Urruah said. If these attempts on our effectiveness fail, It’s just going to try brute force, a hundred thousand saurians or more, the way it dumped them out into Central Park. It’ll wear us down, and kill us without us doing anything useful.
Let’s not give It the chance, then, Rhiow said. We’ll go straight down.
But how, Rhi? You heard him: the lower halls are full of these things.
I don’t propose to go the way It wants us to go, Rhiow said. Look, I’ll watch now: I couldn’t sleep now no matter what. You try at least to get some rest… an hour’s worth, even. Ffairh always said that a rest was better than no sleep.
I’d give a lot to have Ffairh here.
You’re not the only one. Go on, ’Ruah, take a nap.
He lay down, and shortly afterward, he was snoring, too.
Rhiow sat in the darkness and watched over them. Saash had nodded off again, a little while after Arhu did, so that only Rhiow and Ith were awake. Ith was looking down at Arhu. For a while she gazed at him,- wondering what went on inside that mind. His face was hard to read. Even ehhif had been easier, at first; and there was always the one who had become easiest to read after their association…
The thought of Hhuha, of the cold white tiles and the metal table, bit her in the throat again. Rhiow shook her head till her ears rattled, looked away, tried to find her composure again. Oh, to be able to howl like a houff or weep like an ehhif, she thought; why can’t we somehow let the pain issue forth, by some outward sign? Dignity is worth a great deal, Queen of us all, but is it worth the way this pain stays stuck inside?
She looked up and saw Ith looking at her, silent and thoughtful.
You too know the pain, he said inwardly. Rhiow shivered a little, for there was warm blood about his thought, but no fur, not even as much as an ehhif wore: the effect was strange.
Yes, she said.
But still you will do this. And die. I saw that in him, and in my own vision as well.
Rhiow licked her nose.
Yes.
He says… this fight has happened before.
Rhiow wondered just how to put this. Our kind, she said, or rather, the Great Ones of our kind, have fought—this deadly power, the Lone Power—before.
And lost.
They defeated the Old Serpent, as we call that avatar of the Lone One, Rhiow said.
But it made no difference. It lives on, though your gods themselves died killing It.