The right was dimmer, cooler, here. The walls were done in a shade of deep blue-gray; through the skylights above, the sun fell pale, as if coming through a great depth of time. Against the walls, and on pedestals and in glass cases in the middle of the great room, were ancient sculptures and tombs and other things, great and small, belonging toehhifwho had lived in a very different time.
Arhu lagged a little behind the others, looking in (for once) undisguised astonishment at the huge solemn figures, which gazed out cool-eyed at theehhifstrolling among them. Rhiow paused a moment to look back at Arhu, then turned to join him as he looked at the nearest of the sculptures, a massive sarcophagus in polished black basalt, standing on end against a wall. Nearly three feet wide, not counting the carven wig surrounding it, the serene, lordlyehhif facegazed at, or past, or through them, with the imperturbability of massive age.
“It’s big,” Arhu said, almost in a whisper.
Rhiow wondered if what he was really thinking about was size.“And old,” she said, “and strange. Theseehhif usedto keep their dead in containers like this; it was to keep their bodies safe.”
“Safe how?”
“I know,” Rhiow said, “after a body dies, the further processes of death tend not to have any trouble finding it. But theseehhif didtheir best to give it difficulty. I’m afraid it was from something we told them, or rather our ancestors did. About our lives—”
They walked along a little.“You get nine,” Arhu said, looking around at the everyday things in the glass cases: a glass cup here, rainbowed with age and exposure; a shoe there, the linen upper and leather sole still intact; a little farther on, a crockery pot shaped like a chicken, intended to magically produce more chicken in the afterlife.
“We do,” Rhiow said, “but it seems thatehhifdon’t. Or if they do, there’s no way to tell because they don’t remember anything from the last life, as we do—none of the useful memories or the highlights, the People you knew or loved … anyway,ehhif don’tthink they come back. But when People back then told them howwedid, and told them about the Living Ones, theehhifgot confused, and they thought we meant thattheywere going to do something similar.…”
They caught up with Saash and Urruah, who were standing in front of a massive granite sphinx.“What’s a ‘Living One’?” Arhu said. “Is that another kind of god?”
Rhiow smiled slightly. Should an uninstructed young wizard see such a being going about its business, he could be forgiven for mistaking it for a god.“Not quite so elevated,” Urruah said. “But close.”
“After your ninth life,” Saash said, “well, no one’sreallysure what happens… but there’s a story. That, if in nine lives you’ve done more good than evil, then you get a tenth.”
“With a mind that won’t get tired,” Urruah said, “and a body that won’t wear out, too fast and tough for even Death to claw at… so you can go on to hunting your great desire, right past the boundaries of physical reality, they say, past world’s end and in toward the heart of things…”
“If you ever see a Living One, you’ll know it,” Rhiow said. “They pass through, sometimes, on Iau’s business.…”
“Have you ever seen one?” Arhu said, skeptical again.
“As it happens, yes.”
“What did it look like?”
Rhiow threw an amused glance at the sphinx.“Not like that,” she said, remembering the glimpse she had once caught, very early in the morning, of a feline shape walking casually by the East River in the upper Seventies. To the superficial glance,ehhif’sor People’s, it would have appeared to be just another cat, a dowdy tabby. But the second glance showed how insubstantial, almost paltry, mere concretely physical things looked when seen with it, at the same time. Shortly thereafter the cat shape had paused, then jumped down onto the East River, and walked off across it, with a slightly distracted air, straight along the glittering path laid along the water by the rising sun and out of sight.
“Well, I sure hope not,” Arhu said, somewhat scornfully. “Half the stuff in here is just lion-bodies withehhif-heads on them.”
“Theehhifdid that because they were trying to say that they knew these beings the People were describing to them were intelligent… but essentially feline in nature.Ehhifcan’t help being anthropomorphic—as far as they’re concerned, they’re the only intelligent species on the planet.”
“Oh please!” Arhu said, laughing.
“Yes, well, it does have its humorous aspects…” Saash said. “We enjoy them the best we can. Meanwhile, here’s their picture of someone who is one of our Gods.”
They walked on a little to where a long papyrus was spread out upright in a case against the wall.“It all starts with her,” Saash said, first indicating the nearest statue. In more of the polished black basalt, a regal figure stood:ehhif-bodied, with the nobly sculpted head of one of the People— a long straight nose, wide, slightly slanted eyes, large graceful ears set very straight and alert. Various other carvings here wore one kind or another of the odd Egyptian headwear, but this figure, looking thoughtfully ahead of her, was crowned with the Sun: and on her breast, the single, open Eye.
“Iau,” Urruah said. “The Queen, the Creatress and Dam. ‘… In the first evening of the worlds, Iau Hauhai’h walked in the Silences, hearing and seeing, so that what She heard became real, and what She saw was so. She was the Fire at the Heart; and of that Fire She grew quick, and from itShe kittened. Those children were four, and grew swiftly to stand with their queen.’ ”
“It’s the oldest song our people know,” Saash said to Arhu. “Any of us can hear it: the Whisperer taught it to us first, and the wizards who heard it taught it to everybody else. And everybody else taught it to theehhif…though they got mixed up about some of the details—”
“You’re good at this, Saash,” Rhiow said, “you do the honors… I need to check those palimpsests that Ehef mentioned. Or Herself, rather.” Rhiow glanced over at a third statue, farther down the hall.
“You go ahead,” Saash said. Rhiow strolled off toward the papyrus cases in the back of the hall as the others went on to pause before another statue, nearly nine feet tall, standing by itself. Rhiow glanced at her in passing, too: she was not easy to go by without taking some kind of notice. Lioness-headed, holding the lightning in her hands, this tall straight figure was crowned again with the Sun, but a homed Sun that looked somehow more aggressive and dangerous; and the Eye she wore glared. Her face was not as kindly as the Queen’s. The lips were wrinkled, fierce; teeth showed. But the eyes were relentlessly intelligent: this Power’s rages would not be blind ones.
“ ‘Aaurh the Mighty,’ ” Saash said, “the Destroyer by Flame, who came first, burning like a star, and armed with the First Fire. She was Her Dam’s messenger and warrior, and went where she was sent swift as light, making and ending as Iau taught her…”
Rhiow went back to the glass cases ranked against the wall, jumped up on the first one she came to, and started walking along the line of them. She visited here as often as she could, liking the reminder of the People/ehhif joint heritage, of this time when they had been a little closer, before their languages became so widely parted. As a result of all the visiting, there was little of this material with which Rhiow was not familiar, but every now and then something new came out of storage and was put out for public view.
The palimpsests were such material. They were not true palimpsests—recycled parchment used for writing, the old writing having been scraped off with knives—but an equivalent Paper made from the papyrus reed was mounted on long linen rolls to make books, and the paper scraped clean of the old soot-based inks when the book was wanted for something else.