Rhiow peered down at the first palimpsest she found in the case she was standing on, turning her head from side to side to get the best angle on it. Theehhifof that period had had two different ways of writing: the hieratic writing, all pictograms, and the demotic, a graceful curled and swirled language, as often written vertically as horizontally, which shared some structural attributes with the present written form of the Speech. True to their names, these palimpsests had no visible writing left and were here mostly as examples of how papyrus was recycled (so Rhiow read from the museum’s explanatory notes inside the case). But for one of the People, and a wizard, used to seeing the invisible, such paperwork was more revealing. Rhiow squinted a little at the first palimpsest, doing her best to make out the dim remnants of the characters there.Of barley, eight measures,she read,and of water, twenty measures, and of the day’s bread-make, a lump of a fist’s size: let all be set in the sun for nine days, and when the mixture smelleth fair and the life in it hath quietened, let all be strained and poured into larger vessels so that twenty measures more of water may be added—
Rhiow snickered.A beer recipe…Theehhifof that time liked their beer, having invented it, and were constantly leaving jars of it out for the gods. That it always vanished afterward struck theehhifof that time as proof of deity’s existence; it was evidence of their youth and innocence as a species that they rarely noticed how drunk the neighbors were the next morning.
Rhiow glanced up, looked over her shoulder at the others. They were in front of yet another statue, in a light gray stone mis time. This figure was seated, with a roll of papyrus in her lap; again her head was that of one of the People, but wearing a more reflective look than that of Iau the Queen, and a much milder one than her sister.“ ‘Then came Hrau’f the Tamer,’ ” said Urruah, “who calmed the fires Aaurh set, and put things in order: the Lady of the Hearth, who burns low, and learns wisdom, and teaches it. In every still warm place she may be found, in every heart that seeks. She speaks the Silent Knowledge to the ears of those who can hear…’ ”
Rhiow twitched her tail meditatively and stepped along the top of the glass case to look at the next palimpsest, puzzling over the faintly visible characters. This one had been more thoroughly scraped off than the last, but she could still read the earlier writings. A long column of the demotic script ran down the side of the ordered page full of hieratic characters, stick-figures of birds and upheld hands and feathers and snakes, eyes and chairs and wiggly lines. At the top of the scripture, the hieratic writing was easier to read, though Rhiow still had to squint.—he performeth this by means of the mighty words of power that proceed from his mouth, and in this region of the Underworld he inflicteth with the knife wounds upon Aapep, whose place is in heaven—
An odd phrase. Rhiow knew that Aapep was one of the manyehhif namesfor 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 asehhifhad 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 thoughtSomething 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. Hisvoice 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 maybe 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 aboutme?What am I supposed to make ofthis?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 intourruah,“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.’ ”