Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

“But the runup to these events has happened at least once,” Rhiow said. “And the world’s still here. Why?”

“Something must have averted the worst of it,” Hwaith said.

“But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t still serious effects. Remember when Helen said the Mayans abandoned their cities?”

“The tenth century…” Urruah said, and licked his nose. The suggestion fit the dates too well.

Rhiow shivered all over. “We’re going to have to make sense of this as quickly as we can,” she said. In the case, Arhu was making his way down two cases to one of the remaining objects from which rubbings had been made. It was neither clay nor ceramic, but a plain smooth slab, maybe an ehhif foot wide and two feet long, of carved white jade. Temporarily restored to its pristine condition by Hwaith’s wizardry, it was extremely beautiful, even in its mended state. But it had been most comprehensively broken – shattered into six large pieces and numerous smaller fragments.

“Somebody,” Hwaith said, looking up at it, “meant for any reader to understand that this was important. In that culture, gold was all over the place… but jade was precious.”

Urruah was looking at it with great interest. “Yeah,” he said. “This isn’t just someone’s ‘keep off the grass’ sign. What I’d like to know, though, is why someone tried to hard to destroy it. Anyway — Arhu?”

“Yeah,” Arhu said, and sat down in front of the slab, once again bracing himself against it with his forepaws as he Looked at it.

If the last tablet had immediately been eloquent of utmost disaster when viewed with the Eye, this one was less instantly forthcoming – yet it also had a disquieting feel to it, as if it held hidden some secret that might be even more difficult to deal with than a universe’s destruction. “It says the Rift is the key,” Arhu said. “Xibalba Be, the Black Rift, the Dark Mouth…” Rhiow’s vision, like Arhu’s, filled with the image of a huge irregular band of darkness stretching across the otherwise bright streak of the Galaxy.

The Rift grew, or grew closer: it was hard to tell which. But it’s not frightening, Rhiow thought, bemused. Why isn’t this as upsetting as what we just saw? “But then,” Arhu said, “it skips. It says, ‘The old suns will be eaten. The dark and the light will merge and both be destroyed.’ And a little further on, ‘Call upon the Destroyer, do not forget Its name. It will betray – ‘”

He stopped. “Betray what?” Urruah said.

“I don’t know,” Arhu said. “Don’t you see it? I’m losing it. I can’t See – “

Rhiow shivered. For that short time they had all been able to feel with Arhu the equivocal meaning that trembled in the very structure of the stone. But now it was fading, the hidden message of the carving and draining away even while they watched, untl the piece of white jade was just a stone again, carved with strange signs, beautiful but mute.

“I don’t understand it,” Rhiow said, looking up at the tablets. “Why is the context so troublesome all of a sudden — ?”

It’s being interfered with, the Whisperer said.

Rhiow blinked. The thought of the kind of power that could interfere with the functioning of wizardry itself, the very basic use of the Speech to make the normally unintelligible intelligible– But this is the problem. We’re dealing with powers and forces from outside.

“It’s a good thing you did as much as you did without the Eye,” Urruah said. “If you’d used it to start with, we wouldn’t have anything like as much to work with as we have now.”

“Yeah,” Arhu said. But he sounded dispirited as he sat down again, and Rhiow knew what he was thinking without having to overhear it. This was the most important piece, the key to stopping what’s trying to happen — What can be done?? Rhiow said to the Whisperer.

Here and now, that voice said, nothing.

Rhiow held still and considered. Then perhaps we need to look elsewhere for answers than here or now.

The Whisperer paused… and Rhiow felt the other’s whiskers go forward.

“I think we need to do an end run,” she said. “And I’m not going to let myself get too desperate about the Devourer of Worlds until I have a talk with the Devourer of Darkness.”

The others stared at her.

Or Pastrami, said the large calm voice inside all their heads.

*

“Ith!” Arhu shouted, and sat up straight.

Rhiow’s tail waved in satisfaction and relief that Ith had been able to follow the proceedings after she had alerted him earlier. And the connection was surprisingly strong for one reaching so far uptime, and without a specific wizardry having been built to conduct it. “Cousin,” Rhiow said, “we have business in hand here, but it’s being hindered.”

I know, he said.

Hwaith’s ears twitched. “How?”

What my brother sees, I also see. They could all feel through the connection the scratching and rubbing together of saurian claws, Ith’s typical gesture when he was concerned about something. And today I see that I can be of help.

“Indeed you can,” Rhiow said. “Having seen what your brother was looking at – “

I will go to that place in our time and complete what has been begun. And I hear your concern, he said privately to Rhiow; indeed I share it. Forgive my brevity. I will go about this business now, and call you before you depart for your errand tonight.

“Ith,” Rhiow said, “you’re a star.”

She could feel that distant jaw drop in one of the gestures that felines and saurian shared. So it would seem, Ith said, and dropped out of the link.

Arhu came down out of the case and stood looking around him for a moment. “Rhi,” he said, “I’m sorry…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for!” she said. “You did brilliantly. Come on… let’s head out. We need to get back to the Silent Man’s and get some rest before this evening.”

“Though we might,” Hwaith said, “if you liked, stop and smell the roses…”

She chuckled, glanced at the others. “Please,” Urruah said. “I have to confess, the smog has been getting to me a little.”

They headed down the marble stairs and out through that high arched portico once more, wandering down the gravel walks and inhaling air strongly scented with something besides internal combustion. White roses, red ones, gold ones and pink ones, fat rosebushes and thin plants with showy single blossoms, heavy scents and sharp light ones, they were all there.

But there was all too little time to enjoy them. Rhiow was sitting by a white rosebush with huge lemony-smelling flowers when Ith spoke in her ear again: and the sound of alarm in his voice brought her up on her feet in a second. Rhiow, we have a problem.

What?

I have gone to the museum: to the very place I saw with the rest of you. And then to all other parts of it.

Oh, Ith, don’t tell me –

The tablets have not been here for many years. They’re gone…

The Big Meow: Chapter Ten

“Is there any trace – “ Rhiow said.

I can certainly feel their shadows here, Ith said. But after so much time, those are so faint as to be almost impossible to read. I can feel the tablets being wrapped and crated up, and then taken away. But to where…. Rhiow could feel his claws clicking together. Discovering that will take longer.

“This is all wrong,” Arhu muttered, sounding stricken. “Why can’t I See where they went?”

Rhiow licked her nose, intent on not letting her growing exasperation show. “Arhu, take a breath and try to let some of the tension go – “

“Why should I not be tense? We needed what was on that last tablet, it’s really important, I know it is!”

“You should try to stay calm because you’re not going to be able to See your own tail otherwise!” Rhiow said. “You should know by now that vision’s at its least effective when the seer is giving in to stress and trying to pressure the view into happening. Even visionaries with years and years of experience have trouble with — ”