Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

The earth began to quake.

The screams of the ehhif by the door suggested that they were no longer quite so eager to linger here to meet the Great Old One. The torches fixed in the ground fell over, one by one, as the shaking got worse. Dislodged clods of earth began falling from the roof. There was no light, now, but the burning dark forming and spreading from inside the gate locus, and across the cavern, a white fire in the shape of a black and white Person, sitting still, concentrating, pouring out power. “Come on, Laurel!” Urruah was shouting in the Speech. “You know what you need to do, what you want to do!”

The noise was starting to build up in the cave as the shaking got worse, as bigger chunks of the ceiling started to fall, as the ehhif screamed and beat on the door, trapped and in terror of their lives. The earth was starting to roar as Helen had roared, the low sound of a great cat, hungry, bending over its prey, jaws opening. Rhiow, dazed and deafened, kept working to push herself to her feet. Hwaith, who’s looking after him, and what about Arhu, and Aufwi, and Helen, Urruah, you have to get them out —

But the voice that answered her was not Urruah, or Hwaith.

“In – Life’s – Name,” it said, slowly and with great effort, “and for Life’s sake – I say that I will use the Art – for nothing but – the service of that Life…”

She trailed off. The hill roared around them. “Come on,” Urruah said, and “Come on,” said Helen, “come on, cousin, you can do it, come on — !”

Dolores’s body with Laurel’s spirit in it was gasping for air. “Come on, Sif, push it,” Urruah was saying, “Helen, quick, her oxygen levels, I’ll hold that bleeding – “

“I will guard growth – and ease – ease pain – I will fight to preserve – what grows – lives well in its own – own way…”

She trailed off again. The ground under them all shook. The dark from the gate was getting closer, and Rhiow could feel it, a cold that burned worse than vacuum, because at least vacuum was in the real world and had a temperature, and this had nothing, was nothing, Nothing Itself, coming for them as it had wanted to forever –

Rhiow pushed herself up onto her forefeet, all she could manage. “Laurel! Come on!”

“Change no – no object or – creature unless its growth and life – or – or – “

“ – the system!”

“The system of which it is part – are threatened – “ A long, long pause. And then a last gasp.

“Laurel!”

The ceiling was starting to come apart above them, now. The shimmer of a forcefield that Urruah had erected was holding the downfalling chunks away for the moment, but it wouldn’t last: the cold blackness from the gate was eating at the edges of it. Not until I’m on my feet, Rhiow thought, and hauled her hind legs under her, and pushed herself up, and wobbled, and fell down, and pushed herself up again. I am a Person, and if I die here I’ll do it standing up before the Queen as befits one of Her children –

“ – To these ends – in the practice of my Art – I will put aside fear for courage – “ Another gasp, a long pause. “—And death for Life – “

The ceiling came down on them, stopping the ehhifs’ screams. The forcefield held, but it was buckling. Sif’s light was going out. Around them, the walls of the cavern were flowing like water, running downhill toward them –

“ – when it is right to do so – “

Something pushed itself against Rhiow, supporting her in the dark. She leaned on it, pushing herself straighter. Across the circle, Sif’s light was dimming, going out. Rhiow glanced to see what she was leaning on: caught a last glimpse of bronze eyes before the light went out and the earth’s roaring all around them drowned out everything else.

“Until Universe’s end — !”

It was almost a cry of triumph.

And then everything happened at once.

A great rent of light tore down the middle of the black gate, and something like lightning came lashing out of it, lighting the whole cavern in frozen strobe-flashes, long-seeming moments full of slabs of earth and stone held still in mid-fall. The black wizardry in the center of the ring of stones went up in an eye-hurting pulse of fire and deconstructed itself in a breath’s space, lines of light eating themselves away into darkness, finally the outermost containing circle erasing itself until there was no light left in the cavern anywhere but the faint shimmer of the forcefield that was still keeping the ceiling off them, but wouldn’t for much longer. “Out,” Rhiow yowled, “everybody out!!”

Her own transit spell was lying ready in her mind as always, but with someone leaning against her and no more likely than she was to be able to move in a hurry, Rhiow spoke her transit locus to twice its normal size and turned the spell loose, hoping Hwaith’s tail was close to his body. In a roar of downplunging pressure, the roof’s final collapse, everything went dark –

…And after what seemed forever, light again. At least, normal night seemed bright compared to where they had been, and the far more awful darkness they’d just seen. Rhiow looked up from under some trees on the slope they’d climbed what seemed a lifetime earlier, glimpsing through the branches of the shaking pine trees the dusty, dirty, blessedly light-polluted sky above Los Angeles, all aglow with grimy white streetlight-glow.

Rhiow staggered to her feet, wobbling. Her nerves didn’t seem to be working right, but after what she’d just been through, that was understandable. “Hwaith – “

He was sitting just by her again, a little hunched. “I’m all right,” he said. “Well, not the shoulder. I hit that stone pretty hard. Later we’ll fix it – “

The two of them staggered and limped three-legged partway up the hill, where they saw a faint light glowing. It was a wizardlight, and under it Urruah and Aufwi were sitting, and Arhu was bent down licking Siffha’h’s head urgently. Beside them, Helen Walks Softly was bending over the unconscious form of Dolores, putting pressure on her chest wound. Rhiow went up to them, and her eyes met Helen’s.

“Laurel – “

Helen shook her head, smoothing the dirty hair away from Dolores’s face. “The minute she was a wizard again and in her right mind,” she said, “she finished what she’d come for and then died properly to go settle matters with the Powers.” She sighed. “The cord’s broken. We’ll sing her home later. But first we’ll get this poor lady down to the hospital.”

Hwaith, for his part, had gone on past Rhiow up the hill, limping up to where it stopped very suddenly. “Wow,” he said.

Rhiow went up to join him. The cavern had fallen in completely, and taken most of Elwin Dagenham’s house with it: only the front porch and the driveway remained, and behind the house, a cracked swimming pool tilted over on its side, from which water was pouring into the crater where the hill and its cavern had been. Every few breaths, little cascades of dirt fell down into the crater from what remained of the hillside around, for the ground under them was still trembling slightly: doubtless there would be aftershocks later.

“None of this is going to be very stable,” Rhiow said. “We should get off this, and get back to the Silent Man’s… see how he’s doing there.”

She turned away from the newly-formed crater and looked down the hill again. Aufwi was sitting by Urruah, looking a little dazed, but otherwise all right. Arhu was still licking the prone Siffha’h’s head… until he stopped.

“What??” he said.

The others all looked at him. Arhu didn’t sound afraid: just puzzled. Then he sat bolt upright. “What??”

He looked down at Sif, who opened her eyes. “What?” she said to Arhu after after a moment.