Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

Over in the spell-circle, Urruah and Aufwi and Hwaith exchanged glances. Ready?

Ready –

Ready!

Sif?

Get on with it!

The three toms reached out of the confinement enclosures where they stood inside the spell-circle, and each gathered to him like an armful of guy-wires a bundle of hyperstrings that had been tethered to the floor of the spell. The secondary strings that defined the synchronization between the LA gate and the incursion gate, still burning black above them, sprang into visibility. Hastily the three of them started to pull on the three sets of strings.

There was nothing easy about it. Slowly, like a tethered zeppelin, the black gate started drifting toward them: but it resisted them, and at one point simply refused to drift any closer to the LA gate and the spell circle. The Black Leopard had noticed it. But it was twisting and yowling under an increasing onslaught of lightnings, and caught up in a battle on another plane.

There was no telling how much longer this state would last, however. From her little spell-dome, Siffha’h looked over at Arhu.

Do it now! he said.

No, Aufwi yowled, we’re not ready!If it’s not inside the circle, we can’t be sure of the synch —

Urruah glanced around at the Leopard, then back up at the black gate. I wouldn’t wait, he said. Sif, go!

The dome under which she had been sitting and watching her claudication-pearl winked out. Siffha’h seized the pearl in her mouth, not wanting to trust its management to levitation under the circumstances, and bounded across the circle to where Urruah and Aufwi and Hwaith were desperately trying to reel the hyperstrings in. Right up Urruah’s bunch of strings Siffha’h ran, and paused there, balancing precariously, as the black gate was slowly dragged closer to the spell-circle’s edge.

Around them, the lightning licked and flashed at the hillcrests as the Black Leopard’s seeming fixed on them and tried to move closer. Hurry up! Siffha’h yelled.

None of the toms answered her. Like the others, Urruah was clawing the hyperstrings closer to him in armfuls, as if climbing a tree. They vanished into the spell structure behind him, and slowly, slowly the black gate drifted closer –

Siffha’h balanced, wavered as the strings were pulled under her, and almost fell – then caught herself and took four or five hurried steps up the string bundle again, sinking in her claws, hanging on. The black gate was almost up against the spell-circle’s border now. Behind them, the Leopard roared and everything shook again –

Sif!

She didn’t bother answering Arhu’s desperate shout. Siffha’h ran up the string bundle nearly to where it anchored into the structure of the black gate, near the bottom of the portal, and there again she clung and waited –

The gate’s interface butted into the spell-circle’s boundary… and then, an eternal few seconds later, through it.

Siffha’h spat the little glowing pearl into the gate locus. The pearl vanished into its darkness.

Get down! she yowled, and turned to leap down into the circle.

As she hit the ground, Urruah had just time enough to turn around and leap onto the control section of the spell that broke the connections to the black gate. Aufwi let go the strings he was holding, reared up and came down on the separate section that activated the circle’s protective shield. Then, looking around, Aufwi’s jaw dropped. Urruah!

Urruah turned to look.

Hwaith was gone —

Everything whited out as the black gate blew.

Deeper in reality, the battle went on, Queen Iau and her Mate and children tore at the Black Leopard’s essence, seemingly without effect. That darkness now reared above them, growing greater until one of its paws was the size of the Queen or the Great Tom. Aaurh the Mighty charged It, roaring, but the roar was lost in the earthquake-thunder, and it swept Her aside like a kitten. Sa’Rraah leapt at Its throat and clung there, biting deep, but It shook Her off like a rat. In front of It, Queen Iau crouched down and readied Herself for one more spring, though it seemed hopeless –

And suddenly the whole ground of being in that place flickered, as if a wave of some kind had run through the air. It passed over all the Pride without effect. But when it had passed, the Black Leopard looked somehow less definite, somehow diminished. And a moment later it stared at itself in astonishment and rage, for it was once more no bigger than the Queen.

“So,” Queen Iau said, and leapt. And this time, caught by the throat, the Black Leopard screamed and went down.

The Pride followed to finish off the Queen’s enemy. Squealing in pain, flailing in horror, the Outside One began to come apart beneath their teeth and claws. It shredded away like cloud before wind, in tatters and patches, as the connection to its power was lost. Tepeyollotl the Eater was vanishing now as It had in Its time made others vanish: for it was now just a physical thing. Methodically, tempering Their rage now – for there was no need for it – the divine Pride abolished the Outside One as It would have abolished Them and everything else.

And the floors of Heaven shone clean and empty except for the Pride, who stood panting and scarred on the floor of Heaven, looking at one another.

“My Daughter,” Queen Iau said, “well done. “

“Yes,” sa’Rraah said, “it is.” And without another word she flung herself at her Mother’s throat.

They rolled over and over the floors of existence together, the Lone One kicking at her Dam’s guts and tearing at Her with Her claws, during this one moment when the One might be slightly less than omnipotent. Rhiow, now separate again from the Lone One with the destruction of the black gate and the dissolution of the conditions that had prompted their joining, stood aside on the floor of Heaven and yowled in distress at what she had inadvertently brought about. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen, no!

But the Queen rose up and threw sa’Rraah aside – and as she did so, without warning a dark shape came shouldering past Rhiow and leapt onto sa’Rraah in turn. For several of those eternal moments Rhiow could only watch in astonishment as the Great Tom caught sa’Rraah Herself by the scruff and slammed her down against the dark floor of their conjunct mind, digging his claws in behind her shoulders and pinning her so that She didn’t even dare writhe or struggle to get away.

Out! He yowled.

A moment later, She had fled.

Only then did He look back at Rhiow. Only then did she see the one dark eye… and the one bronze one. She stared.

Queen Iau shook Herself all over, glancing in an idle way at the bright fur on her back, still roused a little with the annoyance of the fight, and then strolled over to Rhiow and Hwaith. Behind her, the Whisperer and Aaurh the Mighty came along like good pride-daughters, already healed of the scars They had acquired in the fight, and looking a little curiously at the Great Tom.

Hwaith in the Tom’s person flicked an ear at the Queen. Madam, he said.

She eyed him with amusement, then looked at Rhiow. It seems that your friend learned something from the bargain you and my Eldest Daughter struck, Queen Iau said.

Rhiow was still thunderstruck.

The Tom and I spoke, Madam, Hwaith said. I couldn’t stay: I had to come here to make sure that all went well. And he looked at Rhiow. My Royal Sire was willing to allow me to join him and assist him… after some encouragement.

Rhiow’s eyes went wide.

Iau’s whiskers went forward. Mostly, my son, she said, it’s wiser to keep such assistance to a minimum. We are in very special circumstances here: but your body will not be able to bear much more. You should go.

She waved Her tail at them. Go on, she said. On this plane and on others, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do. But we’ll talk again.

Rhiow and Hwaith bowed to the Queen, and vanished –

…back into reality.

Rhiow sat up straight as a Person will who’s dozed off sitting up, and stared around her in near-panic at the thought of what she might find. The air was full of dust and smoke and the smell of burning, but empty of that loathsome dark curdling that had sucked the life and color out of everything up here. Normal evening was reasserting itself, though after a quake of this size there was understandably little else that was normal about the night. Cracks spread all across the Observatory terrace’s paving, and all around Rhiow could hear little rustles of falling dirt from tiny landslides in the canyons down the mountain’s side, as the abused earth tried to settle itself down. That wasn’t going to happen for a while yet: right then an aftershock shook the ground under her paws.

But Rhiow, who just a few days before had clung to a tree limb like a scared squirrel on feeling such a thing, now hardly noticed it at all as she stared around. There was Ith, sitting down on his haunches by the north-facing Observatory wall. There were Urruah and Aufwi sitting shocked-looking in the middle of the now deactivated spell-circle, talking excitedly to each other, and Siffha’h, looking very smug as she sat and had a wash: and Helen Walks Softly, sitting on one of the white granite park benches near the edge of the terrace, taking the condor feathers out of her hair.

And sitting by himself only a few feet away, in the shadow of the white granite obelisk and just under the majestic robed form of some ehhif physicist, was Hwaith…looking at her.

“Oh, what did you do,” Rhiow said to Hwaith. “What did you do!”

“What I had to,” Hwaith, said, “for my queen.”

Rhiow went straight to him and butted his head, hard. Abashed, he started washing Rhiow’s ear.

She let him.

The Big Meow: Chapter Thirteen

The cleanup was going to take days: that much was obvious from the start. Not even half the world’s wizards could develop a custom timepatch for such a cosmically destabilizing event, and implement it, in a hurry. But that was not Rhiow’s problem, and for that night at least she was glad to let it be someone else’s.

They made their way back to the Silent Man’s house via transit circle, since every bit of strictly physical movement through this space would add to the already significant difficulties that would accompany the patching. While Aufwi was building the circle, though, Rhiow paused with Urruah to look westward. The Old Downside, having done its job and kept the solid earth solid, was gone now, and the Pacific was once more lying in its bed. But over on Cahuenga Peak, the results of other events of the evening were plain to see. That white sign that Urruah had made so much of earlier when they’d landed under it had not escaped the attention of the angry skies. HOLLYWOODLAND it had said earlier. But now by cityglow they could see how the last four letters lay shattered and smoking on the ground, and the brush they’d fallen onto smouldered yet. “Oh dear,” Rhiow said. “That’s probably going to take a while to fix.”

Urruah, though, was looking across at the broken word, and his whiskers were pushed right forward. “You know,” he said, “even if they do fix it, somehow I suspect it’s not going to matter…”

They walked away. “What an incredible mess,” Rhiow said. “The patching’s going to be a nightmare.”

Urruah shrugged his tail. “It could have been worse,” he said. “Try patching a whole planet, or a whole region of space. But the Planetary’s on it, and he won’t dawdle: not with as many casualties as there were. Bad enough that they happened, and people suffered them. But after the master patch team’s done, things here will be back to normal instantly… as far as any ehhif here can tell. They’ll just reset the whole LA basin to sunset local time.”