The Book of Night With Moon (8 page)

Rhiow got up and shook herself again, not that it helped. "Well, give T'hom my best when you hear from him," she said. "Go well, Advisory… and watch out for that caffeine."

"
Dai stihó,
Rhiow," Carl said. "Stay in touch. And mind the rats."

"You got
that
in one," she said, and headed down the stairs.

When Rhiow got back down to the tracks, she found that Saash and Urruah had moved over to the far side, near the wall. Between them lay the kitling, now curled into a tight ball. He was cleaner: Saash was washing him, and looked up from that now as Rhiow came over.

"How is he?" Rhiow said.

"He woke for a moment," Saash said, "but went right out again— understandable. No bones broken, no internal injuries. He's just bitten up and shocked to exhaustion. Sleep's best for him, and a wizardry to kill the filth in the bites. But not here."

"No, indeed not," Rhiow said, glancing around. No
ehhif
terminal staff were out on the tracks as yet, but it wouldn't do for any to come along and find this kitling. The
ehhif
's relations with terminal cats had become somewhat difficult over the last few years. Every now and then the place was "swept," and sick or indigent cats found there were taken away, along with sick or indigent
ehhif
who had also taken refuge in the tunnels for shelter rather than food. "Well, he's got to have somewhere to rest. But I can't help: the outside places near my den are too dangerous for a kit."

"I live in a Dumpster," Urruah said, with execrable pride. "There would be room… but I don't think it's the place for him if he's sick."

"No," Rhiow said, "but it's good of you to offer." She didn't say what she was thinking: that attempting to keep a young tom barely out of kittenhood in close company with a tom of siring age was a recipe for disaster, whether the tom lived in a Dumpster or a palace, and whether he was a wizard or not. Mature toms couldn't help their attitude toward kittens in general, and male ones in particular, no matter how they tried.

"I think I can put him up," Saash said. "There are a lot of places way down and back in the garage where the
ehhif
never go. One big high ledge that I use sometimes will serve: it's four levels down. None of the
ehhif
go down there except to fetch cars out, and not often— it's long-term storage space. This kitling won't be heard, even if he cries, and if I have to, I can lay a barrier to hold either him or the sound in till he's well enough to go."

"You'll have to spend some time there to be sure he's settled," Rhiow said, "and if he catches you, Abha'h will powder you again—"

Saash hissed softly, but the sound was resigned. "I suppose it's in a good cause," she said. "And I have to eat sometime; he'd catch me then anyway. Will you two lend a hand with the jump? I don't propose to carry him all the way home in my mouth."

"No problem. Urruah?"

"As long as she does the circle," Urruah said, emitting a cavernous yawn. The morning's exertions were beginning to catch up with him.

Rhiow yawned, too, then laughed. "Quick," she said, "before we all fall asleep where we stand…"

Saash glanced around her, eyeing the area, and with a quick practiced flick of her tail laid out the boundaries of the spell, sweeping the area clean of random string influences and defining the area where she wanted the new ones to anchor. When the anchors were in place, looking like a cage of vertical bright lines around the edges of the circle, Saash added the only ingredient needed: the words. She said one word in the Speech, and the anchors leaned inward above them, knotting into the tip of a cone. Then three more words— the medium-precision versions of Saash's and Rhiow's and Urruah's names, and a fourth generic medium-precision term for their "passenger," with only the physical characteristics of his size and color added in, since they didn't know his name or anything about his personality. With the details completed, the dirt and cinders under their feet went webbed with more bright lines, the anchors that would hold the four of them inside the spell. "Location's coming," Saash said to Urruah. "Ready?"

He turned and snagged one of the anchor strands in his teeth, ready to feed power down it. "Go."

Saash recited a string of coordinates in the Speech, and then said the last word that knotted the spell closed and turned it loose. Urruah bit hard on the string, feeding power down it. The whole structure blazed: the "cone" of strings collapsed down on them, pushed them down and out through its bottom. A moment when the world was a tangle of lines of fire—

Then dimness reasserted itself. The four of them stood and sat and lay on a concrete shelf four feet wide and ten feet long, high up at the far end of a room much longer than it was wide. The shelf's edge was a sheer drop of twenty feet to a floor painted with white lines and covered with blocky machinery, in which
ehhif
's cars were stacked three high.

The string structure snapped away to nothing. "
Au,
I'm glad there are gates," Saash said, and flopped down on her side. "Who'd want to do that every time you wanted to go any distance? It's bad enough for ten blocks."

"That's why Iau gave us feet," Rhiow said. "Urruah? You okay?"

He sat down, blinking. "I will be after I eat something."

He's fine,
Rhiow thought, amused. "Now let's see about this one—" She peered at the kitling. Under the grime, most of which Saash had gotten off, he was white with irregular black patches on back and flanks and face: one splotch sat on his upper lip, creating an effect like Carl's mustache. Ear-tips, tail-tips, and feet were black.
Hu-rhiw
was the Ailurin name for this kind of pattern: day-and-night. He lay there breathing hard, ears back, eyes squeezed shut.

Conscious,
Rhiow thought,
but unwilling to accept what's been happening to him. And why wouldn't he be?
For not all People believed in wizards. Many who did believe were suspicious of them, thinking they somehow desired to dominate other People, or else they mocked wizards as unnecessary or ineffective, saying that they'd never seen a wizard do anything useful.
Well, that's the whole point,
Rhiow thought,
to do as much good as possible, as quietly as possible. What the Lone One doesn't have brought to Its attention, It can't ruin.
But the generally dismissive attitude of other People was something you got used to and learned to work around. After all, the situation could have been much worse… like that of the
ehhif
wizards. Rhiow often wondered how they got anything done, since hardly any of their kind knew they existed or believed in them at all, and preserving that status quo was part of their mandate.

That little body still lay curled tense; Rhiow caught a flicker of eyelid.
Conscious, all right. We'll have some explaining to do, but it can wait.
"Saash," she said, "would you feel inclined to give him a bit more of a wash? He'll wake."

"Certainly." Saash too had seen that betraying flicker. She curled closer to the youngster and began enthusiastically washing inside one ear. Only the most unconscious cat could resist that for long.

The youngster's eyes flew open, and he sneezed: possibly from the washing, or the smell that still lingered about him. He tried to get up, but Saash put a paw firmly over his midsection and held him down.

"Lemme go!"

"You've had a bad morning, kit," Rhiow said mildly. "I'd lie still awhile."

"Don't call me kit," he said in a yowl meant to be threatening. "I'm a tom!"

Urruah gave him an amused glance. "Oh. Then we can fight now, can we?"

"Uhh…" The kit looked up at Urruah— taking in the size of him, the brawny shoulders and huge paws, and, where the tips of the forefangs stuck out so undemurely, the massive teeth. "Uh, maybe I don't feel well enough."

"Well, then," Urruah said, "at your convenience." He sat down and began to wash. Rhiow ducked her head briefly to hide a smile. It was, of course, an excuse that the rituals of tom-combat permitted: most of those rituals were about allowing the other party to escape a fight and still save face.

"You have reason not to feel well," Saash said, pausing in her washing. "About fifty rats took bites out of you. You lie still, and we'll work on that."

"Why should you care?" the kit said bitterly.

"We have our reasons," Rhiow said. "What's your name, youngster?"

His eyes narrowed, a suspicious look, but after a moment he said, "Arhu."

"Where's your dam?" Saash said.

"I don't know." This by itself was nothing unusual. City-living cats might routinely live in-pride, even toms sometimes staying with their mother and littermates; or they might go their own way at adolescence to run with different prides, or stay completely unaligned.

"Are you in
hhau'fih?
" Saash used the word that meant any group relationship in general, rather than
rrai'fih,
a pride-relationship implying possible blood ties.

"No. I walk alone."

Rhiow and Saash exchanged glances. He was very young to be nonaligned, but that happened in the city, too, by accident or design.

"There'll be time for those details later," Rhiow said. "Arhu, how did you come to be down there where we found you, in the tunnel?"

"Someone said I should go there. They laughed at me. They said,
I dare you…
" Arhu yawned, both weariness and bravado. "You have to take dares…."

"What was the dare?"

"She said,
Walk down here, and take the adventure that comes to you—"

Rhiow's eyes went wide. " 'She.' What did she say to you first?"

"When?"

"Before that."

A sudden coolness in Arhu's voice, in his eyes. "Nothing."

"
Fwau,
" Rhiow said; a bit roughly, for her, but she thought it necessary. "Something else has to have been said first." She thought she knew what, but she didn't dare lead him….

Arhu stared at her. Rhiow thought she had never seen such a cold and suspicious look from a kit so young. Pity rose up in her; she wanted to cry,
Who hurt you so badly that you've lost your kittenhood entire? What's been done to you?
But Rhiow held her peace. She thought Arhu was going to give her no answer at all: he laid his head down sideways on the concrete again. But he did not close his eyes, staring out instead into the dimness of the garage.

Come on,
Rhiow thought.
Tell me.

"I was in the alley," Arhu said. "The food's good there: they throw stuff out of that grocery store on the other side of it, the Gristede's. But the pride there, Hrau and Eiff and Ihwin and them, they caught me and beat me again. They said they'd kill me, next time; and I couldn't move afterward, so I just lay where they left me. No one else came for a good while…. Then she must have come along while I was hurting. I couldn't see her: I didn't look, it hurt to move. She said,
You could be powerful. The day could come when you could do all kinds of good things, when you could do anything, almost, with the strength I can give you… if you lived through the… test, the… hard time…"
Arhu made an uncertain face, as if not sure how to render what had been said to him. "She said,
If you take what I give you, and live through the trouble that follows— and it
will
follow— then you'll be strong forever. Strong for all your lives.
" His voice was going matter-of-fact now, like someone repeating a milk-story heard long ago against his dam's belly. "I wanted that. To be strong. I said,
What could happen to me that would be worse than what's already happened? Do it. Give it to me.
She said,
Are you sure? Really sure?
I said,
Yes, hurry up, I want it now.
She said,
Then listen to what I'm going to say to you now, and if you believe in it, then say it yourself, out loud.
And I said it, though some of it was pretty stupid. And it was quiet then."

"Hmm. Where was this alley, exactly?" said Urruah.

" 'Ru, shut up. You can check the Gristede's later. Arhu," Rhiow said, "say what she told you to."

A little silence, and then he began to speak, and a shiver went down Rhiow from nose to tail: for the voice was his, but the tone, the meaning and knowledge held in it, was another's. "In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art that is Its gift in Life's service alone. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way: nor will I change any creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is fit to do so— looking always toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which they proceeded…."

No hesitation, no uncertainty; as if it had been burned into his bones. Rhiow and Urruah and Saash all looked at one another.

"Then what happened?"

He stirred. "After a while, I felt better, and I saw I could get away— none of
them
were there. I walked out into the street. It was quiet. It was late, just the steam coming up out of the street, you know how it does. I walked a long time until I saw inside there, inside those doors. It was all bright and warm, but the doors were shut. I thought,
It's no use, there's no way to get in.
But then—" Now he sounded dreamily mystified, though at a remove. "Then someone— then I heard
how
to get in, if I wanted to. I knew more than I knew a minute before: a way to move, and words to say. And she said,
Do that, and then go in and see what happens. I dare you.
So I did. I said the words, and I walked in through the doors…
through
them!… and then on under the sky-roof, and on down through those littler doors, down into the dark…"

Arhu trailed off, and shivered. "I'm tired," he said, and closed his eyes.