To Visit the Queen Read online

  Rhiow closed her eyes and reduced the world to near darkness and Iaehh's tiny snore. When I wake, I will meet my old enemy uncertainty, she thought, and its partners, the shadows that lie at the back of my mind and others': those darknesses that go about hunting for some action of mine to which to fasten themselves. They will lie in my road and say, Why bother? or It will never work: or they will lie out long and dark behind me, saying, What difference have you made? It is all for nothing. But I need pay them no mind. They are only the servants of the Lone Power, and against me and Those Whom I serve, they have no strength unless I allow them the same. My commission comes from Those Who Are, the Powers that were before time and will be after it: the Powers Who made time, and to Whom it answers. My paw, lifted to strike the shadows away from the feet of the Event enacted, holds hidden within it Their claw that strikes the Lone One to the heart, day by day. So it was done anciently; so I shall do tomorrow. And for tonight, I admit of no shadow but that of my closed eyes, and I give Their claw the resting time to sharpen itself in dream on the Tree: for at eyes' opening, together We go to battle again!

  And Iaehh's snore was the last thing she heard.

  When she woke up, Iaehh had already gone off to work, and apparently had carefully moved her off his lap and onto the chair without waking her when he went to bed... whenever that had been. The food bowls had been washed again, and were full.

  Rhiow sighed with the sheer pleasure of having had a good night's sleep: it was rare enough, in her business. She got up and ate, then washed at leisure, and went out to use the box: and finally she checked the security spell on the apartment's door before heading downtown to Grand Central again.

  Arhu was there early again, sitting in front of the gate. It was patent, showing the view down toward the Thames from near the main entrance to the Tower, and shedding a cool blue light around him. " 'Luck, Arhu," she said, jumping up onto the platform. "Where's Urruah?"

  "He went through already," Arhu said, watching a barge full of ehhif tourists loading up at the dock near HMS Belfast for a tour down the river. "Wanted to go over early to get the timeslide set up with Fhrio: and he wanted to make sure the two Samnaun-based transfer gates were in place and working without messing everything else up."

  Rhiow waved her tail slowly in acknowledgment, looking at the serene vista. It was a sunny morning over there: she had seen few of those so far. "Before we go..." she said.

  "I'm not going to die of it," Arhu said, "so don't worry."

  Rhiow blinked. "Die of what?"

  "You know. Siffha'h," he said, though his voice was so mournful that Rhiow wondered if perhaps he wasn't all that sure of the outcome.

  "That wasn't what I was going to ask you," she said, taking a swipe at his left ear, and missing entirely: Arhu ducked without even looking. "You are getting good at that," Rhiow added, unable to conceal slight admiration.

  "I don't like pain," Arhu said. "It hurts."

  Which is why it's such an effective teaching medium for kittens, Rhiow thought, not least among them you. "What I was going to ask you," she said, "was whether you had had any further insights into what was going to happen on this run."

  His tail lashed. "Nothing that I can describe," Arhu said. "I keep getting flashes, but they slip away. Believe me, Rhiow, if I see anything that I can describe— then or afterwards— I'll tell you. But it doesn't always come that way. I keep getting stuff that just pops out without warning, and before I can get hold of it to see what it means, it's gone and taken all the— the meanings, the— "

  "Context?"

  "Yeah, the context— it all just goes. While the context's there, everything makes sense, but when I lose that..." He sighed. "It's really frustrating. It makes me want to hit things."

  "Don't be tempted," Rhiow said, thinking of Fhrio.

  Arhu laughed out loud. "I wouldn't bother. For one thing, beating him up wouldn't be any big deal, and for another, it's not exactly polite, is it?"

  She blinked again. Rhiow couldn't think if she had ever before heard Arhu use the word polite. If this is the kind of effect that having a crush is going to have on him, she thought, I'm all for it, even if it makes him ache a little.

  "So are you ready?" Arhu said.

  "By all means, let's go," said Rhiow. They stepped through into the bright London day, and Arhu shut the worldgate behind them. There by the Tower entrance, the two of them sidled. They made their way among the unseeing tourists down into the Tower Hill Underground station, and down to the passages leading to the platform where the London team had confined their unruly worldgate.

  The spot was busy, though not so much with wizards as with equipment. The malfunctioning gate itself was disconnected from its power source, only visible to Rhiow as the thinnest ghost oval traced in the air, like a structure woven of smoke. The "catenary," the insubstantial power conduit that was finally rooted in the Old Downside and that normally served this gate, lay coiling along the floor like some bright serpent: the end of it, which would normally have terminated in the gate, was now faired into a glowing new spell-circle that had been traced on the floor. If the last one had looked like vines twining amongst one another, this one looked more like a circular hedge. It was complex, for Rhiow could see that Urruah, rather than using specific physical objects to twist local space into the shapes he required, was using the spell structure itself. The "hedge" blazed and flowed with multicolored fire, the radiance of it stuttering here and there as one spell subroutine or another came active, did its job, and deactivated itself. Urruah was pacing around the diagram, checking his spelling, while Fhrio crouched nearby and inspected the connection of the catenary to the diagram: off to one side, Auhlae was sitting with her tail neatly tucked about her forefeet, watching him work.

  "Go check your name in that," Rhiow said to Arhu. He went straight over to the spell to do it. There were few such important aspects of spelling as to make sure you were correctly named. Like all the other sciences, wizardry always works: and, as in the other sciences, if a practitioner works too casually with forces he doesn't fully understand, the results are likely to be unfortunate. A wizard whose written name specified a different nature than the usual in a given spell would come out of that spell changed, and not always in ways he or she would prefer.

  Rhiow turned her attention briefly to the other gate, which was hanging at one end of the platform, shimmering in the darkness. This was one of the "transfer" gates that would be taking some of the pressure off the London complex while the malfunctioning gate structure was completely offline. A transiting wizard using one of the London gates would now find him- or herself briefly under the peak of Piz Buin, at the restored prehistoric gating facility at Samnaun in the Alps, before finishing at their intended destination. It would be a slight inconvenience, but Rhiow couldn't believe any wizard in her right mind would grudge the momentary view out of the great transverse crevasse and down the side of the mountain... and the skiiers above would never notice.

  " 'Luck, Fhrio," Rhiow said as she walked over to him. "Everything working satisfactorily?"

  "Insofar as anything can be satisfactory when it's all ripped up like this," Fhrio said, "yes." For once he sounded merely tired rather than actively quarrelsome.

  "You were up all night," Rhiow said.

  "Yes I was," said Fhrio, and gave her a glance as if looking to see whether she was mocking him.

  All Rhiow could do, hoping he wouldn't misunderstand the gesture, was lower her head and bump his briefly. "I appreciate the effort," she said, "we all do." And she moved away before either of them would have a chance to be embarrassed.

  She went over to the timeslide spell to have a look at her own name, checking the arabesques and curls of it in the graphic form of the Speech. Everything looked all right, though she checked again just to be certain. She was not about to forget one spell some years ago, worked in haste by Urruah, that had been perfect in ninety-nine percent of its detail but in which he had changed the sign on one min
or symbol. The spell would have worked all right, but Rhiow would have exited it pure white, blue-eyed, and possibly deaf. She had been teasing Urruah about that one for a long time, but, judging by the intent look on his face, today might not be the best time to do it.

  Auhlae got up and came over to greet Rhiow as she came: they breathed breaths for a moment. "Oh, Auhlae," Rhiow said, "more sausages— I don't know how you cope with all this rich food. I'd be the size of a houff by now."

  Auhlae put her whiskers forward. "I control myself mostly," she said, "but since things started to misbehave, my appetite's been raging... and I confess I've been humoring it. I can always eat grass for a few days, later on."

  Arhu came over. "You satisfied with the way your name looks?" Rhiow said.

  "It looks fine. At least it looks the way it looks in our gate at home."

  "The way it did yesterday?"

  "Yeah."

  "Good. Always check it frequently. Lives change without warning; names change the same way."

  "Yeah." He licked his nose. "Auhlae, is Siffha'h going to be here today?"

  "No, Arhu, she's off with Huff making an adjustment to one of the other gates," Auhlae said. "Fhrio and I will be standing guard over this end of your timeslide while you're downtime." She craned her neck a little to look at the spell construct. "Does he do this often?" Auhlae said to Rhiow. "He's very good at it."

  "He's never done it before, to the best of my knowledge," Rhiow said, glancing over that way too as Urruah sat down, apparently to take one last overview of the whole structure. "I have a feeling he's been waiting for the chance, though." The intricacy and tightness of the spell-structure suggested to Rhiow that he had been working on this spell, or something like it, for a long time. There was no disputing its elegance: Urruah was an artist at this kind of thing. Unfortunately, there was also no disputing its dangerousness. It's a good thing we finally have an excuse to do something like this, Rhiow thought. Otherwise who knows what he might have done someday.

  Then she dismissed the thought. He might sometimes be impatient and reckless, by a queen's standards anyway, but Urruah was a professional. He would not tamper with time unless and until the Powers sanctioned it. And then when he does, she thought, as Urruah looked up from the spell with an extremely self-satisfied expression, he'll have the time of his life.

  "Nice work, huh?" Urruah said, getting up.

  "Beautiful as always," Rhiow said. "Did you get your name right?"

  He put one ear back, not quite having an excuse to comment. "Uh, yes, I checked."

  "That being the case," she said, "hadn't we better get going? You wouldn't want to leave a spell like this just sitting around for long: it wants to work. Waste of energy, otherwise."

  Urruah grinned at her, then turned to Auhlae and Fhrio, who had finished checking the catenary and had strolled over to them.

  "I've structured this so that, once we pass through, it'll seal behind us," Urruah said. "If this is some kind of trap, I don't want whatever might be waiting on the other side jumping straight back down your throats. The spell will continue running on this side, though, as usual, while sealed. Afterwards, say as soon as ten minutes after opening, there are three ways it can be activated. From this side, by either of you waking up this linkage"—he patted one outside-twining branch of the "hedge" with one paw— "which will make the slide bilaterally patent. You'll be able to see through, or to pass through if you need to. You'll see I've left a couple of stems unoccupied on the 'personality' stratum for you to add names to. It can also be activated from our side by one of us pulling a 'tripwire' strand— that's in case we need an early return. Otherwise, it's programmed to reopen to bilateral patency again in two hours: that's as long as I prefer to stay, for a scouting visit."

  Auhlae and Fhrio both examined the linkages that Urruah had indicated. "All right," Auhlae said, "that's straightforward enough. If you're not back in two hours?"

  "Intervention at that point will have to be your decision," Urruah said. "Myself, I'd say wait an extra hour before letting anyone come after us. But you may decide against that... and if you do, I wouldn't blame you. The slide will remain workable for a full Sun's day, in any case. If we don't return by then..." He shrugged his tail. "Better check with the European supervisory wizard for advice, because my guess is you'll need to."

  Auhlae and Fhrio nodded.

  "Then let's do it," Urruah said to Rhiow. She flicked her tail in agreement and leaped into the circle, found the spot that Urruah had marked out for her to occupy in lines of wizardly fire: behind her, Arhu jumped too, a little more clumsily, and found his spot. Nerves. Poor kitling, she thought: but Rhiow's fur was not lying entirely smooth, either. She licked her nose, and tried to keep her composure in place.

  Urruah jumped into the circle, dead onto his spot, as if he had been practicing for this for years. His whiskers were forward, his tail was straight up with confidence. Disgusting, Rhiow thought, and resisted the urge to lick her nose again.

  Urruah reached out for one of the traceries of words and fire laced through the "hedge," hooked it in both his front paws, and pulled it down to the spell's activation point, standing on it.

  The sensation came instantly: not of passage, as in a normal gating, but of being squeezed. Claudication is right, Rhiow thought, as a feeling of intolerable pressure settled in all around her, seeming to compress her from every direction at once. It was as if giant paws were trying to press her right out of existence. And perhaps they were. This existence, anyway.

  She could not swallow, or breathe, or lick her nose, or move any part of her in the slightest. The world reduced itself to that terrible pressure—— which suddenly was gone, and she fell down.

  Into the mud.

  Rhiow struggled to her feet, opened her eyes enough to register that they were in some kind of street: buildings stood up on either side. Off to one side, Arhu was pulling himself to his feet as well. Beside her, Urruah was standing up, and swearing.

  "What?" Rhiow said, "what's the matter?"

  "Is your nose broken?" he said. "Sweet Dam of Everything, this smells like sa'Rráhh's own litter-box. The mud!"

  Rhiow's face was trying to contort itself right out of shape at the smell: she could only agree. The street was at least four inches deep in a thick, black mud that, to judge by the smell, was mostly horse dung: but there was rotten straw in it too, and soot, and garbage of every kind, and a smell that suggested the ehhif's sewers had discovered a way to back up so thoroughly that they ran uphill. The air was not much better. It was brown, a brown such as Rhiow had not seen since she last visited Los Angeles during a smog alert: but this was far, far worse— the concentrated, inversion-confined smoke from ten thousand chimneys, most of them burning coal. You could see this air in the street with you: it billowed faintly, like smoke from a burning building in the next block. But nothing was burning— or, rather, everything was: wood, coal, coke, trash.

  "Is the tripwire here?" Arhu asked.

  "Of course it's here," Urruah said, a little crossly. "I can feel it even through this stuff. Everything's going according to plan... so far." He looked around at the mud. "Though I have to admit my plans did not include this."

  "It's going to take a while for our noses to get used to this," Rhiow said, looking around her with some concern. "Meanwhile, there's no point in standing around waiting for it to happen."

  "You mentioned playing in traffic," Arhu said, looking across the street as horse carriages plunged by, big drays pulled by huge horses, smaller gigs with neat-looking ponies between the shafts, or tall, slender beasts apparently bred for the hackney trade. "I'd give a lot for a nice taxi to run underneath at the moment."

  "I wish you had one too," Urruah growled, glancing up the road and unwilling to put a paw in the loathsome mud. "I will never complain about New York being dirty again. Never!"

  "Yes you will," Arhu said, more in a tone of resignation than foresight, but he knew Urruah well enough by now to be able
to make the statement without resource to prophecy.

  Urruah was so disgusted that he didn't even bother taking a swipe at Arhu. "For someone who lives in a Dumpster," Rhiow said, unable to resist the chance to tease him, "you're awfully fastidious."

  "My Dumpster is cleaner than this," Urruah said. "A sewage-treatment facility is cleaner than this! If— "

  "I get the message," Rhiow said. "Come on, 'Ruah, we don't have a choice. Let's do it."

  They ran across the street together—— and Arhu was completely unprepared for the motor roar that came from down the side street. In a cloud of smoke, a four-wheeled vehicle on thin-tired, spindly wheels came charging around the corner and straight at them.

  There was no time to jump. Arhu's eyes rolled in terror, but it was informed terror. He threw himself flat under the vehicle's chassis: it passed over him and roared on down the street, the ehhif sitting in the contraption either completely unaware that they'd almost run over a cat, or completely unconcerned about it.

  Urruah, who had been farther in the middle of the road, now ran over to Arhu as he picked himself up and shook himself to get the worst of the muck off. "You have to start being more careful about what you ask for," Urruah growled. "Clearly someone's listening.... Are you all right?"

  "As long as I don't have to wash and find out what I taste like," Arhu muttered, "yes." He trotted hurriedly for the sidewalk, or what passed for it: in this neighborhood, this meant "where the mud was only an inch thick instead of three or four."

  They crouched against the brick building there and looked up and down the road. It was plainly Tower Hill, running into Great Tower Street as usual, but the street names were different— George Street and Great Tower Hill— and the traffic was mostly pulled by horses. Not that that made it any slower than modern London traffic: if anything, it looked to be moving a little faster.