“Yes it is. We’re just waiting for Siffha’h now: she felt she needed a nap after her last “pastling” transit, to make sure she was sharp for this big one.”
Right on cue, Siffha’h turned up, carefully greeting everyone but Arhu, who turned his back as soon as she came in, and didn’t give her the chance to reject him first. Rhiow sighed at this, but said nothing about it, and only glanced sympathy at Arhu. He said nothing either, simply waiting for the action to begin.
It didn’t take long, for Siffha’h was eager to get started, and so was Fhrio. They leaped into their places inside the timeslide, and Huff and Auhlae followed: hard behind them came Urruah and Arhu, and Rhiow last of all.
“Ready?” Siffha’h said, rearing up on her haunches and shaking her shoulders a little as she prepared herself.
Fhrio hooked a claw into the timeslide wizardry. “Now—”
Siffha’h came down on the power-feed point, and the world whited out. The pressure came back. Rhiow had hoped that it might possibly be a little more bearable this time: the hope was in vain. If possible, it was worse. The sense of the power which Siffha’h was pouring into the transit was staggering … but so was the resistance. It was as if she slammed them all, repeatedly, into a wall of stone. She’s stubborn, you have to give her that. Rhiow thought: but whatever was ranged against them was immune to stubbornness.
Siffha’h kept hammering, fruitlessly. The pressure bore and bore on Rhiow until she wanted to moan out loud … and suddenly it simply broke, lifted all at once, a relief so great that she felt like fainting.
She was still standing, but only just. She looked around at the others, all swaying on their feet, and at Siffha’h, who was lying prostrate, panting.
“Blocked,” she gasped. “Blocked …”
“It’s no use,” Fhrio said. “We’re not going to be able to get it, the information we need. We were so close … but we’re locked out …”
“You could try using the key the Powers sent us,” Arhu said, very pointedly.
Huff and Auhlae and the others looked at each other, bemused. Rhiow closed her eyes for a moment, and called up her memories of this morning, until she stood again in the grassland of the Downside, under the sun of an endless summer. Ith!
Arhu has already called me, the answer came back. Artie and I will be with you shortly.
Urruah’s tail was lashing thoughtfully. “It would make sense,” he said. “The Law of Isostatic Origin says that nothing can prevent your return to your home time if you’re attempting to reach it, and you have the proper spell, and the spell’s working. There’s simply no way that anything can stop you: you and your home time have too great an affinity. That should mean that even the Lone Power can’t stop you … shouldn’t it?”
Huff blinked. “It’ll be interesting finding out,” he said.
“Even if he’s only present in the spell as an “outrider”, it should work,” Arhu said. “And if you tie him into the spell, it’ll work better yet.”
The air pulled open in front of them, and Artie and Ith stepped out. Artie’s shirt was torn by someone’s claw, and he was slightly sunburned, and had begun to freckle. To Rhiow, he looked extremely happy.
“Here is the one whom the Powers have sent you,” Ith said. “I will leave him with you for the time being: I must go to continue my work. Even though there are ehhif in the Museum today, I believe I can work around them: and anyway, I feel that I must. Time seems to be getting very short …”
He flirted his tail in farewell at Artie, and stepped back through his “hole into the air”, into nothingness.
Artie looked around at the People and the timeslide. “Wonderful,” he said, “more magic! What do I do?”
“Come over here, young ehhif,” said Fhrio, “and tell me about yourself.”
Fhrio spent about ten minutes asking Artie the usual pointless-seeming questions about his age and his tastes and his birthday and his favorite colors: all the things that went into the most basic “sketch” of a wizard’s name. It took no longer than that for Fhrio to add the string of symbols to the timeslide.
“Now step in here,” Huff said to Artie. “We’re going to try to move ourselves back into that other eighteen seventy-four. You’re going to feel the spell pressing on you: it might make you faint.”
“I’ll sit down,” Artie said, and did so.
The members of both teams arranged themselves. Siffha’h got up on her haunches. “Ready?” Fhrio said.
“Ready,” said everyone.
Siffha’h came down. And so did the pressure—
It was different, this time. Last time it had been as if Siffha’h was throwing them against a wall. This time it was as if something was behind them, pushing, pushing harder and harder against that wall the longer the timeslide was in operation. Instead of being squeezed from all sides, Rhiow felt as if she was being smashed flat in one direction only. Frankly, she thought, clenching her teeth, there’s not much to choose between the two sensations—
It went on for quite a long time, Siffha’h’s stubbornness still very much something one could feel in the air all around one. But nothing happened…
The pressure relaxed again. Once more Siffha’h flopped down, panting, and all the People looked at each other in despair.
“What are we doing wrong?!” Auhlae said.
Huff’s tail lashed. “Absolutely nothing.”
“There’s no physical access,” Fhrio said. “None at all …”
A long silence fell.
“Then we’re going to have to try one that’s not physical,” Arhu said.
Everyone looked at him.
“I think I could See what we need to know,” he said, “if I had help. I kept thinking that this was something you had to do alone. Well, maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m just sort of a walking spell. Maybe I can be fueled from outside, too. If she does what she can—” He refused to look at Siffha’h. “And Urruah, if you help—and if Artie is here too—then I think maybe I can do it. If you take most of the timeslide functions out of the circuit, all except for the coordinates—”
Fhrio waved his tail helplessly. “Why not?” he said. “It’s worth a try—”
“Try it with just Urruah first,” Siffha’h said. And there was a note there in her voice that Rhiow had not heard before. She was afraid.
Of what?
“All right,” Urruah said. “Let me take it.” He moved over to the power-point position as Siffha’h pulled herself away, and planted his paws on it. “Ready, Fhrio?”
“Ready—”
Power, growing quickly, increasing to a blaze, a blast. Rhiow blinked, finding herself becoming lost in it. The pressure from behind, which is Artie: the pressure forward, which is Urruah: the impetus in the center, which is Arhu. All go forward a very little way … and then stop, blocked.
Blocked, yes (says a voice that sounds oddly like Hardy’s). But only for actually going. Seeing cannot be blocked: vision is ubiquitous. It is one of the chief functions of Her nature: She sees everything … though in Her mercy, she does not always look. Looking makes it so…
Arhu looks. For a while all he can see is that scarred and leering Moon, the promise of destruction. It is meant to distract him. When he realizes this, he turns his attention away. Show me what happens to her, he says to the listening world. Show me the ones who kill the Queen.
The darkness swirls and does not quite dissolve…
There is little enough to see of them. They fear the daylight. In the room where they sit, talking in whispers, the curtains are drawn against the possibility of anyone seeing in. Sight they may defeat, but not vision. “The time has come. Our people can suffer this unjust rule no longer. We must go forward with the plan.”