“It’ll hold,” Aufwi said.
Urruah was stalking around the inside of the circle, carefully stepping in the empty access and maintenance patches and keeping an eye on the gate’s power draw. “Yes it will,” he said, “but we’re going to need a new one when this is done…”
“Which will be a good thing,” Hwaith said heading over to the management circle inside the diagram that held his own link to the power draw controls. “Especially considering how much trouble this thing’s been giving me lately. Wouldn’t you love the chance to do initial emplacement on a gate? And see the installation done right for a change?”
“Please,” Urruah said, “don’t get me started. That one gate over at Penn, even at the best of times – “
He started in on his favorite rant about the worst-built gate of the Penn complex, and Rhiow threw Hwaith a grateful glance as the gate throbbed brighter and brighter, coming up to the peak of its energy feed.‘Ruah gets nervous in the runup to any intervention, she said silently. This is how he copes, but when things break loose –
It’s how I cope too, Hwaith said silently. What do you think I’m doing now? But he’ll be fine, Rhi –
This was almost certainly true, but it was somehow a great relief to have someone else saying it to her. Rhiow headed over to where Sif was babysitting the claudication package, which sat like a tiny fiery pearl in front of her at the center of the domed-in circle.“It’s stable?”
“No problems so far,” Siffha’h said, not taking her eyes off it.
Rhiow went on past her to the spot where Arhu was sitting by himself, eyes closed as if ignoring everything around him… but she knew nothing was further from the truth. “Arhu…?”
He didn’t look up or around: he didn’t need to. “It’s coming,” he said very quietly. “Get ready.”
Once more Rhiow turned her attention to the sky. No stars were showing, initially because of the dust still hanging in the air. But then it became plain that there were not going to be any stars tonight; and Rhiow started going cold from the inside out.
The initial effect hardly looked apocalyptic enough, at first. It began getting dark. Well, it was doing that already, Rhiow thought. But the unnatural quality of the descending darkness, something relentless and strangely cruel, became plainer moment by moment as the gate came up to its maximum power output and held there. Outside the circle of the gate’s radiance, the ugly new nightfall seemed to be fading down not merely the light of the sky and the sunset, but the outlines and colors in things – not the way normal night did, but in a way that suggested that light and color and even solidity were being sucked out of everything. For the timebeing, the ferocious light of the gate resisted the sucking. But even its normally multicolored light was turning pale and unhealthy-looking, a livid sheen setting in.
This is what we saw last night, Rhiow said. Here it comes–
Not far from the obelisk halfway down the drive, something started to trouble the air– a curdling, a growing obscurity. Very faintly, a suggestion of a dingy weave could be seen forming in it, growing more solid, darkening. But as it darkened the weave grew somehow more distinct. Rhiow’s fur rose at the sight of it, as it began to shimmer around the edges with that same disturbing light that the gate in the cavern had radiated.
Blacker and blacker it went, and all around the second gate things were quickly losing their color and their solidity. The white obelisk faded away like the Moon behind cloud as the outflowing gloom washed up against and around it, flowed past it. Rhiow watched with concern as that ink-in-water obscurity in the air deepened, advanced toward the boundaries of the spell containing the LA gate.
“Rhi,” Urruah said. “Better get in here – “
She licked her nose several times, very quickly.“No,” she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“But Rhi – “
She reached back into her mind to erect around her the small but robust personal shield that she’d constructed earlier with this situation in mind. “’Ruah, if I have to climb out of there to do something in company with our silent partner, the gate could be overwhelmed when you crack the shield to let me out. The gate’s both the bait and the trap, and the rat hasn’t stuck its nose in yet. So seal it up.”
Inside the gating circle, Sif’s expression was unsurprised: she spared Rhiow only a glance and went back to concentrating on the tiny blazing claudication-pearl she was guarding. But Aufwi and Hwaith looked at Rhiow in alarm.
Rhiow ignored them and looked over at Arhu, who was trying to climb up on top of Ith again.“Not this time,” she said, sorry to do so, but it was necessary. “He may have to go where you can’t, Arhu, and do what you can’t, and you don’t dare slow him down. Get in there with the others.”
“Rhi – “
There was no energy to waste arguing with him. She simply held his eyes. After a moment Arhu looked away and up at Ith, who reached him down a claw.“You must,” Ith said.
Arhu cursed, then bumped his head hard against the claw and ran back to the spell-circle, leaping through the interface into one of the maintenance roundels. Urruah glanced back at Aufwi. The circle domed over with light, leaving Rhiow standing just outside.
She turned away and licked her nose again. I really need to stop doing that, she thought, it’s going to get sore… And then Rhiow laughed out loud. Am I insane?? She sat down on the paved walkway and tried to calm herself down while she watched the dark gate finish forming and flare into a ragged patch of shadowy, eye-hurting fire.
It could not be looked at for long– there was something increasingly offensive about that livid light — so Rhiow turned her attention to Ith and Helen. Ith was a fanged and taloned statue of burning gold, now, even taller than he had been before, and looking wesward to where the last embers of sunset were fading away to cinders. Helen stood still over by the edge of the terrace where the ground dropped away, watching the unnatural darkening of the night around them. Alone of all unprotected things around them, as the shadows in the air spread away from the new dark gate, Helen seemed not to be losing the dim warm color ofher deerskin dress; the shell-designs on it glowed faintly, and her hair was a dark river down her back, a far more wholesome darkness than what was gathering ever more intensely around the black gate.
Rhiow glanced back at it through air gone murky with shadows, and saw that it was elongating upward. No, she thought then. It’s being pulled up. Things were about to start happening, she was sure of it. Keep them congruent… Rhiow said silently to Urruah. Don’t let that one drag yours up with it and get out of control.
No fear of that, Arhu said. I’m borrowing some rooting from him. His eyes went to Ith’s ever more brightly-glowing form. We’re not going anywhere.
The dark gate rose, and the shadows in the air flowed down from it as Rhiow had seen thick mist come flowing down the hillslope behind the Silent Man’s house in the morning. Away from the ground, it started shedding its spreading gloom more quickly, more thickly. Soon the white obelisk was completely gone and the Observatory was reduced to a hard-to-see ghost through the dimness, visible only because of Ith’s fierce glow against its north-facing walls. He was watching the gate rise high over the terrace, his claws knitting together as always: but there was something far more studied about that movement now, and Rhiow thought she could see the glow of manipulated hyperstrings between the claws, wound down small and tight… for the moment.
A shiver went right down Rhiow from her ears to her tail and all her fur stood on end as the black gate paused in the air above them, and began to throb and grow. It spread fast, its blackness flickering now, impossible to look at for more than a second’s glance. And then, the portal section of the gate having widened out to nearly fifty feet across, it went utterly dark… and something came out.