Rhiow and sa’Rraah could feel Ith bunching every muscle to resist the abolishing power of the great hating eyes that hung in the heavens, all the length of his body rigid with the inconceivable strain of holding a world in place. Now – would be a good time! he said silently to Rhiow.
Not yet! sa’Rraah cried. It’s not finished becoming physical yet! Just a little more –
Yet the shattering that Tepeyollotl most desired, the precursor of the worse destruction to follow, was already beginning. Rhiow could hear it starting at the roots of things— a tremor in the earth that would build and build until all the land shattered and was overturned, until all the seas ran into the cracks and boiled away in the mantle-deep cracks that would burst open right across the planet. That shattering wave would run straight away from here through space and time, breaking everything it met, shattering it right down to the atoms; and even the particles of dust that remained would themselves be swallowed up into the fissures that would open in space’s own structure. In time those too would close, and there would simply be nothing… nothing but theOutside One, now Inside forever, Deity by default of a dead and empty cosmos.
Against that, though, Ith still strove. And Helen kept singing to the West as if the Old Downside was a frightened animal.“Sky Serpent, ’Alchup’osh,” she was singing, “once more give the children the gift you once gave them – “
The shaking didn’t stop, but at least it didn’t get any worse. It’s all that can be done right now! sa’Rraah said silently to Rhiow, though She too was writhing in anguish. No active attack until It’s all here, until the connection can’t be broken –
How much longer? Rhiow cried.
The earth under the Observatory rocked. Ith hung on, but Rhiow could feel the strain, feel him starting to slip–
Suddenly the earthquake broke out in full force, a roar that began to scale up and up to the point where nothing else could be heard, not even one’s own thoughts. In the sky over Los Angeles, the Leopard went jet-black and real, and Its eyes poured out a light that was itself destruction as that final roar of triumph and hatred rang out and filled the whole physical universe.
Now, something whispered in Rhiow’s ear: to her surprise, not sa’Rraah. And something Person-shaped and burning white went past her like lightning, and caught Tepeyollotl by the throat, knocking it onto the floor of Creation.
Rhiow, joined all against her will with a God, realized that she had now been caught up into that far more central level of being where the Gods have their dwelling, and their wars. With a yowling that broke even through the echo of the destruction trying to unleash itself on the planes below, Queen Iau in her full majesty, in lioness-shape and blinding as a star, roared and tore at the Outside One in its form of Black Leopard. To that fight too came Aaurh the Mighty with the untempered fires of creation wreathed about Her, and beside Her the Whisperer slender and deadly as an unsheathed claw, and with them even the Great Tom, black and scarred and one-eyed, the other Eye fully open and blazing now, and every claw alive with lightning from the birth of things. All of them attacked the Leopard together. Its scream, and their battle roars, went up until they seemed to fill the whole world. And sa’Rraah, dark-pelted like Rhiow now, flung herself into that fight as well, intent on tearing out the throat of the enemy before which She had been forced to humiliate herself.
Never before had all the Pride of Heaven gone into the fight together against a foe from outside. Now as one They attacked the monstrous horror from Outside, and tore it with teeth and claws.
But it was far bigger than They were. And Rhiow, carried along with sa’Rraah into the center of that battle, went cold with fear.
One more thing is needed, said the soft voice inside her brain. Let’s hope it’s enough —
Out beyond the Observatory terrace, Helen Walks Softly lifted the condor-feather wands over her head in the face of the awful black countenance staring down from the sky. A shadow fell even over the narrow corridor of light leading back to the Old Downside: the shadow of vast wings. Under their shadow, the wind started to rise, running down the canyons like the Santa Ana. Now let the Nine-Wind God come to the place of the Serpent Rope—
For just a flash those wings, half-seen in the sky, covered everything with a cleaner shadow than what streamed away from the Outside One. And in answer, lightning struck out of that shadow, lashing down like whips all over the high ridges and mountains surrounding the basin. Smoke began rising, and the dim red eyes of flame opened in the brush on the hillside, growing stronger and brighter with every breath.
And with those few breaths the lightning became more focused, more accurate, and did not strike the hillsides any more. A huge thick bolt like a whip braided of fire struck the Black Leopard right between the eyes. It yowled in pain and rage, and with the pain, surprise. Pain had apparently not occurred to It. More lightning leapt out of the air and began to strike it again and again. There’s a little distraction for you, cousins, Helen said. Make the most of it, because I don’t know how long it’s going to last!
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 –