Urruah sighed.“So here we are having to break new ground one more time,” he said. “You’d think that maybe by now some ehhif wizards somewhere might have run up against something similar, and taken a little of the edge off the problem…”
Rhiow had to laugh at him.“’Ruah, as if we’re not perfectly capable of handling what errands the Powers send us without having ehhif help us out! That’s not a sentiment I’d expect to hear from you.”
Urruah gave her a dry look.“But Rhi,” he said, “it still brings up the question. Why us? Why now? Why haven’t other wizards in our worlds had this problem before?”
“I’m not sure they haven’t,” Rhiow said. “We have to find out if they have, and fast. If this has ever come up before, we have to find out what was done to stop it. I imagine that the other side, whoever they were, believe the data to have been lost. Perhaps it has. Time…” She sighed.“It’s such a solvent. Even wizardly knowledge isn’t proof against it. News gets forgotten, the Speech itself loses recensions, worlds are lost and words get worn down…” She paused to wash a paw and try to calm herself a little. “But regardless, for the moment we have to assume that we’re where we are, and when we are, for the usual reasons: because we’re the best tools the Powers have for the job.”
“Oh,” Urruah said. “No pressure, then…”
Rhiow got up enough to take a swipe at his ear, missing on purpose.“Go on back in there and eat some more breakfast,” she said. “I have to make a call.”
*
Arhu was back in less than half an hour. When Rhiow came back inside after all too brief a time spent meditating and handling necessary physical matters, she found Arhu sitting by himself in the middle of the living room floor, using some of the Silent Man’s spare typing paper to make hard copies of the images he’d Seen earlier. “Well?” she said.
Arhu didn’t answer for a moment. On the piece of paper in front of him, a set of the squarish Mayan characters were forming to cover the paper, with the exception of some of those troublesome gaps. When the figures had darkened down fully, he opened his eyes and started panting a little. A few seconds later he looked up at Rhiow. “There were a couple more pages in the folder when I went this time,” Arhu said.
“Interesting,” Rhiow said. “Someone in that house was looking at them last night, or this morning – perhaps in some other room?”
“I think in another room,” Arhu said, glancing around him at the various pieces of paper. “But the originals don’t like where they are very much; it’s like they’re trying not to notice what they’re used for or who’s looking at them. The house makes them nervous. They really prefer thinking about the past than dealing at all with the present…”
Rhiow’s tail twitched as she thought about that. Inanimate objects couldn’t always be depended on to give one data in much depth, but when they were afraid, it was worth noticing. “Did they know where they came from?”
“Absolutely,” Arhu said. “A museum. I could see their pictures of it.”
“You didn’t use – “
“No I did not use the Eye!” Arhu hissed. And then he quieted down and looked a little concerned. “Not that I would have felt real happy about using it, or staying there very much longer, even if you hadn’t said anything. I was starting to wonder if something was watching me. After just a little while I wanted to get out.” He paused to scratch behind one ear, then looked over at the empty desk. “Where’s our ehhif gone?”
“He’s having a shower,” Hwaith said, wandering in from the kitchen. “So where was this museum?”
“Here,” Arhu said, and put a paw down on a piece of paper that was still blank. It quickly filled with a map of central Los Angeles, and a spot where, within a square of roads, various smaller streets curved toward a meeting-place at the square’s heart. The curves were in marked contrast to the severity of the angles and smaller squares made by the streets all around.
“That’s the Museum of History, Science and Art,” Hwaith said. “It’s down in Exposition Park, where the big rose garden is.”
“You know your way around there?” Rhiow said.
“Fairly well,” Hwaith said. “Errantry occasionally takes me down that way. Getting in won’t be a problem.”
“Let’s go, then,” Rhiow said. It was as if the Whisperer was leaning over her shoulder, looking intently at the map, and bristling with a barely-managed fear that something might not happen in time.
“I’ll do a transit circle out in the back,” Hwaith said. “Give me a moment.” He went out to take care of it.
Rhiow glanced back at Arhu, who was once more looking over the images on the paper. His ears were laid back.“What’s the matter?” she said.
His eyes met hers, and the look in them was genuinely distressed: a reaction he hadn’t been willing to display while Hwaith was there. “Rhi,” he said. “There really was something looking… watching. It felt like what was leaning against the timeslide when we gated in.”
Rhiow hissed softly.“Sa’Rraah….”
“No!” Arhu said. “Not Her. I know what She feels like by now!” His fur didn’t rouse, but Rhiow thought that was only because he was absolutely commanding it to lie still, as a tom not of his pride was in the area and he didn’t want his reaction to show. “She always wants to make you look stupid,” Arhu said. “I mean, She wants you dead too — but the Lone One mostly wants you to think that you were an idiot to even try to fight Her: that She was always going to win. It’s personal, with Her. This, though – “ He turned away from Rhiow as he got up and with a small wizardry swept the papers into a neat pile. “This just wants you dead.”
Rhiow wasn’t sure what to say.
“But we’re the answer, aren’t we?” Arhu said, vanishing the papers into an otherspace pocket. “Iau and the Powers wouldn’t have sent us back here if we weren’t supposed to fix this. If we didn’t have at least a chance.”
Rhiow waved her tail in quiet agreement.“That’s how Urruah and I are seeing it at the moment,” she said.
Arhu hissed as Rhiow had: a small personal sound of frustration and nervousness.“That’s what I thought,” he said. “But I hate this.” His eyes met hers again. “Is it wrong to hate this?”
Rhiow sighed.“Not at all, my kit,” she said. “As long as while we hate it, we just keep on doing what we have to.”
She headed for the doors, trying to look calm for him, and Arhu followed.
*
The museum was surprisingly beautiful for something buried so deep in the heart of a busy ehhif city, and both the building and its surroundings had a spaciousness and grace about them that Rhiow found it possibly to enjoy even in these unnerving circumstances. Down in this part of the city, well away from the hills, there was still some mist clinging in the wake of dawn— though it seemed unlikely to Rhiow that this would last long. From the mist rose a building that featured a big central dome between two smaller ones, and an arched and pillared porch that looked down into the aisles and graveled paths of the huge surrounding rose gardens. The mist softened thetraffic noises drifting in from all sides as the surrounding city surged to life in the brightening morning.
They all sidled before they made their way through the mist and up the steps of the front entrance.“The place doesn’t open for a few hours yet,” Hwaith said. “It should be nice and quiet for us.”
They spoke the Mason’s Word and passed through the bronze-bound doors under the porch, into the huge airy space under the rotunda of the central dome. Had there been any sound, it would have echoed: but the silence here was total, the outside traffic sounds sealed completely away.