As she spoke, the laughter had trailed off, gone silent. Now, all around her in the darkness, Rhiow could hear a low ugly yowl starting way down in sa’Rraah’s throat.
“And possibly you even found that It had played you,” Rhiow said. “Not merely that It intended to use you as a tool, and then to destroy you – but that It was laughing at you.” Rhiow put down that one lag and put the other one over her shoulder. “And that, of course, could not be borne under any circumstances. So you began to consider… unusual levels of intervention.”
Rhiow started washing again. The growl in the blackness went on, but she ignored it; and after a while it began slowly to subside.
Back off a little now, Rhiow thought, and let Her have some stretching space.“In the cavern,” she said, “though they were thick as ants on a dead rat, Your little friends didn’t attack us. Why would that have been?”
Because the One from Outside thinks I am Its friend, sa’Rraah said, I have been acting a certain part…
“’Acting’! Spare me.”
Perhaps it would be as well to admit that initially, the position I took was in earnest. Not even the slightest hint of rue at being forced to make the admission. Yet if It’s to be overthrown, if– and she laughed a laugh not entirely devoid of humor – the Big Meow, as your colleague called it, is not to be heard in this world and bring about its downfall and that of all others – it must trust Me enough to do the thing that will both allow it entry and make itvulnerable. You know the law.
“Remind me,” Rhiow said, scrubbing her face. “There are so many laws, and you’ve broken most of them at one point or another.”
To interact successfully with matter, the Lone One said, Gods must descend into its realm, and join with matter, take it into Themselves. Rhiow could heard the distaste in her voice, like that of a Person forced to use a particularly dirty litterbox and step in the old waste. Nasty stuff that matter is, and the sordid business of mixing it with the purity of spirit, so awful—
This particular snobbery of the Lone One’s, Rhiow knew about quite well. “The point you’re making,” Rhiow said, “is that when a Power descends into the mortal sphere, it becomes vulnerable to physical attack and other such strategies that work on mortal beings.”
Yes.
This was certainly one aspect of the attack on the Outside One that Urruah and Hwaith and Aufwi were contemplating. Urruah hadn’t been overstating the potential effects on anything physical that tried to use a gate that was being subjected to a double eversion. Yet I have to be sure. She is still the Lone One, after all…
“You’re being unusually forthcoming of late,” Rhiow said. “Is this what you did with Dagenham, Queen’s daughter? Instead of sending one of your little jackals to whisper to him, did you perhaps do it yourself, as you’re doing it with me now? Did you tell him where to find poor Laurel, how to catch what remained of a soulsplit wizard after her body was gone, and what to do with her? A wizard that perhaps you yourself drove to madness and suicide?”
And if I did? said the darkness. Would that be so much worse than a thousand million other things I’ve done before?The worlds are My plaything, as you surely know. My Dam may claim the primacy of creation, but I have found another – one she has spent all of time contesting without success.
“Yet suddenly,” Rhiow said, “here you are, the greatest power in the Worlds save Iau – as you would have us believe – holding up your side of this little chat and not bringing your power to bear on me. Because you need me for something. Because you suddenly find that the rats you turned loose to gnaw at the roots of the Tree for your amusement are instead about to bring it down on top of you. Because the game you set out to play has without warning turned far more serious than you ever dreamed. And now only through the willing cooperation of mere mortals, paltry things made of matter with souls stuck inside, can you keep the worlds that have been your playground from being destroyed, and yourself and your Mother and all your sisters and all the hosts of Heaven from being devoured by something as much more powerful than you as you are more powerful than us.”
A long, long silence then.
“So I’ll take that as a yes,” Rhiow said, and went back to washing.
The quiet all around her was most ominous. But Rhiow kept washing. She was not the most passionate player of hauissh, but she had the wit to know when she was sitting in the best position she’d ever held in such a game, and she intended to enjoy it.
She put her leg down and paused for a moment as if considering where to wash next.“In any case,” Rhiow said, “I wouldn’t want you to be overly concerned. I think Urruah and the boys have our solution sorted out now.”
Their little plan? Amusing. Even satisfactory, on the merely physical level. But it won’t work without Me.
Rhiow was instantly intent on not revealing the effect this declaration was having on her, particularly the word“satisfactory”. “You would say that, of course,” Rhiow said, “to save face, if nothing else.” She regarded one forepaw and started licking it idly.
The Outside One has managed minor breaches into our realities before, sa’Rraah said. But these have always been merely locaclass="underline" one universe or another. And always it has been driven out, and the breaches sealed. Eventually the Outside One came to know that only with the active assistance of one of the resident Powers could It break through right across the sheaf of sheaves of worlds, and make the breakthrough permanent. Even so It would have to put forth all Its strength. For if It failed, It would never be able to make such an attempt again, and must remain confined to the Outermost Darkness forever.
Rhiow started washing the side of one paw, then scrubbed behind her ear with it. So?
So even as junior a wizard as you should understand that there’s a spiritual component to this problem, said the Lone Power. It can’t be omitted from any potential solution. The One Outside, insofar as such a vast unliving negation can be said to want anything, wants to be a god. As part of our agreement… I suggested that It could be shown how. Therefore, as It attempts Its incursion, it expects me to confer upon It…
“Godhead?” Rhiow said. “Oh, come on!”
I had some training for the position, sa’Rraah said. Our worlds’ cosmogony had a different prospective direction once, before our Royal Dam overreacted to something I invented.
Rhiow rolled her eyes.
But I was being trained as a possible replacement for Her, the Lone One said, in case the rigors of running a universe should require such. Didn’t you know?
Rhiow thought this sounded very like a lie, and remembered who’d also come up with that invention. “I didn’t,” she said. “But what you’re suggesting is that the One Outside expects this gift from you… and you have in mind to give It something else entirely. The opposite of what it’s expecting.”
Whatever. I’ve certainly convinced It that It needs to become physical before It can be a god. The Lone One shrugged her tail. That’s such a popular trope, after all.
“And It swallowed that?”