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 asked, 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 that 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 one another, 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 Isometric 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 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 in 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 were throwing them against a wall. This time it was as if something were 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 were 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 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 wondered.
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 of them visible. 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."
"Are the conditions all correct? Are we sure?"
"As certain as we can be. The relationship with Germany could hardly be expected to worsen, excepting that they declare war... which they dare not do. Any more than the French. But both have been saber-rattling: and France has made several statements in the past few weeks that seem to threaten the monarchy. There is no point in waiting any further."
More whispers, hard even for a Person's ears to pick up. "The Mouse is in place."
"Well, then let the Mouse run," says another voice, and it chuckles.
The voices fade. Resistance rears itself against Arhu. Something knows he is watching and listening. Something is trying to push him away, back where he belongs.
The feeling of Arhu pressing back, pushing against the resistance, fighting it.
To no effect. It pushes back harder. It is winning.
A deep breath, and then a different tack. The Raven's way. Don't push against it. Rise above it. Don't
fight with the vision: let it bear you. The wings and the wind are a dialogue.
Arhu lets go and soars: and the Eye opens fully....
The letter came. The small ehhif picked it up, without any particular fanfare, from the kitchen of one of the wings of the castle: a letter from his sister in Edinburgh, he said to the cook, and carried it away whistling. Still whistling, he headed for the potting shed where most of his day's work took place these days— and then stepped into a thick bed of rhododendrons near the shed. Concealed there, he stood stock-still and silently tore the letter open.
He knew what it meant: he did not have to read it. All he had to do was make sure that the contents said what he had been told to expect. Dearest John, I hope you are well. I write to tell you that I have received the ten shillings you sent, and thank you very much. If you—
It was correct: it was all correct. The man folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, unaware with what fierce interest a Seer's eyes looked through his, and puzzled out the postmark. July 9, 1874.
"Tonight," the man whispered.
The vision whirled aside, shifted.
And the resistance came back. Pressing him away. Not to see the next part...
Come on, he said. Help me.
No answer.
Siffha'h, come on! This is what will make the difference!
No— do it yourself!
You said it, Arhu said, not angrily, but pleading. "I'll take you anywhere you need to go." This is where we need to go!
A long, long silence, while the pressure increases.
All right...
A shuffling of paws on the power-point, to make room for another. She rears up. Terrified, terrified, she comes down— A blast of power runs down through the linkages, runs into Arhu. The pressure before him fails, melts away: the wind blows him past it— Arhu whirls along with the wind, lets it bear him. Darkness now: not the darkness among the rhododendrons, but black night. In the silence, the man creeps along, under the cosseted trees of the Orangery, along the North Terrace. There are many doors into the silent castle, most locked, but few guarded: after all, the walls are guarded, and no one is inside the walls by night except trusted retainers of the household. There are no lights outside, on the inside of the wall: there is no need for such.
The man stops by a door just east of George the Fourth's Tower, on the bottom level: the servants' quarters and the kitchens. This is a door that is rarely ever locked, a little secret: even servants like to be able to escape now and then. The man waits for a few minutes outside it to make sure no candle is burning inside, harbinger of some servant girl having a tryst in the midnight kitchen by the slacked-down coal fire of the biggest stove. But no light comes: and he needs none. He knows how many steps wide the kitchen is, how many stairs lead up from it to the first floor, and then how many steps, in the darkness, lead along the hallway to the second landing and the small winding stair that leads up into the eastern end of the State Apartments. It is a path he has walked five or six times now by night, and has memorized with the skill that used to let him ransack complex commercial premises in the city, in the dark, after just one walk-through by daylight.
He unlatches the door with one gloved hand, slips in through it, shuts it gently behind him. Stands still in the darkness, and listens. A faint hiss from the hot-water boiler behind the coal stove: no other sound.
Twelve steps across the kitchen: his outstretched hands finds the shut door. He eases its latch open, slips through this door too, pulls it gently to behind him. No need to leave it open: he will not be coming back this way. Six stairs up to the hallway. Two steps out into the middle of the carpet in the hall: turn left. Sixty steps down to the second landing. The carpet muffles his footsteps effectively, though he would go silently even without it: he is wearing crepe-soled shoes, which his employers would have judged most eccentric for a gardener. Well, they will have little chance to judge him further, in any regard. Others will be going to judgment tonight.
Fifty-nine steps, and he hears the change in the sound. Sixty. His toe bumps against the bottom step. Five stairs up to the landing: turn right: three steps. He puts his hand out, and feels the door.
Gently, gently he pulls it open. From up the winding stair comes a faint light: it seems astonishingly bright to him after the dead blackness. Softly he goes up the stairs, taking them near the outer side of the steps: the inner sides creak. One makes a tiny sound, crack: he freezes in place. A minute, two minutes, he stands there. No one has noticed. A great old house like this has a thousand creaks and moans, the sound of compressed wood relaxing itself overnight, and no one pays them any mind.
Up the remaining fifteen steps. They are steep, but he is careful. At the door at the top he halts and looks out of the crack in it where it has been left open. In the hallway onto which this stairway gives, next to a door with a gilded frame, a footman is sitting in a chair under a single candle-sconce with a dim electric bulb burning in it. The chair is tilted back against the wall. The footman is snoring.
Down the hallway, now, in utmost silence.
Half a minute later, the footman has stopped snoring... not to mention breathing.
Swiftly now, but also silently. Reach up and undo the bulb from its socket. Wait a few seconds for night vision to return. Then, silently, lift the door latch. The door swings open. This is the only part of his night's work, other than the hallway outside, that he has not been able to pace out in advance. Here sight alone must guide him, and the description he has been given of the layout of the room.
The outer room is where the lady-in-waiting has a bed. She is in it, sleeping sweetly, breathing tiny small breaths into the night.
Half a minute later, her sleep has become much deeper, and the sound of breathing has stopped. The nightwalker makes his way toward what he cannot see yet in this more total darkness, the inner door. He feels for the handle: finds it.
Turns the handle. The door swings inward.
Darkness and silence. Not quite silence: a faint rustle of bed linens, off to his left, and ahead.
Now, only now, the excitement strikes him, and his heart begins to pound. Ten steps, they told him. A rather wide bed. Her maids say she still favors the left side of it, leaving the right side open for someone who sleeps there no more.
Ten steps. He takes them. He listens for the sound of breathing...
... then reaches for the left side.
One muffled cry of surprise, under his hand... and no more. He holds her until she stops struggling, for fear an arm or leg should flail and knock something down. He wipes the wetness off on the bedclothes, unseen, and pauses by the end of the massive bed to tie the slim silken rope around one leg. Then he makes for the windows.
Quietly he slips behind the drapes: softly he pushes the window up in its sash, wider than need be— no need to give anyone the idea that he is a small man. He goes down the rope like a spider, rotating gently as he goes. Without a sound he comes down on the North Terrace again and makes straight off across the Home Park in the direction of the Datchet Road. Where the little road crosses the Broad Water, a brougham is waiting for him. He will be in it in five minutes, and in Calais by morning.
A quiet night's work, and the pay is good. He will never need to see the inside of a potting shed again— or a merchant bank or a high-class jeweler's after dark. That part is over. The new part of his life begins.
And at least she's happy now. She's with Albert....— and then the vision snapped back. A moment's confusion—— and the vision was centering, bizarrely, on Siffha'h. Herself, she moaned and sank down, covering her eyes with her paws, and Rhiow could understand why: the mirroring must be disorienting in the extreme, self seeming to look at self, seeming to look at self, infinitely reflected— Except that it was not Siffha'h moaning that Rhiow heard. It was Arhu. Crying in a small, frightened voice: crying like a kitten. "Oh, no," he moaned. "It's you. I didn't know.... I couldn't help it.... How could I help it?"— an image of blackness. Th
e rustling of a plastic bag as small, frightened bodies thrashed and scrabbled for purchase, for any way to stay above what inexorably rose around them. Cold water, black as death. Underneath him, all around him, the sound of water bubbling in... of breath bubbling out...
—Arhu fled from the platform, up the hallway: he was gone.
Both the teams, and even the dazed and horrified Artie, looked after him in astonishment— everyone but Siffha'h. In her eyes was nothing but implacable hatred.
"I won't have anything further to do with him," she said. "Don't ask me to. I will kill him if he touches my mind again. And why shouldn't I?" she said. "Since he killed me first."
Note
*A tale told fully in The Book of Night with Moon.
Seven
Rhiow went out after Arhu at a run, and found him gone. He had done a private transit, not bothering to take long enough to get to one of the gates: she could smell the spell of it in the air of the hallway, and she thought she knew where Arhu had gone, within about ten feet.
Rhiow turned once, quickly, where she stood, and drew the circle with her tail, tying the wizard's knot with one last flirt of it. Then she instructed the wizardry to lay in identical coordinates to the last transit from this spot, and to execute them. And don't forget the air! she added hurriedly.
There was a loud clap as she displaced a considerable cubic volume of air from the tunnel, taking it with her. The sound of the clap had barely faded from her ears before she was standing on the cold, white pumice-dust of the Moon, looking around.
He was no more than ten feet away.
Arhu looked at Rhiow and opened his mouth to speak the words of another spell, ready to run again.
"Don't do it," she said.
Arhu sagged and let the breath go out of him, standing there looking cold and scared and very alone. It was an expression Rhiow had not seen on him since he first came to her and the other members of the team: and she had forgotten how much it hurt to see it.
"Tell me what's happening," Rhiow said. "Arhu, please."