The Big Meow

“Okay,” Arhu said, and reared up on his hind legs to pat the glass with one paw. It went misty and indistinct, responding to yet another variant of the Mason’s Word that he’d apparently had ready. Arhu reared back on his hindquarters a little, then jumped up straight through the glass and into the case. He put a paw on the tablet and started talking quietly to it in the Speech. “It must have been awful to be hurt like that, after somebody went to all that trouble to make you. And then getting all busted up! Remember how it was when you were brand new and all in one piece? I’ll help you remember – “

Every wizard has a working style, and once more Rhiow found herself appreciating Arhu’s. What he might lack in structural sophistication when constructing a spell, he more than made up for in youthful enthusiasm and a kind of raw empathy that came across as very touching. It was no wonder that the tablet responded almost immediately. The resin binder that the museum’s restorers had used to replace the worst gaps in the tablet started fading out of sight, replaced by a clay-colored light that started settling gently into the gaps like water with silt in it. The memory of clay fired a thousand years past began rebuilding itself in the actual material: the tablet’s edges sharpened, the shapes of the carvings crisped all across the surface. Finally the effect began trembling in the pits and depressions where characters had been obliterated –

There was resistance. Arhu had stopped speaking out loud, now, and was using the Speech silently, impressing his desire on the tablet. It took more time than the general restoration had, but at last those final characters started filling themselves in. Arhu was breathing hard by the time the work was finished and the tablet sat whole and new-looking in the case.

As she and the others moved in for a closer look, though, Rhiow noticed that the reconstituted symbols seemed to be jittering a little in their places, as if they were having trouble staying restored. “Arhu,” she said —

“Yeah, I see it,” Arhu said, his voice sounding a little strained. “Whoever dug them out really wanted them gone. But I’ve copied this image to the paperwork in case the restitution gives way.”

“Nice technique there,” Hwaith said to Arhu. “Do you know which of these is next? I’ll get it ready for you.”

“Sure,” Arhu said. “It’s that one.” He indicated the first tablet, a round one, on a shelf in the next case. “And that one underneath it, next shelf down.”

“Right.”

Arhu looked back to the tablet he’d just restored. “Rhi, I really think this this is going to need a little of the Eye– “

“Do as much as you can without it,” Rhiow said.

He flicked an ear in agreement, and narrowed his eyes to see the tablet better. For some moments, though, he didn’t say anything, and Rhiow started to worry. “They’re not in some kind of code, are they?” she said, concerned. Normally for codes to be made intelligible to a wizard, at least the cultural context for them had to still be available in some living mind, or recorded in the general knowledge base of some living culture. But if it isn’t –

“No, nothing like that,” Arhu said after a moment. “It’s complicated. But the Whisperer’s helping me. These people’s calendars were really accurate, but so weird in terms of how they divided the months and stuff! They had everything from those thirteen-day cycles Helen mentioned to ones that went on for two hundred sixty days… and then much longer ones based on Venus’s orbit and Iau knows what else.” His tail twitched idly as he worked out what he was looking at. “But there’s one really long sequence called the Long Count… and this stuff has to do with that. There were shorter cycles buried in it: hundreds of years instead of hundreds of days or months. And the dates make sense now that the missing stuff’s in place.”

Arhu paused, studying the tablet. “So what we’ve got here are three sets of dates. There are these three long recurring cycles – one that’s three hundred ninety-four years, that’s a b’ak’tun, and one that’s fifty-four, and one that’s eleven. And there are three short cycles of days or months, and three that are very short, just hours or minutes. At very long intervals, all nine cycles coincide. Looks like someone way back when made a list of when the cycles were scheduled to intersect next…”

Urruah looked over at Rhiow. “The Lady in Black did mention ‘three times three times three’…”

She waved her tail at him in agreement. Arhu meanwhile sat there squinting at the characters for a few seconds more, while his off ear flicked again a couple of times as if someone was whispering in it. “Getting it now,” he said. “The years don’t just have numbers, but animal names. All of these are Years of the Black Jaguar.”

The fur stood up all over Rhiow.