The Big Meow

Rhiow had been half expecting either a clumsy aggregation of mangled Speech-symbols or one of the peculiar but nonfunctional spell diagrams that had percolated down through ehhif popular culture from medieval times, some farrago of alchemical symbols, ancient languages and confused numerology. But this was neither. Scratched in the ground the diagram might be, no polished work, but all the essential elements of a spell circle were here. Inside a series of nested envelopment circles and intersecting power management rhomboids were many long and intricately interconnected statements in the Speech. Rhiow knew she could spend a good while teasing out the fine details, but the overall structure made the spell’s purpose clear. It was meant to contain and trap power funneled into it from outside, and it was full of symbols and contractions that had to do with the confinement of extracted life force. The means of extraction were obvious enough: the broad bloodstains were still in place, the color plain even though the clotted blood had been scraped away. With the blood, soaked into the ground under the spell circle, she could feel the remnants of many previous ehhif attempts to contact dark forces and twist their power to the ehhifs’ will. Blood had been spilled then too, though with far less focused purpose than most recently. Rhiow looked away from the biggest pool and saw something that in its way troubled her more: the eight stones dropped here and there on focus points of the circle’s inner diagrams. At least they looked like stones at first. But if they were stones, then someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to carve each one into the likeness of an ehhif’s torn-out or cut-out heart…

Rhiow shook her head at the low, angry, hungry buzzing noise that was getting louder every minute while she stood inside the stone circle. Here one could clearly hear sa’Rraah’s little minions, and sense them thronging thickly around, just as Arhu said. You could feel them in the air but most especially in the ground, through your feet, as if yellowjackets had buried nests everywhere under the floor. The shadow-imps were reacting, not just to the presence of wizards here, but to the greedy and ambitious ehhif who had once again been stirring up that old pool of darkness with their desire to control it. And more so than usual, Rhiow thought, because this time the stakes are so much higher. This time sa’Rraah has so much more to gain if the ehhif’s endeavor succeeds…

Out at the edge of the circle of stones, Aufwi had slipped out of the shadows to examine the circle more closely. There was definitely a gate here, Rhiow, he said. You can see where the ambient string structure’s deformed by the material memory in the floor of the previous gate anchoring, and there are some temporary mooring receptacles still sunk underneath this circle. But some time in the recent past the gate was moved to that temporary anchorage we found upstairs… maybe while somebody was working on it who didn’t want to be down here all the time.

I can understand that, Rhiow said, for that dark buzzing at the edge of things was getting more and more unbearable. And something else was troubling her: an increasing sense of being buried, buried alive, buried in ground that nonetheless was thinking about moving, moving the first chance it got, killing everything… She shook herself, told herself to stay focused. Anyway, it’s not up there now. And it’s not down here. Where’ve they got it stowed? Because whatever gate was operating here was extremely powerful, on a par with a hardwired permanent gate. It has to have deranged everything else for miles around whenever it went operational. No wonder the formally emplaced gates in the area have been acting so badly….

She glanced over at Hwaith, whose tail was fluffed out to about three times its size as he stared at the spell diagram. Gating issues were plainly far from his mind right now. Rhiow, this is very bad, he said. This isn’t just some clueless ehhif dabbling. This is professional stuff.

Her tail lashed in agreement. It’s unquestionably the Speech, Rhiow said. Unquestionably a spell. But now we’re left with the question: how could it possibly ever enact? No wizard in the Powers’ service would ever build a spell like this. Or expect anything to come of it —

Yet then Rhiow had to stop, for at least once now she’d seen a wizard working in a Power’s service because it knew no other source of power… and his spells had enacted. But that was in another universe, a whole pocket world in the Downside that the Lone One had subverted to its own intentions. This is the Powers’ world. This kind of thing can’t work here –

It can if the wizard’s physical tie to Them has been completely severed, Hwaith said, his voice full of pity and dread. And all that remains is a soul-shell that walks and speaks and hates…