Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (39 page)

“Ponch!” Kit said. He was standing there in pajama bottoms and a beat-up, plaid flannel bathrobe, looking bleary, astonished, and annoyed. “Cut that out!”

Ponch lolloped over to Kit, plainly far too pleased to be troubled by his annoyance.
I found her. Can we keep her?

Kit rubbed his eyes. “My dog brings home strays,” he said in Ronan’s general direction. “I should have mentioned. You think It noticed?”

Difficult to tell, but I think perhaps not,
the One’s Champion said from inside Ronan.
Otherwise,
I
should have noticed. Ponch’s way of getting places doesn’t seem to register as a transit.

“I guess we should be relieved,” Kit said. “Ponch, promise me you won’t go off like that again without telling me first!”

Ponch stood up on his hind legs, putting his feet on Kit’s chest.
I didn’t do anything bad!
he said, sounding worried and a little perturbed.
You all wanted to see her! And I wanted to see if she smelled like I thought she should have smelled,
Ponch said.
And she did!

“Yeah, but we also wanted to give her a chance to get used to us—”

I gave her a chance to get used to me! I smelled her, and she smelled me. And then we started talking.

Dairine stifled her laughter. Roshaun, who had come out of his pup tent shortly after Dairine, caught her eye.
You said you were planning to improvise?
he said.
You are going to have to move much faster in the future.

Dairine turned her attention to the Yaldiv handmaiden. She came around the back of the
mochteroofs
and paused to look at the members of the group one after another, taking them in: a tree with glowing berries, a tall humanoid with flowing blond hair, a tall dark humanoid, a smaller one, and another smaller still; a little machine, a strange creature that wagged at one end and panted at the other. The Yaldiv’s scenting palps moved uncertainly.

Somebody really ought to say hello to her,
Dairine said. But then the question came up: what did you say to a creature that might never have heard of errantry, or might think it was evil? Yet, buried somewhere inside this creature was the hope of a tremendous power for good. You had to let that power know it was safe to express itself.

Dairine opened her mouth. But the Yaldiv beat her to it, raising her foreclaws in the deferential gesture they’d seen used out on the path the afternoon before. Then the Yaldiv let them fall, as if she couldn’t use the normal ceremonial response, and thus the gesture was invalid as well.

“This one saw these,” the Yaldiv said.
Those weird pronouns again,
Dairine thought. “When they walked in the tunnel, near Grubbery Fourteen. Though they were not Yaldiv, they had a Yaldiv seeming. They wore it strangely, like a shell during molt, but not-like, as if the shell could be seen through. Their shapes were strange. Their shapes were these shapes—” She pointed one claw at each of them in turn.

Then she glanced up again and met Dairine’s eyes, and once again Dairine felt the shock of looking out, looking in, mirrors reflecting in mirrors. “But this one saw that one before,” she said to Dairine. “And not within the Commorancy.”

Dairine became aware that the “older-and-wiser types” were watching her and expecting
her
to produce some useful result. She took a breath. “Yes,” Dairine said. “And this one, also, has seen
that
one before.”

“When?”

“Not long ago,” Dairine said. “And not from within the Commorancy, either. From within that one.”

The Yaldiv stood there shifting uncertainly from leg to leg, a rocking motion. “Yes,” she said. “There was a glimpse of strangeness. Other eyes, a world in strange shapes, strange colors. Why are these here?”

Dairine glanced at the others.
Anyone have any suggestions?

You’re the only one of us she knows firsthand,
Kit said.
You’d better run with it.

She turned back to the Yaldiv. “To see this one,” Dairine said.

“Why?”

I really need a few moments to think about this!
“To tell the story may take a while,” Dairine said, “as the story told before the King does.”

Dairine saw the shiver that went through the Yaldiv—a shudder that literally shook her on her legs. It was strange, considering the fervent way all the Yaldiv in the hive had seemed to willingly worship that bloated shape on the dais.
Maybe—

No, don’t get ahead of yourself.
“That one should be at ease,” Dairine said, “and this one will be, too, while the story is told.” She sat down cross-legged on the cavern floor.

Spot came spidering over to Dairine and crouched down beside her.
Look,
Dairine said silently,
keep an eye on her bodily functions while I’m talking. If I get near some dangerous topic, I want some warning.

All right,
Spot said.

Very slowly the Yaldiv lowered herself to the floor, folding her legs underneath her and resting the huge claws on the floor at what passed for their elbow joints. As she did this, the others slowly sat down, too—those who could. Filif stayed as he was, and while the Yaldiv was watching them do that, each after his fashion, Dairine saw Spot put up a transparent display above his closed lid.
It can’t be seen from the other side,
he said.
Here are indicators for brain activity, general neural firing, and the rates for all three hearts. But as for what the readings will
mean …

She was going to have to take her chances with that. “Tell these of this one’s life,” Dairine said, hoping she was getting the pronouns in the right order.

“This one is a Yaldah,” the Yaldiv said. It was apparently the female form of the species noun. “The Yaldat are the mothers of our people. We are the engenderers of our City’s defense. To be a Yaldah is our destiny, and our glory.”

This sounds too familiar,
Dairine thought. The language was much like some of the stuff she’d read in the mid-twentieth-century unit of last year’s history class. “
Destiny.” Half the time the word’s just code for “what someone else wants you to do without asking any inconvenient questions.
” “What does this one do in the City?” Dairine said.

“What most Yaldat do,” said their guest, and then she did the first casual thing Dairine had seen any Yaldiv do: she lifted one claw to comb back the scent palps on one side, like someone absently brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Feeding meat to the newly hatched grubs who are past their first food. Cleaning away their leavings and molted-off skins until their shells grow. Yaldat tend the hatchlings until they are large and strong enough to be taken away and trained in their work, or the way of warriors… or vessels.”

Vessels
was a different word in the Yaldiv language than the simple female form. And the
it
pronoun simply meant that the creature using it was just a thing, of no value except as it contributed to the glory of the Great One.

Dairine opened her mouth to ask another question, but she didn’t get the chance. “Now these must tell this one of themselves,” the Yaldiv said. “These have come to the City wearing shapes that are not their own. And to mimic a City person’s smell—that has been done in the past by invaders from outside, the Others.”

“These simply did not wish those in the City to be frightened,” Dairine said. “The strangeness of these could make a Yaldiv fear.”

“The strangeness does not frighten this one,” the Yaldiv said. “It is also—” She stopped.

“Also what?” Dairine said.

The Yaldiv was gazing at the cavern floor with those dark eyes. “Also not the same…”

Dairine glanced at the readouts that Spot was privately showing her. The hearts’ rate had increased nearly threefold in the past few minutes. She looked up into those dark eyes again, met them, and held them. “There’s no reason to fear,” Dairine said.

The pause was so long that Dairine broke out in a sweat, wondering if she’d misstepped. But the Yaldiv looked down at her with eyes that somehow managed to show more than fear. There was anger there, too.

“There’s every reason,” the Yaldiv said. “For when one says the wrong word, the dangerous word, in the wrong hearing—little time passes between the last breath and the first bite of another’s jaws on the meat that was one’s body.”

“Whatever else these may do,” Dairine said, also angry now, “these are
not
going to eat that one.” And then a little exasperation crept into her own anger. “And these can’t just keep calling that one ‘that,’” Dairine said.

The Yaldiv looked at her in complete noncomprehension. “What else would this be called?”

“There is something,” Ronan said suddenly, “called a name.”

The Yaldiv looked from him back to Dairine. “A name?”

“A name,”
  said the one inside Ronan, “
is the word by which one calls a creature that is different from all other creatures. A creature that is its own unique self.”

Though as far as mere sound went there was no difference between Ronan’s voice and his guest’s, the Yaldiv started up, terribly shocked. She wheeled about swiftly to stare at Ronan, and then began to back away. Bumping into one of the
mochteroofs
stopped her, but still the Yaldiv stared.

“This one also it knows,” the Yaldiv said. “This voice… It is Death to hear this voice, this word from beyond the outside! It is worse than Death!” She was shivering. Now she began to crouch down again, her claws uplifted in desperate supplication. “There is no such place as the Outside, nothing but the City and the One who rules it! Let the Great One forgive this unworthy one! It did not mean to speak the evil word; it will be faithful to the Great One’s trust—”

Ponch got up from where he’d been sitting watching all this, and trotted over to the Yaldiv. Bizarrely, he started licking the claws that were now lifted up to hide the mirror-shade eyes.

The Yaldiv slowly stopped shivering. Dairine watched her turn her attention to Ponch. Stealing a glance at Spot’s display, she saw the heart-rate indicators dropping little by little. The dark eyes looked down into the doggy ones.

“This one is not very like you,” she said after a moment, glancing back at Dairine.

“That one is Ponch,” Kit said. “Ponch is a dog.”

Ponch is my name,
the dog said.
That’s me. It’s good to have a name.

“Why?”

Because that way people can call you and tell you they want to give you things!
He went romping back over to Kit.
Like this!

Ponch started bouncing around and barking. Dairine resisted the urge to cover her ears. Even though this was a big cavern, the noise was deafening, and it echoed. Kit looked at Dairine in helpless amusement, reached into the dog biscuit box, and got one more biscuit out. “Opportunist,” he said. “Ponch! Want a biscuit?”

Oh, boy, oh, boy!
Ponch barked, and whirled around in a circle a few times, and then jumped up and snatched the dog biscuit out of Kit’s hand. To Dairine’s total astonishment, he then ran back and dropped it in front of the Yaldiv.

She looked at it in surprise. “What is that?”

Food!
Ponch sat down and looked at the Yaldiv expectantly.

She reached down a claw and prodded the biscuit. “This is meat?” she said.

This? Not even slightly,
Ponch said.
But it’s nice!

The Yaldiv looked quizzically at Ponch. Then she reached down, picked up the biscuit, and nibbled at it with a couple of small mandibles.

“It is pleasant,” she said. She finished it up, then settled herself down again. Dairine sneaked another look at Spot’s readout.
A lot better,
she said to him.
She’s calming down now.

That’s what happens when you have a name,
Ponch said, and lay down near her, panting a little from all the bouncing and spinning around.

“This one supposes… if there is no harm… then there might be a name.” She still sounded very uncertain.

“Is there something the ones in the City say when they call this one to do something?” Kit said.

She glanced up. “They say it is unworthy of notice,” the Yaldiv said. “They say it is always the last one to be called.” Was that a touch of bitterness?

The last one,
Dairine thought. She glanced down at Spot, who was still running analyses of words he had seen on the walls. He showed her a word, in both the Speech and the Yaldiv written language.

“Memeki,” Dairine said.

The dark eyes met hers again. “‘The last,’” she agreed. “It would not be a strange calling.”

“When one has a name,” Dairine said, “one’s not an
it
anymore. One is called
you.
”

She shivered again. “Another strangeness,” Memeki said. “This word also you has heard.”

“Sorry,” Dairine said. “Not enough explanation. When it speaks of itself, and has a name, it says, ‘I.’”

Memeki began to shake harder. Dairine swallowed and kept on going. “Like this. I see you.” She pointed first at herself, then at Memeki. “We—” She gestured at the others, then again at Memeki.
“We
see you.”

The trembling didn’t stop, but Memeki looked at them all, and then down at Ponch, who had rolled over on his back in front of her foreclaws, and now lay there exhibiting his not inconsiderable stomach. “And I—” She stopped. She lifted her claws, dropped them again.

“This one is afraid,” she said, so softly that they could barely hear it. “It knows this word. It never thought anyone else might.”

After a moment, Dairine said, “Tell how you know the word.”

Slowly Memeki made that palp-grooming gesture again, like pushing hair aside. “Often it wished when it was younger that it could achieve such merit as some of the Yaldat had,” she said. “But to serve the Great One personally is not an honor offered to many. And those Yaldat who had achieved such merit, they said it could never happen to this one; for this one was not fair enough to ever attract the King’s attention. This one came to believe them, and stopped hoping for more. It was content to serve in the grubbery, giving the young ones food in the less meritorious way. Such was honor enough.” She glanced down at Ponch, who was now lying there with his eyes closed.