The Book of Night With Moon by Diane Duane Page B

create a fair amount of friction.
    Not that matters were perfect for her either. Rhiow found, to her annoyance, that she had slowly started becoming bilingual in Human and Ailurin. She kept finding herself thinking in slang- ehhif terms like ra'hio and o'hra: poor usage at best. Her dam, who had always been so carefully spoken, would have been shocked.
    Rhi? said Saash inside her.
    I'm awake, Rhiow said silently.
    Took you long enough, Saash said. Believe me, when this is over, I've got a lot of sleep to make up.
    Oh? Rhiow said.
    Our youngster, Saash said dryly, has been awake and lively for a good while now. It's been exciting trying to keep him in here, and I don't think I'll be able to do it much longer. I had to teach him to sidle to distract him even this long—
    You mean you had to try to teach him to sidle, Rhiow said.
    I mean he's been sidling for the last two hours, said Saash.
    Rhiow blinked at that. Nearly all wizardly cats had an aptitude for sidling, but most took at least a week to learn it; many took months. Sweet Queen about us, Rhiow thought, what have the Powers sent us? Besides trouble…
    All right, Rhiow said to Saash. I'll be along in half an hour or so. Where's Urruah?
    He's having a break, Saash said. I sent him off early…. I thought maybe there was going to be a murder.
    Oh joy, Rhiow thought. To Saash, she said, Did he go off to the park? He mentioned the other day that some big tom thing would be going on over there.
    He mentioned it to me too, Saash said. Not that I understood one word in five of what he was saying: it got technical. He left in a hurry, anyway, and I didn't want to try to keep him.
    I just bet, Rhiow thought. When Urruah was in one of those moods, it was more than your ears were worth to try to slow him down. All right. Hold the den; I'll be along.
    Somewhat regretfully— for quiet times like this seemed to be getting rarer and rarer these days— Rhiow got down out of Hhuha's lap, sat down on the floor and finished her wash, then went out to the terrace to use the hiouh -box.
    Afterward, she made her way down from the terrace to the top of the nearby building and did her meditation— not facing east for once, but westward. The smog had been bad today; Rhiow was glad she had been inside with the air-conditioning. But now that the day was cooling, a slight offshore breeze had sprung up, and the ozone level was dropping, so that you could at least breathe without your chest feeling tight. And— probably the only positive aspect to such a day— the Sun was going down in a blaze of unaccustomed splendor, its disk bloated to half again its proper size and blunted to a beaten-copper radiance by the thick warm air. Down the westward-reaching street, windows flashed the orange-gold light back in fragments; to either side of Rhiow, and behind her, skyscraper-glass glowed and in the heat-haze almost seemed to run, glazed red or gold or molten smoky amber by the westering light.
    Rhiow tucked herself down and considered the disk of fire as it sank toward the Palisades, gilding the waters of the Hudson. As a wizard, she knew quite well that what she saw was Earth's nearest star, a glimpse of the fusion that was stepchild to the power that started this universe running. Rhoua was what People called it. The word was a metonymy: Rhoua was a name of Queen Iau, of the One, in Her aspect as beginner and ender of physical life. Once cats had understood the Sun only in the abstract, as life's kindler. It had taken a while for them to grasp the concept of the Sun as just one more star among many, but when they did, they still kept the old nickname.
    The older name for the Sun had been Rhoua'i'th, Rhoua's Eye: the only one of Her eyes that the world saw, or would see, at least for a good while yet. That one open Eye saw thoughts, saw hearts, knew the realities beneath external seemings. The other Eye saw those and everything else as well; but no one saw it. It would not open until matter was