To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

meet! Remember what Urruah told you."
    "I never get to have any fun with wizardry!" Arhu said, the complaint acquiring a little yowl around the edges, and he fluffed up slightly at Rhiow. "It's all work and dull stuff!"
    "Oh really?" Urruah said. "What about that cute little marmalade tabby I saw you with the other night?"
    "Uh... Oh, " Arhu said, and abruptly sat down right by the wall and became very quiet.
    "Yes indeed," Urruah said. "Naughty business, that, stealing groceries out of an ehhif 's trunk. That's why you fell down the manhole afterwards. The Universe notices when wizards misbehave. And sometimes... other wizards do too."
    Arhu sat staring at Urruah wide-eyed, and didn't say anything. This by itself was so bizarre an event that Rhiow nearly broke up laughing. "Boy's got taste, if nothing else," Urruah said to her, and sat down himself for a moment. "He was up on Broadway and raided some ehhif 's shopping bags after they'd been to Zabar's. Caviar, it was, and smoked salmon and sour cream: supposed to be someone's brunch the next day, I guess. He did a particulate bypass spell on a section of the trunk lid and pulled the stuff out piece by piece... then gave every bit of it to this little marmalade creature with the big green eyes."
    Arhu was now half turned away from them while hurriedly washing his back. It was he'ihh, composure-washing: and it wasn't working— the fur bristled again as fast as he washed it down. "Never even set the car alarm off," Urruah said, wrapping his tail demurely around his toes. "Did it in full sight. None of the ehhif passing by believed what they were seeing, as usual."
    "I had to do it in full sight," Arhu said, starting to wash farther down his back. "You can't sidle when you're— "
    "Stealing things, no," Rhiow said, as she sat down too. She sighed. The child had come to them with a lot of bad habits. Yet much of Arhu's value as a Person and a wizard had to do with his unquenchable, sometimes unbearable spirit and verve, which even a truly awful kittenhood had not been able to crush. Had his tendencies as a visionary not already revealed themselves, Rhiow would have thought that Arhu was destined to be like Urruah, a "power source," the battery or engine of a spell that others might construct and work, but he would fuel and drive. Either way, the visionary talent, too, used that verve to fuel it. It was Arhu's inescapable curiosity, notable even for a cat, that kept his wizardry fretting and fraying at the fabric of linear time until it "wore through" and some image from future or past leaked out.
    "If nothing else," Rhiow said finally, "you've got a quick grasp of the fundamentals... as they apply to implementation, anyway. I can see the ethics end of things is going to take longer." Arhu turned, opened his mouth to say something. "Don't start with me," Rhiow said. "Talk to the Whisperer about it if you don't believe us; but stealing is only going to be trouble for you eventually. Meanwhile, where shall we meet in the morning?"
    Urruah looked around him as Arhu got up again, looking a little recovered. "I guess here is as good a place as any. Five thirty?"
    That was opening time for the station and would be fairly calm, if any time of the day in a place as big and busy as Grand Central could accurately be described as calm. "Good enough," Rhiow said.
    They started to walk out down the Graybar passage again, to the Lexington Avenue doors. "Arhu?" Rhiow said to him as they came out and slid sideways to hug the wall, heading for the corner of Forty-third. "An hour before first twilight, two hours before the Old Tom's Eye sets."
    "I know when five thirty is," Arhu said, sounding slightly affronted. "They do shift change at the garage a moonwidth after that."
    "All right," Urruah said. "Anything else you need to take care of, like telling the little marmalade number— "
    "Her name's Hffeu," Arhu said.
    "Hffeu it is," Rhiow said. "She excited to be going out with a wizard?"
    Arhu