A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition)

by Julie E. Czerneda

  A warm hand touched his arm. The Human female had come to crouch beside him, her expression now one he couldn’t read. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she told him.

  “How do you know I’m upset?” he asked. “I haven’t told you so.”

  “You are Tidik.” A slight wave to his neck. “I may not be physiologically able to detect your messages through the air, but I do know they are released during stress. I also know you can’t change the inflection of your voice, so I must discount that as a measure of your emotions. But the droplets on your upper lip? I’ve read Tidik literature, Finder Aris. Those are what we would call tears, are they not? Released, as ours, during sadness or pain. So I know. You cared for Mesky. That’s why you want another dog.”

  “He could do that, too,” he confessed, overwhelmed by such unexpected empathy. “Understand what I felt, withoutthis nonsense of speech. We Tidik—it’s not easy for us to work with other species. They call us cold and unfeeling, because we don’t wail and shout as they do. But the dog knew—” Vasi stopped, embarrassed, and looked from one Human to the other. “It made me feel less alone,” he admitted to them and to himself. “A silly reason, isn’t it? I’ve wasted your time. I apologize.” He stood to go.

  “I can’t promise another dog for you, Finder Aris,” Edwards said with what sounded like honest regret. “The bio’face is the only trump card we have right now, the only way we can gain access to the Hoveny sites for our species. Maybe, one day . . .”

  Vasi nodded. “I knew. I just hoped.” He understood the reluctance of the First. Humans were numerous, but they possessed unremarkable technology, biology, and culture. Why admit more of the species to the secrets of the First? But Vasi looked at Seung and suddenly wondered what they didn’t know. He’d never met another alien so perceptive, so willing to work within his own parameters to understand him.

  Perhaps the important thing about that damn dog wasn’t about dogs at all, but the kind of beings who valued such partnership enough to bring it with them into space.

  “As you know, Liaison Seung, my Triad remains in charge of the most significant Hoveny find ever made on Aeande XII, possibly anywhere,” Sai Vasilo Aris said in his even, unemotional voice. “We lost our Analyst in the tragedy. Do you have a qualified Analyst available for the coming field season? One who can climb?”

  After a shocked pause, they both spoke at once: “What— What did you say? Pardon? Are you serious?” Then, Seung, almost angrily: “You want a Human Analyst?”

  “A Human.” Vasi didn’t know how to show he shared their astonished pleasure, but opened his flaps a trifle and sent out a scent of pleased anticipation for himself. “I think I’ll enjoy the company.”

  Now available in a hardcover edition

  from DAW Books,

  REAP THE WILD WIND,

  the first novel of

  Julie E. Czerneda’s gripping new

  science fiction series: Stratification,

  which introduces readers to the

  origins of the Clan.

  Read on for a sneak preview.

  PRELUDE

  The M’hir Wind began out of sight, out of mind. It stirred first where baked sand met restless surf. It became fitful and petulant as it passed over the barrens, moving dunes and scouring stone. Sometimes it sighed and curled back on itself, as if absentminded. But it never stilled.

  It only grew.

  By the time the land raised its wall, the M’hir was a steady howl, wide as the horizon and heavy with power. Dust and sand marked its leading edge; thunder and lightning heralded its approach. It rushed into the mountain range, screaming through canyons until rock cracked from the sound. But the land would not be denied, forcing the M’hir up and up until the wind became chill and sullen and pregnant with cloud.

  Rain came to the slopes; violent, driven rain that carved gullies and tumbled boulders. It washed everything from its path until, spent, it sprawled across the desert as thousands of dark, twisting rivulets that were sucked into the parched earth. Life ignited. For days and days to come, this place would bloom and crawl and flutter, turning the M’hir’s grudging gift into color and motion.

  The M’hir itself roared up the mountains, what remained of its moisture released in blizzards of white. It ripped clouds as it crested the summits, then plunged.

  Stripped of its moisture, heated as its air compressed, the M’hir Wind raced down the far side of the mountain range, faster and faster, its searing breath about to fall on new lands.

  No longer out of sight, or out of mind, to those who waited; the first dry hot gusts of the M’hir signaled summer’s end and the harvest.

  If you were brave enough to climb.

  Chapter 1

  Old, these mountains. Old and beaten and scoured, until they were more a blur of sharp ridges than peaks. The ridges plunged like greedy fingers into the swamplands owned by the Tikitik. Those swamplands, themselves an immense grove braided with open water and reedbed, extended from the mountains to the horizon; beyond, should any care, lay the sere plains and parallel mounds of the Oud. For Cersi was a world meticulously divided and ruled.

  As it had always been. This was one of three points on which all who dwelled here agreed.

  Next was Passage. The Om’ray, third of the races of Cersi, owned no part of this world. Once a lifetime, an Om’ray was entitled to trespass wherever he must over the lands of the others, to reach a mate or die in the attempt. It was an accommodation of instinct which pleased no one, beyond continuing the world as it was.

  For that was the final point of agreement: what was and had been must stay the same. Cersi was in balance and at peace. Change was forbidden, for all sakes.

  Old, these mountains.

  And every summer here ended with the M’hir.

  Aryl Sarc stared at the hand near her face. It was hers, the knuckles white with strain beneath smudges of dirt. She eased her grip slightly, looked ahead for the next. She’d never been this high before. Didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. She took a deep breath.

  “I’m going to fall, you know.”

  Exhaling the breath in a snort, Aryl twisted to scowl at her brother. Costa Sarc, or rather Costa sud Teerac, might be bigger, stronger, and Joined—thus officially adult and her senior—but he clutched the stalk below her as if to embed himself in its bark. “I’ll fall,” he assured her. “Any—Oh, no! I’m slipping!” he howled, one arm thrashing wildly through the air.

  Real fear? He was close enough. She lifted one brow and let her awareness of him become focused, breaching the barrier between the acceptable here-I-am of Costa and the private how-I-feel. It was rude and childish.

  So, it turned out, was her brother. “Not funny, Costa,” she snapped, pulling free of his delighted amusement.

  The flash of a wide, unrepentant grin. “Sure it was. Ease up, Aryl. I thought this was to be fun.”

  “Only if you don’t get us caught,” she scolded. A full tenth of the day climbing and they were just at the third spool—the height of five clansmen, short ones at that— from the wide bridge suspended below. Below that support, it was a drop of twenty or more to the dark water glinting its menace between root buttresses and trunks. Young Om’ray were encouraged to drop scraps from such safe height. The resulting boil of activity made this a good object lesson, for the Lay Swamp was home to many things; what didn’t have leaves, had teeth. Om’ray learned not to fall.

  Rarely, anyway. Aryl pointed down. “Next time you feel the need to slip, dear brother, aim for the bridge. I’m sure Leri would love to help heal a broken leg for her beloved Chosen.” She lowered her voice to a fair imitation of Haxel Vendan, Nena’s First Scout. “ ‘Mark my words, young Om’ray. If you miss,’ ” she growled menacingly, “ ‘you’ll be eaten before you drown.’ ”

  Costa chuckled “Leaving you to explain to the family.”

  “I’ll do anything if it makes you hurry, Costa! We don’t have time to waste. The M’hir’s coming.”

 
At this, his grin faded. He stared up at her, beginning to frown. “You keep saying that as if it’s true, Aryl. The Watchers haven’t called. You’re no—”

  “They will soon,” she interrupted, unwilling to discuss the source of her impatience. Costa’s strange little sister kept such feelings to herself. This inner anticipation—half excitement, half dread—was never easy to interpret when it arrived. But she’d learned it meant change.

  Change, today, could only be the M’hir.

  “When the Watchers call,” she continued, “we’ll already be in place. No one will have time or breath to argue.” Aryl tucked her toes between the long, sturdy fronds and pushed higher. Until now, the passage had been easy. No need to use the ladder scars coaxed from the straight stalk. Besides, she thought, running her fingers through the soft gray down that coated the underside of the nearest frond, no one knew the lower reaches of this great old rastis as she did, her favorite of all those that towered in the Sarc grove.

  Aryl slipped between fronds and reached for the next spool, pulling herself up. “Hurry—” She closed her mouth over the words, tilting her head back as she tried to see through the latticework of fronds and leaves and branches.

  They weren’t the only ones who’d guessed the wind.

  “Oh, no,” she grumbled. “Ghoch’s here.”

  “Where else would he be?” Costa puffed noisily, as if to prove he was doing his best.

  “I mean right here. Above us in the grove.” She pursed her lips and blew a curious, bright-winged brofer away before it landed on her nose. Most of the smaller life high in the rastis took cover before the M’hir. It was one of the signs the wind was due—as well as the only time to climb without wearing every possible protection. A rastis had its earnest defenders, and Om’ray flesh suited that vast array of biters just fine.

  “We’ll only be in trouble if we’re caught. Hush!” she urged again, then tilted her head to look up, eyes narrowing as she tried to see through the patches of overlappinggreen, yellow, and brown. There might be no sign of anyone else in the giant rastis or its neighbors, but she knew better. Ghoch and the rest were not far above now. She felt them, as surely as she felt the great plant between her hands, as surely as she knew the direction and distance to her home, or to the Cloisters, where the Adepts dwelt, or to the very edges of the world.

  For the world of the Om’ray was shaped not by mountain or grove or sky, but by the Om’ray themselves. Direction was the first awareness. Even newborns would move restlessly in their sleep until facing one or another of the six distant clans, then still, as if soothed to find their place in relation to all others. This late in summer, the sun rose between Clans Amna and Pana. It set in line with Grona. If Aryl put Grona to her right hand, she would face Tuana, with her back to Rayna. Vyna lay directly beyond Rayna.

  Distance came next, a sense honed by age and experience. Very young Om’ray couldn’t climb beyond their awareness of their mothers. Too far, and that tight comforting bond began to thin, sending the child back to safety as quickly as it drew the anxious mother. That bond loosened with age, replaced by the deep, constant awareness of those close by, the family and friends of one’s clan, amid the faint comfort of those more distant. Aryl knew, as all of the Yena Clan, that Rayna and Ael were closest, Vyna farthest.

  If she had to, she could find any of her kind.

  So it was for all Om’ray. Those above would feel her presence and Costa’s, though not who they were. Om’ray were never lost or truly alone. Clans stayed where they were, defining the world. Only Passage sent an Om’ray from home, to seek and answer the call of another clan’s Chooser. Such strangers were welcome, though they rarely made it to Yena.

  Now, to Aryl, the canopy above glistened with more than sunlight. She felt those permitted to be there and knew every one.

  Including—she bit her lip and climbed faster—Bern Teerac.

  It wasn’t Bern’s fault he’d been selected this M’hir and she had not. That they’d trained and climbed together for two seasons preparing for this day, neither besting the other, made no difference to the will of the Council. Afterward, he’d stammered all the things a heart-kin who was as thick as an Oud might say until Aryl had managed to escape.

  She hadn’t spoken to him since.

  She might not—for a while, at least.

  Costa didn’t touch her feelings—she’d have felt it— but he didn’t need to. Her reason for this illicit adventure wasn’t a secret. “Aryl,” he said quietly as they resumed the climb, “being passed over the first time you’re old enough doesn’t mean anything. You’re not like me, too heavy for the ropes, slow as a pregnant aspird. ”

  Thinking of the fat creature, which hung upside down for most of a season without moving while eggs warmed on her belly, Aryl’s lips twitched. “An aspird’s faster.”

  It was true, not everyone could participate in the harvest.

  But Aryl couldn’t fathom why she hadn’t been picked, if Council considered Bern ready. They were reflections of each other. Closer than kin, in many ways. It was only a matter of time . . .

  She felt her cheeks warm and silenced her thoughts. “We’re almost there.”

  “How can you—” Costa’s words were swallowed by an undulating moan, so loud it vibrated through the stalk holding them both. It was as if the mountains themselves had cried out. The sound diminished, only to come again.

  “The Watchers!” Aryl shouted to be heard. “I told you. The M’hir is coming now! Hurry, Costa!”

  She lunged upward. Her brother would have to follow as best he could. Her left hand closed on an irka vine, its edges slicing through the skin, the tiny barbs taking hold on flesh beneath. A trap for smaller prey. Aryl tugged her hand free, leaving a splash of red along the green, and continued upward.

  The higher she went, the brighter the world became. Patches of blue blossomed like flowers through the canopy. Sky.

  She pulled herself past the final spool of giant fronds only to find herself stopped. Ahead, the single great stem thickened into a bulb. The underside of the rastis’ crown. She couldn’t see past it. Worse, a dense collar of vines feathered downward, some bearing the yellow galls that warned of stingers hiding within, others pale and white with the sap Aryl knew to be glue and poison in one. Even without these hazards, none of the vines could hold the weight of an Om’ray child, let alone an adult.

  She wedged herself into the topmost spool, leaning back to study the problem. Flitters flew by, their small brightly colored bodies revealed by their clear wings. Her kin hadn’t flown up there. Aryl frowned, eyes searching the vines. There had to be a way.

  Suddenly, she sensed her brother was now above her. “Costa?”

  “Here!” Costa’s call was triumphant. Aryl pulled herself to a stand to look for him, careful to keep her head well below the reaching tips of the vines.

  At first, she didn’t see him, then glimpsed brown tunic in the midst of the vines and stifled a cry of her own. Remarkably, Costa wasn’t waving off stingers or trapped in sticky vines. Where was he? Halfway around the stalk and three body lengths higher. “How did you get there?” she demanded.

  “Here,” he repeated, this time pointing straight down.

  Aryl worked her way around the spool until she was beneath where her brother so mysteriously hung in what should be midair—with vines. She looked up and laughed in surprise.

  Mystery solved. Costa stood on a ladder of slats and braided rope. It hung free from the bulb, leading—she tilted her head—past the broadest portion. Any vines that might touch a climber if shifted by a breeze were carefully tied back, not cut. She assumed they’d be released after the harvest, to hide the way up and protect the rastis’ tender crown.

  To any Yena, such a ladder was as easily run as a flat bridge. Aryl’s brother eased to one side to let her rush past, but she stopped beside him to claim a quick one-armed hug. “I knew I brought you for a reason.”

  Costa laughed. “Remind me later.”
>
  Later, Aryl didn’t remember climbing the rest of the ladder, or the moments it took to pry open the door leading through the decking above.

  For once she did, she was in a world none of the stories or shared images could have prepared her to experience.

  The crown of the rastis—this one and those to every side—grew a grove of its own. Tall, slender stems rose upward, uniform and so densely packed Aryl couldn’t have forced her body between them. They sprouted dull gray and straight, so thin her fingers met around them. At waist height, they changed.

  Aryl followed one of the stems upward with her fingertips to where it thickened. What looked smooth to the eye felt woven, like cloth. No, not cloth, she decided, but a rope of the most tightly spun thread imaginable. The texture deepened into a spiral that wound up the remainder of the stem, its line traced in crimson that spread wider and wider until, overhead, the stems were vivid red and thick, edged in orange. They appeared taut, as if ready to burst.

  The Watchers moaned again, the deep vibration rattling the decking that was as much coaxed from the living rastis as fastened to it. Costa clung to the doorframe as he climbed through to join her, his eyes wide. “Aryl!” he mouthed.

  The moan died away; the world steadied. It was temporary, she knew. “Hurry, Costa.”

  The decking curled around the flattened top of the bulb for several steps in either direction. It held more than a door. A large sling and pulley array was fastened to one side, its precious metal chains wrapped in cloth to protect the rastis during use. Costa walked over to the other feature, a sturdy plank ladder slanting up and into the stalks, wide enough that three could climb at once.

  The stems obscured the top. The ladder was partnered by another set of cloth-covered chains. Aryl put her hand on one and looked up. “This must be how they bring down the ripe dresel.” She put her foot on the first rung.