Riders of the Storm

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Aryl picked up a pebble and sent it flying ahead. It didn’t reach the other side. She should, she decided, be glad the river was empty at the moment.

  The other bank was an easy scramble to the top. Once there, she found the paving stones flat and in place, spared by the Oud. Dead nekis stalks tilted and towered on one side of the road, separated by more ditches. The grove-that-had-been stretched across the valley, row upon row of old bones.

  After that one look, Aryl kept her eyes on the paving stones. The wind whistled through the stalks, unsoftened by leaf or flower. The sun beat down, its light unfiltered by green or brown.

  The road turned sharply, angled toward the river until she walked almost on its bank. She didn’t look back, although she sensed those behind her. There were, she realized abruptly, no Om’ray ahead of her at all.

  The world’s end.

  “We’ll see,” Aryl whispered to herself, and lengthened her stride once more.

  Although the road climbed, the rock outcrop that hid the valley’s upper reach rose faster. Very soon, it blocked most of the sky and Aryl had to tip her head to see its top. To the side, the valley’s other wall closed in until only the river—narrower and deeper here—the road, and an edge of fallen stone could fit between.

  The shadows were deep and permanent here, brightened only by drifts of unmelted snow. Aryl, coat now fastened and hood up, used mouthfuls of the stuff to assuage her thirst, saving the water she carried. She tried not to do it often. Walking didn’t warm her, and she was afraid the snow would chill her body even faster.

  Difficult to keep her mind from wandering; harder still to keep it from where she didn’t want it to go. Lack of sleep. Lack of challenge. Climbing would be better. She almost—almost—wanted some of the rocks she passed to move, simply to help her focus. Though every step took her farther from the comfort of her kind than she’d ever been, so far she felt no dread, no overwhelming impulse to return to their glow.

  “Day’s young,” she reminded herself.

  Difficult to keep track of time, wedged in this deep cleft between ridges. In the wider valley, she could have used the steady climb of shadow up a rock face, but here those walls overhung and shaded one another. Likely less than a tenth since she left Sona. Her stomach hadn’t complained; not that Aryl planned to eat before truenight if it did. Haxel had given her one of the Grona fire starters, and wood filled most of her pack. Good thing. There hadn’t been more since the nekis grove; the pieces she could see down in the riverbed were too massive to move or set on fire.

  The chill shadows, the soaring rock walls ahead and alongside her, the complete silence other than her soft footsteps on the smooth stone of the road…this was nowhere she’d been or imagined. Yet Aryl found herself more and more at ease, as if this place somehow held a welcome.

  Or she remembered one…

  She stopped, waiting for the echoes of her footsteps to stop as well. Was she dreaming this, the way Seru had walked and dreamed?

  “I am awake!” The reverberation of that defiant shout bounced and blurred; definitely not something she’d dream.

  Aryl blushed and started walking again. Regardless of how she felt, the road was reassurance. If the Sona had built it, they’d had a reason. An Om’ray reason. Something she’d find and understand.

  “With water,” she promised herself, around another icy mouthful of snow. It wasn’t an idle hope. The uncrossable torrent in the ridge gully they couldn’t cross had been flowing toward the valley. It didn’t reach it—she didn’t know why—but she’d seen its water. If there was a similar source for Sona’s river, it might be closer. The road was an easier path than the ridges for those carrying water.

  Even better, maybe they could fix whatever stopped the river and make it flow into Sona again.

  She could hear Enris now. He’d laugh his deep laugh—not to mock her but because she’d surprised him with another of her “ideas.” Then he’d have questions—not to discourage her but to explore possibilities.

  They moved apart with every step—she could feel the distance between them stretch. He was heading straight for Vyna. He couldn’t plan to climb the mountain that lay between. The powerful Tuana’s climbing skill, as Haxel would say, made his walking look good. No, surely she’d feel him turn toward Rayna, go in that direction for a day or more, stay to flat ground.

  Difficult, moving through the destruction left by the Oud. Dangerous, passing close to the Lake of Fire and the Tikitik. She couldn’t help him. Could she?

  No.

  Aryl’s hands became fists.

  She wasn’t doing this again.

  She’d ached for Bern when he’d left Yena on his Passage—had almost followed him. What had that longing gained her besides pain? Hadn’t he Chosen Oran di Caraat of Grona? Hadn’t he abused their link as heart-kin and tried to force her to share her Talent?

  What she felt for Enris Mendolar promised a greater agony, unless she let him go.

  “Those on Passage are dead to those they leave,” she whispered.

  Fighting back tears, Aryl withdrew her inner sense until all she felt were those behind in Sona.

  The riverbed didn’t go tamely around the outcrop. Where the cliff’s curve thrust into the valley, the river had gone through it. Gray rock hung above the river’s deep and jagged course, the entire height of a mountain suspended in midair.

  Aryl pushed back her hood to better stare at the mass of rock overhead. Water had power. No one climbed during the heavy rains: the force could knock an adult Om’ray off a branch or wash anything unsecured from a platform. Missing roof pods had to be replaced or the resulting flood could destroy a home’s contents.

  Could water wash away stone? She shook her head. Another of her “ideas;” a more foolish one than most.

  She wasn’t surprised when she came around the outcrop only to face another, this thrust from the opposite wall of the valley. Over the past days she’d seen for herself how repetitive this mountain landscape was: hollow and peak, valley and ridge, without an end in sight.

  The road became steeper, though still even and paved in those matched flat stones. The riverbed writhed to the opposite side as if it fought the constraint of the mountains. The road rose over it, carried on an arch of perfectly fitted stone.

  The how of it baffled her. Perhaps Sona’s Om’ray had been like Enris and Fon, able to push heavy objects with Power.

  Better that, she thought grimly, than imagining Sona had trusted the Oud, had worked with them to create something this impressive, only to be betrayed.

  The answer might lie ahead.

  More twists, more arches. The shadows grew longer or the mountain to either side taller—Aryl couldn’t tell which. The result was the same. The rare glimpses of sky only proved it wasn’t firstnight. She might have walked three tenths or five.

  While she had light to travel, she would. She felt no fear or exhaustion during this easy walk, only anticipation. Careful of her body, she’d chewed one of Haxel’s swimmer twists and drank at intervals, but stopping to rest was out of the question.

  Why build this road?

  Homes, places to grow plants, a meeting hall, storerooms sunk into the ground: these made sense. A road for Passage to another Clan made sense.

  There was none of that here, just the road and the river, the glow of her kind receding with each step. As she walked, Aryl studied the walls to either side, searching for doorways at ground level or caves higher up, like Yena’s Watchers. These walls were sheer or jagged; she found no sign they’d ever been touched. The “before-now” structures Marcus and his Triad had freed from the cliffs beyond Grona—another how she couldn’t imagine—had been embedded in rock that crumbled rather than split along clean lines. If any such buildings were buried here, they were staying buried.

  She tightened the scarf around her neck against the wind whistling down the valley. It grew stronger as the walls narrowed. Louder. The M’hir Wind must roar through here—not a place to be a
t summer’s end. Didn’t the Sona have Watchers to warn them?

  The Tuana had drums, Enris said. Those didn’t sound a warning of the M’hir. They announced the Oud.

  Useful, that. Aryl scuffed her toe pensively. There might be Oud beneath her right now and she’d never know. “No Tikitik,” she assured herself. They stayed in the groves, or on the borders of the Lay Swamp, where they could tend their growths and beasts.

  Didn’t they?

  She’d hear any pursuit.

  Or would she? The wind made odd noises where it slipped along the river’s deep empty channel or under rock overhangs. Her footsteps and breathing, however quiet, were caught by the stone and reflected back at unexpected moments.

  Aryl shook her head. She was alone, more alone than she’d ever been in her life. Those on Passage sought a living goal; she followed a road made by the long-dead and forgotten. Their purpose, however, was the same: to find a future, no matter what stood between.

  She swung her pack around to retrieve a piece of rokly, food left by those who’d last walked as she did. Dresel was what her mouth wanted—fresh, moist, and sweet—but the wizened fruit answered the same craving.

  They’d taste fresh rokly, she thought as she chewed, if they could get it to grow again. Ziba “remembered” it fondly. She didn’t.

  Aryl’s mind skittered from fruit to Choosers and those to become Choosers. No one else had dreamed or had visions of Sona’s past. If something about their minds made them more susceptible or reached out, it didn’t explain to what.

  Or why the M’hir had come perilously close in her sleep.

  She stopped on the next arched bridge, toes over the edge, and gazed down into what was now a black abyss. Life should be lived high above the ground, she thought wistfully. There should be a reason to step with care; balance and strength and skill should matter.

  If she found water, if Sona could become green again, would Ziba still run the rooftops? Or would the Yena lose that part of themselves?

  “Survive first,” Aryl reminded herself.

  About to move, she paused, suddenly aware of a vibration beneath her feet. She crouched to flatten her hand on the stone.

  Faint. Steady. Like rain on a roof.

  She looked to where the valley twisted around yet another slab of mountain. Was there sound as well? Aryl held her breath and strained to hear.

  Still faint—more imagined than heard—but there, she was sure. A low, heavy thrum.

  Aryl rose to her feet and eagerly took to the road again. She had to force herself to keep to a walk, prepare herself for disappointment. Nothing promised the next turn would be the last.

  But it was. Aryl knew it by the time the road and river turned around rock. The vibration here came up through her feet, matched to a growing rumble.

  The air took on a scent. Heady, rich, moist.

  Alive.

  About to run forward, Aryl hesitated, then left the road for a shadow darker than most. Shedding her pack and rope, she tucked them against the rock wall. She pushed back her hood and drew the short knife from her belt, then relaxed. From this vantage, it was easy to watch the road she’d just walked.

  Shadows moved and lengthened. The wind tugged at her hair. She felt disoriented, without Om’ray in every direction, but it wasn’t as if she could be lost here, where there was only one path.

  No pursuit. Satisfied, Aryl continued on. Keeping to shadows, now avoiding the road, she moved with every bit of stealth she possessed.

  With each step, the vibration grew stronger, the rumble louder, the scent of the air more intense.

  Nothing prepared her for what waited around the turn.

  The valley walls faded back, embracing a vast open space. Their towering reaches were hidden in mist and cloud. The mist came from the source of the vibration and roar: a river that fell from the sky.

  Not the sky, Aryl realized as she walked forward, the hand with the knife limp at her side. She faced a cliff whose upper height she couldn’t see. Its sheer face streamed with lines of writhing white and black that glistened and sang with unimaginable force. The amount of water pouring straight down in front of her mocked any understanding she had of her world. This was the Lay Swamp and the Lake of Fire…this was every flood and raindrop…every melting snowdrop…and it went—

  Nowhere. The water fell. And vanished.

  It couldn’t. That much water had to go somewhere. It should be filling the empty river, racing down the valley to Sona and beyond.

  The road, and empty river, ended at a hill of loose rubble and dirt taller than three Om’ray. Aryl ran to it, then up it, her boots digging in with every stride. The roar of the waterfall grew deafening. She met mist, chill and clinging, that turned the footing slick and treacherous. The slope steepened and she grabbed for handholds. Only after the second reach did she recognize what she grabbed.

  Aryl froze, one hand on a piece of dark wood, identical to the splinters from the beams of Sona, the other on a skull.

  This wasn’t a hill. It was another ruin.

  The Oud had struck here, too.

  Suddenly the urge to turn back, the pull of living Om’ray overwhelmed her. Aryl blinked tears from her eyes and leaned her forehead against the hand on the skull. “Soon,” she promised herself. “But not yet.”

  She climbed the rest of the hill with a heavy heart, making no effort to avoid the gray skulls and bones that dotted its surface, though they cracked underfoot. Their appalling number answered one question: why they’d found none in the homes. The exiles had assumed all of the Sona Om’ray had fled into the mountains and died there. After all, that would be the Yena preference, the safety of height. But Sona had come here, in a final, desperate flight along their road.

  Why?

  What refuge could protect them from a terror underground? Where would Om’ray run?

  The Sona Cloisters. There was no other choice.

  Sure now of what she’d find, Aryl came to the top and stood, staring through layers and swirls of mist. Her hand rose to her mouth.

  She hadn’t imagined this.

  Water dominated everything. It dropped from the sky, barely touching the immense cliff, its spray like plumes of smoke. Where those plumes touched rock, there was life. Gnarled stalks and sprigs of still-green leaves burst from cracks. Vines thicker than her body somehow found hold on the stone itself. Their tendrils, heavy with clusters of wizened brown fruit, hung out in the spray as if to catch it. The air itself was like a drink.

  A drink that vanished. The water plunged into a great black hole, choked with spray and rimmed by more ruins. Nekis sprouted in thick groves along that crumbling edge, their stalks short and twisted, leafless in this cold season but alive. Several were about to fall, their roots washed bare.

  Aryl worked her way down, wary of the footing. When she came to the first of the groves, nekis barely over her head, she ran her fingers greedily over the tight buds that tipped every branch. This was what water could do. Bring life even here.

  As to the hole? Knife in her belt, her woven coat collecting droplets from the plants, Aryl pushed her way to its edge, forcing a path through the stalks. Without conscious thought, she slipped into old habits, checking as she moved for what might fancy a taste of Yena or merely have thorns. The stunted grove seemed barren of dangerous life; “seemed” couldn’t be trusted.

  Once at the edge, she found a sturdy, if doomed, stalk leaning over the chasm and walked out along it as far as she could before peering down.

  It was like being in a storm where the rain came up as much as fell properly from above. She had to gasp for breath and wipe her face constantly, her bones vibrating with the roar and crash of so much water going…where?

  For all she could see, it went through the world to nowhere. There was no flash of white, as if the water struck bottom and boiled. The torrent simply fell into the dark.

  Thoughtfully, Aryl walked back up the stalk, leaning with its tilt.

  Now she knew whe
re the water from the river had gone—if not why or how.

  Returning it to the river was going to be a problem…

  Snap! Pop! The stalk’s roots began to give way, and Aryl absently jumped to its neighbor. Maybe there’d be something about moving rivers in a dream, she told herself.

  Once more above the grove, she moved along the hill itself, hunting what had to be here. Every living Clan had a Cloisters. Finding Sona’s would be irrefutable proof there had been Om’ray here once.

  And could be again.

  Rock, shards of wood and bone. The destruction here had been horrifyingly complete. But a Cloisters wasn’t made of rock or wood; didn’t suffer weathering or damage. She’d find it.

  Every so often, Aryl checked the sky. There wasn’t much to see other than mist and hanging cloud; it was still daylight. For how long? She should retrieve her pack and make a camp. Wood wouldn’t be a problem. That would be the prudent, sensible plan.

  Something in her couldn’t stop. Not yet.

  The hill didn’t ring the entire hole. It rose highest over the road and the old river, then flattened as it approached the cliff and waterfall on either side. There, the nekis and other, unfamiliar growths took over, cloaking the ruin. To continue, Aryl found herself once more forcing her way through spray-drenched vegetation.

  She couldn’t stop.

  Her coat caught and held on a leafless branch. Impatiently, she tore off the sodden garment, leaving it to hang. It had started to smell anyway. She kept her belt, using it to hold her knife, and shivered as she pressed forward.

  “Not yet,” Aryl muttered. She protected her face with her forearms as she pushed through a particularly thick stand of young nekis. A twig snapped against her ear.

  She stumbled into the open, at once sinking knee-deep in freshly loose soil and pebbles. Trapped! Her hand flashed to the hilt of her knife. It stayed there.

  The Oud reared, black limbs flailing, dust and dirt pouring from the dome and fabric of its covering. “Who are!? Who are!!?”

  Aryl coughed and spat dirt from her mouth. The creature rose so high she thought it would topple over backward. “What do!!? What do!?”