Riders of the Storm

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The soft wind of heated air dispersed the foam from her skin and hair, and most, if not all, from her clothes.

  Refreshed and alert, Aryl dressed, picking clumps of dried foam from her tunic. Her leg wraps had fared best, being almost white again.

  She lifted the pendant in both hands to examine it, clean hair brushing her cheekbones. It gleamed like a leaf after the rains, markings no longer obscured by dirt. They weren’t like those on Sona’s wooden beams, or on Enris’ blade. They weren’t like any other writing or drawing she’d seen—or dreamed—here. As she’d expected, Sona’s pendant was the same as those worn by her mother and Grona’s Speaker, as the one fastened to the cloth band of the Tikitik’s Speaker. That was the point of the pendants. They identified the wearer as a Speaker.

  What was she, an unChosen, doing with such a thing?

  Only a Clan’s appointed Speaker was, by the Agreement, allowed to talk to his or her counterpart from either of the other races. Aryl had no idea how other races chose theirs. For Om’ray, few could converse comfortably with what they sensed as an object, not a person. Of those who could, fewer were willing to accept the risk. The Speaker assumed responsibility for whatever was understood or not. Speakers sometimes died for his, her, or its mistakes. That was the Agreement, too.

  Although, Aryl thought with some impatience, the other races persisted in talking to her, without a pendant or her consent, as if rules didn’t apply to them.

  Was that why the Oud had given her this? Did it know she’d talked to Tikitik? To the strangers? Was this to get her out of trouble—or into more?

  More, she decided, and tucked the pendant inside her tunic before leaving the ’fresher.

  Snores greeted her. Aryl almost envied the Human his trust in walls. Almost. She collected her knife and belt—hair falling in her eyes—slipped on her damp boots—hair in her mouth—and put on the Human’s pretend-Grona coat. It was dirty but dry, as the real garment wouldn’t have been. As for her hair? A quick search of a countertop supplied a length of threadlike metal. She twisted it around the annoying locks and pulled them into a painfully tight knot at the base of her neck. There. Out of the way.

  A length fell back into her eye. Aryl ignored it.

  Stranger-doors could be locked. When she pressed her palm flat against the square plate beside the door, she was relieved to have it open, sliding to one side instead of turning around its center. Too wide, but she supposed the gap was necessary. Strangers came in a variety of races; she’d met one much larger than a Human.

  Aryl stepped out, closing the door behind her. As she did, its surface transformed from white to…she lifted her hand, astonished to find herself facing the pale gray-streaked stalk of a nekis, one of several. There were more in the distance.

  Image or drawing?

  She brushed her fingertips over the door and couldn’t tell.

  Aryl turned to face an oval clearing of packed dirt, free of stone if not footprints. They appeared all the same: the Human’s. The clearing and path were free of roots or cut stalks. Impressive, given how densely nekis grew all around, their roots writhing up through the ground.

  Broken cloud overlaid the mist, but the sun’s light came through. Midmorning, she guessed, displeased to have slept so much of the day. On the thought, she tied another knot along her rope. The interior of the building had been warm. The outside air had a bite to it; she was glad of the Human’s coat. As she walked away from the building, she held out her hands. Despite feeling foolish, she had no desire to walk into another illusion.

  The thought made her look back. From here, the image was almost perfect. A hasty glance would miss the building entirely, despite its size. Marcus didn’t rely on his Om’ray-like clothing alone. More “policy”?

  Aryl spotted a second area of not-quite-right nekis. Another building. When she investigated, she was disappointed to find its door locked.

  Secrets.

  Enough. Anything the strangers would lock away wasn’t for Om’ray. Time she was gone. She could reach Sona before firstnight, if she moved quickly. She wanted her own kind.

  Something made Aryl look back before she entered the shadow of the path. Strange. From here, the buildings—their illusions—met. For no reason…or to hide something behind them from anyone approaching from the Cloisters?

  She hesitated. What did it matter? This was the strangers’ camp—Triad business. She should leave, now. Before Marcus woke up.

  She’d never know…

  “One look,” she promised herself.

  Putting the locked—and hopefully empty—building between herself and the one where the Human—also hopefully—still snored, Aryl traced its disguised wall with her fingertips, keeping close. The waterfall’s background drone, the wind rustling the twig tips of the nekis made more sound than her steps.

  She came around the back and gasped, flattening herself against the wall.

  The Oud paid no attention.

  Too far away to detect her—or didn’t they care? Nothing hid her. Nothing grew between—it had been removed, she realized with dismay, along with any growth on the towering rock above. Plumes of spray from the waterfall filled the sky toward the Cloisters, hiding the mountain. To the other side of the Oud, the cliff folded inward, as if to hide itself. This was the valley’s end.

  And the Oud had been busy here.

  Beginning only steps in front of her—and the strangers’ buildings—the dirt was churned and treacherously soft. No, not all. Her eyes narrowed. Oud ground vehicles had left paired tracks; where they’d been, they packed the dirt into hard lines. Most paralleled the cliff, leading from where the Oud worked to the mouth of their tunnel. She’d seen its like at Grona: an immense slanted opening framed in wood. This one had been thrust up through the edge of the living grove, leaving stalks splintered and dead to either side.

  Aryl counted five of the creatures at the base of the cliff. What were they after? There were dark pits—holes—in the cliff face above the Oud. Were they Watchers, like Yena’s, whose immense pipes were blown by the M’hir Wind each year to sound a warning? She couldn’t be sure.

  Below, the bulky Oud and their machines kicked up so much debris she couldn’t see past them, creating a roar and rumble like the waterfall’s.

  They were moving rock. A great deal of rock. Digging into the cliff itself.

  She hadn’t realized Oud could do that.

  It didn’t matter. The cliff was above ground. Above ground belonged to Sona’s Om’ray, not the Oud. She was their Speaker—appointed by the Oud, at any rate.

  Aryl pulled the pendant out and made sure it was in plain sight—not that Oud had eyes. She would go to the creatures and demand to know what they were doing out of their tunnel. It was her duty.

  She took a deep breath…

  Pounding feet made her spin about, knife out and ready. The Human almost collided with her. Only her quickness saved him from impaling himself.

  “Fool,” she exclaimed, shaking as she put the knife away.

  Marcus flinched but didn’t retreat. His eyelids were swollen and purpled, as was most of his face; his eyes were wild. He hadn’t stopped to put on his boots. “Aryl—”

  “You’re too late,” she interrupted. “I’ve seen what’s going on here.” She jerked her head toward the Oud.

  He glanced toward the cliff, then back to her, looking confused. “Aryl not run away again?”

  Is that what he’d thought? Aryl flushed. Not her finest moment, dashing off into truenight. No credit to her they weren’t both dead. She owed him her life.

  She didn’t owe him any part of Sona.

  “You told me you came here for a rest, Marcus Bowman,” she accused. “You lied!”

  His expression darkened. “Not lie. Not! Oud already here. Invite us many time. Push. Rude. Want full Triad assess site.” He shook his head violently. “No proof. No surveyindicators. We not come. Oud ask again. This time different. I can’t do my work. So I say yes. I come. Curious
. Unhappy. Understand? Me only, set up survey camp, determine if real find or empty hole. Make Oud happy. Me, away from others. Peace. Truth, Aryl,” this with a heavy sigh, as if he didn’t expect her belief. “Oud want explore ruins. They interest in Hoveny Concentrix. This place no Tikitik stop them.”

  Oh, she believed him. Aryl instinctively tightened her shields to keep in her reaction. The Tikitik kept the Oud from exploring? The Oud went to the strangers for help to do just that?

  Was the Human trying to terrify her?

  “Have they found something?” she managed to ask, surprised her voice sounded normal.

  “Oud think so.” Marcus leaned on the wall of not-nekis and rubbed the bottom of one foot, grimacing as he did. She guessed he didn’t run barefoot often. “Not let me look yet,” he said with a resigned shrug.

  Which helped explain, she realized, why the too-curious Human had been poking around the Sona Cloisters. He’d been bored.

  He peered at her through his swollen eyelids. “Aryl want breakfast? Sombay?” From his hoarse tone, he did.

  “I have to go. My people are waiting—” For what? Answers? Who appointed you Speaker for Sona Clan? Who said there was a Sona Clan? What if we want to leave? What if the Oud refuse to share water? What if the Tikitik object to the Oud’s “explorations” and blame us? How dare strangers make camp in Sona? What do they want? Didn’t you promise Marcus Bowman would never come near us again?

  “Aryl not eat first?”

  “Maybe I should,” she sighed.

  Aryl sat on the ground and crossed her legs. Being low kept her out of the damp, chill breeze that swayed the nekis, but she wasn’t about to admit that. “We can eat here,” she suggested.

  “Here?” Marcus looked horrified. “Aryl come inside,” he insisted, leaning against the side of the door’s opening. “Please. Don’t sit on dirt.”

  Not her first choice, to go inside his building, surrounded by all that gave the Human an advantage, but the bruises on his face were her fault. He’d saved her life again. How he’d followed her through the darkness was a mystery; she assumed some gadget or device gave him an advantage. What mattered was that he’d jumped into the waterfall after her, risking his own life. Ridiculous.

  Heartwarming.

  The waterfall may have spat them both out, but Marcus, battered and scared, had protected her from the Oud. He’d made her breathe again, a trick she’d like to learn. She could no longer doubt him.

  Everyone else. Them she doubted. What he was here to do. That she doubted.

  Aryl sighed again and stood. “Inside,” she agreed.

  Once through the door, Marcus shoved and tossed crates aside until he cleared the area of floor between their beds. “Wait,” he told her when she tried to help. “I do.” He pressed a control that folded both beds against the wall—their blankets stuck out as if trapped—then grabbed a handle she hadn’t noticed in the floor. A pull, and up rose a table, complete with attached seats. “There,” he beamed at her. “Not sit on dirt. Sit.”

  She sat with a certain amount of caution. Furniture that came out of a floor could, in her opinion, sink back into it without warning.

  In short order the Human filled self-heating cups, gave one to her with a box of “supplements,” found soft, useless-looking boots to put on his sore feet, and sat down across the table with a groan of pleasure. “There. Better.”

  Aryl smiled into her cup.

  “Aryl happy?”

  As Speaker for Sona Clan, she had every right and obligation to talk to the not-real.

  She probably wasn’t supposed to like the not-real individual in question.

  “You think hard.” Marcus scrunched his face. “Like this.”

  She pretended affront. “I don’t look like that.”

  “Yes. Laugh is better.” They sipped in companionable silence for a moment, then Marcus gestured toward her. “See what Oud gave you? Scan. Find how old?” With that too-innocent look.

  The Human had accepted that the Cloisters were off-limits as far as she was concerned—or he’d stopped asking, which suited her. Aryl found herself equally reluctant to share the pendant. To divert him, she pulled the wet and still-grimy headdress from her pocket and laid it on the table. “You could scan this. It’s from Sona,” she added when he didn’t reach for it. “I found it with Om’ray bones.”

  “Went through ’fresher.” Complaint or observation? “Not good.”

  Complaint.

  She should have guessed from what lined his shelves that he’d prefer things covered in dirt. Aryl nudged it toward him anyway. “It stayed in a pocket.”

  “Hmm.”

  Collecting what he needed, Marcus returned to the table. He handled the metal links with greater care than she’d shown them, holding a length gently against one end of a palm-sized device, before he pressed a series of buttons. Small lights flickered and she could have sworn the device gave a satisfied hum. The Human’s eyebrows rose. “Old, is.”

  “How old?”

  He pressed more buttons. “Two times get. One wrong.”

  “Two?” Aryl reached for the headdress.

  Marcus laid his hand over it. “How long exposed to elements? ’Fresher,” he said, shaking his head dolefully. She almost gestured an apology. Then, “How long since manufacture? Different times.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He blushed easily. “Sorry. Excited. This,” he raised the hand over the headdress, “was made over 240 standard—sorry. Your year, close to same, good enough. Little more.” At her impatient nod, “This made to this shape 240 years ago.” He held up the headdress and peered through its links at her. “What is it?”

  This time, he relinquished it at her gesture. Aryl laid it over her hair, shivering as the decorative piece crossed her forehead. “A headdress—to keep hair quiet and well behaved. Only a Chosen would wear one.”

  A grin. “Mother give daughter, yes?”

  She took off the headdress and put it back in her pocket, more carefully than before. Enris’ Clan traded for such ornaments. She had no idea what Sona would have done. Still, something so difficult to make, yet lovely and useful—in Yena, such would stay within a family, to be treasured. “Or to the First Chosen,” she hazarded.

  “Then this could be gift many many—”

  Trill! Loud, from a box on the counter behind Marcus. Flashing lights accompanied the sound. Muttering impatiently, he slapped a control and turned back to her.

  Trillll! With more lights. Then a deep male voice uttered incomprehensible words, sounding none too pleased.

  “Tyler,” Marcus announced with a shrug. “Triad First, Site Two. I better answer.” He held a finger in front of his lips. “Aryl, no sound please.” A gesture to his abused face and a crooked smile. “No vid, sure.”

  Having seen him use a comlink before, Aryl understood. She sat quietly, enjoying the warm drink, while Marcus exchanged strings of stranger-words with this Tyler. Site Two was where they’d uncovered large structures, inexplicably whole, from the side of a mountain—a discovery important enough to make Marcus take her with him to join the others.

  From his tone, this “Tyler, Triad First, Site Two” wasn’t a friend. They exchanged short bursts of words, like scouts reporting. Whatever it was about, Marcus remained calm and assured. By the end, Tyler’s voice went from argumentative to resigned, as if Marcus had made some point.

  The Human switched off the comlink and sighed. “Sorry, Aryl. Missed last night’s check in. I tell them I all right.”

  So many words for that? She decided not to press for an explanation. The less she knew about the strangers’ doings on Cersi, the better.

  Though she wondered what they’d found…how they’d entered the buildings, if they had…and why…?

  Before she could ask—or to forestall any questions—Marcus tapped the table with a finger. “Need to know how many times that be gift. How many First Chosen. How many mothers to daughters.”

  Her survi
ving great-grandparents could remember one of their great-grandparents—injury took the lives of most Yena before they grew old, and Ele Sarc had lived a remarkably long life—so she’d grown up hearing the stories of more ancestors than other Yena families. Of course, whomever had lived before that was no longer real and didn’t matter. They might never have existed at all. She’d certainly never given them thought, until now. “I don’t know.”

  “We can estimate. For Om’ray, how long per generation?” Marcus immediately rephrased his question. “Sorry. Generation is how long for Om’ray from born, grow up to be mother, have own child. How many years for that?”

  What an odd thing to ask—a Clan always had Om’ray of every stage in life. Maybe Humans were different there, too. As for his question? Those Chosen pairs who could have children became pregnant soon after Joining. After that, some might have more children or not; everyone hoped. A Clan needed children. There were never enough Om’ray. Yena had diminished in number long before the disastrous Harvest.

  “Sixteen years,” Aryl said cautiously. “For most.” The coming M’hir would be her eighteenth. Surely she would be a Chooser by then. What was it like to Choose…to Join…to have a Chosen’s body…to carry new life inside? She wasn’t supposed to wonder. After Choice, a new Chosen stayed with her mother, to learn, to be cared for as she matured.

  Hers might as well be on one of the Tikitik’s fabled moons, Aryl thought with a bitterness that startled her. She took a sip of her sombay.

  For some reason, the Human appeared distracted, too. He fussed with the device in his hands until it made a buzz of complaint, then tossed it aside with a grumble in his language. “How old your elders?” he asked after a moment.

  The Human had a gift for asking what she’d never considered before. For most of their lives, Om’ray paid no attention to age, only accomplishments. “Old.”

  That drew a laugh. “My son say same.” But something bothered him. Aryl didn’t need to seek out his emotions to know. She waited, sure some of their mutual confusion came from haste. Marcus rubbed one hand over his face, then looked at her, determination in his eyes. “Quick generations,” he said at last. “Aryl say Om’ray have only living past.” A frown, as if this continued to be difficult for the Human. He drew a circle on the tabletop with his finger, over and over again. “Means quick forget. Quick generations means change quick, too. Om’ray not remember. Change inside. Change outside. Om’ray now, not like Om’ray many many generations past.”