Riders of the Storm

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The Chosen spread the undercoat. “This is here.” A symbol like two sticks braced against one another. Her finger went to one side of the ’coat, indicated a line from which three others rose. “This is where we see the sun in the morning.” To the other side, a line alone. “This is where it sets. The empty river.” Two wavy lines. “The mounds.” Dots of black.

  Sona. Defined not by the Clans around it, but by its relationship to other places. Aryl’s eyes shot up to Oswa’s. “Remarkable.”

  “I wrote her name—she knows it—here, with mine. So we’re together.” A line of symbols beneath. Painstaking, detailed work. The Grona sighed. “Foolish, I know.”

  “It’s clever,” Aryl said sincerely. “Like looking down from the sky.” Was this how Marcus saw his surroundings? Was this how he found his way from place to place—world to world? She felt dizzy trying to imagine it. “Would you teach me?”

  “Why?”

  Freeing one arm from Yao, now half asleep, Aryl touched the mark that was Sona, then drew her finger across the empty white and pressed where she thought would be the waterfall and Cloisters. “Yao will go here, one day. She’ll need to know the way. I’d like to draw it for her.”

  “She can’t go out on her own,” Oswa objected, reaching for her daughter. Unconcerned—or familiar—with the talk of adults, Yao stirred only to settle in her mother’s lap, promptly closing her eyes. “She never will,” the Grona continued. “You know she’s—” a whisper, “—she’s not like other Om’ray. The world isn’t there to her.”

  Aryl regarded the now-sleeping child. Before meeting Marcus, she would have shared her mother’s grief. Now, she found herself smiling. “The world is there—and more than the world, Oswa. Yao may be the first Om’ray able to walk beyond the end of the world, to see what’s there.”

  “Om’ray are the world,” as if Aryl was the child. “There’s nothing more.”

  She didn’t argue. “So, how should I draw a mountain?”

  A tenth later—and Aryl’s attempts at drawing the valley—Oswa relaxed enough to laugh. She had a lovely smile, belied by the lines on her face. With Yao asleep, the burden on her Power lessened, though she continued to shield against any dreams. Sleeping children didn’t confine themselves to their own minds.

  Dreams. Maybe, Aryl thought, it was time. She put down her splinter and wiped her fingertips on a scrap. “Has Yao had any unusual dreams, Oswa? I don’t want to concern you, but Seru, Ziba, and I—” she decided not to mention Juo’s unborn “—we’ve each had one or more since coming to Sona. Dreams about what this place was like. That’s how we found the supplies hidden in the mounds.”

  The Grona didn’t look surprised, though her cheeks paled and she held Yao a little tighter. “Teaching dreams.”

  Aryl blinked. “You know what they are?”

  “Adepts use them. That’s how they learn.” A flash of bitterness, quickly stilled. “Memories are stored in the Cloisters, I don’t know how. But certain skills and knowledge—whatever must be known by those who come after—those are kept. To learn from them, an Adept dreams.”

  Aryl’s heart pounded. “Why are we—why would Choosers dream?”

  The other bent her head, rubbing her cheek against Yao’s soft curls. Her own hair moved restlessly, but didn’t disturb the child. “I don’t know. But…A few years ago,” she said so quietly Aryl had to strain to hear, “a sickness came. It weakened the eldest first, and the children. The Adepts stayed in the Cloisters, searching the records—” while a young mother waited outside, alone, and in fear, Aryl thought with pity.

  “One truenight,” Oswa went on, “our Choosers, all of them, dreamed the same memory. A teaching dream, sent out of the Cloisters as well as to the Adepts within. The sickness came from one of our plants. Because of the rain and cold during harvest, it had a growth inside that made a poison. We had only to stop eating it. The Adepts rushed from the Cloisters to save us—” a note of triumph “—but we had already saved ourselves.”

  The Sona Cloisters, sealed and abandoned. Could it have been sending dreams all this time, Aryl wondered, trying to save a people who no longer existed?

  “I dreamed,” she said, picking up the splinter and reinking it from Oswa’s little pot, “that everyone in Sona learned to read and write. Even unChosen.”

  When Aryl looked up, Oswa Gethen was smiling.

  “I don’t trust either of them.”

  Aryl traded looks with Seru, who gave a pained lift of her eyebrows. Cetto sud Teerac had been a Councillor for Yena, confident of his authority and purpose until handed a token of exile with the rest. Husni had taken the Adepts’ betrayal of her Chosen and family personally indeed.

  “We’ve seen it,” she said now, driving a needle through fabric with unnecessary force. “Adepts have their own schemes and plans. None for the good of ordinary Om’ray. You saw that, young Aryl.”

  Since her own mother had been one of those Adepts, there wasn’t much Aryl could do besides gesture agreement.

  “Oran healed Myris and Chaun,” her cousin spoke up.

  “That one?” Husni made a rude noise. “Smaller stitches, Seru,” she ordered, “or the cold will find its way in.”

  Aryl slipped to the floor beside Seru, crossing her legs comfortably. Much as it pained her—and much as she inwardly agreed—there was nothing to be gained if Husni continued to speak against the Adepts. “I’m not suggesting you trust them,” she began, sending sincerity through her shields.

  Another jab of the needle. “Never will. Never!”

  “But Sona is a fresh start for all of us. Including Oran and Hoyon.” Who, despite being worked as never before, showed no signs of leaving. “We should give them a chance to prove themselves.”

  Husni, who had no hesitation expressing herself when away from her larger-than-life, outspoken Chosen, made a rude noise. “They talk about you, too, young Aryl, and not words you’d like to hear. ‘Forward.’ ‘Doesn’t know her place.’ ‘Just an unChosen, barely more than a child.’ ‘Who does she think she is, ordering everyone?’ ‘Haxel’s favorite doesn’t have to do real work.’”

  Aryl’s lips twitched. “Here I thought that’s what you said about me.”

  Wrinkles creased in a wicked smile. “Of course. But to your face. Though you haven’t done badly for a Sarc.” The smile disappeared. Husni laid her hands on the pile of clothing in her lap. “Mark what I say. The two from Grona mean you no good and they’ve found fools to listen. If Sona is a fresh start, is that what we want? Secrets? Spite behind shields? You should do something.”

  She had. It had only made things worse. Secrets indeed. Aryl wished she could believe all would be well once she could offer her people the ability to move through the M’hir. If she should. She’d give anything to have someone she trusted to talk to about it.

  If only Enris had stayed…

  The other two were watching her, Seru with a slight frown. Aryl rose to her feet. “What I have to do is catch up to Haxel. She’s waiting for me.”

  “Don’t trust her either,” Husni grumbled, picking up her needle and giving the sleeve in her other hand a dire look. “Upstart Vendan with her notions.”

  Aryl smiled sympathetically at Seru as she left.

  The First Scout’s notion of a meeting place would have raised Husni’s hackles even more, Aryl thought with amusement as she climbed the rope ladder. Haxel, wanting a better vantage point to watch the valley, had built her own—a platform rising the height of three Om’ray from the top of the nearest mound. That this exposed whomever she assigned to watch to the full brunt of the ceaseless winter wind didn’t appear to bother her.

  On second thought, Husni probably approved. Anything that smacked of their life in the canopy brought a gleam to her washed-out eyes. Climb a swinging rope to a perch that, to be honest, shook with every gust of wind?

  Just like home.

  Aryl swung herself up and onto the platform. Haxel waved at their surroundings from her perch on
one edge. An invitation.

  From here, she could see the Oud tunnel, the dead grove of nekis, and follow the road and river to the first bend in the valley. The snow that fell no longer melted by day, although the wind scoured it from any rise. The result erased shadows, leveled the landscape. Did snow keep the Oud underground?

  Looking across the valley, the snow emphasized the pattern of pebble-filled ditches that led from the empty riverbed, a pretense of water.

  Beyond that?

  Aryl squinted at the formidable cliff on the other side. Beyond that was Vyna.

  Deliberately, she turned. Looking down the valley, she found it easy to tell where the destruction of the Oud stopped and started. Not random. The village, the road from it, the wide open fields. Anywhere a Sona might have run to escape.

  “Any sign of our little friends?” she asked. Haxel had become, as she succinctly put it, “familiar” with the Hard Ones. Hammer, ax, or burning fuel oil only made them roll away. Nothing daunted, Haxel had stayed with a group for the better part of two days, finally baiting them close with her rations. Hard Ones, she discovered, exposed a soft body part underneath to feed—what she called their “sweet spot.”

  As well as triumph, she nursed broken toes. An unusually large Hard One had managed to pin her foot—an event Haxel dismissed as an excellent opportunity to test if jabbing a knife point up through the sweet spot was how they could be killed. It was.

  But she wouldn’t eat one.

  “They don’t cross the river,” the First Scout observed. “Or the ditches. My guess is the Sona knew how to keep them away. Have you dreamed anything about it?”

  “I haven’t dreamed since coming back.” The others hadn’t either. It would have been helpful to know how to unlock the mound doors—or the Cloisters.

  “Our Adepts claim it’s because we have what we need. That these ‘teaching dreams’ are for emergencies.” An undertone of frustration. The First Scout never enjoyed relying on the Power or knowledge of others.

  Oran had had a difficult time believing in the dreams; after all, she’d had none. Aryl refused to argue the point. It hadn’t been necessary. Little Ziba had dismissed the Adept as “silly” in front of the entire Clan, then proceeded to demonstrate how to dismantle and clean one of the Sona oillights—a skill she’d never been taught.

  Oran had believed then.

  “What we need is water.” Aryl gazed up the valley again, feeling the wind redden her cheeks. So far, the road had been passable, though the cart had yet to roll. Morla refused to admit defeat, though the mechanism to let the round wheels turn smoothly remained a mystery. Veca built one design after another; Tilip busied himself with tables and benches, avoiding his wife’s mother as much as possible.

  The road was passable—but only until another ice storm, or much more snow on the ground. At least that could be melted for water. “If I knew how to call the Oud,” Aryl said with her own frustration, “I would.”

  “Taisal used to say the same about the Tikitik.”

  Aryl’s thoughts scattered like biters tapped from a window gauze, settling in a new pattern. She hadn’t tasted Taisal’s presence in the M’hir since that day. It didn’t mean she wasn’t there; Taisal’s control in the other had advanced, too, and she had an Adept’s trained discipline. She might be able to hide among its currents.

  As a comfort or threat? It would, Aryl decided, feeling as old as the ruins below, depend on whether they were on the same side or opposed.

  “Did she find a way? To contact them?” She tried to sound vaguely uninterested and doubted it worked.

  “No. We tried following them once, she and I.” Haxel stretched like a predator. “Before she was Speaker and Adept. I, First Scout. They lost us within a tenth.” As if that long-ago failure still rankled.

  Aryl couldn’t wrap her mind around the image. Her mother…racing through the canopy after Tikitik on a whim? Taisal di Sarc had never been that young, or foolish.

  Had she?

  “Don’t worry, youngling,” Haxel went on. “I happen to agree with Cetto. The Oud showed some sense there, making you Speaker. You’ve already talked to strangers—which is more than Taisal or any Clan Speaker can say.” A too-innocent pause. “I wonder how our Marcus is doing?”

  Aryl checked her shields, but it was only habit. Haxel couldn’t read her thoughts without her permission. The gibe was dangerously accurate, though; she hoped her face hadn’t shown anything. “All he wanted was to dig for the past in some hole.” The truth was always safer. “I’m sure that’s what he’s doing.”

  “If it had been up to me…” The First Scout didn’t bother completing that sentence. Instead, she went off on another topic. “You’re right. We need the Oud back here. Get them to put water back in the river. Hoyon tells me going down their tunnel is out of the question—”

  Only Haxel would consider such a thing. For once, Aryl was in complete agreement with the Grona Adept. Go beneath the ground, where the sun couldn’t reach?

  Enris had barely hinted what it had been like. He hadn’t wanted to think about it. And he was Tuana—used to spending truenight under the pathetic glow of stars.

  ”—so what we should do is backtrack the one who did come. Either find more Oud, or find out what happened to that one. Have a story to tell its relatives, if need be.”

  “You want me to go back up the valley.” Aryl paused, suspicious. “Alone?”

  “The rest are busy.” That scar-twisting grin was a challenge. “You can practice that new Talent of yours without an audience.”

  Other than Taisal, Aryl thought with an inward wince.

  So much for the First Scout’s unusual patience over the last few days. She managed to gesture gratitude. If her gloves made it less than gracious, Haxel could take it as she wished. “While I appreciate the thought—” not much, “—I don’t need practice. I need—” She hesitated.

  An esask would quail under the anticipation in those eyes. “Need what?”

  To be desperate…?

  The First Scout would gladly supply such a situation, Aryl knew. “Among other things, a peaceful, clear mind—” this, sincerely, “—which I won’t have until we’ve a water supply.”

  Haxel settled back, again the image of patience. “You’re the Speaker.”

  Patient only to a point. “I’d better get going.” Aryl tried not to climb down in haste. It might feel like an escape; unwise to make it look like one.

  Husni had been right to warn her about Haxel’s “notions.”

  Marcus Bowman lifted the lid from the first pot and waved his bioscanner over its contents.

  “That’s no way to treat a gift,” Aryl complained from her perch on his table. She’d come straight here, reasoning it was the best place from which to launch her search for Oud—given there were some busy at work in the distance.

  Besides, Marcus needed real food.

  The Human grinned at her. “This is the right way. You don’t want me to be green and die. I don’t want that, too.” He went to her next offering, a fragrant loaf baked with pieces of rokly. The ’scanner shrilled a protest and he showed her its agitated display, for all the good that did. “See? You can eat this. I can’t.”

  “Fine. You can have all of Lendin’s swimmer stew. I’ll eat the treat.” As she helped set out a pair of dishes, she glanced at him curiously. “You’re speaking much better.”

  “I practiced.” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Would you like sombay?”

  “Yes, please.” She’d never had to learn a language, but this seemed exceptional progress for a single fist, when he’d told her they’d studied words from the Oud for years. “I’m impressed.”

  Instead of getting cups, the Human sat on his bed with a thud. “Geoscanner,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  “Do you need it?” She hoped not, but it was his. She drew the device from its pocket and held it out. “If you don’t, I’d like to keep it.”

  Instead of taking it, he ta
pped the side with one finger. “Comlink.”

  The device he used to talk at a distance. Aryl opened her mouth, closing it as she understood. No wonder he looked like Costa when she’d caught him sneaking the last dresel cake. “You’ve been listening to me.”

  “No. Not listening. Not. Collecting. Words. Phrases. Sentences. How Om’ray put words together. Syntax. When I had enough data, I ran through sleepteach.” A hint of pleading in his voice. “I don’t want to sound like an Oud.”

  After sorting all this out, Aryl held up the geoscanner. “Show me how to make this so you can’t listen—collect—” when he tried to protest, “—any more words without my permission.”

  He leaned forward and pressed a depression on one side. “This is off. Press again,” which he demonstrated, “and it is on.”

  “And ‘on’ means you can hear me.” Satisfied, Aryl pressed the depression once more. “Off,” she asserted, putting the valuable device back in her pocket. “Now, how about that sombay?”

  As Marcus moved to get their cups, Aryl considered him. They weren’t the same; there was, nonetheless, a tantalizing possibility. “You called it ‘sleepteach,’” she began. “Does that mean Humans dream to learn?”

  “What is ‘dream’?”

  “When you sleep, sometimes you feel awake. You can see things. Hear things. Dream. Don’t Humans?”

  “Ah!” Marcus looked pleased. “Yes. Humans dream. Good dreams.” He feigned a shudder. “Bad dreams. Sleepteach is different.” Putting down the cups, the Human went to one of the many crates stacked on the counters, returning with a clear bag filled with metal threads and disks. “This sleepteach device.” He pulled out the contents and showed her how the disks fit against the sides of his forehead. “I sleep, this teaches what I want to learn. When I wake up, I remember new things.”

  So it was the same, only under his control. “It gives you dreams,” Aryl concluded.

  Marcus grimaced. “It gives me a headache. Pain here.” He pressed his fingers into his temples where the disks would go. “But works.” After a moment’s hesitation, as if debating with himself, he thrust the device at her. “You could use it to learn Comspeak, the language of the Trade Pact.”