Something gleamed, and Enris picked it up.
A token.
There were more. Everywhere he looked, more.
These had never been Vyna.
He walked faster.
Yuhas, in a rare reminiscence about his life as Yena, had told him about a flower that produced an alluring scent, but when biters came within its petals, they slipped and fell into sticky liquid, to drown and be digested by the plant.
This, Enris decided, had been such a trap. UnChosen, drawn up the mountain by the lure of Vyna’s many Choosers, would have lowered themselves into this lighted gap, believing it the way to their desire. Once here, they’d find the walls too smooth to climb out, the door from the tunnel locked, and this.
Enris sighed and squatted on his haunches for a better look. The hole—there was no other word for it—was shorter than he was tall. Wide enough, but there’d be crouching involved.
The bars? He’d pushed them aside, fiercely glad to be the one to ruin the Vyna’s trap.
The crouching, though.
He hated crouching.
Unless the hole grew smaller. He couldn’t tell. The Vyna most uncooperatively hadn’t bothered to light their hole. This one led away from them. That was good.
If the hole grew smaller, there’d be crawling.
He hated crawling more than crouching.
Tossing a token into it had produced a distant clink, clatter, and slide. Lined with metal, not stone. A tube? If so, there’d be another open end. The first portion ran straight. With a downslope. Down was fine. He’d had his share of mountains.
How much of a slope?
That interesting question, along with where the other end of the tube opened, were questions he’d only answer by crouching.
Making sure his coat was tightly belted, the contents of his pockets secure, Enris bent to enter the hole.
His first step produced a loud, echoing boom. He backed out hastily, then took off his boots, fastening them to his belt. Upon consideration, he took off his foot coverings as well and tucked them into the boots. Yena did it, he told himself. Of course, Yena were crazy.
But bare feet were silent and gave purchase on the metal, both reassuring as he left the lights behind.
Every so often, Enris reached for his kind. Vyna faded behind, though not as quickly as he’d have liked. Crouching wasn’t quick. Rayna grew closer, but not directly ahead. Was the tube aimed away from the world?
If so, he’d find out what was there. It wasn’t, he laughed inwardly, as if he had a choice.
A tenth went by, or more. Hard to judge time. His legs burned, thigh muscles complaining about the abuse. Ignoring them, Enris kept going, one hand on the cool surface overhead, the other in front. It didn’t help that the tube’s slope varied without warning, sometimes flat, at others too steep to do more than shuffle, bracing himself with both arms.
With nothing to do but crouch and shuffle, stuck in a tube of unknown length, he let his mind wander, and thought about his life since Naryn and the Oud. If anyone had told him a story like his, he decided, he wouldn’t have believed a word.
He did his best not to think of the Call he’d heard. Whoever it had been, surely other unChosen had answered it by now. Saving all others from what would be, he was quite sure, an overbearing, difficult, controlling…
…What was that?
Nothing. The tiniest sounds echoed and expanded. His breathing, the light brush of fingertips, the padding of his feet. Any moment, his suffering knees would creak, adding to the racket.
Still, Enris moved more carefully, listening. Had there been a sound? Had it come from behind—or ahead?
Maybe he was approaching the end—heard wind across the opening, the trickle of a mountain stream. A pot handle let go.
Enris froze midstep. That’s what he’d heard. Metal to metal. Ahead. Not loud, but if there was a sound he knew, it was that one.
The dark smothered and disguised everything else. No, not everything. He sniffed.
He knew that smell, too.
He eased down to sit where he was, holding in a groan as he straightened his back and legs, and waited.
Silence.
Darkness.
Then, “I wouldn’t stay there long, Tuana.”
Oh, he knew that dry, amused voice. “I’m comfortable,” he lied. Thought Traveler. How did the thing keep finding him?
“Then you don’t know where you are. Most entertaining.”
Cold inside, Enris waited for the echoes of its barking laugh to die. “Enlighten me,” he suggested grimly. “Or get out of my way.”
“I can do both. This is what you Om’ray call a Watcher, though why you would use that term for what has no eyes has never been satisfactorily explained to—”
“What does it watch for?” Enris interrupted. He should have recognized the construction. He’d seen the mouths of Yena’s Watchers: three much larger tubes, set into the side of a mountain. Yuhas, from Yena himself, had explained how the powerful winds of fall, the M’hir, blew through the tubes before striking the forest below. The sound warned the Yena to prepare for their strange harvest.
No wind would blow through this. Only the screams and pleading of those trapped above.
“The Vyna don’t care for company. Yours. Mine. Any but their own.” The Tikitik was enjoying itself. “They protect their little sore on the world far beyond its worth. If they detect an approach and don’t favor it, they release some of the poison they call a lake. Flush any intruders from their mountain. The rumble from this ‘watcher’ can be heard from a great distance, though usually not in time to avoid the result.”
Enris rose to his feet and started moving.
“Ah. A fine idea, Tuana. You really should listen to me. Because if the Vyna feel truly threatened—” no amusement now, “—they can send something much worse.”
Busy crouching as quickly as he could, one hand out so he wouldn’t collide without warning into the Tikitik—although the thought had its charm—Enris didn’t bother to ask.
The Vyna Watcher opened into a narrow mountain valley, distinguishable from others of Enris’ experience only in its disturbing lack of small loose stone. After he climbed out and stood, taking a moment to stretch out his back and legs, he turned to look back.
The metal hole he’d left was one of what could be a hundred more, pocked into an artificial cliff of black rock that sealed the top of the valley. They were like open mouths, ready to vomit forth whatever the Vyna chose.
Were there traps at the top of every one? Were there bones?
“Can’t stay here,” he said numbly, shoving his feet into his boots, having to stop to pull out his feet coverings, pushing those in a pocket to save time.
Thought Traveler’s mouth protuberances writhed. “Where should we go?” From the way it stretched, neck twisting, shoulders bent back, crouching hadn’t suited its body either.
“You,” Enris informed the creature, “can go where you like. I’m getting out of this valley before the Vyna flood it.”
“Sensible Om’ray. They won’t be happy if they find us together. They may conclude I sent you, to steal their secrets.”
He should strangle the thing, not listen to it. But Enris, already five long strides away, hesitated. He looked back. “Since when do Tikitik care about Om’ray secrets?”
“Since Om’ray began to have them.” It bounded forward to stop in front of him. “Like this.”
Snap!
The Tikitik had his pouch, broken thong dangling, before Enris could flinch. “That’s mine!” he objected, trying to grab it back.
Swaying out of reach, Thought Traveler barked with amusement and threw the pouch, unopened, at him. “As you wish.”
The thong, it kept. It brought the thin strap of leather to its mouth, protuberances writhing along its length until they reached the knot of Aryl’s hair. There, they appeared transfixed.
“I need that, too.” Enris did his best to sound casual.
“Oh, but I think you owe me at least this scrap. Have I not interceded for your life three times now? Unless it means more to you…” A meaty sound as all of the Tikitik’s eyes swiveled to lock on him. “I do hope not, Om’ray of many Clans.” Clear threat. “This would not be a match we favor.”
What could it know from mouthing her hair? And, if he understood the maddening creature, why would another race care about an Om’ray Joining?
“You broke it. You keep it.” Enris deliberately tucked his pouch in his belt. “I’m leaving.”
“Excellent idea, Tuana. We’ll be safe when we reach the boundary dam.” Thought Traveler turned and began to run with its disquieting speed.
He watched it shrink with distance. “Good,” Enris told it. “Go. Be gone. Finally.”
One thing for sure. He was not traveling another step with the Tikitik.
There was, however, only one way to go.
He started to run after the Tikitik.
The boundary dam, as Enris expected, was made of the Vyna’s black rock. But instead of a wall or structure, the rock looked like a river turned solid, somehow twisted to flow in a thick ribbon across the mountain slope, not down. He couldn’t help but notice curves and layering as he climbed it, like eddies in liquid.
Metal, he understood. How could anyone control molten rock? The Vyna he’d met hadn’t understood their own technology. There must have been a time when they had, or this wouldn’t exist.
If so, how had they forgotten such ability…?
At the top of the dam, the Tikitik—who climbed better than a Yena, and certainly better than he—squatted comfortably. Enris thought of climbing the dam elsewhere, but it was too much work. And would amuse the creature anyway.
As he neared the top, the head swung on its curved neck to regard him past a bent leg, all eyes fixed. “Where will you go now, Tuana?” One clawed hand stretched out and slowly closed, as if to grasp the world. “Show me your path.”
Enris stepped up and past it, every breath leaving plumes in the cold clear air, tiny clouds above an abyss.
For that’s what he faced.
A landscape that couldn’t exist. No matter how he strained, there were no Om’ray before him, yet his eyes showed him an expanse that began far below, a rolling mauve plain scratched by frozen ponds, immense beyond belief. It ended at the sky, or was the sky’s end.
Impossibly empty.
He found himself sitting beside the Tikitik, hands braced against the rock, as if another step forward would be his last.
“Will you venture forth, Om’ray?” Thought Traveler asked. “Or will you stay where your perceptions guide you? Do you have a choice? I have always wondered what would happen if one of you went beyond your limit. Would you fall to the ground and whimper, disoriented and lost? Or would you adapt? Could you? I do enjoy a puzzle.”
Enris didn’t attempt to answer. “Is there more?” His voice sounded strange. “More to the world than this?”
“An excellent question. Are you sure you can bear the answer? You seem upset.”
As if it hadn’t intended that very result. As if it didn’t watch him for every reaction, every flinch, and savor them all.
He’d learned of other worlds, other suns, other races. He’d learned there was a before, that life had been different from now.
Enris managed to laugh. “Been a while since supper,” he told the creature. “So tell me, Thought Traveler. I’m curious. What is it you don’t think I can bear to know?”
“That the entire universe of the Om’ray is nothing more than a speck upon Cersi. If you flew over it in the grasp of an esan until it fell dead from the sky, you would not reach its end. That if you stood upon one of the Makers and looked down on this world, you would see the mighty works of Tikitik and of Oud, and be sure only two races lived here.”
Wrapping his hands around a knee, Enris leaned back and gazed at the Tikitik, who stared back with all four eyes. “If we are so insignificant,” he said at last, “why does the Agreement include us?”
It surged to its feet with such abrupt violence Enris reached for his knife. But Thought Traveler only stood still, looking down at him. Its head bobbed twice. “The best question of all,” it acknowledged—he thought grudgingly—then barked its laugh. “Stay alive if you can, Enris Mendolar. I enjoy our conversations.”
A familiar scream filled the air and Enris ducked as an esan swooped low. Rather than snatch the Tikitik, the huge beast hovered, wing beats pummeling the Tuana with blasts of cold, dust-filled air, while Thought Traveler stepped into a basket suspended between the claws of the midlegs.
The esan dropped below the dam, all four wings rigid. Had it crashed? Enris jumped to his feet, only to stagger back as the creature reappeared, wings now vibrating. As the basket with the Tikitik rose in front of him, the creature leaned out and shouted, the words barely audible over wind and wing.
“Don’t go home!”
If the world of the Om’ray was a mere speck, why did it take so long to get anywhere?
Enris laughed at his own joke, then stopped. Not that his prey appeared to be disturbed by the sound, but it wasn’t healthy to laugh too much alone. Not when he’d gone the best part of a day without food or drink. Not when he’d been walking in circles trying to find a path to—
Anywhere. Rayna was closest. Rayna would do. There was the small problem of an unclimbable ridge tall enough to pierce the clouds and the other small problem of the storm those clouds were carrying in his direction. And the other small problem of no shelter or vegetation to burn for heat, but…
He did have rocks.
And once he found one that was edible…he turned over the next in the pile. No opening. He tossed it aside and picked up another.
Ah. The work of an instant to shove his knife tip into the slender crack and twist it to break the Hard One apart. It wasn’t neat or efficient. Enris had to pinch his nose as the creature wheezed and died in a mass of goo.
If Thought Traveler hadn’t lied to him, the blue bit was what he should—or was it could?—eat. Enris poked with the knife till he found it. With a resigned shrug, he popped the lump of flesh into his mouth and chewed. Moist. That was good. As for taste? He swallowed quickly, then spat.
If it didn’t kill him, he didn’t care.
The corpse enticed others from their protective stillness. He waited to gather the smallest, then retreated as a boulder half his size rolled ominously close.
No need to be greedy.
He felt remarkably at peace—after all, what faced him was simply walking, albeit a great deal of it. Walking was easy, mindless. No problems to consider, no great decisions to make. Having found food, he should—
DANGER!!!
Enris dropped the rocks and pressed his hands to his head, half stunned by the power of that sending. “What—?”
DANGER!
PAINPAINPAIN
Tuana.
His family.
Without hesitation, without fear, Enris Mendolar threw himself into the M’hir, knowing only where he had to be…
It was like falling, inevitable, powerful, swift—like being caught by a flood and washed down a mountain—it was…
…home.
Enris choked on fumes, strained to see through heavy smoke, moved only to bump into something hard. His hands groped, knew what they found.
Home. His workbench. But why the smoke? Was it the melting vat? “Father?” he shouted, reached at the same time. I’m here!
“Enris?! Look out!”
The floor split underneath and the bench hurtled away. Enris staggered but stayed on his feet.
UP!!! THIS WAY!
DANGER!
PAIN!
FEARFEAR!!!
The floor continued to move!
Enris…this way…
Coughing, he fought to hear that one sending among many. Everyone in Tuana was terrified, fear and pain flooding over any words. This wasn’t just happening under the shop. Not daring
to believe what was happening, Enris fumbled his way forward, what he touched made strange, until he found a wall and its shelves. He climbed—anything to get away from the floor.
The ceiling was no longer there. The smoke was less. He made out forms, four, clinging together on what remained of the swaying roof. Knew them. Jumped and grabbed and forced his way across the slanted, broken beams and wood to them.
Worin. Sobbing, mind numb. Enris swept his little brother into his arms, felt his body for injury even as he sent encouragement.
His father. Jorg gripped his arm, pulled them both close. Bad time to come home. But beneath the words, an outpouring of love and relief.
Yuhas and Caynen. No doubt who’d thought of the roof as an escape route. Enris freed one arm to press his hand to the Yena’s wide shoulder. Thank you.
We’re not safe yet. Fierce and angry. Why are they attacking!?
Attacking? Enris looked past Worin’s head, aghast at what he saw. Buildings were tipping, sinking into the ground. Om’ray ran into the street, only to sink beneath its surface before they could scream. Wood snapped, brick crumpled, metal screamed. “The Oud—” This was Sona—
“They’re reshaping under everything!” his father shouted. “The village! The fields!”
“We should get the device—what the Oud left us—” Enris looked wildly for a way back down, not that there was any way to know where the cupboard had been. “Give it to them!”
“No. No.” Jorg shook him. “The Oud came for it the day you left. That’s not why they’re doing this. No one knows why. We have to run—” His hurried voice changed, became the gentlest, most terrible sound of all. “Ridersel…”
MOTHER! WHERE ARE YOU?!!! Worin struggled in his hold, frantic. MOTHER!!
Yuhas moved before Enris could think, catching Jorg before his now-limp body could fall off the roof. He brushed the older Chosen’s hair from his forehead, then looked up at Enris, his grim expression saying what Enris could already feel.
There was no mind there. Or life. Jorg had followed his Chosen.
There was, he realized numbly, no life anywhere but here. The sounds continued, but only of wood, brick, and metal. There were no more screams, no more sendings. Building after building was being consumed. Only the Cloisters still stood, bright and gleaming, while the ground slapped at its base and shattered its stair.
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