“Aryl!” Haxel jumped down from the platform wall to land bent-knee beside her. “We’ve company,” as she straightened, pointing toward the cliff. The Oud reacted by dropping to the ground. It ran backward a short distance on its little legs before it stopped.
Aryl looked up. From this distance, the shapes clinging to the massive rock face behind the Cloisters appeared small and insignificant. Fronds, opening to the sunlight. Wastryls, waiting for heat. As if they’d waited to be noticed, they began to fall toward them.
Enris gave a grim laugh. “Getting crowded, isn’t it?”
Esans. They circled overhead, descending slowly, growing larger. She counted five . . . more. They carried baskets, not that she’d thought they’d come alone.
One let out its shuddering scream, answered by another. Steady! she sent quickly to the others, driving her own fear down until she felt only calm certainty. The confrontation would be now, before they’d been able to return everyone to their Clan. There was no choice.
“They’ve come to talk to me,” she told Haxel, who gave her a stare of disbelief.
Not to drop more rock hunters? Enris asked. I’d like to be sure about that, since we’re standing out in the open.
No.
Not that they were in any sense safe.
Some of the esans tried to land in the surrounding nekis grove, but the too-slender branches and stalks cracked under their weight. They rose again, screaming, to join their more experienced fellows who hovered above the dirt to let their passengers climb out. Aryl and Enris shielded their eyes against the dust generated by the huge paired wings. Haxel squinted, as if determined to see all she could. The Oud Speaker scurried back and forth, back and forth, kicking up its own cloud, half sinking into the ground.
Clean clothes and a drink of water. Time. That above all she needed and couldn’t have. Aryl spat to clear her mouth and waited.
The esans lifted away and headed back to the cliff. Thought Travelers appeared out of the settling dust, their blue-black skins losing color with each step until they stood before her like clouds themselves.
Silence, except for the rapid clatter of the Oud’s limbs, the slither of stones across its body and cloak. The thing appeared frantic.
Sona’s neighbor.
Useless creature, Aryl thought in disgust. “Stop that!” she told it, to no effect.
A rock thudded off its back. The Oud slid to a stop and reared, facing the wrong way. After an instant’s hesitation, it bounced in place, flesh shaking, limbs loose and clicking together, each bounce turning it slightly. Until it faced her. “WHATDO-WHATDOWHATDO?”
Aryl glanced at Enris, who gave a charming shrug and dusted his hands.
One Thought Traveler pranced ahead of the rest. She didn’t have to guess which one that would be. Their “friend.” “What do you believe has happened here, Speaker?” To the Oud, not to her.
The Oud stilled. “Sona less.” Almost sullen.
“Is that so?” Two of the Tikitik’s eye cones swiveled to regard Aryl, the others remain fixed on the Oud Speaker. “Apart-from-All. Humor me. Have those with you step on the ground.”
Come, Aryl sent to the Sona waiting on the platform. They climbed down the ramp, Yena as reluctant as the Tuana.
“More!” the Oud exclaimed joyfully, then slumped. “Less than. Where rest? Balance!!! WHERE REST!??”
The other Thought Travelers stirred uneasily at this, fingers flexing, eyes turning.
We could bring out the rest of Sona, Enris suggested. Make the right number.
We don’t know it would be. And she wouldn’t risk more Om’ray on ground Oud could churn to liquid—or within reach of the too-fast Tikitik and their predatory mounts.
“ ‘Where are the rest?’ ” Thought Traveler repeated. “How can you not know? You are the ones who demand Balance, who insist on it, who trammel all those in your way to achieve your version of it.” Its head bobbed sharply up and down. “Count for yourself, fool!”
“Count one. Count one. MeMeMe. Sona Less.”
“Idiot.” With no other warning, the Tikitik lunged at the Oud, knife out. Aryl stepped in its way, hands up. “No!”
ARYL!
The Tikitik stopped in its tracks and stared down at her. “It’s insane,” it argued in a reasonable tone. “Once I kill it, they’ll send a new one to talk to us. That’s what Oud do.”
“No more,” the Oud protested weakly. “One.” It folded its speaking limbs and waited.
Waited, Aryl realized with cold settling around her heart, for them to understand. For her to hear what it said, not guess at meaning. “It’s not counting Om’ray.” Her voice came out too high and she lowered it. “It’s counting Oud. Something’s happened to them.”
An image of twisted machines and scorched buildings slipped into her mind. The Strangers.
Why would they harm Oud?
Do we know they wouldn’t? Enris replied, letting her feel his dread.
The Thought Travelers hissed to one another. One went to the hole in the ground through which the Oud had arrived and squatted. It picked up whirr/clicks, discarding some. Those it kept, it brought to its mouth protuberances, patting the body and wiggling legs thoroughly before dropping it. Why, she couldn’t guess. Enris had told them the rock hunters were a young form of Oud. Were the whirr/clicks another stage or just biters with a taste for Oud?
After the fourth, it stopped and stood. “The Oud is accurate,” it announced. “Sona’s colony has been decimated. This is the only Minded left.”
Sensing her confusion, Enris supplied another image: a naked Oud, upside down and oblivious, using its limbs to polish the rock ceiling of a tunnel. Not all think.
How many could? If most “Minded” were dead, did this make Sona Tikitik again?
Following her negotiation with them, the Oud lived at the head of the valley, under the Stranger camp. Marcus’ camp. It was steps away, behind the grove. She threw a despairing glance. The illusion still disguised the opening. What was behind it now?
Marcus?
I’ll go. He’d followed her thought.
No, Enris. She held herself in place with an effort that tore at her heart. I need you. Here.
“Then we are finished.” Thought Traveler beckoned. Before any Om’ray could move, the nearest of its companions had swarmed over the Oud, blades flashing.
The Oud Speaker died without sound. It sank down, its soft body spreading wide beneath its cloak. Green stained the hem.
“No!” Aryl drew her knife, heard the others do the same. Would they be next?
“Minded cannot make sense alone,” Thought Traveler stated in its infuriatingly superior voice. “And we have little time. The world is broken, Apart-from-All. It will not recover from the foolishness of Om’ray.”
Never appear weak or ignorant. Aryl stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You can believe we know.” It bent to the Oud corpse, ripped the Speaker’s Pendant from its torn cloak, and held the dripping object fastidiously away between clawtips. Without waiting for her answer, it flipped the pendant into the hole.
Every Tikitik turned its head to follow that motion.
“We, too, have a unique sense,” Thought Traveler continued. “The Makers’ Gift, if you like. It resides here.” Straining its neck upward until she could see the pale underside of its head, the Tikitik pressed its thumb deep into the soft tissue between its jaws.
A vulnerable spot.
It returned to its normal posture. “The Gift sings of healthy rastis, draws us home through darkness or heavy rain. The pendants, Om’ray tokens . . . all such were made from a substance that also catches our attention. We have but to listen. I assure you, we hear the pendants of Rayna, Amna, and Yena inside your Cloisters, where there should be none. If you open its doors, would I find the many missing from other Clans, where there should be Sona’s few?”
The pendants betrayed them to the Tikitik. The Cloisters hid them.
Ca
ught in the possibilities, Aryl hesitated too long.
“I would, I see.”
“We’ll send them back—” If they’ll go, she added to herself.
“To their Clans?” It stepped closer. “They cannot go home. They’ve been changed forever, little Speaker, and only belong here. Did you not realize this?”
It couldn’t know about their new connections through the M’hir. But it was right, she realized, feeling her blood turn to ice. Those who’d come to Sona, who knew how to move through the M’hir, were no longer the same as the rest of their kind.
She wasn’t.
Closer still, with menace, forcing her back. “They cannot leave. And the moment your Om’ray set foot on the ground, the Oud beneath—busy as we speak, producing new Mindeds to make their decisions—will know how many now live in Sona. More than should. They’ll want to keep you, prattle about ‘Oud, best is,’ and to do that—” it moved again; she retreated, stumbled in loose dirt, waved Enris back, caught herself, “—to do that, they’ll go to their lists and they will reshape as much of Cersi as they deem necessary to redress the Tikitik for this Gift of Om’ray. One Clan? Two? Three? Tikitik factions will be split, some favored, others not. Our Balance will be changed.”
Thought Traveler stopped. So did she, near enough to smell its musty breath, to see its body soften and bend as if too weary to stand straight. “The moment they step outside, Apart-from-All, your Om’ray destroy both our peoples. And, though it matters not,” a careless flick of its fingers, “the Oud will not long survive on their own.”
“We’ll live inside the Cloisters,” she promised desperately. “Only come out in the same numbers each time.”
“Do you believe that’s never been tried? Ask yourself, Apart-from-All. Why did Sona’s Adepts die outside?”
Its face approached, filled her sight. Eyes swiveled on their cones to bore into hers. A whisper, so quiet she doubted anyone else could hear: “Prepare, as we must, for the doom of the world.”
One heartbeat there, the next, gone. The esans, responding to no signal Aryl could see or hear, swooped down like a storm to pick up their passengers. The Thought Travelers didn’t look back, didn’t speak again. They climbed into their baskets and sent their mounts climbing.
Leaving only Om’ray.
They were looking at her, Aryl thought wildly, sick inside. At her. Haxel and Galen sud Serona, the grizzled runner from Tuana. Her Chosen. Naryn. Everyone. As if somehow she could save them. As if she knew anything at all to do.
“Marcus,” she heard herself say. “We have to find him.”
Chapter 10
AVOIDING THE PATH, Haxel led them through the grove. If there was a trap, it would be along the wide, flat, easy route the Human had made. Aryl came next, Enris behind her. To one side, out of sight if not beyond their inner sense, Syb and Yuhas, followed by Galen. To the other, Veca, Suen d’sud Annk, and the Licor twins.
Naryn? She’d returned to the Cloisters, her thankless task to tell the others what had happened to the Oud. With Anaj’s help, she hoped to find those among the new arrivals with more experience with the other races, who might have answers, a plan. Aryl wished them success; she didn’t expect any.
Om’ray had never paid attention to the not-real.
Which would have been reasonable, she thought wryly, if the not-real had cooperated and not paid attention to them.
Her nerves settled as they moved through the grove. A hunt. Finally something normal, something Yena. Where their skill mattered.
Even Enris moved quietly.
SnickCrack! A faint apology.
Quietly for a giant Tuana with big feet. Aryl almost smiled.
Where the grove thinned, Haxel stopped. She glowered at its unclimbable sticks as she waved Aryl to her side. Their hands touched. What do you think?
Aryl pressed herself against the nearest stalk, sank below Om’ray height, then eased around until she could see between the young leaves.
The buildings were intact; the ground its familiar morass of mud and vehicle tracks. No burning. No destruction as at Site Two.
All wrong, she sent. The buildings stood white and exposed, their illusions gone, doors open. A shirt, socks, other belongings were strewn before the one Marcus used as a home. The rest . . . Aryl eased back and touched Haxel. The storage buildings are empty.
Before or after? Not waiting for an answer, Haxel slipped to the others, brushed hands, gave her orders. Syb, Yuhas, and Galen went one way, fading into the grove; Veca, Suen, and the twins the other. They’d circle wide. Haxel flickered in and out of sight, choosing her own path.
What about us? Enris asked, crouching beside her.
Aryl stood and brushed at her no-longer-blue dress. “We,” she said calmly, “are here to visit our friend.”
“You mean walk out there and be Haxel’s bait.”
She shrugged. “That, too.”
Deliberately casual strides took them across the opening to Marcus’ door. Strides during which Aryl’s shoulders tensed and her eyes searched for the telltale shine of a vidbot or other watchful machine. Shadows shortened as the sun moved higher overhead. Her feet sank in the loose dirt.
Once there, she paused beside the inviting doorway. Lights were on inside. These weren’t Om’ray, she reminded herself. Her other senses had to do. She listened, not breathing.
Nothing.
Aryl danced in and to the side, crouching with her knife ready. Enris burst through behind her, an intimidating bulk. But they were alone.
And everything was broken.
They moved through the mess. The mattresses, used or not, were torn apart, the beds ripped from their wall supports. Cupboards and crates were open or upended. Marcus’ jars of dirt were smashed. Not a struggle. Something else. Aryl frowned. “If this was a hunt,” she wondered aloud, “did they find what they were after?”
“Wasn’t these.” Enris pointed to the devices on the counter. All looked as if someone had taken a hammer to their faces—or used a body part suited to violence. There were Strangers, Aryl remembered, who could do such damage with a limb.
“Or they didn’t want them used . . .” At the thought, Aryl pulled out the geoscanner and turned it on. Its glow was reassuring, though the red display wasn’t. Oud below. But she knew that.
Not the “Minded.” Not decision makers. Not yet, somehow.
They had time.
She thumbed on the device. “Two. Howard. Five.”
Is that a good idea?
“He answers or he doesn’t.”
“How long do we wait?”
She propped the ’scanner on what had been a table. “As long as we can,” she said quietly.
“Well, then.” Enris used his arm to clear a section of counter, brushing debris to the floor. When he sat, it creaked under his weight but held. “We wait.” He smiled with a cheer she didn’t believe for an instant. His shields were at their tightest; without an effort, she could only sense their connection, nothing of how he felt.
“You don’t think he’s coming back.”
“From beyond the world? Do you?”
Aryl found her own perch. I must, she admitted. Aloud, “Don’t underestimate—”
Come. A summons.
“Galen’s found something.” Enris stood, his hand out to her. Aryl.
“I’m all right.” She retrieved the ’scanner, her hand wanting to shake.
There’d been a warning with the sending. What Galen found hadn’t been good.
Aryl . . .
“Let’s go.”
“Oud?”
The middle building had been stripped clean, leaving only overturned tables. The far building was empty, too, but not for the same reason.
Aryl stood with the rest outside the open door. To enter meant stepping in the churned green mud that had replaced the floor.
Haxel knelt, brought a fingertip of it to her nose. “Oud,” she confirmed after a sniff, wiping her finger on her leggings as she stood.
“Last ’night.”
“They collect their dead,” Galen told them, his gruff voice low as if afraid of being overheard. No need to point to the wide hole gaping in the center. “We’ve never seen where they take them. Somewhere deep.”
“Why would they be here at all?” Aryl asked. The wide door could accommodate an Oud, but Marcus had never let the creatures inside. Too many breakables, he’d said. “Why were they killed?”
“The artifacts.”
She looked at Enris.
“That’s what this is all about,” he said, gaining confidence with every word. “Marcus told us he’d left his people here, to secure the artifacts. The Oud must have understood that much. Maybe they tried to protect them.”
As one, they all stared at the hole. The deep, black hole.
“The Strangers could be down there?” Haxel asked tensely.
Aryl understood. The hole was as appealing as the waters of the Lay. All the Yena looked uncomfortable.
“It’ll lead to a normal tunnel.” Josel didn’t appear to notice the dreadful ooze underfoot as she walked to the opening. “I’ll go.”
Syb stared at her. “In there?”
“I’ll come with you.”
Enris? No, Aryl protested.
YES! His friends might be alive. I owe him this. Someone waited their chance and I gave it to them when I asked Marcus to turn off his machines. The fury turned gentle. “Wait here. Tunnels aren’t for Yena—ask Yuhas.”
“I’d go,” that worthy protested.
Enris put his hand on Yuhas’ shoulder. “Of course you would,” he said, giving the other a gentle shake. “But Aryl needs you here.”
Aryl ignored this last. “Not your fault. The trap was set first. It had to be,” she insisted when he looked doubtful. “Marcus told us there’d be extra protection soon. Whoever this was must have planned to ambush him as he left with the artifacts, before that protection was ready.” Vulnerable prey, out of its normal place, alone. “When a better chance presented itself, they sprang the trap early, that’s all.” She might not understand trading and the value of things; this, she did.
“What are these Strangers?” Suen was appalled. “They kill each other. They kill Oud. Why do you want to help them?”
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