“Do you?”
A barking laugh, but she noticed its eyes tracked away from hers. “Most of those who do will also tell you the Oud were a mistake made by our ancestors, and those long-dead Tikitik were condemned to seal the sun each night within a rastis chamber and open it by day. Thus, darkness reminds us not to be wrong again.”
It was Aryl’s turn to laugh. “The sun goes to Grona Clan. Everyone knows that.”
The Tikitik barked twice. “And how does it get back again, without being seen?”
She glared at it, nonplussed.
“You don’t know,” it stated.
“The Adepts teach what we need to know.” The words fell flat— when had she ever been satisfied with their explanations? When had she glibly swallowed what was told without seeing for herself? Too often, it seemed. Aryl flushed. “It’s our way,” she finished, determined to defend her people. And ask more questions.
“They don’t teach you to read.”
“Only Adepts need to read.” Her lips twisted in a grimace. It had found a sore point. “It doesn’t matter,” she threw its words back. “Reading isn’t something they could teach. Only those worthy can receive that skill. It’s given— it’s not taught.” She didn’t know if Tikitik understood how Adepts were trained, how they delved through the memories of those of greater knowledge to acquire what they needed— or if it even should.
“Anyone can read.” The Tikitik held out its arm to show her the symbols on its band. “This,” it drew a fingertip along a wavy pair of lines, “stands for ‘traveler.’ This,” now a trio of widening circles, “for ‘thought.’ We are named for what we are. Thus, my name is written as ‘Thought Traveler.’ These,” it indicated the rest, “are the most important names and tasks of kin-groups through which my line has passed. Each part has a meaning.”
“The markings always mean the same thing?”
“Always.”
It was, she warned herself, probably Forbidden. New things were— and she’d certainly never heard of anyone being taught by a Tikitik. Or imagined it. Her hands itched to copy the symbols in ink, to repeat them over and over so she would never forget them. She heard herself ask, “Would you show me more?”
Another bark. “Show me your name.”
She opened her mouth, then realized it meant the marking on the cloth. “It’s not a name,” she admitted, offering her wrist. “I like how this looks, so I put it on all my drawings. Among Om’ray, my name is Aryl Sarc.”
“This has meaning, intended or not. The curve, like a bowl. It means ‘everyone.’ For you, all Om’ray.”
The world, she thought to herself, amazed something so simple could convey so much. “And this?” She eagerly touched the dot above her “bowl.”
“Shown there, the meaning is ‘apart.’ Does ‘Apart-from-All’ name you?”
Besides uncomfortably apt? “It will do,” Aryl admitted. She made herself gaze out over the empty water. “Does this have a name?”
“Lake of Fire.”
It hadn’t barked, but she was wary of another Tikitik joke at her expense. “It’s water. What kind of name is that?”
“Do Om’ray eyes see so poorly? Do you not see its smoke?”
Aryl held back a retort and looked more intently. For what, she had no idea.
Then she saw what Traveler meant. What appeared to be tendrils of cloud were rising in the middle of the lake, from the water’s surface. Smoke? Each spiraled, slowly, higher and higher, but stopped in midair well before real clouds began. Some tendrils were thin; one was fat at its middle.
“It can’t be smoke,” she decided out loud. “It rises too slowly. And there’s no bright flame underneath.”
Traveler’s head shot up. “You’ve seen fire?” No mistaking the threat in its voice or posture.
“Lightning struck near the Cloisters,” Aryl explained quickly. “All of us went to see.” It had been terrifying— and beautiful. So was this “lake.”
“Are there rastis on the other side?”
The Tikitik lowered its head in slow stages, all eyes on her. “Oud are on the other side,” it said at last. She wasn’t sure how this answered her question, but it seemed to think so.
Aryl studied the lake, growing more curious instead of less. The Oud had machines to fly— this water should be no barrier to them, though she didn’t know how long their machines could stay in the air. Longer than a fich. She leaned as far as she could over the side of her mount away from the Tikitik, holding the post with one arm and leg. She tried to see through the swirling silt, afloat with vegetation torn loose by the ossts ahead. “Are there hunters here, like the Lay?” she shouted from that position. When the Tikitik didn’t answer, she pulled herself up again. “Are there?” she repeated.
“Where the reeds grow, yes. Farther in—” its eyes focused on distance, “— see the line where the surface begins to sparkle? From there, the Lake of Fire contains only water, without bottom, without life. We give it our dead. And those who disappoint.”
Not a casual explanation, Aryl judged, both hands on the post as her mount lurched after another mouthful. Tikitik might be invisible to her other sense, but this one, at least, was expressing itself perfectly.
She was being taken somewhere for a purpose of theirs. Whatever it might be, she’d heard the cost of failure.
* * *
They rode through deepening shadow, the sun touching distant glints from the Lake of Fire as it sank below the canopy. The clouds turned yellow, then pink. A line of darkness began to climb from the horizon. Aryl hadn’t made up her mind if it was beautiful or frightening, to see the sky’s changes firsthand.
She did know how this time would be within the canopy. Yena would be heading for shelter. Glows would brighten, forbidding the swarms.
Aryl closed her eyes and reached gently, without insisting. Mother . . .
But Taisal wouldn’t allow their minds to link. Aryl stopped trying, guessing her mother was in a Council meeting or with other Adepts; neither would be good times to be interrupted.
She didn’t, she sighed to herself, have anything new to say.
Aryl clung to the osst’s post as the insatiable beast lunged for another bite. It never stopped eating. For some reason, that made it easier to sip its blood, for that was the only food or drink the Tikitik offered.
Home. Myris and Ael would be sharing their scant ration of dresel powder over supper. Talking about her, maybe. A little concerned, but wasn’t Aryl on a kind of Passage? Maybe they’d think her famous, the first Chooser-to-Be to leave her clan.
After all, her mother would have told them she was safe.
No, Aryl told herself, abruptly certain, Taisal would not.
The Yena Speaker would keep her secret. She would never reveal being able to contact her daughter over such a distance, let alone her use of the Forbidden Dark. To do either would only encourage Tikva di Uruus and her supporters, risk the Agreement her mother cared so much about.
Taisal would let Myris and Ael, Seru, all the rest of her family and friends, think her dead first.
Aryl sniffed miserably.
Interest.
What? She shook her head. Nothing. Still, Aryl concentrated, opening her inner awareness.
Yes, there.
A wisp . . . a hint of another presence in her mind. Lurking. Hiding from her in the other.
It wasn’t Taisal.
Aryl threw herself at it, like a hook through air.
The hint disappeared before she could touch it. That hint.
Another in the roiling other, the merest glimpse, as if she’d seen something almost break the surface of the lake. As if her attention startled it, it was gone. The Dark sang its tempting song, luring her to forget herself, to let herself thin and be consumed.
Aryl pulled free with an effort.
Spies? Set to watch her . . . or her mother. The Adepts?
Or was it something much worse.
She stared out at the line of monstro
us beasts, splashing their mindless way between grove and lake, the froth from their steps gleaming briefly before disappearing.
Where, she wondered with a shiver, did the minds of the Lost go? What was left of them? Were they fragments, swept and spun by those remorseless currents, or something more, something that clung to, if not consciousness, then purpose?
Did they hunger for their own kind? Was that the source of the lure?
Aryl couldn’t stop shivering. Taisal had been right to warn her against the Dark. She—
“Do you require something?”
Startled, Aryl glared at the Tikitik. “Yes,” she snapped, her fear turning to anger. “I need to know why you’ve taken me from my home. To know where we are. To know where we’re going. To know why—” her voice cracked. “What do you want from me?”
Its head reared up and back. The other four Tikitik, so silent till now she’d almost forgotten them, broke into agitated hisses.
“You asked,” Aryl said in a voice that sounded thoroughly sullen even to herself. Oh, she was handling all this well.
But it wasn’t fair. She was supposed to be home, in her bed. Not sitting, her legs cramped and backside numb, on a creature she hadn’t known existed before today. All she’d wanted to do was see the sky for herself.
And now even that was disappearing, swallowed by the dreadful black of truenight.
As for the connection to her mother, her one link . . . did she dare touch the other again, given what might be watching?
“Are you ill?”
Not for an instant did she dare believe it kindness. Nothing her mother had ever said about the Tikitik offered that hope. Self-interest, perhaps. She had a role to play— Thought Traveler was involved in that role, whatever it was.
“It’s almost truenight,” Aryl told it. “Am I safe?”
Its head lowered back to normal, its shoulders hiding it in shadow. “What do you fear?”
Where would it like her to start? Aryl asked herself, but settled for, “The swarms, for one. You said they could reach here. Last night you sealed me inside a rastis. Don’t tell me being on top of an osst will protect me.” Or the osst, for that matter. She’d seen the remnants of what the swarms did to large, furred creatures who didn’t or couldn’t climb beyond their reach.
“You are safe. They cannot tolerate light.”
“What light?” The clouds had lost their color; the lake itself vanishing gray into grays. “The sun’s almost to Grona. Do you have glows?”
“The Makers will rise.” In the dimness, she could see its left arm pointing up and ahead. Traveler sounded supremely confident.
She’d probably sounded just as sure to Joyn, knowing nothing of what was to come. Thinking of his small trusting face, his warmth wrapped around hers, Aryl was overwhelmed by longing. All she wanted was to be home— away from the stench and unceasing movement of the osst, her bewildering surroundings, and above all her helplessness.
Had those on Passage felt this way?
Had Bern?
She lowered her face into the crook of her arm, shutting it all out. Maybe she should wish for the Tikitik to be wrong, and swarms to consume them all. Make an end to it . . . Bern might hear, one day . . .
“Apart-from-All. Look.”
She didn’t obey at once; having her head down was unexpectedly comfortable. But curiosity, morbid or otherwise, couldn’t be denied.
She rolled her head to the side and opened her eyes.
Then Aryl straightened, slowly, her eyes growing wider.
The clouds had retreated to become pale gray walls of their own, exposing the sky over the lake. That sky was now the deepest blue Aryl had ever seen, almost black at its edges and where it met cloud tops. Holes in that blue let through sparks of light, like glows through leaves. Stars.
Brightest of all were two that sat exactly where the Tikitik had pointed, one larger and so white it hurt to stare at, the other a warm gold, its surface marked with dimples and swirls. Their light didn’t just puncture the sky, but spilled over the lake in two endless lines that never crossed, the sum bright enough to pick out green from the tops of the canopy. Bright enough to send the swarms hunting within the darkness deep under roots and stalks, not out here.
Cersi’s moons.
She’d heard of them; she’d never imagined being out in truenight to see them with her own eyes. “What did you call them?” she asked. “The ‘Makers’?”
“Some believe everything on Cersi was made by beings who now reside within those orbs. The Makers. They say we see their lights because the Makers never cease their labors to make this world perfect for Tikitik.”
“What about the Om’ray?” Aryl demanded without thinking, then shut her mouth.
The Tikitik was a silhouette; it might have been one of her kind— save for its height, the depth of its voice, and the lack of a head between its shoulders. As well as not, Aryl thought firmly, being real. “Those who populate the moons with powerful beings consider the Om’ray no better than the Oud. A flaw.”
She shivered, though the air wasn’t cold and the osst shared its heat. Taisal should be here, not her. This wasn’t a conversation for an unChosen. She suspected the only reason for Traveler’s frankness was exactly that. She wasn’t important. He could indulge his version of curiosity by getting her reaction.
Aryl scowled at the Makers in the sky, knowing one thing for sure. The Om’ray weren’t a “flaw.” “We trade with you,” she said, pleased at the calmness of her voice. “We harvest the dresel you need. There’s no harm in us.”
“The dresel you supply is nothing. We gather a thousand times more for ourselves. What—” Traveler continued when she sat silent and stunned, “— did you think your contributions were significant?”
Her grip on the post was painfully tight. “Then why did you take most of the Harvest?” she asked finally, her voice unfamiliar to her ears. “We’re starving. Some of us will die— some already have!” Bern, the rest on Passage . . . for nothing?
A bark. “I am gratified.”
Aryl stared at its dark form. “Because we’re dying?”
“Be at ease, Apart-from-All. I am gratified because I recognized your value from the beginning. Now you have told me something I need to know. Thank you.”
“You didn’t know we were starving?” Aryl wanted to hit the smug creature. “Why?”
“Much like Om’ray exist in Clans, my people are divided into factions. By ideas, not place. There is a faction that looks to the moons for guidance. Others who mourn our past or fear the future. Most care only for what is important for the survival of our groves and our kind, season by season. The Yena live within the influence of three different ideologies: one faction continues to honor the Agreement; one wishes to avoid that duty, but dares not; and one . . . from you I learn that this one does so dare, doubtless inspired by the arrival of the strangers.”
Not curiosity. By the moons’ light, at the edge of the Lake of Fire, she, Aryl Sarc, was being given information vital for all of her kind. Factions? Strangers? Feeling woefully inadequate, she licked her dry lips and tried to think like her mother. What would the Speaker ask? “Which— which faction are you?”
“Each has its Thought Travelers, like myself, who move between to gather and share information. This is how Tikitik decide what to avoid— to stay away from any course likely to be wrong. Thought Travelers are neutral and act only to better understand a situation. I have an opinion, of course.”
“An opinion.”
“The Agreement was made for a reason. Our races are together, here, for that reason. Until we know what that is, my opinion is that only a fool would break it. And you?”
“Me?” Aryl hesitated. “What about me?”
“Do you honor the Agreement that arranged the world as it is?”
It didn’t seem a safe question. Not that silence was an option. She took advantage of her osst’s loud series of pained grunts, something the rest were now doing as if
to keep better track of one another in the dim light, and tried to reach Taisal.
Nothing.
When the creatures quieted, Traveler repeated his question. “Do you honor the Agreement?”
“Yes,” Aryl said carefully. About to say “as do all Yena,” she thought of Haxel and substituted the more truthful, “Our Council makes such decisions. Most of us worry about survival, too.” She ran her hand up and down the leather wrapping. “Can you help us?” she dared ask. “Can you tell your Council what’s happening? That the Yena have been put in danger?” It would all be worthwhile, she thought with abrupt, fierce hope. All of it. Even Bern. “We need more dresel; more glows and cells.”
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