“There is no Tikitik Council,” it replied. “I tell other factions what I learn, not what each or all should do about it. Om’ray are resourceful. Yena will survive.”
Bitterly disappointed, she almost didn’t answer. But it wasn’t this Tikitik’s fault. By feeding her for days, it had unwittingly provided more for those at home. She sighed. “We will try.”
“If you succeed tonight, I’ll send what I can with you. It will be what we have left. I can’t do more.”
Back? She’d be going home? Aryl hadn’t realized how sure she’d been that this was a one-way trip, that she was already as good as dead, until relief made her dizzy. And supplies? About to thank the Tikitik for its offer— any supplies would help— the rest of what it said sank in. “Succeed at what?”
“You will solve this puzzle. You will learn if the strangers did interfere with a Harvest. Such an act is offensive to all Tikitik. The faction who tolerates their presence here will no longer.”
As well fly over the lake, she thought. “I don’t understand. How can I do that?”
“Search their belongings for a device like the one you drew. I require this confirmation. I am sure—” it said with a bark, “— you will find it, Apart-from-All. Be sure to take nourishment.”
Aryl had never felt less like sucking blood from an osst. Or anything else, for that matter. “The strangers are here?” She looked up at stars and darkness. How would she spot their flying machine?
“Look to the right of the Makers, low on the horizon.”
She did, finally spotting a group of white-and-blue stars, twinkling like the rest. Or were they? “Glows?” she hazarded, realizing they were in front of the clouds.
“Yes. The strangers dared settle on the Lake of Fire. We’ll be there by the time the sun returns from its visit with the Grona Om’ray. Shall we watch for it, Apart-from-All? Discover how it sneaks past Yena every night before dawn?”
It made fun of her. From an Om’ray, such teasing would be an attempt to lighten her spirits. From Thought Traveler, she decided gloomily, it was because she’d revealed herself to be ignorant, like those it disdained for making up incredible stories to explain what they couldn’t. “If you know,” she challenged, “tell me.”
“Ah. This isn’t reading, Apart-from-All. You couldn’t comprehend.”
Aryl frowned. “I’m not stupid.”
“I don’t think you are. Describe the shape of the world.”
Automatically, Aryl reached to locate her kind. She nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Amna,” she pointed, “then Rayna with Vyna beyond, Grona, Tuana, Yena, and Pana. With,” she added magnanimously, given her newfound experience, “the sky above. Amna,” this in case it lacked her sense of distance, “is beyond your Lake of Fire.”
“And beyond Amna?”
Churning darkness ... Aryl forced it away. “Beyond Amna? Nothing.”
“Interesting. I wish you could travel with me, Apart-from-All, so I could see your reaction when you learn otherwise.”
Otherwise? It tried to trick her. She deliberately ignored this, having no intention of spending more time with any Tikitik. “How do you think the sun returns to Amna each morning?”
“Perhaps it turns off its light, to sneak past us in the dark.”
“I’m not a child!”
“I meant no insult.” A pause. “Om’ray are never lost. We know this from those on Passage. You are never lost, because to you the world is not a physical landscape, but a living one. I envy you that perception, Apart-from-All, but I can’t feel it— just as you can’t feel my perception of this world, its sun, those moons and stars. I can’t help you understand. I can’t describe other worlds or their suns to you. Be content with yours. Its sun and mine will be up all too soon. Rest if you can.”
They proceeded in mutual silence for a while, except for the grunts and bellows of their mounts.
Finally, Aryl had to ask.
“If the strangers are on the lake,” she ventured, “how do I get there?”
Chapter 20
THE ANSWER TO HER QUESTION arrived with the earliest hint of dawn from Amna.
“You’re sure the osst can take me there.” Ignoring her first horizon-spanning sunrise, Aryl regarded the distant speck in the glittering water with dismay. Nothing about her mount suggested it could swim. She certainly couldn’t.
“It will manage.” In the steadily growing light, Thought Traveler appeared less and less familiar. Its mouth-fingers moved restlessly, and its small eyes divided their attention between her and the activities of its companions.
Those Tikitik were busy consolidating supplies from the gourds on their mounts into fewer. They appeared to want two emptied. The reason thus far escaped her.
She was sure she wouldn’t like it.
Aryl pushed a sweat-damp lock of hair from her eyes. The night had been warm; riding the osst, rank with sweat itself, had been like standing out in the hot sun. If it weren’t for the cloudiness of the water beside them, she’d have been sorely tempted to try and wash.
But Traveler hadn’t recommended it, this close to shore.
Where it wanted to send her— not close enough, she thought. “There has to be another way.”
“If you have a suggestion, Apart-from-All, I would be glad to hear it. The strangers pretend we aren’t here. Shouting doesn’t bring them closer. You must go to them.”
Aryl shivered. “And the osst will bring me back again?”
All the eyes turned to her. “They will return you. We’ve seen their behavior when a flitter lands on their platform. If it doesn’t leave on its own, they catch it and use their machine to fly it back to shore, unharmed.” A pause and a bark. “They don’t behave similarly with biters.”
“Who would?” she said, almost to herself. Still, Aryl perked up, things were looking better. A chance to fly in their machine— to learn how it worked?
She wondered if they’d show her how to control it. She could ask, couldn’t she?
“Here.”
All the osst grunted explosively as their riders insisted they move closer together. For the first time, Aryl saw the Tikitik use pointed sticks, applied like prods, to control their mounts. She held her nose at the result— this was not going to help her first encounter with the strangers.
“Here” referred to the pair of now-empty gourds. They were about her size. The four Tikitik stood on the wide backs of their osst, balancing without difficulty, and carried the gourds over to hers.
Confirming their climbing skills, she thought dourly.
“These go under your arms,” Traveler explained as the gourds were positioned beside her. The Tikitik, hissing unhappily to themselves, nonetheless gently rigged a harness of sorts around both gourds and her body. When her osst heaved in protest over its five passengers, it was prodded to be quiet.
Aryl, in the midst of it all, sympathized completely.
When they were done, the Tikitik returned to their mounts, leaving Aryl puzzled, her upper arms resting over the empty gourds. Her legs began to cramp.
Thought Traveler came close again. “The Lake of Fire is without life in its heart, but there are hunters where the water first deepens. You must stay on your osst there, or die.”
Aryl managed to bend her arm so her hands could grip the post. “It knows what to do?” she asked, eyeing the beast doubtfully. It hadn’t seemed overly bright to this point.
“It knows to flee.”
With that, three Tikitik gave their throbbing shriek and leaped to Aryl’s osst, plunging knives deep into its hide. As the beast bellowed in pain and lunged away, they scrambled back to safety on their own, leaving the hilts embedded amid growing patches of blood.
After that horrified look, Aryl found herself too busy to care. Her osst was heading straight out, its instinct to run from danger taking it away from its now-agitated fellows. Its powerful movements drove it through the water, deeper and deeper, water that crashed over its shoulders and into Aryl’s
face.
Then, the heave and push of muscle beneath her changed to something more rhythmic and outwardly peaceful. Long hair spread out around them.
It could swim. Loud huffs of air from the osst’s dilated nostrils measured its effort. Aryl began to enjoy herself as the place of the strangers drew closer and closer. She could see details now. It was a floating platform, not that dissimilar from those in the Lay beneath the Yena meeting hall. Larger than she’d have guessed, with an entire building at one end, the other boasting a tall series of ladders joined to form a tower. There! She spotted the flying machine, then was surprised when it seemed to grow smaller.
Until she realized her osst, perhaps finally aware it had left the safety of the herd, was gradually turning around. Aryl kicked it, making no impression at all. The stupid creature began swimming toward shore with strong, methodical movements. They should have given her a stick, not tied her to gourds.
So much for the Tikitik’s plan, she thought, casting a longing look over her shoulder at the platform.
The osst shuddered, like a tree lashed by the M’hir.
Again.
It let out a piteous bellow and turned back toward the strangers. Aryl hung on, confused until she saw the stain in the water. Something— some things— were attacking the osst from below.
Another shudder, another cry. She patted it, weeping, unable to imagine anything that could save it, despairing for the first time in her life for something mute and helpless.
There was a terrible jerk. The osst screamed!
Then she was underwater.
* * *
Somehow, Aryl kept her mouth closed, remembering not to breathe until she surfaced. If she surfaced . . .
The gourds tied to her body saw to that. They popped out of the water and lay on top, with her hanging helplessly between them. Aryl gasped for air, then looked frantically for any sign that she was to be prey next.
The chill water around her was free of blood and so clear that the dawn’s light slanted down until it faded into shadow. She might have been flying in midair, instead of floating on a lake.
The harness cut into her waist and made it hard to move. She struggled to stretch one, then both arms over the gourds. This pulled her head high enough to see her surroundings.
She was closer to the strangers’ platform than ever. Aryl twisted her neck to look back and wished she hadn’t. She was too close to where the water was torn by splashes and spurts of red. The osst, mercifully silent now, was being ripped apart.
She couldn’t see by what. She didn’t want to.
This had been the Tikitik’s plan all along. For all their ability to talk and reason, they were outside her understanding. That was plain.
She hoped for better from the strangers.
What other choice did she have?
Interlude
THE TUANA CLOISTERS rose above the plains and town, its rounded roof easily twice the height of any other building. Had Om’ray needed a beacon to guide them at truenight, its rings of soft light would ensure none were lost, for the flat land of the Oud stretched well beyond Tuana territory. But only those on Passage traveled there.
And those who left on Passage did not look back.
Enris leaned on the wide solid rail that encompassed the Cloisters’ uppermost tier and watched the moons rise. He wasn’t curious where they’d been until now. He didn’t care that the sun had abandoned the day or how. He only knew that the light of moons and sun fell on places he didn’t want to be.
As Yuhas had said. “So much for what any Om’ray wants.”
Tomorrow, he’d be leaving in truth. On Passage. Council had made its decision. For Naryn’s sake, he must go beyond her Call. Where? That was why he’d come outside, to try and find a direction that wasn’t away from everything he cared about.
As if such could exist.
“Shields, Enris.” A cane tip smacked against the floor. “Any grimmer and you’ll give the Lost nightmares.”
He straightened and turned, gesturing respect. “Grandmother.” There was, he checked, nothing sloppy about his control over his thoughts and emotions.
No surprise. Councillor Dama Mendolar had always been able to read him without using Power. And his father. She admitted to difficulty with young Worin, complaining he took after her daughter too much. Ridersel’s lips would tighten at such comments, restraining a response. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship at best; at more than a few family gatherings, the two managed not to speak at all.
Dama came to stand in front of him, moving ably with her canes’ support. An accident before Enris was born had ruined her knees; an accident involving unsettled Oud and a section of street collapsed with no warning.
“Unfair,” she said now, in her dusty voice. “Unjust. Good words?”
“With respect, they are pointless ones,” Enris replied, stiffly. “Choosers never leave.”
“Naryn S’udlaat is an abomination.”
Surprised, Enris gave a bitter laugh. “Everyone else tells me how desperate she must have been, how drawn to me, how impetuous in her love. Her drive as a Chooser overwhelmed her senses. Surely I’d wanted to respond . . .” He leaned back, elbows against the rim, and stared at the softly-lit arches behind his tiny grandmother without seeing them.
“Didn’t you?”
That got his attention. “I’d rut with an Oud first.”
“Hush, Enris. My delicate ears.” But her thin lips curved, wrinkles cascading over her face. “I do hope a better option awaits you.”
He shrugged. “The Adepts can’t be sure— did they tell you?”
“That there was injury they couldn’t repair? Yes. But also that you may heal on your own. In time.”
“Or I may never be able to Join at all. No one’s tried to force Choice before.”
“That we know.” Dama tapped her canes against the strange yellow flooring, one and two, one and two, paying careful attention to their tips as if this were some task of note. Then her gaze rose to meet his, clear and cool. “What I tell you, son of my daughter, goes no further.”
“Who would I—” he began.
“Hush,” she said impatiently. “No further. Understand me? Good,” at his nod. “To protect the Agreement, we prevent change, say we Forbid it. Bah! A scandalous lie. We cannot. There’s no hope of it. We ride a storm, Enris.” Taptap. “Each generation afflicts us with children of new Talent. Each shows an increase in Power among all, however slight. The Power itself may be changing its nature.”
“Matters for Adepts, Grandmother.” Enris raised a skeptical brow. “What do they have to do with me?”
“Everything.” She edged closer, looking from side to side as if she wouldn’t trust her inner sense that they were alone on the platform. “We have kept secret something else. Power can affect a Joining.”
He flinched as if she’d touched an open wound. “I don’t—”
“Listen to me. It’s true. Those weak in Power have always Joined with ease. But those with great strength . . . sometimes there are difficulties. An Adept must be called, quietly, to assist. There is a drug, a drug that eases—”
“I will not!” The harshness of his voice startled them both. Enris gestured apology, but he didn’t back down. “You called her an abomination. You can’t imagine I’d try to Join with her. Not after this.”
“An abomination we have to keep.” In that moment, Dama looked every one of the Harvests she’d seen. “I fear the consequence, Enris. There are more like Naryn to come. Those who care nothing for risk to others or even themselves— only their Power and its use. You could be a good influence. As her Chosen—”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t have to leave.” Lightly, Dama tapped her left cane against the side of his shin. “Your father needs those strong legs.”
“He has Yuhas.”
She frowned, her eyes all but disappearing. “That one? He still carries the weight of his former Clan, though safe and Chosen and one of us.
Ungrateful, I say.”
Despite her shields and complaint, Enris sensed sympathy for the Yena Om’ray. “He has reason to fear for those he left behind, his family and friends.” As her frown deepened into a scowl, he added gently, “It’s not unlawful, Grandmother, to care about those you leave.” He took a deep breath. “I know I will.” There. It was done. Somehow he felt safer, just saying the words aloud.
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