If they walked— or, rather, climbed, for there were ladders— the length of the great tubes, they’d arrive just below the mountain’s upper ridge. There, the Watchers gaped, ready and waiting for the M’hir to howl down their length, producing the alarm to rouse the Yena to Harvest.
Aryl pointed to the nearest before Marcus could spout “what is?” “A Watcher. When the M’hir Wind comes over the mountain, it blows thus.” She cupped her hands together in front of her mouth, and blew through them. It produced little more than a whoosh, but he nodded.
“Watchers,” he replied. “Loud.” This with a grimace.
From his reaction, he’d heard them. Implying he’d been close to the Harvest, Aryl realized. Something else she didn’t care to think about.
“Supplies,” she suggested, hoping she was right about that. If not, they’d have to leave at dawn to search for water and food. She doubted the Tikitik would be gone.
On the bright side, the living rocks might be.
Interlude
THE OUD WAS TRYING TO KILL him. It just didn’t know how.
Only possible explanation, Enris assured himself. He imagined he could hear someone snickering. Probably Mauro and Naryn, having a last laugh at his expense. He couldn’t blame them. The not-quite death of Enris Mendolar was a joke on them all.
“Faster. Faster.” The Oud dropped back to the floor and humped away.
“I can’t go faster!” he shouted after it. How long had he been running after the creature? Half a day? A full fist? Time had no meaning below ground. Too long. The Oud disappeared around a bend, and Enris staggered to a jog. Always the same. The monster insisted he keep up, yet couldn’t comprehend that Om’ray had only two legs.
“Two legs!” he bellowed. “Two!”
He’d argued with it, thrown rocks at it, laid down and ignored it, desperate to rest. Such futile protests ended the same way, with the Oud looming over him and a clawlike appendage seizing him— by what didn’t matter— to drag him along in the dirt until he moved on his own. Enris had quickly learned to protect his head; the Oud, not so quickly, learned not to grab him by a leg.
He’d dropped his precious pack. It wouldn’t let him retrieve it. He’d found a water tap and had thrown himself in front of it, drinking in great gulps. It wouldn’t let him finish. In final insult, the Oud was leading him away from Vyna.
“You . . . want . . . to . . . kill . . . me,” he panted. “Try . . . a . . . rock.”
The Oud covered ground with incredible speed; it knew this landscape. Still, Enris would have chanced trying to escape down another tunnel but for one thing.
The token.
Without it, he was already dead. He couldn’t move on his own through Oud territory. He couldn’t enter Tikitik. It was doubtful another Clan would admit him. His own . . .
“Give it back!” he begged the mass of gray ahead of him. In answer, it humped away faster.
Why take it? In his coherent moments, he wondered if the Oud was supposed to carry it for him, if he had an escort— albeit one completely ignorant of the physical limitations of Om’ray. At others, he worried this was a homicidal game, the true end for all who left on Passage, that the Oud led him to a pit where he would fall, fall and land on the bodies of those who’d just left, Irm and Eran, bodies atop a pile of the bones of other unChosen.
It said a great deal about his state of mind that he preferred either to the alternative, that the Oud was sane and had good reason for this panicked flight.
* * *
When the Oud finally stopped, Enris didn’t. Half asleep, he collided with its back end with enough momentum to send him flying to land on his. He sat there, blinking away dust, and waited to see what would happen next.
“Here are.”
“Here” looked like everywhere else they’d been. A newer tunnel, with lighting, heat, and water, the walls and ceiling ready for Chewer Oud to polish them smooth. He wiped his sweating face against his sleeve and kept waiting.
Another Oud approached them, naked and moving with its body pressed to the floor. It stopped alongside the other. His Oud— not that Enris wanted the creature, but he’d started thinking of it that way— reared and smacked the newcomer with its front/head end. The blow wasn’t light; the newcomer tumbled over and over until it struck the wall.
It immediately scuttled back on its little legs to take the same position as before.
His Oud, still half reared, patted it. The other quivered as if in joy. Enris looked away, fearing this was the prelude to Oud sex— a subject Om’ray knew nothing about. He had no intention of being the first.
“Things, yours.”
The voice startled him awake. Sure enough, the newcomer Oud held out his bag. Enris grabbed it, digging inside for a flask. Only once he’d had a good, long drink, then another, did he bother to look at the creatures again.
And was just in time to see the newcomer take the token from His Oud and convey it down to wherever they stored things. “Wait!”
Too late. The newcomer rose to the ceiling, took hold, and scurried away, upside down.
Now he was to chase that one? Maybe his was worn out. Enris forced himself to his feet, though he’d lost feeling in them some time ago, and cursed the Oud. He shifted his bag to one shoulder and started walking.
“Mine now,” His Oud exclaimed. “Token other. Find no. Safe.”
He stopped moving before it could seize him. “I don’t understand.”
“Strangers and Om’ray. Come.”
“Let me rest first,” he begged, beyond shame. “Please. I can’t run anymore.”
“Not run.”
He should have specified no dragging, Enris thought, tense as the creature came closer.
It moved beyond him to the left-hand wall, then disappeared. “Come!” he heard.
Dead or dreaming, he assured himself, but curiosity brought him stumbling to the wall.
Which wasn’t a wall, Enris discovered. Or, rather, there were two walls, identical and overlapping, which gave the illusion of one. The gap between had to be a tight fit for the Oud, the end of which he watched disappear again.
Keeping a hand on the stone, Enris followed, this time not surprised to find His Oud had simply turned itself right around to move through another gap between walls. The Oud version of an alleyway? A shortcut between neighboring tunnels? How many had he missed . . . ?
He stepped out into what wasn’t a tunnel, though the entrances of several met here. Light— real sunlight— poured from above. Enris looked up to find himself standing at the bottom of an immense tower, one wall broken by windows of irregular shape and size, the other four solid. There were Chewer Oud clustered around the topmost windows. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what they were doing. The construction was of uneven stone and earth, as if the Oud had done little more than hollow a mound from within. How such a pile could be strong was a mystery.
Like everything else, he thought, staring at those pieces of sky with a longing that made him tremble. He reached and felt some relief. Pana was closer than Tuana, Yena and Amna almost as near. Vyna? He turned his face to it. Not so distant now. The Oud had done him a favor.
If he survived the kindness.
“Come.” His Oud was waiting beside another tunnel mouth, tapping impatiently. “Comecomecome.”
Enris walked across the broad floor, fine dust isolating every length of sunbeam. He shuddered at the relative darkness of the tunnel, for the first time understanding Yuhas’ horror of such places, but didn’t dare hesitate.
This tunnel was another of the rough type, with only a few loose glowstrips. The light from those was soon overwhelmed by brightness ahead. The tunnel became a ramp. Enris found himself walking more and more quickly, despite the slope and his exhaustion. This had to lead outside.
And it did, though not to any view he’d expected. Enris stopped with his Oud, gazing at a confusion of vehicles, most in motion. Some were the platform type, bearing Oud dressed in the
fabric and clear head domes he’d last seen in Tuana. Others bore long oval shapes of metal, resembling mechanical Oud. He dodged back and coughed at the dust as one of these swept by too near and quickly for comfort. There were some with sides taller than two Om’ray, and small round ones that could pass beneath the others. He couldn’t keep track. The sound of treads and scraping metal was a constant din.
All this within a great walled circle, penetrated by ramps, and domed by sky.
His Oud was on the move again. Enris followed, staying as close as he dared. They went around the outer edge, to his relief. There was no discernible order to the traffic, and collisions were frequent. Those involved merely backed and tried again to pass one another. An Om’ray wouldn’t last long.
A loud roar preceded an overhead shadow. Enris ducked instinctively before gazing up in wonder. A flying vehicle. Everyone knew the Oud had vehicles to travel through the air. Such made regular passes over the fields, though at a considerable height. He’d never seen one this close. It looked impossible, heavy and thick, with ridiculous little wings. Nothing, Enris vowed to himself, would make him trust his life to that.
His Oud stopped, rearing to speak. Three small vehicles changed direction hurriedly to avoid it, slamming into one another. “Om’ray fly. Goodgoodgood.”
Almost nothing.
* * *
The long, dark machine raced and bounced along the empty field, going faster and faster and faster until, abruptly, a final bounce left the ground behind. Enris watched openmouthed as the machine tipped and swerved its way through the air, straightening out just as the clouds swallowed it.
Not encouraging.
Another waited for them, its top half open in an invitation he would have declined if he could. Being surrounded by Oud who rattled and reared menacingly didn’t make that likely. There’d been a crowd waiting with the flying machines; from what little Enris could read of the creatures, these were opposed to either his presence or his Oud’s. Or both.
His Oud, either because it was superior to the others or oblivious to their posturing, didn’t react at all, moving to the machine. By that, Enris judged himself safer in its shadow, although wary of sudden moves on its part.
He was startled by a loud voice, very different from the low husky tones of Oud. He couldn’t make out the first words, other than that they were urgent and harsh. The rest were drowned out as the dozens of Oud around them tapped to themselves. It had sounded Om’ray, but wasn’t. He sensed no one else near.
“Stranger calls,” his Oud said, moving forward with its body half reared. It was an awkward position, from the way the creature lurched, but apparently it must talk to him before they reached the side of the machine. “What means? Badbadbadbad. Om’ray best.”
What “stranger?”
His Oud gestured with three black limbs to the side of the machine. Enris tossed his bag in, jumped to catch the edge. His rib did nothing more than grumble— only bruised, then, though the rest of his body argued against moving at all. It wasn’t worth tempting his Oud to do it for him. Most of his bruises were new.
His arms were in the best shape of all, and he pulled himself up and over without too much effort. Over, and into a featureless metal box that reminded him of the inside of the melting vat.
The voice again. The “stranger.” It came from the front of the machine. Enris jumped and grabbed the top of the barrier between, pulling his head and shoulders up, gaining support from an elbow.
The front of the machine was larger. It had to be, to house two Oud plus his. The floor, what he could see of it, was covered in what looked like levers and taps and other control-type objects. It was from there the voice was emanating.
No wonder he couldn’t sense the Om’ray who spoke, Enris thought, fascinated. No wonder his Oud had understood the device it had found— or stolen. The creatures had technology to carry a voice over distance.
The voice had continued, “— lost!”
“Where is?” his Oud replied.
“Site Two.”
What did that mean? Enris wondered.
“We come.” This with a heavy nudge to the Oud next to it.
Enris let himself drop back down. Just in time, for Oud outside the machine began laying curved metal sheets over the top— a roof, he saw, each piece sliding into the one before.
He was really going to fly, he realized. In the air. In this thing.
How bad could it be?
* * *
Flying was more terrifying than he could have imagined, with the added joy that Oud didn’t feel the need for padding or light. Enris sat on the metal floor of what was basically a box now too low to stand in, left to interpret agonizing vibration and random noise as best he could.
The sitting part, that was good. Very good. After a while, when nothing worse happened than a sudden short drop that sent his teeth through his tongue, he put his pack under his head and stretched out flat. That was better.
Nothing he could do about knowing where he was, Enris thought queasily. Though he tried to ignore it, his inner sense informed him exactly how far above other Om’ray he was, not to mention how quickly he was moving away from Tuana.
Eventually, on the reasonable assumption Oud were no more interested in crashing than he was, Enris slipped into, if not sleep, a state of blissful uncaring.
He didn’t know how long it was before the vibration and noise shot to the point of pain, the machine doing its best to slide him from side to side. Forgetting the low ceiling, Enris stood to brace himself, managing to bump his head, hard. He cried out, but didn’t bother asking questions. If they were falling from the sky, he’d know soon enough.
The machine steadied, though tipped toward the front. Going down was inevitable, he reminded himself, hoping the Oud were better at this than they were at getting into the air in the first place.
A jerk threw Enris against the back of his box, driving most of the breath from his lungs, followed by a regular thumping sound.
Blissful silence. Maybe they were all dead, he half-joked to himself in the dark.
“Come!” his Oud commanded as the roof panels were tossed aside, letting in light and raindrops. Enris lifted his face to both as he eased to his feet, then looked around as he climbed from the Oud machine.
Solid ground, he decided, felt wonderful.
Ground that tilted mere steps in front of him, falling into a black abyss?
Enris stepped back from that edge, no longer sure how wonderful this was. Or where . . .
Shared images of streams and rock came to him then, helping to settle the vast sloping gray into perspective. Mountains. He was on a mountain, or at least the side of one. The sun was setting behind him, rain clouds hastening truenight, but there was still plenty of light. The Oud machine had landed on a long flat strip that looked to have been recently cut from the rock. He didn’t want to consider the skill required not to slam into the mammoth cliff that rose up from the strip to the clouds.
The strip wasn’t the only cut. Another, the height of two Om’ray above him, dug deep into the heart of the mountain. Part of it was flat, with unfamiliar white structures, like small buildings, surrounding a tower of metal. Part met where the rock had washed away on its own, exposing . . . what?
Enris wiped the rain from his face, trying to understand what he saw. An immense curved something was stuck into the mountain, or rather erupted from it. Other, smaller curves showed to either side, their shapes emphasized by long shadows. A straight piece aimed outward from the top, ended in midair with another at right angles. None of it, from here, appeared damaged or broken. Lost, he judged. Forgotten.
Now found.
“Who is?”
Enris turned in the direction of the voice, expecting it to come from the machine. Instead, he found himself facing an unknown Om’ray in strange clothing. Relieved, he reached for the other’s mind.
To find nothing.
What had Naryn done to him? He tried again, opening his p
erception as wide as he dared, this close to Oud.
There. Enris glanced to his right. He could see nothing past the rain-shrouded slope, but he knew one Om’ray was that way, alone. Beyond was the glow of Yena and Grona. Here? He stared at the creature wearing the flesh of his kind, and shuddered. What was this?
“See? Om’ray.” His Oud reared up beside him, seemingly unaffected. “Find.” This with confidence.
Because it knew what was going on, Enris realized. This must be what it had called a “stranger.” And there were more. Others moved on the upper ledge. There was even, he stared, another machine coming down from the sky, different from the Oud’s, flying without wings or sound.
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