Riders of the Storm (31 page)

She drew up her most horrifying memories to throw like knives: the osst being eaten alive in the Lake of Fire, the swarm, Yena burning…

FEAR!!!
Her sense of Hoyon faded.

Oran kept coming.

Let her come. Aryl slipped into the M'hir, embraced its chaos…

And waited.

Oran followed, her presence tasting of
triumph
and
greed
…

…only to falter as she realized where they were.

Welcome to the M'hir.

Like a stitler springing its ambush, Aryl launched herself at her enemy. She didn't know if she rode the M'hir Wind or was that wind…all she knew was
RAGE
.

She tore at Oran, tossing parts away, letting them go in the
darkness
…

AGONY
…

She didn't stop…stripping away more…and more…until what was left of Oran di Caraat sobbed and gibbered and flickered at the edge of existence.

Aryl?

Bern?

He flickered, too, tossed by storm and turmoil, desperately holding to what remained of his Chosen.

Aryl…

Her rage winked out, replaced by sick dread. What had she almost done?

She
gathered
Oran together and drew them both to safety.

 

Aryl spat snow, dirt, and bile from her mouth. She raised herself on arms she wouldn't allow to shake, collected herself. In one smooth motion, she was on her feet, confronting her attackers, longknife out and ready in her hand.

Hoyon cowered against a window. Oran was on hands and knees in the snow and dirt, vomiting.

Not good.

Aryl put away the knife and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her stomach lurched, and she fought the urge to spew as well.

She hadn't defended herself. She'd tried to kill Oran—and Bern.

Self-control was the first, most important lesson of all.

“You didn't need to attack me,” she told them wearily. “Once I learn to control it, I'll share the ability to move through the M'hir with anyone who wants it—starting with my Clan.” Hoyon gave her an incredulous look. Oran lifted her head, her hair flat and soiled, eyes shot with blood.

“You didn't believe Bern, did you? Or want his new life, here.” Aryl stressed the word. “You decided to take what you wanted and go. To be greater than all of Grona's other Adepts. You'd trade your healing Talent for it—your brother. But destroying me to take it was even better, wasn't it? Then I couldn't teach anyone else. It would be yours alone.”

Oran used a handful of snow to wash her face, then spat to one side. Her eyes never left Aryl's. She didn't answer.

She didn't need to.

Aryl sighed. “You don't see it, do you?” she said reluctantly, remembering a mug shattered on a floor. “Too much Power, held by too few, will destroy us. The Agreement keeps the peace not just between races, but between us, our Clans. You're right. Moving through the M'hir could be the most valuable Talent of all. But if we dare change, if we throw this at the Oud and Tikitik, we threaten the balance that holds Cersi together. We'll fall.” The world could end. She knew it, deep inside. She'd proved it. Hadn't she almost killed another? “There's only one way. Once this ability is safe, every Om'ray must have it. Including you.”

“Why?” Hoyon straightened. “After—Why would you do that?”

Because they were all Om'ray, a race disappearing from the world?

Because they were surrounded by those with more technology and real power than they could imagine, who didn't care about them?

Because some good had to come from her mistake…from Costa's death?

He'd had to ask, which meant he'd understand none of those answers.

“Twenty-two Om'ray are not enough to sustain and build a Clan,” Aryl told him instead, which was also the truth. “Sona needs you and your families. You've seen what we've accomplished in our first fist of days. Shelter, food, and now water. But it's not enough.”

Oran sat, drawing her robe away from the soiled ground. “You Yena have no idea what it's like here in the cold.” A peace offering?

“No, we don't,” Aryl agreed. Not the time to mention the dreams. “We're not ready for winter, let alone what will happen afterward. We could use what you know about living in the mountains, about growing food. We need your Talents and training. If you stay and help—when I'm ready, I'll share what I can do with you as well as the others.”

“You tried to leave me
there.
Tried to kill me.” Oran's hair came back to life, lashing the air around her head. “You expect me to trust anything you say?”

Aryl gazed at the Adept. This was no friend. The best she could hope for was the kind of truce that existed in the canopy, when two predators avoided each other during their hunts.

I expect you,
she sent, just to Oran, through the M'hir that now so readily connected them,
to be afraid of the dark.

 

Nothing troubled their return journey. It was much like their first, Aryl thought. The Grona Adepts hadn't talked to her then either. They'd collected their coats—she both of hers—and the Adepts had tucked up their robes, however filthy. The rock hunters were piled closer to the line where shadow conquered light, a line moving steadily inward from both sides as the sun left the sky, but she didn't bother to mention it. They were adults, after all, Chosen and powerful and Adepts.

If they were blind to danger, it suited her. They were blind to other things as well. Like the occasional glint from overhead, a reflection from what followed them, something cautious and discreet.

A comfort, to know a friend was watching. Aryl would have given anything to look up and smile at Marcus, but not even Grona were that blind.

They also didn't see—or care to mention—the lines of compressed dirt here and there on the paving stones. She'd seen such paired tracks before. An Oud machine. It must have taken this road while they were at the Cloisters.

Since they hadn't encountered it, the Oud traveled away from them, down the valley. Aryl kept them to the fastest pace Hoyon could manage, but the machine didn't come in sight.

Stupid Oud. If it wanted to talk to the Sona Speaker, it should have waited here.

The only Om'ray who knew more about Oud were with her. Aryl chewed her lower lip a moment, then decided. “There's an Oud ahead of us, “she informed them. “Going to the village.”

“Oud go where they will,” Hoyon said in a patronizing tone. “There's no way to know where they—”

“What makes you say that?” Oran interrupted.

She'd learned there were things to fear. Aryl wasn't proud to be the reason, but it was useful. “These tracks.” She pointed. “They go down the valley. There are no others. Plus…there's this.” She pulled the pendant from its place under her tunic. “They promised to come and talk to me.”

Hoyon burst out laughing. “An unChosen?”

“I asked them to release water into the river,” Aryl said evenly. “We need it for the fields.”

He ducked his head deeper into his coat, for all the world like a offended flitter, but didn't slow his pace.

“If this is to be an official Visitation,” Oran offered after a moment, “the Oud will ask for lists.”

“Lists. Of what?”

“Of everything.” Hoyon snorted. “Not that you have anything.”

“We have you,” Aryl countered. “Lists are records, are they not? Written down? That's what you do.”

“You know something of our work. Were you training as an Adept?” There was a new eagerness in her tone, as if Aryl being of their kind mattered to Oran.

“No,” she replied evenly. “But I've seen lists.” There had been lists made by Yena's Adepts. Lists of their diminished supplies. Lists of what could be spared for the ten unChosen sent on Passage—including Bern Teerac and Yuhas Parth, who'd made it to Tuana Clan. Two had died. The other six? Aryl wished she'd disobeyed custom and law and
reached
to follow them. There were so few Yena left. “Why do the Oud want them?”

“No one knows.”

And no one cared, Aryl corrected to herself. Until now. “Do you trade with them?”

“What would we trade with Oud?”

This was different. Yena had always given dresel and seeds to the Tikitik who came after the Harvest, receiving in turn the glows and power cells, the metal and oils they needed for the coming year. Enris told her how the Tuana grew large numbers of a plant the Oud wanted, how the creatures took that harvest when ripe. In turn, the Oud left glows and other supplies at the mouth of their tunnel. “Provide food the Oud want. Receive glows and power cells in return. Metal.”

“We go in the tunnels and take what we need. The Oud don't care. They just want their lists. Crops. How much food we were able to grow,” she clarified at Aryl's puzzled look. “They don't want any of it. Whatever we built or used. How many of us there are, who died and how, who was born. Lists. Our Speaker—” with emphasis “—reads them out.”

Aryl doubted that. The Grona Speaker was not, like her mother, an Adept, and no other Om'ray in a Clan were taught to read or write. But she didn't doubt the rest. For whatever reason, the mountain Oud treated their Clan differently.

Had it been the same for Sona?

Would it be?

 

Firstnight and the Oud made it to the village before they did. Aryl had worried her way through several scenarios during the final tenth of their journey—during the worst, she'd forced the Adepts into the best run they could manage, only to have Hoyon collapse on the road, wasting valuable time. The Oud, however, waited on this side of the dry river. It lay on its machine, shrouded in brown, dusty fabric. Her people lined the other bank to watch it, those who weren't perched on a roof for a better view.

They'd have sensed Aryl and the Adepts returning. She could only imagine how they'd felt before. The Oud here. Their Speaker not.

Not every day the First Scout was wrong.

To be fair, the Oud were the least predictable beings Aryl had met. They made the Human seem normal.

His tiny airborne eye had left them before the final turn of the valley. She'd been sad to see it go. Not that Marcus could or should have helped—but it had been nice to have a companion who didn't hate or fear her. Or want something.

About to
send
reassurance to the others, Aryl stopped herself. Don't use Power near Oud unless you must. Enris' advice—which she trusted more than anything the Grona might say.

Instead, she waved her hand as they approached, made sure to smile. The Speaker's Pendant glittered against her coat. She hoped the creature recognized it clean.

Hoyon and Oran walked past the Oud, barely glancing at the creature, and clambered awkwardly down the river's bank. Their heavy clothing didn't help. Hoyon fell again; Oran didn't wait for him. He stumbled to catch up to her.

That figures detached from those waiting, prepared to help them up the other side, wasn't a compliment.

Aryl walked to the dusty dome she assumed covered the head of the Oud. Small biters scurried away from her, but stayed near the machine as if they belonged. So long as they bit Oud hide and not Om'ray, she didn't care.

Only the biters appeared to notice her.

Was the Oud asleep? Dead?

It would be dark soon. She'd rather not be on this side of the river then. Behind the Oud, the far side of the road was edged in hopeful rocks, some daring enough to roll into the lingering sunlight. Not that they moved when she looked.

Aryl drew herself tall and straight. “I see you,” she said. Loudly, in case the Oud was asleep.

No reaction.

It was the right creature. A Speaker's Pendant was attached to the fabric below the dome.

She fingered hers, frowning, then leaned forward and rapped her knuckles on that smooth surface.

“Whatwhatwhatwhat!” The creature reared violently upright, clattering limbs and words, then fell off the machine to one side. Disturbed biters whirred and clicked into the air, then subsided around its limp form.

Had she killed it?

Aryl didn't glance over her shoulder. Not the time to seem as if she didn't know what was going on. “Get up!” she urged.

Black limbs, some disturbingly like hooks, waved weakly.

Not dead.

She wrinkled her nose at a musty odor but stepped closer. “Are you—” The word “hurt” died in her mouth as she saw the green stain spreading across the dirt and stone.

Ready to leap back at the slightest excuse, Aryl lifted the heavy fabric draped above the stain. It took both hands and all her strength to raise it high enough to look underneath.

The flaccid, pale body was slashed open along three lines. The cuts were precise and too straight. Powerful strokes, she judged. Skilled. Possibly using a weapon made for this purpose.

Another Oud?

She'd tried to kill her own, Aryl thought grimly. She eased the fabric down. “Who did this? Why?”

“Let it die in peace, Speaker for Sona.”

She spun, knife out.

The Tikitik rose from its crouch, hands empty at its sides.

She hadn't seen it, Aryl thought numbly. How could that be?

It wasn't like the Tikitik she knew. This was gray on gray, its skin and cloth a perfect match for the stone. The same body shape, the same intent four-eyed stare.

The same threat. She kept her knife ready. “What are you doing here? This is Oud land.”

“Is it?” The Tikitik bobbed its head, as if amused. “Forgive my trespass, then. I was…curious.”

A familiar symbol on its wristband caught her eye. “You're a Thought Traveler,” she guessed.

“That is part of my name. Curious indeed.” It sounded pleased, as if a puzzle was what it sought. “Do you know what it means?”