Interlude
Y
UHAS PARTH, NOWYUHAS SUD S’UDLAAT, waited to take over the cart five steps inside the tunnel mouth, an accomplishment Enris was careful not to praise. Natural good humor and a willingness to work let Yuhas fool everyone but his thoroughly smitten Chosen, Caynen.
And Enris himself.
Each day he watched the former Yena force himself deeper into the mold of Tuana. Yuhas studied how others took slow strides to cover the hard dry ground and walked slower. He saw Tuana clump up stairs one at a time and did the same, though it wasn’t natural to a body with perfect balance, easily able to leap five stairs at a time. But once Yuhas had noticed that his graceful, careful movements caught everyone’s eye— some admired, while Mauro and his ilk sneered and made mocking noises with their boots— he’d worked hard to change.
And now wore heavy boots.
Yuhas worked well in the shop and Jorg was pleased. Other than a tendency to spend as much time as possible near the melting vat, he’d noticed nothing unusual about their new helper. Enris hadn’t told his father how Yuhas had panicked his first time within the Oud tunnel, falling to the floor, then half crawling, half running in his desperation to reach daylight. He kept to himself Yuhas’ vow— to overcome his aversion, to take his turn pushing the cart.
Each day, Yuhas walked one step deeper into the world of the Oud, trembling and shaking like one of the giant leaves he’d tried to describe to Enris. It was an achievement of such magnificent will, Enris knew himself privileged to be the only witness.
“A good load,” Yuhas complimented breathlessly, hefting the handles as he pushed.
A scrap tumbled free, and Enris caught it before it hit the sand. “Not bad,” he agreed, tossing it back in as he walked alongside the cart. “Should fill the vat. Good thing. We’ve seventeen cutting blades to pour. Geter ran over a
joop
mating line and half the blades snapped.”
“The joop— whatever it is— can’t have liked that.” Yuhas’ voice eased the moment the sun hit his face. It was the light, Enris decided. There wasn’t enough below for him— for some reason, Yena feared the dark.
They made their way along the still-quiet road. Enris chuckled. “Oh, they probably didn’t notice. Joop are almost impossible to kill— they’re shelled, you see. If they’d die above ground, we’d collect them for bricks, but they only come up to mate. Almost the size of the cart,” he nodded at it. “They tuck themselves between the rows. I’ve heard of forty hooked together in one line.” A grimace. “It doesn’t take that many to be a nasty surprise for anyone operating a harvester.”
“You use these machines?”
From the sudden intensity of Yuhas’ green eyes, this wasn’t a casual question. “Of course. Oud-built, but we make replacement blades. There are tillers as well as harvesters. Don’t you?”
“This
nost
you grow,” the Yena said instead of answering. “Is that for the Oud or for yourselves?”
“Only an Oud could stomach the stuff,” Enris assured the other, making a face. “We grow our own food— which I’ve noticed you like well enough. Why?”
Yuhas shrugged and leaned into the handles. “Lucky for you,” he said obliquely.
About to pursue the issue, Enris spotted someone waiting outside the shop. Recognition slowed his steps. “What does she want?” he muttered.
Yuhas chuckled. “The same thing she wanted yesterday. And the day before that. You really should give up, Enris.”
“You Chosen want everyone to be like you,” he complained, not without cause. His cousin was equally unrelenting in his zeal to improve Enris’ love life.
It’s a good thing, my new brother, to find someone to complete you. You’ve seen my joy.
It was the first sending Yuhas had tried with him. Faint— he wasn’t Powerful— but characteristically warm and generous. Enris had to smile. “That I have,” he said aloud. “But—” his smile faded “— trust me when I say that’s not what she wants.”
As surely as he knew how to work the Oud’s metal, Enris knew Naryn S’udlaat was drawn to his Power, not him. Worse, her ambition had nothing to do with the making of useful, beautiful objects, or even friendship. There would be nothing of him left in Enris sud S’udlaat.
He wouldn’t risk it, despite the helpless desire that grew each time she came near.
“I’ll take this inside,” Yuhas offered.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Enris gently but firmly shouldered the other Om’ray from the cart. “Do me a favor. Go tell her how wonderful your Chosen is— that should send her running for the Cloisters.” No secret that Caynen S’udlaat, Naryn’s cousin, hadn’t been expected to catch the eye of the exotic, handsome stranger in their midst. But it was a good match, Enris thought, happy for his friend. There was no hiding the contentment the two had found in each other. Tunnels or no, Yuhas would be fine.
“Naryn!” Yuhas called, easily outstepping the cart. Despite the new boots, his every move made Enris feel clumsy and slow. He did his best not to grin at Naryn’s suddenly fixed expression at Yuhas’ babble as he pushed the cart past her to the shop. She was obliged to listen politely to Yuhas— Chosen were adult, after all, however new that state— but she didn’t have to like it. That much was clear from the glare she sent his way.
Enris smiled.
Jorg was inside. He waved an absent greeting to his son as he swung open the vat, eyes assessing the cart’s load as Enris pushed it through the wide door. No doubt Jorg knew to the blade how many they could pour this morning.
Enris was a step inside, about to start the cart down the ramp to the vat when a hand clamped over his bare wrist.
ENRIS!
The sending struck like a blow. He staggered back into the door’s frame, the cart tipping its load over the ramp with a resounding clatter. He could hear his father’s running steps. Yuhas was shouting. Louder by far was the voice in his mind.
ENRIS!! COME! COMECOMECOME!!!
The summons beat against him. He couldn’t see, could barely remember to gasp for air. He had no strength to pull free of the now-light grip. Instinct made him throw his free arm over his head for protection. Useless. This attack came from within, but his shields were useless, too. All he could do was resist. At that resistance, the summons turned to
pain
. . . waves and waves of
PAIN . . .
He heard a scream . . .
“Enris!? What’s wrong?” His father. “What are you doing to him?” This a shout. “Stop!”
Somehow, he began to force the other out, to wrest control of his senses from her— for it was
her.
“Nar— Naryn—” he managed to whisper.
She was
pulling
him. As he struggled, a darkness rose behind his eyes, a churning emptiness that sang with delirious joy and fear. It seemed a
place,
somewhere he could be safe . . . if he only let himself fall apart, the pieces would flow
there
. . .
PAINPAINPAIN—!
As suddenly as if cut by a knife, the pain and pull were gone. Enris found himself slumped against the wall, breathing in great sobbing heaves as though he’d raced uphill with his cart. His hands . . . he stared at his hands. They couldn’t be his. His hands had never trembled before. “What . . .?”
“Yuhas threw her into the street. The Adepts are coming, my son. Stay here. Listen to me. Stay here.”
I’ll never leave.
He tried to say it, tried to send it, but the darkness was coming back.
This time, he fell.
* * *
“You’re to leave, Enris Mendolar.”
He struggled to sit up in an unfamiliar bed, pulling at the constriction of a strange shirt around his shoulders. “Why?” He fought to see through the dark.
“You’re to leave. When you are ready. Which won’t be today.”
Sleep.
It was a command.
* * *
“I want to see my family.” Enris reared up in the bed, tossing the blanket aside. “I want to see them now!”
The Om’ray with the tray didn’t react. He said, as he had said for the last two meals Enris had been served, exactly and with each syllable the same: “Here is food. Eat what you wish.”
One of the Lost.
Enris rubbed one hand over his face, feeling a fool. He pressed two fingers into the corners of his eyes, hard against his nose. There was pain still. Not overwhelming. Not even real.
Not his.
Imposed
. How had she done it?
“Here is food. Eat what you wish.”
He sighed and dropped his hand in order to take the tray. Otherwise, the Lost would continue to repeat his message, over and over.
He knew the face. This had been Sive sud Lorimar. A harvester. A friend of his father’s. With the death of his Chosen, he’d been brought here. To stay.
The Cloisters. Enris shuddered inwardly as he watched the Lost walk from the room. He’d wanted, once, to explore this place— see its ancient metalwork for himself, explore the many mysteries supposedly hidden behind its bold arches and smooth walls.
Now, he wanted home. He stared helplessly at his impeccable meal and wanted Ridersel’s sweetpies.
The voice had said he had to leave.
Had he left already?
Was this his destination?
It could be. His thoughts felt thick, unsettled, more so than the disorientation left by the Oud trace. The Cloisters was the refuge of those too mind-damaged to live with the rest of Tuana.
Naryn’s
gift
.
Enris threw the tray and its contents against the far wall.
Chapter 19
“I
S THERE SOMETHING YOU NEED?”
Aryl kept her eyes on her hands, trying to ignore that her hands gripped a shoulder-high leather-wrapped post, and that post was embedded into the back of ...
... impossible to ignore sitting on top of a room-sized mass that grunted and stank and ate its way over a world that . . .
She squeezed her eyes shut in denial. “What I need,” she said bitterly, “is for the edge of the sky to stop moving.”
“It’s called the horizon. It isn’t moving. You are. The feeling will pass.”
Her stomach didn’t care about the distinction. The Tikitik and their beasts had taken her from the rastis grove to where the rain no longer fell as it properly should— deflecting in all directions from the tips of leaves and fronds, half mist, half heavy drops— but instead hammered straight down as if she’d stood under the cistern’s open tap. Every identical drop stung exposed skin. She’d had to bend over, her head between her arms, simply not to drown.
Almost worse, the terrifying rain had ended as no rain ever had: quickly, as if shut off from above. She’d opened her eyes in shock to find herself in a place she’d never imagined could exist. It had taken until now for her curiosity to outweigh the nausea.
Aryl eased open her eyelids.
The sky she knew. She’d seen its ripped blue amid the clouds before. But the land beneath had been erased by a smooth flat sheet of water.
Not the black water of the Lay, though some of that churned around the feet of their mounts as they lumbered through the plant-thick shallows, grunting to themselves. This expanse was the color of her grandmother’s failed eyes, a soft gray that no longer remembered blue. Nothing disturbed it beyond the ripples and silt of their passing. It stretched to meet the sky in a straight line, like the end of the world.
It wasn’t. Though Yena grew dimmer to her with every step, Amna and Rayna, distant Vyna, grew brighter. No wonder so few arrived on Passage at Yena. Aryl couldn’t imagine how long it would take to skirt this all-wet place.
She turned her head the other way. A green wall rose alongside their path, abrupt and solid, crowned by the familiar vegetation of her canopy home. Its feet stood in the black flood, that boundary fringed on this sunward side by a dense growth of short, thin plants that rose from the water. They were bent, as if to an unfelt wind.
Her mount lurched as it lowered its great head— again— to snatch a green mouthful, yanking the plants free by their dripping roots. It munched as it continued wading. Munched and grunted. Those of the Tikitik didn’t take such liberties, Aryl noticed glumly.
There were dozens of the beasts ahead in straggling lines and, when she dared turn— holding on for dear life— even more behind. Only their five had riders. The rest seemed accidental companions, following the plants they liked, grazing as they moved. All had at least one post rising from their backs. Some had two or three.
“We call them
ossts,
” the Tikitik told her, as if noticing her interest. It was the first time it had volunteered information. Perhaps, she thought, it was at ease here. It looked comfortable, sitting with one leg hooked around the post as if it were a branch, the other crossing to lock the first.
Aryl copied its position, at once more secure. She dared release a hand to trace the post to where it vanished within the osst’s thick coat, digging gingerly into the coarse dark hair with her fingers. She couldn’t find the end or its skin. “How did you do this?”
“The posts are inserted at birth, whenever possible. By the time the young are weaned, they are large enough to object.”
She’d object at any age, Aryl thought, awkwardly patting the hair flat again.
“If you require nourishment, your osst will provide.” The Tikitik twisted a leather cap from the top of its post to reveal a metal disk. Removing that, it bent its face over a tube protruding from the post, its mouth-fingers flattening to its cheeks as though getting out of the way. Aryl could see its throat convulse and relax all the way up to the shoulders.
Its eyes bent on their cones as if to watch her reaction.
Calmly, Aryl twisted the cap from her post. The disk took a bit more doing, because she couldn’t bring herself to loose both hands, but came off eventually. She put her lips over the tube and sucked.
It was blood, hot and rich. Though she’d expected it, her abused stomach wasn’t happy. Deliberately, Aryl took one more swallow, then replaced the disk and cap. So much for all the canopy dwellers who’d taken her blood without asking.
“Convenient,” she told the Tikitik, who’d also finished.
“Yes. Though the inner tube must be replaced several times. Its lining stops the first wound from healing, but eventually wears away.”
There were biters who left always-oozing holes in flesh. Om’ray died from those. Aryl found herself patting the osst again, though it gave no sign of noticing her or the multitude of small brown flitters that walked across its horned head, themselves preoccupied with the assorted small biters dining on the osst’s naked ears.
By the symbol on its wristband, she guessed this Tikitik was the one who’d come this morning to give her her own band. A leader, as she’d told her mother. Someone who should have answers. “How do you make such things?” she asked.
“Make what?”
“The osst.”
“Who told you I did?” It was amused— of that she was suddenly sure.
“The Humble Ones— after I was washed—” a now thoroughly redundant process given the rain, “— they told me the Tikitik made the rastis, the swarms, everything.” Aryl waved her arm at the wall of green beside them. Everything except Om’ray, but she didn’t add that.
“You believe this.”
Aryl hesitated. From her mother, this would be a challenge to some childish presumption. From a Tikitik? She felt vulnerable. Could she back down? Should she? Or was that the mistake. “I mean no disrespect,” she said after a moment. “Is it true?”
“It is true that what the Oud accomplish with their loud machines and metal tools, we Tikitik accomplish with life. It is true, we do not hide it, that we were greater once.”
“Once?” Aryl frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“No,” it replied. “You would not. For Om’ray, there is only now. The world is as it has always been and will always be. I’ll tell you an important thing, little Yena. For Tikitik, there is an endless span of befores and weres and perhaps-one-days—” As if sensing her growing confusion, it stopped, mouth-fingers moving restlessly. “It doesn’t matter. In this now, we can do many things, but we cannot create a new living creature. Did we, in the before? There are those who believe so.”
“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.